James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 9, 2019 22:45:22 GMT
One Hundred & Forty–Four
There were five pockets of active NATO resistance behind the frontlines in Germany.
In Hamburg there were the Bundeswehr forces of the 6th Panzergrenadier Division who had been holding that city since the first morning of the war. The Hannover pocket had shrunk, but there were still British and Bundeswehr forces fighting there too. At Einbeck those US III Corps elements who had not escaped Soviet encirclement were still holding out just like those parts of the US 8th Mechanized Infantry Division at Bad Salzschlirf in eastern Hessen. Finally, there was Frankfurt and its defenders fighting off East German attempts to take that city while it burned all around them.
Throughout the day, Soviet-led forces responded to direct orders from Marshal Korbutov to smash each of these to pieces using all means available… with varying degrees of success and failure.
*
Hamburg faced attacks at first coming from the east and southeast as those East German reservists made what had to be a final effort to overrun the city. There were few of those men left and they had little effective weaponry or ammunition, but they came at Hamburg’s defenders like they had previously done so in what could only be described as a suicidal attack. Men and the few vehicles remaining had to come up and out of cover to try to cross the stretches of no-man’s land which separated both sides and they faced Bundeswehr weapons which had been long since zeroed-in.
Both the 19MRD & 20MRD were no more than brigades when they attacked and afterwards would each be lucky to field a pair of battalions each. So many men were slaughtered for what seemed like no gain at all as the 6th Panzergrenadier Division sheltered behind minefields and used machine guns, artillery and tank gun fire to eliminate those attackers in great number. There were instances were some East Germans refused to march forward into certain death, yet harsh penalties for the slightest infractions of discipline let alone refusal to go forward came into play with Soviet ‘rear-area security’ troops assisting their East German counterparts.
The Hamburg commander, Generalmajor Klaus-Christoph Steinkopff, wasn’t stupid and had a suspicion that that advance to his front was a cover for further attacks and he was perfectly correct in this assessment. The Soviet 3GMRD had been released from combat operations around Lubeck with the motorised rifle and artillery units joining the divisional tank regiment which had previously reached the North Sea coast behind the city. From the north and northwest the 3GMRD attacked against the city’s outer defences.
The Soviets were more careful in their attacks with emphasis being on concealment and extensive fire support. Nevertheless, the Bundeswehr troops were dug-in well to counter the effects of artillery and also had forward reconnaissance teams out ahead of their defences to detect where real efforts were being made in place of distraction efforts.
The fire support which the Soviets had was devastating though. It was not only targeted against the frontlines but rather back from them too deeper throughout Hamburg’s suburbs and, on occasion, as deep as the centre of the city. Immense damage to the city and the death toll among non-combatants was great, yet this wasn’t the Soviet intention. Instead the aim was to pull fighting troops either at the front or waiting in reserve in the rear away from their duties to assist with dealing with that destruction. Moreover, the Soviets wanted to block access routes throughout the pocket for reserves to move forward before the main attack came.
It was almost as through every defender of Hamburg was armed with man-portable ATGM-launchers or rocket-launchers. Hundreds upon hundreds of these seemed to open up when the tidal wave of Soviet infantry was pushed forward with tanks and armoured vehicles moving behind them. Missiles and rockets erupted from the city when the main Soviet attack came just after midday and the 3GMRD was hit hard. However, every launch of such a weapon betrayed a firing position to which the Soviets directed their own fire against. Of course, the defenders moved around before firing again, but the massed Soviet artillery fire – the divisional artillery had been joined by a brigade from the Soviet 149th Artillery Division which had been with them at Lubeck – kept pouring explosive fire upon them. Many of the Soviet T-72 tanks had extra armour fitted while the BMP-2s and BTR-70s behind them in fire support jinxed around as much as possible to avoid some of the defensive missiles.
General Steinkopff had thought that he could hold off the Soviets by eventually inflicting so many casualties upon them that they could retire, yet his hope was smashed by intense, violent explosions which started to go off following air attacks along the northern frontlines. Thermobaric bombs were being dropped on his troops and the weapons-effects of those bombs killed his men sheltering inside buildings and inside trenches and foxholes. Again and again the Soviets employed these until some fortunate bad weather swept in off the North Sea over the city forcing the enemy to give up using them because thermobaric weapons really needed perfect weather to work effectively; not rain and strong coastal gusts like what arrived.
3GMRD elements moved-in afterwards and overrun significant defensive positions where the defenders had been choked or burnt to death. Much of the 17th Brigade was lost in these attacks and General Steinkopff had to push his 18th Brigade – his tank-heavy force and his only reserves – forward. There were panzergrenadiers with the 18th Brigade yet not as many as needed to fill the gaps in the lines, gaps which the Soviets were pouring into.
In addition, far too much ammunition had been shot off and there had been no resupply of his division since before the war begun. General Steinkopff was worried about one final, major push by the Soviets…
…which came in the early afternoon.
The 18th Brigade didn’t have the defensive positions like the 17th Brigade had held and their seventy plus tanks (the brigade had started the war with one hundred and nine Leopard-1A2s assigned) couldn’t operate like they were in open terrain like they were perfectly suited for. They had to continually manoeuvre slowly and watch the flanks at every given moment for Soviet infiltration teams with missilemen aiming to attack their tanks in the rear, where the Leopard-1 was most exposed. The Bundeswehr infantry kept getting caught in Soviet rocket artillery barrages so they couldn’t act to defend the tanks as they should have too.
By the mid-afternoon, the 18th Brigade was forced by heavy losses and a terrible tactical situation to fall back, especially in the Hamburg Airport area. This meant that the 16th Brigade to the east had to shorten their lines too and give up good positions less they be outflanked. Those Territorial troops of the 81st Reserve Grenadier Regiment which made up the rest of General Steinkopff’s command held their southern positions, but the readjustment of the defensive lines to the east opened up an opportunity for the remaining East Germans to push forward a little bit more. There was a sudden and successful attack made in the Ohlsdorf area with the railway station there falling and then they managed to push a few of their remaining tanks along the banks of the Alster River before those T-55s were blown to pieces by dismounted Bundeswehr missilemen.
Elements of the 3GMRD then shifted eastwards to follow-up on that East German advance using the narrow Alster to protect their own flank from attacks from the 18th Brigade. Soviet forces drove forward for the Hamburg Stadtpark, that large urban park. Once they got there they were temporarily free of the deadly urban maze that Hamburg was. Afterwards they struck out in all directions from that green space and while facing further opposition, they were getting closer to the heart of Hamburg now. There were many civilian refugees sheltering nearby and the Bundeswehr baulked at using heavy weapons so close to their civilians; the Soviets had no such qualms.
The hesitation doomed the city. The Soviets kept on pushing forward and drove southwards now right towards the Elbe at the heart of the city. Artillery was brought forward as they advanced along the eastern side of the Alster River which would take them to their ultimate objective and that was used in direct fire support often against buildings dead ahead to bring them down atop of the stubborn defenders inside them. A lot of Soviet casualties were caused and this would later reaffirm for the Soviet Army their desire to stay out of urban areas with armoured forces, though many of their men were now moving on foot with tanks and armoured vehicles following not leading the way and stumbling into ambushes.
By the late afternoon, General Steinkopff had lost the city borough of Hamburg-Nord and Hamburg-Mitte (Centre) was being slowly entered by leading Soviet infantry units. The Soviets couldn’t be stopped and his own ability to shift forces around inside the city were not working; a key example of this would be how the 18th Brigade with all of its tanks was on the wrong side of the Alster River in the Eimsbuttel and unable to effectively cross that narrow waterway. His headquarters came under close attack from Soviet artillery and there were reports that the enemy was less than a mile away.
Well-aware of the implications of doing so, but with no other choice than to continue to oversee a slaughter of soldiers and civilians alike, General Steinkopff begun the process of calling for a ceasefire with a view to surrender his command. He was unaware that so much damage had been done to the 3GMRD and its losses meant that it would have very soon been unable to continue to advance any further.
However, Hamburg was wholly cut off from the outside world. Soviet electronic jamming had meant that there had been silence on the airwaves going out since Thursday and then the following day had seen the tenuous physical link with the rest of Germany cut by the Poles in the Elbe-Weser Triangle; the 6th Panzergrenadier Division commander had no idea that the French had sought to advance to his assistance that very morning. No supplies had come to the city’s defenders and neither to the civilians trapped here: all nine hundred odd thousand of them who needed food, water and medical care.
And so the 3GMRD had taken Hamburg like they had eventually forced the surrender of Lubeck too, though in the battles here today that division was destroyed as a fighting force. The survivors would need assistance from the East Germans in rounding-up prisoners and collecting weapons before marching away to leave Hamburg to those under orders from the murderer Mielke.
*
Those Soviet-led forces surrounding the Hannover pocket tried as they might, but they couldn’t force General von Sandrart to surrender like his counterpart up in Hamburg did. The pocket inside which British and Bundeswehr forces were fighting to defend as they waited upon the relief which they were sure would be coming ever so soon shrunk a little throughout the day, but at no point did the Soviets do enough to allow those inside to think of giving up. There were still some stocks of war supplies inside and while the numbers of civilians trapped alongside the fighting men were large, they weren’t overwhelmingly so.
There was consistent bad weather across Lower Saxony throughout the day and that ensured that the Soviets didn’t use any thermobaric weapons with the resultant devastating effects of those against defensive positions which would have come. Then there was the fact that these troops had only been surrounded since late Friday, not the first day of the war: there was still plenty of optimism left.
The wounded British 3rd Armoured Division under General Jones – which now incorporated all British forces inside the pocket – even conducted a limited counterattack during the day against enemy forces of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army moving against it to the south. The Chieftian tanks from the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars battle-group distinguished themselves in a short engagement around Wettbergen while the infantry of the Queen’s Own Highlanders first battalion battle-group achieved equal success in nearby Empelde. The troops of these formations, along with the rest of the British Army forces here, were tired and had already taken many losses among their fellow soldiers, but they fought like tigers ambushing Soviet forces moving forward to attack.
The Bundeswehr fought hard too and weren’t about to give up here where the thinking was that they could hold out until NATO reserves came across the Weser in strength and drove hard on Hannover taking on all comers.
If the Soviets wanted to destroy the Hannover pocket they were going to have to try harder, with great numbers too, than they did during their attempts on March 20th.
*
The much smaller Einbeck pocket was now commanded by Major-General John Yeosock, the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. Yesterday, Polish and then Soviet troops had forced the US III Corps forces left behind on the wrong side of the Weser back into the town ready to be blasted with massed artillery and those howitzers and rocket launchers had fired all through the night into today.
The cutting of their supply links crippled the movement capabilities of the US Army troops which General Yeosock commanded. He had ammunition, but not fuel for his tanks and armoured vehicles. With the enemy surrounding him on all sides and no opportunity to manoeuvre, he knew that his command was doomed. There was intensive Soviet electronic jamming of the airwaves and, of course, no opportunity to send a messenger or such like. What was deemed an ‘intelligence bundle’ was dropped by a USAF twin-seat F-16B on what could have been a suicide mission for the two-man crew aboard; the USAF aircrew managed to drop their package from a weapons hard-point bang on target due to their low-level, high-speed dash avoiding Soviet anti-aircraft fire.
General Yeosock was informed of the failed attacks by the French in the north and the US Fifth Army in Hessen as well as the inability of the remainder of the US III Corps to cross the Weser and come to his rescue. There was an intelligence summary included of the strength of opposition surrounding him – thus standing in the way of a relief effort – though such news as that was only depressing. Moreover, he was also given intelligence that there were senior US Army figures in Soviet KGB custody being put to use as a propaganda tool to try to convince NATO units, in particular American ones, to give up or respond to false orders to retreat.
None of this was good news at all.
Finally, he was instructed to keep fighting as long as he possibly could. There was no demand for a last stand to be made to the last man or any of that nonsense, just an order to fight as long as he could here while maintaining the best traditions of the US Army.
General Yeosock would follow his orders and keep resisting as long as possible while enemy forces manoeuvred all around him and their artillery kept coming. For reasons unknown to him, no direct attack came during the day though he expected such a thing to occur during the night or the following morning at the latest. The answer to that was the presence of Green Berets nearby hurting the Soviet preparations and stopping their planned daytime assault after the loss of one divisional headquarters and the wholescale destruction of ammunition stocks at a major supply point for their mini-offensive against Einbeck.
The attack against Einbeck was only delayed though, not stopped.
*
Three days beforehand, during Thursday March 17th, the US 8th Mechanized Infantry Division had fought along the Fulda River as part of the US V Corps’ left flank where that corps zone of responsibility met with that of the Bundeswehr’s III Corps. The 8th Mechanized Infantry Division had seen one of its combat brigades and much of the divisional rear-area support forces lost in battle before the frontlines moved further away then and even further since. What remained of the division had withdrew into the area around the town of Bad Salzschlirf awaiting relief.
During that initial battle, both the divisional commander (Major-General Waller) and his manoeuvre deputy had both been killed while the support deputy had been captured. The chief-of-staff had suffered serious wounds in combat and had no choice but to concede command to a lower-ranking officer; the whole top command structure had suffered immensely when the Soviets had broken into the divisional rear as it had.
In command in Bad Salzschlirf was Colonel Wesley Clark, a West Point graduate. He had pre-war been at Fort Carson in Colorado with a brigade of the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division before transferring to the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division during REFORGER to replace a brigade commander with that latter formation who had come down with a major illness. Colonel Clark was an unlikable man among his peers and his subordinates but he had ended up in command of what remained of the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division after so many losses to senior people: yesterday he had been named acting G3 (Operations Officer) before the chief-of-staff had been killed when at the division’s field hospital in a Soviet artillery strike. After that event, Colonel Clark had assumed command with many in the know making offhand remarks out of earshot that he was next to lose his life to enemy action as the command staff of the division was acting as a magnet for Soviet weaponry.
Instead of being killed, Colonel Clark found himself the target of a clever piece of disinformation warfare and being tricked into surrendering Bad Salzschlirf and those troops of the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division he wasn’t long in command of.
Tanks and troops from elements of the Soviet Twenty-Eighth Army were massing around the town and its US Army defenders but the GRU moved in first and their actions resulted in the death of only one man in achieving the desired crushing of resistance here.
Approaching under a white flag, GRU officers disguised as Soviet Army officers managed to get Colonel Clark to meet them at the frontlines during an agreed temporary ceasefire. He was introduced to Major-General John Shalikashvili by the Soviets and informed that the senior US Army man was now in command of the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division after being named as a replacement by US V Corps headquarters for General Waller. Though he knew something was wrong, Colonel Clark – a man whose hero as a young soldier had been Douglas MacArthur – didn’t understand that Shalikashvili was under the influence of several mind-altering drugs and had been heavily coached in his lines as well as having been repeatedly threatened with torture. While egotistic, Colonel Clark wasn’t a fool and when Shalikashvili ordered him to stand his forces down and stop fighting just as the rest of the US V Corps had done, along with the entire US Army in Europe, he of course couldn’t fathom such a thing. He asked why there were still aircraft in the skies on combat missions and if a ceasefire or surrender had taken place why wasn’t one being broadcast over radio waves which shouldn’t have been being jammed.
Shalikashvili stumbled over his lines and explained that a ceasefire had been arranged between Washington and Moscow so that Soviet and American forces were no longer fighting, but the West Germans, the British and the French were still fighting: those were the reasons for aircraft seen in the sky and the need for mass electronic warfare efforts. Shalikashvili got angry with Colonel Clark too and was only calmed down by the GRU men with him. The drugs and coercion used on the former commander of the US 9th Motorized Infantry Division hadn’t been perfect… yet they did the trick.
Colonel Clark fell for it.
Shalikashvili and a pair of those GRU officers posing as Soviet soldiers went back to the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division headquarters where their doped prisoner assumed command and ordered the division to stand down. He fumbled over an explanation that the Soviet Army was going to escort the men of the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division back westwards and they should leave their weapons behind. At the command post, a collection of tracked M-548s, trucks and jeeps, there was disbelief at such an order, but it was nonetheless an order from a general officer and Colonel Clark stood by the dishevelled Shalikashvili.
The men laid down their weapons and a Soviet messenger went to pass the word on for Soviet Twenty-Eighth Army units to come forward.
An hour later, after things became much clearer on what was happening, as US Army soldiers marched into Soviet captivity instead of being escorted westwards, Colonel Clark realised what a fool he had been. He attempted to grab the pistol of one of those lying GRU men so he could shoot Shalikashvili, but he himself ended up being gunned down by the GRU instead: Colonel Clark died knowing he had done something very wrong indeed in allowing himself to be tricked as he had been. In a follow-up to this, Shalikashvili, as affected as he was by those drugs, that intensive coercion and then witnessing Colonel Clark’s death, suffered a stroke which while it wouldn’t kill him, would render him useless to further GRU disinformation efforts.
They had other men at-hand though.
*
In Frankfurt, the West Germans kept on fighting like they had the day before. Their city was alight around them yet they fought to keep it and the civilians still inside out of the hands of the East Germans who were attempting to take it.
Soviet artillery and then air power provided assistance to that attempted occupation, though it wasn’t enough to overcome the passionate defence of Frankfurt.
East German soldiers were machine gunned as they tried to clear the northern reaches before they tried to move through the eastern outskirts and faced equally-strong opposition there. When they used tanks for fire support those fell victim to accurate, repeated hits by hand-held rocket-launchers in the hands of men willing to fire those even when the overall tactical situation wasn’t that great.
Throughout the whole day, the capitalist and socialist Germans fought for Frankfurt while the Soviets looked on. There were West German television cameramen in the city filming much of the defensive effort and those journalists resorted to many methods to get their footage out, most of which came to nought with the Soviets surrounding the city and that electronic jamming of theirs being so effective across wide parts of Germany now. Eventually though, some footage was smuggled out on an aircraft and that ended up on the evening news in the West as a propaganda boost.
Very quickly orders came for the Soviets to be more supportive of the East Germans in taking the city for their own propaganda uses. Soldiers from elements of the Soviet First Guards Tank & Eighth Guards Armys were sent towards Frankfurt during the night but they wouldn’t be effective enough; the West German defenders were too well dug-in and the few thousand Soviet troops committed weren’t going to change the outcome of that fight.
For now, Frankfurt’s defenders was holding out like those in Hannover and Einbeck were in comparison to what had occurred at Hamburg and Bad Salzschlirf.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 14:37:21 GMT
One Hundred & Forty–Five
Thatcher and her War Cabinet had been kept fully informed about the Soviet attempts to negotiate with the Americans while deliberately excluding the rest of the NATO and wider Western alliance. Mistakes had been made the other day with the delay in reacting to the chemical weapons attack and there were to be more errors like that… such was the hope anyway.
There had been murmurings over that was the wisest things to do with regards to the Norwegian and the Danes, and especially the Dutch with the still unresolved situation with them voting to quit the war and then Queen Beatrix being killed. That was the way NATO worked though: everyone was meant to be equal even if the Soviets were trying to push forward the notion that only the Americans mattered.
The British PM had been forthright in her opinion that Britain needed to do what Reagan had the United States doing and reject such proposals as they were made first in Vienna and then in New York. She hadn’t entertained a doubt for a moment that Reagan would cave in despite the worrying of some others that maybe he’d concede, even in part. The West had to stand firm, she had reminded him when they had spoken, in the face of such demands and games. Otherwise, what had all those who had lost their lives been killed for. Freedom against tyranny had to be defended with everything the West had.
Going on what the Americans were saying, there was some talk of the US Secretary of State’s thoughts on his meeting in New York where he said afterwards that he thought that the Soviets were hiding a weakness behind their bravado. What could that be?
Thatcher again pointed to the notion of freedom and stated her belief that the grey monolith that was the Soviet Union was in trouble behind the frontlines. She reminded her War Cabinet colleagues of the reported economic troubles behind the Iron Curtain before World War three erupted and assured that that problems like those would bring internal unrest. Of course then there was all the wartime damage and losses to men and equipment that the Soviets were taking.
On the subject of losses, this time British, the War Cabinet discussed those late on the Sunday evening too. There was a discussion in depth on this matter and when everything was laid out for them, the news came as an unpleasant shock. It shouldn’t have been for they had been regularly briefed on such a thing, but when the numbers were totalled up as they stood as opposed to be fed to them in drip-drip fashion as beforehand, that started to sink in.
Thatcher was afterwards worried that her War Cabinet may be the ones going wobbly, not those abroad.
The British Army of the Rhine had been smashed to pieces during the week’s combat. The losses from conventional warfare and then the nerve gas attack were extraordinarily high and shocking to hear when put together. Not only had frontline combat forces been smashed, but the destruction was wider throughout rear-area units in direct support of British forces as well as those of the British Second Army. Twenty-three thousand plus men were dead or seriously wounded in six days of combat – there was no immediate figure for today – with another eleven thousand known or suspected to be in Soviet captivity and more than twelve thousand trapped in the Hannover pocket.
The number was something shocking indeed especially as no nuclear weapons had been used and chemicals only employed once.
Of course, the other armed services didn’t have such staggering losses in terms of service personnel as the British Army had, but that didn’t mean in any way that those losses in the RN and the RAF were trivial.
The RN had taken repeated big hits on their ships and suffered accordingly. In addition to those personnel lost in attacks on their home stations at naval ports around the British coastline, the Senior Service had taken casualties of seven and a half thousand; there was a large number of women and teenage cadets among those losses. Alongside the pair of aircraft carriers sunk, nineteen major warships (destroyers and frigates) had been sunk with another four wounded enough to be put out of action for the time being: almost half of the forty-eight which started the war in RN service. Of the twenty-six submarines, nine were known to be lost with three now on the ‘missing / presumed sunk’ list. Auxiliary and support vessels, patrol boats and minesweepers joined the casualty list as the RN had taken fearful rates of losses… losses which were wholly irreplaceable.
The RAF had lost half of its air combat strength. Aircraft had been shot down over Germany, over the North Sea, above Norway and back over Britain too. Others had been destroyed when on the ground by air, missile and commando attacks. The tactical Harrier and Jaguar strike forces in Germany had been nearly eliminated with the Phantoms faring a bit better but still having been lost in great numbers. Many Tornado strike-bombers had been lost too; not just those assigned to the 2 ATAF on the Continent, but with the 3 ATAF back in Britain too. The interceptor Tornados in Britain alongside Lightnings and interceptor-rolled Phantom had been hurt defending the UK mainland as they had – in conjunction with older Bloodhound and newer Rapier SAMs – and then there was the losses which naval-rolled Buccaneers had taken in land-attack missions as well as their maritime air activities. In terms of manpower, only a portion of the six thousand RAF losses were those of aircrew; mainly it was ground personnel, including men of the RAF Regiment on airfield defence missions, who suffered from repeated attacks that never seemed to cease.
The numbers of military personnel killed stood alongside an estimated figure of fourteen thousand civilian casualties in Britain which could be directly attributed to (or which had played a major factor) Soviet military action. Those attacks against civilian targets across the UK mainland took the lives of so many innocents in addition to those in uniform when bombs and missiles struck the country.
Such information presented to the War Cabinet came right before a briefing given by General Vincent as to a plan which General Howlett in Norway wanted to put into action: Operation WRITER.
WRITER was an Allied Forces Northern Europe offensive planned to begin either tomorrow or the following day for elements of NATO forces in northern Norway to seize back control of much of Finmark. US Marines along with light units from parts of the US 7th Light Infantry Division arriving in-theatre were to strike eastwards to seize Soviet-held Lakselv and the Porsangerfjorden area. British troops from the 5th Airborne Brigade – Paras and Gurkhas – were to make a simultaneous assault to the southeast of the bigger American assault towards to Norwegian small towns near the Finnish border: Karasjok and Kautokeino.
At once, there was opposition to this from the politicians here below London. They all knew that northern Norway was still effectively in winter with earlier briefings mentioning the thick snow and the crippling cold. British forces there had already taken losses in beating back the Soviets advancing out of Finland and to send them into action again, on the attack and against defending opposition, wasn’t something that the War Cabinet liked the sound of.
British military operations as part of NATO needed political clearance by the War Cabinet before they could commence and in previous days this had been a more formality… and often that political assent had come afterwards too. This was different though as the briefing for WRITER came on the back of those casualty reports. It was felt that the use of British troops up in Finmark was being done for reasons of prestige rather that military need; the politicians thought that the Americans and the Norwegians themselves should be attacking like that. Moreover, if the situation on the ground up there had changed as it had from one of great worry at holding the Soviets back to now being ready to push them back to their own borders, then such a thought set into train a process that General Vincent couldn’t stop.
It was decided that those elite British troops were no longer needed up there in Finmark. One battalion from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers could remain behind, but the War Cabinet wanted to send the rest southwards instead. Before that naval-air attack in the waters off Narvik a few days beforehand, the Royal Marines had been preparing to move southwards to join the Independent Guards Brigade operating in southern Norway. Those men were on their way there now – finally – and it was decided that that 5th Airborne Brigade would join the 3rd Commando Brigade.
Though it wasn’t said, the shelved plan for British ground forces in Norway to become the 6th Light Division had finally been achieved as such forces – Paras, Gurkhas, Royal Marines and Foot Guards – were going to be concentrated.
Continued Soviet military operations in the Baltic Approaches were now deemed to be the greatest threat to Britain: Tom King, George Younger and, most-importantly, Thatcher were insistent on this. When both Flesland and Sola airports had been fully-operational as forward bases for Soviet bombers before the former was retaken, British military attention had been focused on southern Norway, but it now moved to the wider area. The sinking of the RN frigate HMS Plymouth the day before had been mentioned earlier in the briefing when it came to losses taken by the British Armed Forces and so too was the complete (though slow) destruction of the RAF’s 617 Squadron, which was a Tornado GR1 unit with the 3 ATAF which had been sending its twelve and now none aircraft over the region for several days.
The Soviets were intensifying their military actions there in that region much closer to the UK that northern Norway was. Further introduction of British forces into the region was thought to be the most prudent thing to do and WRITER could become an all-American affair up in Finmark.
General Vincent would afterwards have to explain to General Bagnall how that military briefing had been turned around by those politicians deciding Britain’s wartime strategy as part of NATO on the fly.
Moving further onwards, the situation on the North German Plain with the Hannover pocket was also discussed by the War Cabinet. Those British Army troops encircled in Germany were concentrated there with what they understood to be three divisions: the majority of available forces. When could the Hannover pocket be relieved? What further assistance, even from lower-grade TA or newly-formed formations, could be sent to Germany to assist in a relief effort?
General Vincent had to remind the politicians that the 2nd Infantry Division had been disestablished several days beforehand and the 1st Armoured Division consisted now of one regular brigade (the 22nd Armoured) and TA troops from that other division. The 3rd Armoured Division might have had three combat brigades with it (the Desert Rats previously being with the 1st Armoured Division) yet this wasn’t at full-strength away from that round number. The British forces inside this surrounded pocket were not what they seemed on paper and were instead under-manned and missing much vital combat and non-combat equipment.
There were no further TA troops which could be sent from Britain to the Continent. Those that had gone were meant to have been trained in operate in wartime conditions and they had been thoroughly beaten; General Vincent said that to send lesser trained troops would mean that they would be slaughtered wholescale. The 7th Armoured Division – with its ranks made up of former servicemen retraining – still needed time and its equipment needed to be fully brought up to standard. Those Centurion tanks, Ferret armoured cars and Saracen armoured personnel carriers which had been assembled to equip the new division had all to be taken out of storage first. Again, sending these men to Germany without proper training and without all of their tanks and armoured vehicles was tantamount to murder.
Any relief of the Hannover pocket would have to come from other NATO forces and at the minute there were none available. The effects of both failures by the French Second Army and the US Fifth Army earlier in the day were explained to be showing the weakness that NATO now had when facing an enemy who was digging-in to defend what he had taken. On top of this, Soviet electronic jamming of the air waves was getting more effective all the time. A lot of Germany was now hidden behind hostile active electronic interference of radio waves so that any relief effort into the Hannover area couldn’t be co-ordinated with those inside – that would doom any effort.
British forces on the western side of the Weser in Germany were now a quarter in number of what they had previously been alongside the rest of the shattered, multi-national British Second Army. Ahead of them lay the territory of West Germany which the Soviets had taken and now which they were preparing to defend with as much effort as possible to stop its recapture.
On that final observation from General Vincent, the War Cabinet briefing came to an end for the night.
One Hundred & Forty–Six
Chebrikov was pretty far from being the master of all he surveyed. The current leader of the Soviet Union, the man who had murdered his way to leading his country and then taken it in a World War, was not what he was thought to be: a power-mad dictator hell-bent on world domination. The enemies of him and his country easily portrayed him as being such due to no real evidence to the contrary, yet that didn’t mean that it was the case in any way.
He personally felt that at any given moment he could face the guns of his fellow countrymen turning against him for leading them into a war which he thought had been the right thing to do, though now what appeared to have been a serious mistake, at worst a terrible lie. Those in the West were acting more and more like they were never going to stop fighting until their armies marched through Red Square with his head on a pike… if one was to believe their propaganda. Chebrikov was compared to Hitler and to Stalin – to Pol Pot even! – as a bloodthirsty butcher not only of his own fellow citizens but those from all around the world too. This demonization of him along with the errors being uncovered in the build-up to war left Chebrikov a frightened man as he spent his awake and sleeping hours in his bunker beneath Moscow. He wasn’t plotting to take over and control half the world but rather worrying over who would be the gunman who would at any moment appear to take his life like he himself had done with so many others.
No one sensible wouldn’t want to be in Chebrikov’s shoes yet there were many who thought that they would like to be.
World War Three had been started at Chebrikov’s command because he had truly believed that the West was about to launch Barbarossa #2. He had acted in defence of his country due to the stupidity of his then co-ruler Shcherbytsky in goading the West into a position where they were about to attack; striking out first had been the only sensible thing to do.
But that was all a mistake!
There had been no Western attack coming. NATO hadn’t been about to invade East Germany and march onwards to Berlin and then all the way eastwards via Warsaw and Minsk to Moscow. The fear of that had been so great that Chebrikov had ordered RED BEAR to commence in a pre-emptive attack yet everything now pointed to a fatal error on his part with that judgement made back in the days before the war was started.
And what a mistake it was.
Everything was coming apart around Chebrikov. The war was being won on the frontlines in Europe, Marshal Ogarkov and STAVKA were telling him, but that was at the frontlines in Germany and to an extent in northern Europe. Elsewhere though…
The Soviet mainland was under frequent attack in the Far East from naval and air attacks conducted by the Americans and on a few occasions their allies too. Across parts of Eastern Europe, there were nightly air attacks being conducted against the Northern Tier countries which were causing immense destruction there. Major elements of the Northern and Pacific Fleets of the Soviet Navy had been destroyed along with all that investment that had gone into having a blue-water navy. Casualty rates among the Soviet Army fighting in Europe were immense and only covered by the continued bringing forth of new troops as well as the success in combat gained.
Allies of the Soviet Union worldwide had walked away from Moscow’s orbit while the regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua had been violently overthrown. Those nations in Africa and the Middle East which had previously been pro-Soviet had reverted to self-interest (military attacks against respected neutral nations such as Sweden and the Irish Republic hadn’t helped too); in East Asia, North Korea and Vietnam had come under Chinese influence as the People’s Liberation Army massed on its borders with the country Chebrikov led. ‘His’ KGB had had a disastrous war with an utter destruction of its intelligence gathering capabilities worldwide as neutral nations shut down foreign espionage activities in their countries to avoid being drawn into World War Three. Effective martial law in many Western countries – combined with the defection of KGB assets in countries not under such harsh rule – had further eliminated the activities of the country’s foreign intelligence service.
Across Central Asia, there had been multiple but uncoordinated instances of a break-down of civil order across those Republics. There was no full-scale rebellion going on, just outbreaks of anti-Soviet violence. The Interior Military had been busy arresting some and shooting many more of those who rioted, looted, burnt and killed as they did with wanton abandon, but new outbreaks of disorder erupted all the time. Chebrikov had seen reports stating that it was all a Western-directed effort from their pre-war clandestine activities in Afghanistan, but that was hard to believe for someone like Chebrikov who knew how restrained the intelligence services of the West had been acting before the war down there. For them to have suddenly overnight conspired and coerced thousands of Soviet citizens across Central Asia to do what they were just wasn’t the case at all.
The Soviet-installed governments in Eastern Europe had cracked down harshly on civil disturbances which had occurred in their countries, though they had been doing so before the war commenced too and thus had some preparation. The East Germans under Mielke had been most successful at this though both the Poles and the Czechoslovak security services hadn’t been idle. Arresting and disposing of those who distributed underground newspapers or who plotted in smoke-filled rooms for revolutions was one thing, but the situation there was more than that. Soviet communications ran through Eastern Europe for its military forces and those countries also provided a buffer zone of protection for the Soviet Union. Transportation links through them had been battered from the air by NATO though and afterwards there had come rioting and ineffectual attempts at rebellion for ‘peace’. Such counter-revolutionaries were immediately dealt with – especially in East Germany – yet that was never going to be a long-term, effective solution.
Chebrikov’s pre-war desire had been to bring about revolutions on the other side of the Iron Curtain in selected parts of Western Europe. That had been planned to give a kick-start to the economy of the Soviet Union; something which Gorbachev and his ilk had been destroying before the Moscow Coup had occurred. The war was doing far more damage to the country’s economy that what Gorbachev had been doing. There was no international trade being conducted and gone was that source of wealth for the country. Worse though was the immense destruction to the domestic economy by the war; there had to be a focus upon war production of equipment for military purposes rather than Gorbachev’s failed policies for consumer products which Chebrikov and the dead Shcherbytsky had been moving to reverse. The state could print money all that it wanted yet there were empty shelves in the food stores as all attention was focused upon getting military equipment produced and then pushed forward to the frontlines.
The state-controlled media was telling Chebrikov’s people that the war was being won following victory after victory; there was no negative news at all. In theory, the absence of any bad news should have brought about a belief that the war was being successfully won and victory was imminent, yet no one was apparently believing this. For most of the country – expect those in Kaliningrad and selected, often isolated places in the Far East – the war had wholly unaffected them on a physical sense with no air attacks against them, no naval shelling of the coastline and no sign of enemy armies marching through the cities. Mobilisation of men and production meant that it did affect nearby everyone though and all the effort nationwide being thrown at the war meant that the people could see that it wasn’t something almost over and done with as the newspapers, the radio and the television said it would very soon be.
What news came from abroad told Chebrikov that the West was preparing for the long war. They were mobilising their citizens to create new armies and crew old warships being brought back to life. There were no revolutions in their streets or even small-scale rebellions. There were immense problems with civilian refugees in many countries in Western Europe though those were being dealt with. Politicians in the West were joining hands – those from the left and right – against the Soviet Union in waves of patriotic fervour as they supported their countries wartime efforts. Bombs may have been falling in their lands, their national economies destroyed and their armies at the frontline beaten, but they were still in the mood for prosecuting the war despite those setbacks… many of which were being mitigated all the time.
The only worry with the war that Chebrikov didn’t have was that of nuclear conflict breaking out. There was absolutely no way in which the West was going to unilaterally launch their own weapons first against the Soviet Union – he knew that – and as he had no intention of ordering such a thing himself then the missiles wouldn’t fly. No Soviet soldier was going to step foot inside the mainland parts of Britain, France or the United States and thus there would be no reason for those countries to unleash their nuclear arsenals in response to an outright invasion. The tightest possible leash was being kept on Soviet nuclear weapons and there wouldn’t be any orders given or accidental releases to start a chain of events where nuclear war came about. Chebrikov had acted as he had done late last year to save his country after all, not have it destroyed in nuclear fire!
No one had wanted to tell Chebrikov at first that once RED BEAR was underway, the military effects of the operation were not beating back NATO armies ready to advance in a 1988 version of Barbarossa but rather engaging defensive forces waiting and prepared for an attack. Those ‘NATO invasion forces’ that all intelligence had pointed to hadn’t been located because they weren’t there. It had been Marshal Ogarkov who had told him; no one else had been brave enough as it became clear enough with time that that was something quickly and widely understood even if no one wanted to voice this.
The Marshal didn’t seem at all concerned and told Chebrikov now that the war was underway the causes were immaterial and all that mattered was fighting and winning, but…
The reason why Chebrikov had chosen war with the West was that belief that an attack was coming eastwards first. He had presented with a wealth of information ‘proving’ that such a thing was about to occur. This had all come from the GRU, not his own KGB. They had pointed to the gathering of troops in West Germany and the preparations to move further forces forward. NATO warships gathering off European and Asian coasts were further indicators of that which the GRU had presented to him. He had been told of NATO intention to ‘liberate’ West Berlin after Shcherbytsky’s folly in shooting down those French aircraft and between NATO’s armies and West Berlin lay the Soviet Army.
Of course he had had to act when presented with such evidence.
KGB personnel with the Soviet Army, behind it alongside Eastern European military forces and operating in a political role independent of the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact had all gone forward into occupied portions of West Germany. Once there they couldn’t find anything to support those GRU assertions of a coming invasion which RED BEAR was to stop. Western political and military figures were interrogated, documents were captured and apparent invasion staging areas combed for evidence of invasion preparations. Nothing had been found; there wasn’t a shred of physical evidence that NATO had been about to do what the GRU had told Chebrikov. Instead, there was just the opposite: evidence that the West had been fearful of a Soviet attack to occupy all of Western Europe for nefarious purposes and therefore desperate defensive efforts made to stop that from occurring.
The greatest strategic blunder that the Soviet Union had made prior to the commencement of World War Three had been not being ready for the Nazi invasion of June 1941. The decision to go to war in March 1988 turned out to be far worse than that from Chebrikov’s point of view as they had attacked the West unprovoked rather than in self-defence… based on what he soon came to see as deceit too.
The head of the GRU was Vladen Mikhailovich Mikhailov: a man whom Chebrikov knew well and had never held in high regard. Mikhailov was no Ivan Alexandrovich Serov or Pyotr Ivanovich Ivashutin – the previous two GRU chiefs who had made that organisation what it was – but rather someone regarded as an ineffectual dolt. Chebrikov had been instrumental in having Mikhailov put in place there at the KGB’s chief rival (the CIA wasn’t exactly a change to combat as the GRU was despite Chebrikov and Mikhailov both heading Soviet intelligence agencies) to counter the influence of that military intelligence organ’s reach into foreign operations.
It had been at first Marshal Akhromeyev and then Shcherbytsky who had dealt with Mikhailov at the GRU. He hadn’t been part of their conspiracy or afterwards taken part in the implementation of many of the plans put forth to ‘save’ the Soviet Union and he also hadn’t been seen as a threat. Mikhailov had no interest in politics and there was a dismissal of any wish that he might have had for power for himself. The military spook concentrated on his own organisation and the activities of the GRU hadn’t been directly connected to what Chebrikov and Shcherbytsky had been doing before the war.
Mikhailov surrounded himself at the GRU with long-serving senior people in that organisation who were interested in power and prestige though. Such spooks were regarded as unimportant though and not a threat to Chebrikov and Shcherbytsky but rather puppet-masters for their boss. They had an interest in keeping the GRU what it was and the thinking had been that they would concentrate on that while dreaming hopeless fantasises of power. This unofficial stand-off between Chebrikov at the KGB and Shcherbytsky with the Communist Party had to an end on the eve of war when Chebrikov had unleashed his hit teams to wipe out Shcherbytsky and the fools that man surrounded himself with for getting the country into the situation that it ended up in. With reflection, Chebrikov was able to see that Mikhailov and his top advisers should have been eliminated too – with the GRU brought under KGB control – because those spooks had then gone and fabricated a cause for war.
Why they had done this he didn’t know; Chebrikov was sure that Mikhailov didn’t either know that this had occurred let alone why. It had happened though, they had taken the Soviet Union into a war which was now a fight for national survival for unknown reasons. It was something utterly insane though what had actually occurred. He and everyone else had been lied to about a non-existent NATO invasion by Mikhailov’s top people for their own unexplained motives.
Did they want to keep their GRU empire intact?
Where they scheming among themselves to replace Chebrikov?
Did they even realise what they had done?
The fear that Chebrikov had and what caused him to fear for his life was that these GRU people – he knew their names – were going to be ready to move against him soon enough. They had survived the many purges that he and Shcherbytsky had launched prior to the war and had the whole of their organisation behind them with the lightning rod Mikhailov out front. They would be thinking that he had lost them the war which they had created, so Chebrikov’s thinking went, and move against him.
The Soviet leader had no fear or American stealth bombers dropping bunker-buster bombs here in Moscow but rather assassins of the GRU. For someone with the KGB behind him, and millions of Soviet Army soldiers out ahead, this was a very real fear for Chebrikov.
Therefore, Chebrikov had decided a few days beforehand that the war needed to come to an end. He had set about trying to arrange a ceasefire – leading to a later armistice – with the West to bring not only the fighting to a halt but also all the other troubles that came with the conflict to a stop too. The situation was only going to get worse with the Soviet mainland coming under further air and naval attack with the negative results of that. Organised rebellion in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and even the European Republics of the Soviet Union could break out with the collapse of the communist system of government. Those GRU people who he was convinced were out to kill him at any moment could then be dealt with in the aftermath.
Had Chebrikov not been a deeply troubled man as he was with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he would have put better thought into his instructions to those he was using to make diplomatic advances to the West… some more sleep would have helped too. He had been one of the most effective KGB chiefs in many years with a very good understanding of the domestic security situation in his own country as well as geo-political affairs, with particular regard to the West. He should have understood how the West would react to his attempts to get them to back down – in public no less – and effectively give in. There could have been a much better solution than what he was offering and he should have known that.
Yet it was him that had introduced the current trend into the top tiers of the Soviet ruling establishment of sending hit squads after political enemies; no one else. His fear was that now it had been done before it would be done again with him as a target. His earlier actions brought forth a fear which he lived with every waking minute and thus Chebrikov wasn’t thinking straight. He commanded armies of millions of men and rocket divisions of thousands of nuclear weapons, but his mind was on his own survival rather than that of his country and the fate of its people.
Furthermore, his enemies in the West – real ones, not imagined ones with the GRU – were now Reagan and Thatcher: not the type of people to give in, especially not in the manner in which he was demanding of them anyway.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 14:47:03 GMT
One Hundred & Forty–Seven
The Battle of Copenhagen was fought during the late evening and into the night of March 20th. Polish naval infantry joined their Soviet comrades (who had been reinforced) in moving towards the city that was the Danish capital in view of taking it as well as vanquishing the Danish and Swedish defenders. Throughout the war until tonight, Soviet-led forces had shied away from night time fighting and rather undertook ground combat during daylight hours due to the capabilities of NATO troops to engage in combat much better in the hours of darkness as opposed to their own. Yet, the American and West German paratroopers of the previously-strong ACE Brigade-Group had been destroyed three days beforehand in that thermobaric bomb strike and the remaining Luxembourgish and Spanish troops with that NATO formation were regarded as not so highly-trained. Danish and Swedish forces, numerical superior to that NATO force, were not thought to be able to fight as well in the darkness.
Moreover, crushing enemy resistance outside Copenhagen and storming that city was regarded now as all-important as part of a wider strategic operation to finally secure the Baltic Approaches region.
The Polish 7th Landing Division joined up with the Soviet 336th Guards Brigade with the former being inland on the latter’s left. After moving up from the south and then through Roskilde, the Poles were unwilling pushed forward as bait to draw attention and defensive fire towards them. The dismounted marines and their light armour did just that as they found themselves on the receiving end of Swedish troops who were now fighting where the NATO-manned ACE Brigade-Group had been in the Tastrup area.
Fighting against the Swedish 13th Army Division, the Poles ran into trouble very quickly indeed. They couldn’t break through the defensive lines which the Swedes had taken over from NATO troops there and then greatly expanded. There were strong-points for armoured vehicles, trenches for infantry and minefields out front. Swedish artillery had zeroed in the battlefield and their guns were also used for anti-armour strikes against light Polish vehicles. There had previously been a craving for military action on the part of the senior Polish officers with this formation after they had been sent to Falster and Lolland only to engage Danish reservists as well as the Langelandsfortet coastal fort. They regretted that desire for ‘proper action’ now as their men were slaughtered by merciless defences.
Once the Swedes were engaged with fighting the Poles, the Soviet naval infantry was pushed forward… joined now by a battalion of main battle tanks which had arrived overnight from East Germany. These were manned by Soviet Army crews and twenty-nine T-80s – part of the 6th Independent Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade from East Berlin – went into action ahead of the remaining lighter armour that the naval infantry had (the tanks which the invading marines had arrived on Zealand with had all now been lost). The Danes were not expecting such an enemy this evening yet recovered quickly to launch effective anti-tank strikes knocking out quite a few of these with great haste. The T-80s kept on coming though and they of course fired back at those who tried to kill them. There was artillery fire given in support as well as armed helicopters and aircraft from the Soviet Fifteenth Air Army in close-support too. The Soviets were making an all-arms attack on a narrow frontage right near the coastline and they pushed hard towards Ishoj.
The Danes couldn’t stop them.
Many men of the Danish Zealand Division died where they were, fighting for their country and the city behind them. Others gave up as surrenders started to break out up and down the line as tired and demoralised men finally quit after seven days of warfare. Panic set in when the Soviets deployed smoke from their tanks to confuse missile crews as some defending troops thought that chemical weapons were being used against them like they had heard it had been down in Germany. Gaps were opened up and surviving T-80s lead groups of naval infantry forward.
Centurion tanks from the Guard Hussar Regiment were pushed forward to try to stop the Soviet attack yet shells from their modern 105mm cannons couldn’t stop the remaining T-80s from getting the naval infantry into the rear areas of the Danish Zealand Division. Those Danish tanks themselves found themselves being hit from the air by missiles coming from Hind helicopters too and then their crews started to give up as well.
The war had been too much for the Danish Army. Then men who surrendered had been engaged in combat for a week now and faced continuous air and naval attacks against them along with the Soviet naval infantry which kept on fighting to expand their perimeter. The Soviet attack using thermobaric bombs a few days before had caused many Danish casualties among them including many serious burn cases that the rest of the men knew about. There were shortages of food, fuel and ammunition for the fighting men and a feeling that they were all alone here in eastern Zealand. It was time for many to just give up.
The 336th Guards Brigade wasn’t able to fully exploit the gaps in the Danish lines caused by mass surrenders as other units alongside those who gave up kept on fighting. The mobility of the naval infantry was nearly non-existent and the tired Soviet marines could only march so fast rather than be brought forward in vehicles which had long ago been destroyed. They did manage to penetrate deep into the Danish rear though by the time it started to get dark they were only just approaching the very western reaches of Copenhagen and remained a long way from taking that city.
The Swedish 11th Army Division was positioned behind the Danes as an active reserve ready to assist their fellow Swedes to the northeast of the Danish Zealand Division ahead of them. As the Danes started to collapse and the approaching Soviet naval infantry moved forward slowly trying to push through which units stubbornly kept on fighting while others were giving up, the pair of brigades assigned to the Swedish formation moved forward.
The turret-less Strv-103s (better known as the ‘S-Tank’) which were fielded by the Swedes found themselves unable to combat the Soviet T-80s and their exploding reactive armour protective blocks. There wasn’t enough ‘punch’ to those S-Tanks when facing such Soviet main battle tanks and this was telling in the first engagements when the opposing sides met in a meeting engagement rather than the Swedes fighting from fixed positions. Right on-cue, just at this crucial moment when battle was being joined, they faced disaster in their rear.
On the war’s first day, naval Spetsnaz troops with the Soviet Baltic Fleet had been busy securing landing sites around Koge as well as disabling the impressive coastal defence battery at Stevnsfortet. In that latter instance, the twin five point nine inch (150mm) guns there had been knocked out of action in their above-ground position while the underground fort which supported them was later left to be dealt with using a conventional ground assault which later took them from the rear. The Spetsnaz had taken fierce casualties – the Danes had been on alert – but the survivors were in action again this evening in the Brondby area of Copenhagen. They attacked the Swedish command divisional post in a commando raid and managed to kill the divisional staff (no prisoners were taken) therefore eliminating command and control to the combat brigades and the combat support assets ready to assist them.
Neither the 12th or 26th Brigades, despite being numerically superior and having much more armour than their opponents, could halt the slow but consistent advance of the Soviet naval infantry. As expected, the Swedes didn’t fight as well in the dark as NATO troops had been and they also had immense difficulty dealing with the external fire support on-hand to the invader. The Soviet Fifteenth Air Army threw its remaining ground attack aircraft into the fight – dropping a lot of ordnance with no regard for collateral damage – and then there were warships off-shore firing their guns too.
Being pushed back as they were into the night, the Swedes lost a fierce fight around Hvidovre Hospital where the fighting quality of their infantry was shown to be not as strong as even they had fought and then a gap was opened up between the 11th Army Divisions pair of brigades which the Soviets were fast to exploit. Furthermore, the flank of the 13th Army Division to the north – which had continued to hold off the Poles – had been turned by Soviet success in the south. It was only the Swedes now fighting in strength for the defence of the Danish capital as the Danes themselves had been overrun or surrendered. Nonetheless, the Swedish troops kept on fighting this far away from home because their intelligence pointed to the Soviet naval infantry not having heavy exploitation forces behind them ready to truly punish them.
Swedish Ikv-91 tank-destroyers were pushed forward by the 12th Brigade when the S-Tanks of the 26th Brigade had failed to try to smash the Soviet tanks with their 90mm guns...
…only to be wholly unsuccessful in their efforts to destroy the mobile fire support which the dismounted marines were using to move forward.
Out of Copenhagen, which was now under fire in a tactical manner by Soviet and Polish artillery, now came Danish Militia. Those lightly-armed men had been in dug-in defences within the city for a week now but they were foolishly employed away from their urban fortifications at this late stage marching forward towards the sound of battle. The result from this was predictable: they were slaughtered by well-trained invading marines. This last minute Danish attack disrupted a planned Swedish tactical withdrawal towards the improvised defensive line planned to run along the narrow Harrestrup River anchored on the Damhus Lake. The Soviets got right in amongst the Swedes as they were trying to withdraw there and this caused the collapse of the 12th Brigade as it was overwhelmed with friendly and enemy forces all around.
The rest of the 11th Army Division – the 26th Brigade and uncoordinated divisional support assets – started to retreat to the north and were able to stop an attempt by the naval infantry to follow them but the way ahead into Copenhagen was now clear.
It was approaching ten o’clock at night and the naval infantry couldn’t go any further, yet the 336th Guards Brigade hadn’t only been reinforced by those Soviet Army tanks but also by a battalion of air assault troops from the 23rd Independent Landing-Assault Brigade out of Germany too; a formation which had been attached to Western-TVD headquarters and used in piecemeal fashion all over the front there.
The lone battalion of mechanised infantry in BMD-1 tracked armoured vehicles rolled over Swedish improvised crossing points along the Harrestrup River which those men of the 11th Army Division had earlier used to get into battle as well as civilian links which hadn’t been blown up. They crossed the inner ring-road around Copenhagen’s western edges but were forced to deploy from their vehicles now that they were inside Copenhagen itself. Many men of the Danish Militia hadn’t been rushed into certain death across on the other side of the river and still fought from fortified positions with lighter weapons.
The Soviets hadn’t entered in enough strength to take the city and could only push forward so far. Their supporting armoured vehicles helped them using their mounted weapons though those also fell victim to Danish attacks using man-portable weapons. By midnight the area around the Vestre Cemetery was reached yet that was as far as the invading troops could go. There was an attempt to move in a southeastern direction towards the big airport down on the Amager Peninsula, but that was blocked by the leading units of the Swedish 41st Brigade at the Sjaellandsbroen Bridge; a follow-up formation for the 11th Army Division which had elements moving forward without orders but stumbling into the fight at the right time.
Artillery started to arrive where the Soviets had taken the Vestre Cemetery and was set up on that open patch of ground where gravestones were knocked down to get the best positions. Those guns now started firing right into the historic centre of Copenhagen to harass the enemy while the 336th Guards Brigade was brought forwards for a morning push towards there.
Meanwhile, the Swedish 13th Army Division had made a tactical retreat to cover its flank from being turned and allowed some Polish units to move forward towards the Harrestrup River north of the Damhus Lake. Those Swedish forces were still capable of fighting effectively especially after being joined by the escaping 26th Brigade and they were confident that they could hold back any Polish attempt against them should it come the following morning. What they weren’t aware of was that the Poles were being pushed into Copenhagen too leaving their own flank exposed but responding to higher orders from the Baltic Front.
Those Polish units engaged Danish Militia at the same time as the mechanized air assault troopers did inside the city too and were also instructed to fire their artillery in a strategic rather than a tactical fashion into the city centre further eastwards.
This penetration of the city itself caused chaos amongst those inside. There was nowhere for them to flee to but northwards and up towards the distant Helsingor due to the crossing between over the Oresund between Copenhagen and Swedish Malmo being in military hands for their exclusive use. Tens of thousands of Danes who had stayed in their city longer than they should have tried to leave due the night while the enemy artillery (not too much of it was available to be honest) continued to fire forward.
The Danish government did the same too.
Those senior men who had been in their bunker beneath the city as their country was slowly gobbled up by Soviet, East German and Polish units and now unable to be saved by the Swedes decided that they too had to leave their city. There were still some Danish and many Swedish troops still available who could conceivably hold out for a long time in the northeastern corner of Zealand, backed up hopefully by NATO naval support, but not here in Copenhagen. The politicians started to leave just as their people did… though there were no orders for the Danish Militia to stand down and withdraw too.
When morning came, the rest of Copenhagen was now open to be lost to the enemy when it resumed its advance.
One Hundred & Forty–Eight
No one could ever accuse Colonel Charles Dair Farrar-Hockley of getting where he was in the British Army due to nepotism. His father might have been the legendary General Sir Antony Farrar-Hockley – affectionately known as ‘Farrar the Para’ – but his son Dair (as the younger Farrar-Hockley was known) had won the Military Cross for bravery in the face of the enemy when serving with 2 PARA in the Falklands six years ago. The younger Farrar-Hockley had afterwards gone on to command 3 PARA and then earned his NATO staff position on merit for his reputation as an excellent combat officer and able staffer too.
Farrar-Hockley was titled as Special Briefer to SACEUR and he was thus an experienced senior aide to General Galvin. There was nothing tedious about such a staff position, especially with World War Three going on. He was the Supreme Allied Commander’s eyes and ears and his war had been spent out in the field delivering personal messages and making observations. General Galvin spent much of time on political matters – where he had no choice but to deal with them – and therefore his trusted men like Farrar-Hockley did most of the legwork in making sure that NATO kept fighting. He had seen much during this war and come close to death or serious injury many times but kept at it so that his superior could be kept fully informed of what was going on and able to see the big picture overall.
This morning, a week now after the war had commenced, Farrar-Hockley briefed General Galvin on the NATO situation on the ground in Europe.
Up in northern Norway, US Army and US Marines units were conducting General Howlett’s counter-offensive in Finmark though without the British units in support as originally envisioned to be part of that. Lakselv and Banak Airport, at the base of the Porsangerfjorden, had been attacked by the US Marines in a combined overland and airmobile attack. They were fighting against Soviet naval infantry there and had promising success even if they had found the opposition stronger than expected. Karasjok on the Finnish border had been taken by elements of both the 7th & 10th Light Infantry Divisions of the US Army moving in an airmobile assault with blooded and green units fighting together. Their opposition came from the Soviet 131MRD which was well dug-in guarding the crossing over the Tana River which served as the main supply route for Soviet forces (as beaten as they were) in Finmark though it was hoped as the rest of the troops from those American formations arrived in further airlifts the border crossings points could be seized. Operation WRITER was on its way to destroying the rear of the Soviet Sixth Army and threatening to outflank its forward elements in the Finnish Wedge opposite Fortress Norway. Once political developments were made, Norwegian forces were going to advance into the Finnish Wedge and the presence of the Americans deep in the Soviet’s rear, also hopefully allowed to enter Finland too, should cause the utter defeat of Soviet ground operations in the Arctic.
To the south, British forces already in the Bergen area were now being joined by more coming down from the north. The 9th (formerly Independent) Guards Brigade which had retaken Flesland Airport was now underway moving overland towards Sola Airport near Stavanger. The aim was to conduct a night attack later today along with elements of the British 5th Airborne Brigade moving by air and then the Royal Marines arriving by sea on the Tuesday morning to finish off any Soviet opposition. Should the Royal Marines not be needed there, Operation HADDOCK – the name of this ambitious British operation undertaken by the now-activated 6th Light Division – called for a divert of those Royal Marines to conduct a forced landing further southwards and on the Skagerrak coastline near Polish-occupied Kristiansand to retake that port town and a-joining airport. General Galvin expressed worry over the ambition of such a complicated move over great distance by multiple elements of the new British 6th Light Division, but Farrar-Hockley relayed General Howlett’s confidence as theatre command for Northern Europe that this could be done with such elite and highly-mobile troops.
Efforts by Norwegian and Swedish forces to recapture what Soviet paratroopers had taken near Oslo had still not met success. Those enemy forces couldn’t be dislodged now that they had dug-in and the complicated local geography of southern Norway was assisting the Soviets as their air power coming out of Jutland allowed air attacks to take place limiting how the Norwegian and Swedish forces could operate. There was confidence that the Soviets couldn’t expand their bridgeheads with their forces on the ground or any further reinforcements flown in by air, but should there be a seaborne reinforcement then things would be different there.
Any seaborne reinforcement of the invaders of southern Norway would have to come from Jutland. Those East German tank divisions there had now reached the very tip of the peninsula after yesterday crossing the shallow Limfjord: the sound which ran east-west and separated the mainland part of the peninsula from the island of Vendsyssel-Thy. The harbour facilities at Alborg, Frederikshavn and Hirtshal had all been wrecked by the Danes with assistance from US Green Berets and so a movement northwards across the Skagerrak would be near impossible… even without the presence of NATO navies. Nevertheless, by reaching the northern coast of Denmark as they had, as well as occupying parts of the Norwegian coast, access to the Baltic entrances was being threatened for the naval forces of NATO by those Soviet and Soviet-led forces.
Copenhagen was now at risk of falling into Soviet hands this very morning as SACEUR was briefed as to the fighting there the previous night and the abandonment of the city of the Danish government. Swedish troops had been overrun or pushed aside and it was expected that the Danish capital was be lost.
Away from Northern Europe, the briefing by Farrar-Hockley moved to Germany. The past week had seen the forty-two year old British Army officer criss-crossing West Germany seeing for himself the things he reported on and meeting with those commanders he spoke of whereas with his details of what was happening in Northern Europe had come from external sources, not personal contact. When in a helicopter over Lower Saxony above the Leine Valley he had nearly been shot down by a roving Soviet fighter which had luckily been engaged by a friendly SAM unit while afterwards there had come another close call for Farrar-Hockley when a Czechoslovak artillery unit had opened up on the Bundeswehr II Corps headquarters when he was there in southern Bavaria. The battlefields he had seen before, during and after they had been fought over had taught him a lot about how the war was going as so too had his conversations with senior NATO field officers as they faced down the invader… many of those people had actually lost their lives afterwards due to enemy action.
The Soviets were trumpeting their capture of Hamburg yesterday though there had been no word from the Bundeswehr forces there in the city as to their status. Those troops had been surrounded since the first day of the war and were expected to fall at some point though. With Hamburg now apparently lost, there were expected to be Soviet and East German forces from there now freed-up for later use elsewhere.
In the nearby Elbe-Weser Triangle, the French had pulled back from their gains yesterday halfway from their furthest penetrations eastwards to be better positioned and not with a long exposed southern flank. They had sent tanks northwards to recapture Nordholz though been unable to stop a small Polish force from shutting itself away in wrecked Cuxhaven. The elements of the French Second Army deployed here were still licking their wounds after facing the stronger than expected opposition that they had yesterday. The 11th Parachute Division had had a lucky escape from what could have been near destruction while many of the tank formations had taken worse losses than expected. In short, as first thought and confirmed after a day, the French were unable of mounting another attack like they had tried deep into enemy-held territory for some time to come… if at all.
NATO troops along the Weser south of the French at Bremen were previously under the Kampfgruppe Weser command but now formed the Bundeswehr IV Corps; a change of command title, nothing more. The Belgian, British and West German forces under command were dug-in at potential crossing points all along the western bank of the river down as far as the Minden area. There were few mobile counter-attacking forces available though with the enemy reported to be doing the same on the other side as they set up their own defences, Farrar-Hockley reported back the thinking of those senior people on the ground there that no major attack was going to come over the river against them.
The thoroughly wrecked British I Corps, with Belgian forces attached, manned the banks of the Weser further southwards from Minden down to Hameln. Again, much digging-in had been done through observations made of what was going on over the other side of the river showed the Soviets doing the same thing. NATO forces here were holding good defensive ground yet were unable to go on the offensive themselves unless they were massively reinforced and also had their rear-area support services sorted out. Farrar-Hockley had spent more time with the British I Corps than other corps-level commands and seen especially how since the Friday offensive by the Soviet third echelon the support services of that command had been thoroughly wrecked beyond any immediate repair.
Half of the US III Corps was still fighting while trapped in Einbeck while the remainder was on the Weser. The loss of their fire support assets alongside those combat units left behind had badly affected the Americans just as it had those British units to the north and there was no hope of the US III Corps doing anything more than holding their positions. Farrar-Hockley reported that he found the Americans here the most demoralised of all NATO forces in northern Germany after the defeat which they had suffered with all previous confidence gone among the senior staff who had escaped from encirclement.
There had been no contact made with the British and Bundeswehr forces across the river and surrounded in the Hannover area. The walls of electronic jamming which the Soviets had put up made communication impossible though it was known from air observations that they were still putting up a decent fight. All the time that they kept fighting there meant that attention was drawn towards them by the enemy and thus that kept the chances of a follow-up Soviet attack over the Weser to a minimum with them having such a strong NATO force in their rear.
In Hessen, where the US IV Corps had gone through Bundeswehr lines, was where Farrar-Hockley’s briefing went afterwards. He spoke of how the West Germans had a thin defensive line with nothing behind them to counterattack even a half-hearted Soviet attack westwards to reach the Rhine should they want to.
When it came to yesterday’s failed attack by the lead elements of the US Fifth Army, General Galvin was given a different take on what had gone on their to what he had previously heard. Farrar-Hockley reminded his superior of how the US Fifth Army commander had been so insistent that the offer previous to the offensive in the Lahn Valley area commencing to have his ARNG forces assisted by Belgian paratroopers had been dismissed by General Schneider. That refusal had been to do with the different logistics used by the two armies and a worry over how much air support would be needed to punch through Soviet air defence assets to get those paratroopers on the ground before the national guardsmen could then come and relive them after they had taken a forward bridgehead. General Schneider was now only talking about how he had been correct with that judgement – pointing to the French failures further northwards – and focusing upon patting himself upon the back. There was no internal criticism of how their troops had operated bunched up as they were running into defensive lines and trying to bounce them rather than manoeuvre and admit tactical defeat. Farrar-Hockley carefully constructed his demolishing of the current state of affairs at US Fifth Army headquarters as they now started to take over a section of the frontlines with their two corps and those Bundeswehr units already in northern and central Hessen, but he left his superior in no doubt that even if they should have been able to take on the Soviet defences being constructed ahead of them, they would fail there.
US Seventh Army units – French and American troops – manned frontlines running from the Taunus Mountains to Wiesbaden to Mainz to north of Darmstadt and then across to Aschaffenburg. Frankfurt and the fight for that city was now in the rear of the Soviet Sixth Guards Tank Army ahead of them. Again, no enemy offensive had come yesterday and both sides were constructing defensive positions. General Otis was planning to advance later today against the Soviets and try to chase them back to the Main area at least, maybe further, despite all of the French and American defensive positions which they had hastily created. Farrar-Hockley gave his opinion that he suspected that successes would only be had a tactical level and overall there would be a strategic failure in such an operation there.
Across Bavaria, further American then French and finally Bundeswehr troops manned NATO positions against the Soviets and their East German and Czechoslovak allies all the way to the Austrian border. The tactical withdrawals made in the north had been conducted well and Farrar-Hockley thought that should the US VII Corps go over on the offensive they would be able to take much ground as the East Germans ahead of them hadn’t been digging-in as well as other enemy forces had. However, to do so would again open up the American flanks there and mean that their previous retreat had all been for northing when they would again be exposed.
Away from the actual state of where the frontlines were and the NATO forces engaged in holding them, Farrar-Hockley spoke further of the destruction caused to the logistics networks at a wider scale than he had mentioned in parts of northern Germany with the British there. Those Soviet drives deep into the NATO rear following their gas attacks had allowed immense destruction to be caused to the support network that kept the men fighting at the front. Rear-area troops had fled in disarray and often either took their equipment with them or tried to have it destroyed in-place. Ammunition, fuel and supply dumps had been lost along with many of them men who operated them and the links between them to the frontlines.
Important headquarters and communications centres in the rear along with vehicle maintenance sites had been overrun or destroyed with the death, capture or scattering of the men who ran those facilities. Soviets tanks had been running riot during their offensive and caused so much destruction that it was going to take a very long time indeed for much of the vital rear-area network to be replaced. In Bavaria where no major enemy enveloping attack had come and orderly withdrawals had been made, there had been little damage done to such a network which stretched back as far as the Atlantic coastline but that hadn’t been the case in northern and central Germany.
Without such a support service, defensive efforts to stop any further Soviet advance were going to fail and there was no hope of a major counter-offensive. Those US Fifth Army support units arriving in Germany were minimal and were only enough to support that formation. Farrar-Hockley was a fighting soldier yet he understood that warfare depended more upon just tactics and ammunition supplies; everything else was needed too and only combat forces were arriving in great strength.
When it came to the Soviets, SACEUR’s special briefer gave his considered opinion on them too from what he’d seen at the ground level. He agreed with General Galvin’s intelligence staff’s stated assessment that the Soviet intention now appeared to defend what they had taken in Germany – things were different in Northern Europe – and hold out for geo-political and diplomatic leverage. Their construction of heavy fixed defences showed that so too did the forming of beaten-up first and second echelon units into mobile counter-attacking forces behind the lines. His opinion was that they weren’t going to attack again in strength unless the Soviet diplomatic efforts didn’t work out for them and it was decided in Moscow to strike for diplomatic gain somewhere on the battlefield.
Such was Farrar-Hockley’s Monday morning briefing to SACEUR: one of the most accurate of the war which General Galvin was going to receive.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 14:53:02 GMT
One Hundred & Forty–Nine
It wasn’t a demand of the Soviet Union that the Finns made, but rather what they deemed to be a request. It was termed as such in the private message sent to Moscow and announced as such in public too, yet at far as the recipient Soviets saw it, the Finns were demanding that Soviet military forces left Finnish territory within seventy-two hours. The message came from the Finnish military high command too, not the frightened and thus subservient civilian government, and that also told the Soviets a lot about what the Finns were doing with their request.
There was no co-ordination with the West with this act of Finland asserting its independence; the Finnish military didn’t trust their own politicians nor anyone else’s. They put a lot of thought into their actions and believed that they were prepared for every eventuality. Getting the Soviets to leave their country, even if they had to fight for that, was regarded by the Finns as absolutely necessary even if it would cause much short term pain. Letting the current situation which they were in just couldn’t be allow to continue.
Finland had a complicated history (to put it mildly) with the Soviet Union going back to the formation of the two modern states at the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918. Before the Bolsheviks had overthrown the Provisional Government in what was then Petrograd, the Grand Duchy of Finland had been a Scandinavian province of the Russian Empire. The Finns declared their independence in December 1917 though and then fought against Soviet-supported communists in their own country throughout the following year in a nasty civil war where the White forces defeated the Reds using Imperial German help to do so.
In late 1939, as Europe fell into war, the Soviets launched an unprovoked invasion of Finland in what would become the Winter War after a year of Soviet demands for Finnish territory as well as Soviet intrusions into Poland and the Baltic States. The Red Army was quickly humiliated by the patriotic fighting capabilities of the Finns in comparison to their own; Stalin’s Great Purge had destroyed the Soviet Army. Diplomatic intrigue and geo-political realities meant that the Western Powers didn’t come to the aid of the Finns as had been the original hope and when this failure of assistance from fellow democratic nations occurred, combined with a final Soviet offensive, the Finns gave in.
Two years later, still bitter at what had occurred in the Winter War, Finland joined Nazi Germany in invading the Soviet Union. This occurred after a Soviet attack first against Finland, a point which the Finns made to all who would listen, yet their military action had been pre-planned. Finland regarded itself as a ‘co-belligerent’ of Germany yet being linked with Hitler’s attempted conquest of the Soviet Union made sure that the West no longer cared for the Finns. By 1944, the Continuation War, as the Finns called it, was lost for them even if they managed to turn back the last major Soviet offensive launched to wholly invade the country; the Finns truly knew how to fight.
The subsequent armistice with the Soviet Union in 1944 forced the Finns to fight against the Germans in the Lapland War to push them out of Finland while also at the same time accepting Soviet terms for a demobilisation of their army. Later terms of the armistice and the peace treaty saw immense war reparations paid to the Soviets, much territory lost and Soviet involvement in Finnish internal affairs. Finland managed to avoid occupation and a Soviet-placed government in Helsinki though; Finland kept its independence.
The West later called the situation which the country found itself in after WW2 ‘Finlandization’. The Finns remained a free and democratic country yet its military size was restricted and no alliance with outside powers occurred. The country lived on the doorstep of a superpower which hadn’t forgotten previous events, but the Finns survived as they did by not antagonising the Soviet Union. There was self-censorship imposed so that criticism of the Soviets was limited and the Finnish Communist Party was allowed to operate even when following Moscow’s direct orders. Long-serving Presidents such as Paasikivi and Kekkonen dealt with the KGB to a great extent in keeping Finland friendly but not subservient to the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe was. The Finns kept their heads down in the battles between the superpowers and were keen to get on with their own affairs.
However, the treaty which the Finns had signed with Moscow in 1948 – the so-called YYA Treaty – allowed the Soviet Union to act in apparent self-defence when it came to Finland against ‘Germany and its allies’; in 1988 this meant NATO.
Finland had come under extreme pressure in the run up to WW3 breaking out and then had seen Soviet troops lance through Lapland to defeat what they claimed was a NATO invasion of the Soviet Union coming through Finland in part. The government in Helsinki rolled over and allowed this to occur, frightened as they were by the perceived unleashing of nuclear weapons against them should they try to stop this and also that field army sized force that the Soviets kept at the northern end of the Karelian Peninsula ready to invade southern Finland was about to move.
The Finnish military mobilised and martial law came into play across the country. An extremely high percentage of Finnish men of military age had undertaken military service and defence of Finnish independence was something that Finns took seriously… not least the professional officer class. The Finns might only have had a small standing army in peacetime, but when mobilised – in accordance with political wishes – Finland ended up with a lot of men under arms. The military didn’t like how the government allowed the country to be used as a base of operations to attack its neighbours and also the allowance of free proclamations from the Finnish communist leader Taisto Jalo Sinisalo of a desired end state where the country would become a “socialist, Soviet worker’s state” after the war was ended.
As the war progressed, the Finnish military watched what happened across Scandinavia with special attention being paid to Sweden. Their western neighbour had been attacked without warning in an uncompromising manner when Sweden hadn’t been a NATO member nor in any fashion posed any possible threat to the Soviet Union apart from standing in their way. Finnish territory had then been used to invade Sweden – even though only to a very small degree in the area where the borders of Finland, Norway and Sweden met – which the Finnish military was very upset about to say the least.
It was the Finnish military which made sure that civil authorities in Lapland provided absolute zero support to the Soviet Army in their military efforts. This was the first and at that point hoped for only step which was to be taken with the desire to impede the Soviets though not force them to act against the Finnish population. That approach failed miserably as time passed with reports coming that ill-disciplined Soviet troops had looted, raped and murdered their way through isolated Finnish villages up in the north instead of just fighting in Norway as the unfortunate reality was meant to be. It was realised that these Soviet actions, even on a small scale, were nothing to do with Finnish indifference to the Soviet needs to keep roads clear of snow and food given to their men and all about how the Soviets regarded Finland as a country to be trampled over as they were.
As the war progressed and then intensified across Northern Europe, in particular in the past few days, the Finnish military watched with alarm as they saw themselves being cut off from the outside world. The southern coast of Sweden was bombarded, most of Denmark was overrun and the Soviet paratroopers landed near Oslo. Intelligence flowed back which showed that the Swedish Army wasn’t preforming as well as NATO thought that it might. Soviet-led naval operations of their combined Warsaw Pact Baltic Fleet moved northwards into the Baltic Approaches and there were efforts underway to open the blocked Kiel Canal up for further operations.
To be physically isolated from contact from the outside world wasn’t something which the Finns wanted to see, especially with Soviet troops on their soil too ready to act inside their borders if they chose to show Finland who were their new masters.
There were some voices of dissent to the decision made to the request to be delivered to the Soviets. It was said that the West was losing the war and it was best to be with the winner rather than to be possibly treated afterwards by the Soviets as one of the losers. This was an accurate judgement and could be something which could occur… yet Finnish independence was at stake and that was regarded as more important than anything else.
The threat of nuclear weapons being deployed by an angry Soviet Union was now judged as extremely unlikely. The capabilities of that Soviet Army force in Karelia – the reinforced Thirtieth Guards Army Corps – was judged to be minimal as combat support assets of artillery and engineers had recently been detached for service in Finmark along with the transfer of air support from the Soviet Air Force away to the Arctic too to replace losses up there. Finnish military intelligence had what they thought was a very good understanding of who were the civilian, political and military traitors to their nation and what particular Soviet interest they served. The Finnish people were assessed to be opposed to what was the effective turning of their country into a vassal state and not willing to stand with those weak politicians in the government.
The timing of the move made by the Finnish military was important too. The Finnish Defence Forces were fully mobilised by this point with excellent morale being shown so that if it came to a clash of arms, this was the best time to have such a fight; it was believed that Soviet agents would have reported this back too thus decreasing the likelihood of Soviet military action. Maybe the West was losing the war but they hadn’t lost yet. Finnish action at this time would hopefully embolden them and also provide an opportunity for them to do something to improve their own situation while later remembering what Finland did. Soviet forces inside Lapland were evaluated as being very weak at this current time with them being unable to conduct any major action inside Finland should they be given the word to do so in the Finnish rear in conjunction with cross-border action; that may not be the case in the future.
The correct timing went with the feeling of frustration by the Finnish military. They had had enough of the cowardice of politicians talking of realpolitik and allowing the country to be used as it was. If this was to be the swansong for Finland than that was how it had to be because Finland would have to do what it had done since the modern country was founded – act forcefully to maintain its independence against efforts by its giant neighbour to the east to trample that.
The request was made of the Soviets at nine o’clock in the morning on March 21st. This went through the Finnish Ambassador in Moscow as the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki – along with the influential KGB station there – remained a smouldering ruin after being bombed by the Americans, killing a number of Soviets which had been at the forefront of the coercion efforts against Finnish politicians. At the same time, in carefully-planned non-violent actions, Finnish military officers started detaining the majority of the government as they took control of the country. This was unfortunate as they didn’t wish for military rule and had given the democratically elected government a chance to stand up against the Soviets, but this had to happen too.
Afterwards, Finland was to wait with baited breath for the Soviet response. A peaceful acceptance was hoped for, yet at the same time the country was to get ready to make a fight of it should it come to that.
One Hundred & Fifty
Fighting around Einbeck, the small town in Lower Saxony where parts of the US III Corps had withdrawn into, went on throughout most of the morning. The Americans inside the pocket created by the Soviet advance to the west of them three days beforehand didn’t want to give up but those Soviet and Polish forces arrayed against them were determined to finish them off.
Marshal Korbutov passed on higher orders from STAKVA that this particular point of resistance was to be crushed without delay.
During the night, a US Army Lieutenant-Colonel who had volunteered for such a mission, was parachuted into the Einbeck pocket. The low-flying C-130E Hercules which he had jumped from in a LA/LO insertion (he was a former Green Beret on the US III Corps intelligence staff) had suffered damage from anti-aircraft fire and one of the escorting F-4s had been lost by a SAM strike, but the intelligence briefer arrived there safely. The Lt.-Colonel met with General Yeosock and went through with him the overall situation, in particular how those forces cut off here couldn’t be rescued by other US Army forces or even NATO. General Yeosock was asked to hold out here as long as it was possible for him to do so for resistance in Einbeck meant that NATO forces west of the Weser had more time to prepare for a follow-up Soviet offensive… if such a thing was to come.
That news which the Lt.-Colonel brought made him about as popular as an ‘ex-fiancé at a wedding’, to use his own words.
The Americans in Einbeck had plenty of ammunition for their small arms and tank cannons yet had by now run out of missiles for anti-tank and surface-to-air systems as well as artillery shells. The fuel situation for their tanks and armoured vehicles was terrible with nothing more than enough to have their engines running at important times to allow for local manoeuvres. The medical services in the pocket were stretched to the limit with no medicines and the inability to treat the wounded properly in cramped conditions and without power. Morale among those trapped was at rock-bottom with the awareness of their terrible tactical situation, let alone the strategic bind they were in, along with audio broadcasts being made towards them from their fellow soldiers being held captive by the enemy imploring them to surrender.
There was a constant, never-ceasing artillery barrage of Einbeck. Enemy artillery shells landed inside the perimeter held by those under General Yeosock’s command along with heavy mortars, rocket artillery and the odd tactical missile fired from distance. Night and day that artillery fell as the Soviets and the Poles brought more to bear on the town and its defenders to keep them awake and hopefully drive them mad. The destruction that this artillery caused, along with tactical air strikes which were only partially opposed by the few anti-aircraft guns which the Americans had, was immense: Einbeck was knocked down. It seemed like every building had been hit and there were fires that raged out of control in places due to the need to keep those US Army soldiers inside the pocket manning the defences rather than manhandling buckets of water from the Ilme River to chuck over them with all the near-zero effectiveness that that was.
Behind the ruins of the town sat the forests of the Hube Ridge. Einbeck had been chosen as a position which could be defended due to it backing up against these hills behind and the impassable terrain for a massed armoured attack to take General Yeosock’s command in the rear. No Soviet or Polish tanks did go up there as part of the complete encirclement of Einbeck yet light infantry units did so along with towed artillery pieces as well as anti-tank guns. Positions were sought for those weapons so that they could fire on depressed trajectories down against the Americans below them against specific targets which the spotters with them could pinpoint from their elevated positions. Small grounds of infantry trained in tactical infiltration were sent forward to harass and attack the Americans in their rear too; the Hube Ridge provided little protection for General Yeosock.
Saturday’s heavy attacks against Einbeck had pushed the American’s back into the town itself rather than the previous outlying defences which they had chosen to the south and west. Attacking on the Monday morning from those abandoned positions came the attack which the Soviets and their Polish allies hoped to finish off the Americans with.
The Polish divisions were used like before to strike first and gain the attention of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 157th Infantry Brigade, US III Corps units which faced southwards. Knowing that this was a distraction effort didn’t mean that the attacks could be ignored when the Poles threw multiple assault bridges across the Ilme River. Those bridging vehicles were hit with the few anti-tank missiles which the Americans had, but then there were further armoured bridge-layers which appeared and there was a need to keep some of those weapons back for what came over those assault bridges.
Polish T-72s were engaged and so too were BMP-1s which followed them, yet the Poles had the benefit of spreading their attack along several miles of riverbank and artillery in direct support of them firing right atop of the defending Americans. American tanks fired against the Poles but the T-72s fired back too. Attacking infantry flooded forwards into further defensive fire as well… which the Americans had plenty of.
The Poles were stopped on the banks of the Ilme. Eventually the rapid fire of M-1 and M-60 tanks knocked out far too many vehicles for the Poles to physically be able to continue coming at the Americans while those armoured bridge-layers were also hit with tank fire too. The infantry was cut down in droves by accurate machine gun fire and pushed back towards, though unfortunately not over, the river. The fighting here, which lasted more than an hour, broke the Poles yet also forced the Americans to use up far too much of their ever-dwindling stocks of ammunition. Many of the men and tanks assigned to those two formations deployed in stopping in the attack had been lost in combat as it had been a close-run thing.
As that fighting to the south was petering out, from the west came the Soviet 107MRD which struck against the 1st Cavalry Division. The Soviets were not pushed forward trying to drown the defending Americans with weight of numbers like the Poles were, but rather the division was deployed in multiple attacks with combined arms battalion-groups moving cautiously forward through cover with others providing intensive over-watch. Tanks and infantry worked together moving forward with heavier weapons in direct fire support. This approach wasn’t standard Soviet Army behaviour but trying to rush fixed defences elsewhere during the war hadn’t gone that good for them and so this careful advance was tried…
…with good results made from it. The left wing of the 107MRD’s attack managed to push right in almost towards the centre of Einbeck ahead of the right wing before starting to turn back in an enveloping manoeuvre. This took several hours and midday was approaching by the time it was achieved and all the while the division was effectively destroyed as a fighting force, but success was achieved. The Americans just couldn’t combat the Soviets here this morning with the invaders determination and thought-out approach to smash each and every defence of theirs. Both regular brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division were ground down into smashed and scattered groups of men left wandering aimlessly around the town’s western portions afterwards. Thousands of Americans lay dead along with even more Soviets from a battle fought over the ruins of Einbeck.
The 194th Armored Brigade – operating effectively as a light infantry force after its tanks and armoured vehicles were lost when they were unable to move as the Soviets took the western part of the town – withdrew towards the east to fall back upon their comrades there. General Yeosock was with them and had an M-16 assault rifle in-hand along with many of the supporting elements of his command. On the Friday night, he had taken almost seventeen thousand men with him into Einbeck and he now had less than half that number left fighting. He had witnessed some terrible scenes during the combat here, not least this morning when flamethrowers were employed by the Soviets in taking much of the town and then many of his men had been rounded-up and shot by Soviet troops in urban fighting which had lost their discipline. Field hospitals had been bloodily overrun and so too had buildings housing trapped civilians who had been massacred like wounded men: there were scenes of hell played out here in this little piece of Germany.
What remained of his command was still capable of fighting in theory, though in reality General Yeosock could see that it was a hopeless cause. Many of his soldiers had given up and were laying down their arms even in the face of such a harsh enemy as they had because it was all too much for them. Choking smoke surrounded the town and all along the a-joining valley in which it sat while the sounds of gunfire and the screams of wounded men weren’t about to come to an end. Any hope of being able to hold out any longer was pointless and was only going to lead to a further loss of life here among his soldiers.
It was time to call it quits and make an attempt at some kind of surrender… if that was possible with an enemy such as he had.
Einbeck fell after midday.
Six and a half thousand unwounded and almost three thousand wounded American soldiers would afterwards come into Soviet captivity as yet another one of those pockets of NATO resistance behind the main frontlines in Germany was beaten. It had taken a great deal of effort for the Soviets to do so, but those forces used were deemed expendable in the overall goal of riding the Soviets of groups of surrounded Western forces in their rear.
RED BEAR in the German theatre was getting even closer now to being a success, even if it had taken a lot longer and a great deal more lives lost for it to be achieved.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 15:17:23 GMT
One Hundred & Fifty–One
When on the ground and also when out of earshot of their Political Officers, the crews of the raketonosets assigned to Northern Fleet Aviation had whispered messages of good luck and goodbye to each other. Those flying officers who crewed the Backfires which had lined up at airfields across the western parts of the Kola Peninsula weren’t a tight-knit group of aviators, but during the past week many had come to know others as they had been based together and flown together. Many comrades had gone down with their aircraft during the war so far, but this mission today was expected to be their last.
These pilots, co-pilots, bombardiers and navigators came from formations based pre-war with the Northern Fleet originally as well as from other units stationed in Belorussia and the Crimea. They had connections with each other socially and professionally. Nearly everyone believed that they were to go down with their aircraft today yet there was a general feeling that they should all do their best regardless.
Those raketonosets started lifting off in the early afternoon and courses were set for the north as they went back to their naval aviation duties: their mission was to again take on the US Navy.
Striking Fleet Atlantic was again a three-carrier force. The Coral Sea and the Saratoga had both reinforced the Dwight D. Eisenhower so that once again there were a trio of US Navy aircraft carriers in the Norwegian Sea. Aircraft which had been land-based after the damage done to the Theodore Roosevelt and then to the Forrestal linked up with those brought with those two extra vessels which had come across the North Atlantic; those pair of damaged carriers were both down in central Norway hidden in the Trondheimsfjorden.
Each was operating this afternoon in the wind-swept seas off the North Cape right at the very top of mainland Europe. Aircraft flying from the carriers were engaged in operations supporting both the US Marines and the US Army engaged in combat against Soviet forces inside Norway. There were air, surface and subsurface escorts with those carriers though being as close to the Soviet mainland as they were, along with the knowledge of what had happened to the other carriers, made the Americans very cautious indeed with these precious ships of theirs here. Their safety was paramount, even to the detriment of air operations, and so they were being protected as much as possible away from those physical defences by moving around as much as possible rather than staying fixed in one place as well as having much electronic countermeasures support assigned too.
Soviet aircraft which had come anywhere near them since their arrival on-station during the night had been mercilessly hunted down with those maritime reconnaissance Bears and Ilyushin-38 Mays knocked out of the sky. One Soviet submarine had been sunk with the hope that that had occurred before it could get off a contact report while another suspected enemy submarine had been lured away using deception methods to engage it away from the carriers in an elaborate trap though that vessel had then escaped.
The US Navy was waiting impatiently for the opportunity to withdraw their carriers northwards away from land and into more open seas but for the time being they stayed as close as they were to increase the frequency, range and payload of air strikes in support of the ground forces. Operations inside the Barents Sea were planned for once they were released from supporting Operation WRITER and that was hoped to be sooner rather than later. It was expected that other Soviet reconnaissance efforts had been made which they hadn’t detected and that those raketonosets which had been so effectively used against them beforehand would come again, but this time things would be different.
Striking Fleet Atlantic wouldn’t be taken down again in a missile saturation attack, it was decreed, because this time the US Navy was ready for such an attempt to be repeated and thus was prepared.
Many US Navy warships had reinforced Striking Fleet Atlantic along with those carriers which had come from the Caribbean and Norfolk. There were destroyers and frigates which were no longer involved in anti-submarine efforts across the North Atlantic following the natural wind-down of activities hunting the few number of Soviet submarines left at sea and with weapons. In addition, three missile-cruisers had arrived for air defence duties two join the three already in-place. The nuclear-powered USS Mississippi had steamed independently across the ocean at flank speed after being deployed pre-war off the Lesser Antilles; just ahead of her had come the Mobile Bay after that warship had been involved in counter-raketonosets operations near the Azores on the war’s first day. There was also the new USS San Jacinto which had been with the Coral Sea in the Caribbean. Those latter two cruisers were both Ticonderoga-class vessels with AEGIS anti-missile systems and represented an immense addition of fire power to defend against expected Soviet attacks.
Striking Fleet Atlantic wasn’t bunched up like it had been when hit on the war’s first day by Backfires nor like four days ago when those Shipwreck missiles from that Oscar had caused all of that destruction. The notion that by being close together all defensive fire power could be better combined along with a concentration of electronic jamming and spoofing had been shown not to have worked. It was realised that once detected by long-range enemy efforts, the Soviets would just pour fire towards the ships knowing that some of their missiles would always get through.
No, this time things were different. Each aircraft carrier and its escorts operated separately in self-defence with only long-range defensive assets combined and co-ordinated at a distance. With the expectation that the Soviets wouldn’t be aware that Striking Fleet Atlantic would change their operation patterns, and still over confident from earlier victories, the US Navy was hoping that when the raketonosets finally got around to attacking them, action today would result in a famous victory for them.
Rather than go directly in a northwestern direction towards the North Cape across occupied portions of Norway – after all the good that such action had taken on Friday night when they had been massacred by land-based NATO air power – the raketonosets were sent northwards first to cross the Soviet coastline west of Murmansk. A few of the Backfires had to abort while still over friendly territory due to technical difficulties in-flight but those reductions in strength were only minor. As that crossing from flying above land to above the waters of the Barents Sea was made, the raketonosets were met by their escorts for this mission.
The commander of the Northwestern-TVD had faced great difficulties in getting the Soviet Air Defence Forces to release its interceptors but PVO had been forced to do so due to the theatre commander’s rank. There had been no NATO air attacks undertaken in the Kola Peninsula, which those long-range aircraft were meant to defend against, and such later attacks could only come from aircraft operating from the aircraft carriers fielded by the US Navy in a non-nuclear environment. MiG-31 Foxhounds and Sukhoi-27P Flankers were thus released to escort the raketonosets with a pair of regiments assigned to fly alongside them to stop further attacks against them from NATO fighters and to sink those carriers.
The 174th Guards and the 941st Fighter Aviation Regiments from the Soviet Tenth Air Army put twenty-five Foxhounds and twenty-two Flankers to escort the missile-bombers which went north first before making a turn to the west. There were two groups of raketonosets with each having different interceptors assigned for separate attacks to be made.
Those thirty-three Backfires being escorted by the Flankers for close-in protection raced towards Striking Fleet Atlantic first. They were following the spotting report of a Northern Fleet submarine which had gained a partial tracking of an American carrier earlier before having to flee from intensive anti-submarine efforts. There was one of the few remaining naval reconnaissance Bears currently operating which had intermittent contact with that same vessel and it was now waiting for strike elements of Northern Fleet Aviation to arrive to strike.
It had been noted by the US Navy how in previous encounters with the raketonosets that strict radio discipline was enforced by them up until the very last minute or unless things went wrong with their strike missions. Frustrating as it was, this was still useful intelligence even if limited practical value. Today though, ELINT operators aboard warships of Striking Fleet Atlantic were able to detect if not decode transmissions coming from several aircraft moving westwards above the water. These were identified as being in-flight pilot talk between Soviet PVO pilots coordinating their movements; a major break of radio discipline.
It didn’t take the Americans long to work out why there would be pilots of land-based interceptors coming towards them from the direction which they were: strike escort for raketonosets was suspected as the Soviets changed their operational patterns just as the US Navy had.
That Bear was sacrificed by Northern Fleet Aviation to allow the inbound raketonosets to get a fix upon the targets which they were closing in upon. It activated its surface-search radar in the active mode and started tracking what was believed to be an aircraft carrier with escorts very near to the expected location where it should be. This information was quickly sent to the Backfires as those aircraft and their interceptors with them increased speed while those aboard the big aircraft waited for the inevitable American respond to come with Tomcats firing missiles.
The US Navy didn’t disappoint.
They were already on full-alert and a pair of F-14s racing from the Saratoga – these Tomcats from VF-41 which had been previously flown from the Roosevelt – shot across the sky before launching a wave of Phoenix missiles against the aircraft; they used more than needed but the intention was to destroy rather than cripple the big aircraft if only one or even two strikes didn’t result in a mission-kill.
Such an instant and strong reaction from Striking Fleet Atlantic threw a spanner into the works for the Soviets. That aircraft carrier which had been detected was moving fast and the raketonosets had needed to get closer before they could launch their missiles. Without the targeting information from the Bear that would have to close the distance and then use their own less-powerful search radars, all the while illuminating their own presence to the Americans. Their strike was underway though and the mission orders stated that once they were on an attack run that was to be continued rather than called off just because the targeting information wasn’t as perfect as it could have been.
Those messages of goodbye exchanged between men when back on the ground were now realised to have been something necessary.
The missile-cruiser Mississippi was the ‘aircraft carrier’ which those Backfires were soon to unleash their missiles against. Electronic warfare specialists aboard were operating spoofing systems which made the warship appear to be a much bigger vessel than she was. Being missile bait wasn’t going to be fun but it was known to be essential for the survival of Striking Fleet Atlantic and the final destruction of those missile-bombers which the enemy had been putting to much use in this war.
The radars carried by the Backfires were engaged so that the carried Kitchen missiles could be properly targeted and then those Soviet aircrews were warned of enemy fighter radars tracking them. They quickly set about identifying what their radars were showing them while letting the Flankers break away from them on afterburner and race to fight those Tomcats at distance. An aircraft carrier was spotted along with four escorts; this wasn’t the whole of the US Navy carrier battle group, but one strategically important vessel was better than none. The radar picture was right, the electronic signals matched and the positioning was correct. Kitchen anti-ship missiles started to fall away from the Backfires before each missile-bomber then started to turn back for home with the hope that the destruction which their own missiles would cause would be added to by the efforts of the second group of raketonosets flying this afternoon.
Like the Mississippi was, those Flankers were missile bait too; they were meant to distract and take the attention of American defensive efforts.
The Tomcats fired first against the Flankers. They had missiles with longer range, guidance from an E-2 AWACS aircraft to direct their fire and were in a better tactical situation that their Soviet counterparts were. Phoenix missiles lanced across the sky towards the PVO interceptors – just as planned on the Soviet side, though without such an understanding from those pilots involved – though there were further US Navy missiles in the sky which didn’t do as the Soviets expected they would… at once many were going after the Kitchen’s.
There were far more Tomcats airborne and in position that Northern Fleet Aviation had thought that there would be. These were striking at the cruise missiles long before those Kitchens could get anywhere near their targeted ships and previous to their final, high-speed dives inbound. Sixty-two Kh-22 cruise missiles had been fired and while another pair joined those four which had already mis-launched (each raketonosets had brought two with them), eleven of those went down to one wave of Phoenixs and then another seventeen were destroyed in mid-flight moments later. Therefore a third of the deployed missiles were hit and knocked out almost instantaneously following launch.
The Flankers did no better. Their own air-to-air missiles weren’t in range and they couldn’t even detect the American fighters shooting at them due to an extremely hostile electronic environment. The pilots of these aircraft had been told that they would surprise the US Navy with their superior systems yet no one had told them the PVO-operated Flankers had been encountered over Germany and such intelligence on them and their weapon systems had been shared between the US Air Force and the US Navy. The externally-fitting jamming pods carried by each interceptor tonight which were meant to defeat the Phoenix missiles which blew them apart offered none of the promised protection for the Flankers either.
The Sukhoi-27Ps were massacred.
A second squadron of Tomcats, this time from VF-103, engaged those Kitchen missiles from much closer and used Sparrow missiles instead of Phoenixs. Ripple-firing and carefully lining-up their shots against defenceless targets, the total number of inbounds upon the distant Mississippi dropped to the low number of nine… from sixty-six which the Soviets had originally hoped to fire against what they thought was an aircraft carrier not a missile-cruiser armed with SAMs and anti-missile guns. More Tomcats couldn’t be brought to bear in time so the warship would have to deal with those inbound Vampires without air support which was soon needed elsewhere, but the Tomcats had truly done their job today. The Flankers were finished and the vast majority of inbound cruise missiles destroyed in mid-flight. It was unfortunate that the offending raketonosets from that particular flight had got away, but there were to be more in the sky targeted soon enough.
Below the interceptor versus interceptor and missile versus missile duels, the Mississippi got ready for the attack coming her way. Decoy rockets packed full of electronic deception equipment were launched and chaff was fired off by the missile-cruiser and her smaller escorts too. SM-2MR missiles were being launched from the twin-launchers located forward and aft aboard and the Vulcan-Phalanx anti-missile guns were pointed towards the threat direction. Less capable weapons aboard those escorts nearby – an old destroyer and two frigates – were lined-up ready too, yet those of the Mississippi would be all that was needed. Again and again, SM-2MR missiles were shot skywards and those SAMs raced through the sky. After several engagements that the US Navy and other NATO allies had had with Kitchen missiles, their capabilities were now quite well known and hasty upgrades had been given to the SAM systems which were used against them.
There were cheers aboard the Mississippi inside the CIC compartment when all nine Vampires were destroyed at distance. It had taken the launch of eighteen missiles before all inbounds were off the radar screens and there had been a great deal of tension which the Captain let his sailors relieve for just a few moments.
At once, communications were sent from the Mississippi to the rest of Striking Fleet Atlantic informing them of their success in defeating the attack against them. Further information was sent by data transfer as fast as possible too so that what extra intelligence had been gained through radar analysis of how the Soviet missiles preformed (or didn’t in this case) could be put to use in further efforts to defend against them.
Later, after the engagements elsewhere, the Mississippi would be steaming south to go down to the Porsangerfjorden where the Wisconsin was supporting the US Marines on land there. There were further battles to be fought by other combatants in this fight first.
The second group of raketonosets, supported by those Foxhound interceptors, took a more roundabout route towards Americans and came at them from the north. What they weren’t aware of was that approaching from this direction brought them into the range of a US Navy submarine operating near Bear Island and on the surface with its radar and ELINT masts raised. USS Narwhal had detected and momentarily tracked the missile-bombers using their transmissions and reported this onwards to Striking Fleet Atlantic.
Tomcats then moved into ambush positions with these F-14s coming from VF-11: the squadron formerly being on the Forrestal and now flying from the Coral Sea.
Striking Fleet Atlantic was now fully in control of the skies around its carriers. Their interceptors were operating at great distance with further fighter aircraft in the form of FA-18 Hornets ready to back them up. The determination not to again be caught by Soviet missile saturation attacks was showing today as again they were ready for such a thing.
With no naval reconnaissance Bear to guide them in, the Backfires searched the airwaves for scouting reports which may come from either submarines broadcasting burst transmissions or those of the less-capable airborne Mays. The further the aircrews brought their aircraft southwards and thus closer to where they knew the Americans would be operating the more worry which they had that at any moment they would be attacked. No active radars were being used by either the raketonosets or their escorts so as to not alert the Americans to their approach, yet it would be soon time to use such systems in an active search mode if no external information came first.
It was just about getting to the point when the airborne mission commander in the lead Backfire was about to give up waiting and activate his radar when the warning systems went off aboard his and the other aircraft that they were all being illuminated by AWG-9 fighter-interceptor radars: the Tomcats were here!
The Foxhounds were to defend the defenceless missile-bombers against such attacks as these and at once engaged their afterburners to shoot towards the Americans while also switching on their own intercept radars; the raketonosets meanwhile broke away and initiated their jamming systems. Unfortunately, those electronic warfare systems carried by the Northern Fleet Aviation aircraft interfered with those radars which the Foxhounds flown by Soviet Air Defence Forces pilots had. There were already Phoenix missiles in the sky by this point and the jamming from their comrades interfered with the ability of the Foxhounds to track those incoming air-to-air missiles. It was mix up of the first order and one which was to at once cost the Soviet interceptors dear.
As they broke away to avoid expected inbound missiles, the raketonosets aircrews were now using their (unaffected) surface-search radars to try to locate warships on the surface, especially the expected cluster of aircraft carriers and close-in AEGIS escorts. Those radars which they carried were of a short-range though and all that could be detected was a pair of smaller warships on the surface – identified as a Knox- and a Perry-class ASW frigates – rather than the bigger assigned targets. Each Backfire had two giant Kitchen missiles which would make short work of those frigates, yet those weren’t the vessels which they were after. Instead, they continued flying southwards hoping to find what they were really after.
Phoenix missiles started crashing into the Foxhounds just about the time when the effect of the ‘friendly’ jamming wore off. Those pilots and weapons operators aboard were getting ready to fire their own air-to-air missiles when their aircraft started being hit. The Foxhounds were truly at a disadvantage in this engagement without the usual benefit of ground-based radar control and the interference which their systems had suffered from the jamming on the raketonosets which they had been sent to protect. The first wave of US Navy missiles took out almost half of them and then there came a second wave of Phoenix missiles straight afterwards which wiped out most of the rest of them. Those few interceptors which had managed to launch their own R-33 (NATO: AA-9 Amos) missiles were either destroyed or lucky enough to flee thus leaving those weapons without guidance where they would have struggled anyway against high-manoeuvrable Tomcats instead of big bombers which they had been designed to counter.
The Tomcats of VF-11 still had some Phoenixs as well as Sparrows left and went after those raketonosets next. They had guidance from an E-2 flying from the Coral Sea like they were and launched long-range shots towards the rear and sides of the missile-bombers going after their carrier.
Now the Backfires started to explode like their escorting Foxhounds did. Those aircraft still had their radars active, thus highlighting them for attack, and their aircrews had thought that their doomed PVO-crewed interceptors would have provided distant protection for them. There were twenty-nine missile-bombers in this formation and after VF-11 had expended its Phoenix missiles eighteen remained. Those US Navy interceptors were faster than the Backfires and the attempt to abandon the mission and flee thus didn’t work as Sparrow missiles were fired by the Tomcats when in range. It would have been best for these Northern Fleet Aviation missile-bombers if each aircraft had separated and gone in a different direction at a different altitude as there wouldn’t have been enough Tomcats to chase each one, but they didn’t do that and thus more and more of them were struck by continuous waves of air-to-air missiles guided-in perfectly against them despite the full use of jamming equipment.
Every single one of these raketonosets was shot down.
Northern Fleet Aviation now had less than a quarter of the Backfire missile-bombers which it had started to war with. Half of those sent into the skies this afternoon along with almost all of the interceptors assigned from PVO had been lost with absolutely no return gain at all in terms of American ships hit or aircraft shot down. The air battle today had been a slaughter for the Soviet aircrews who had braved the Tomcat’s; the aircraft of the US Navy ruled the skies and nothing could be done to stop that now that the Americans had the measure of the Soviets at sea.
Both sides would look at the results of the battle afterwards and realise that once Striking Fleet Atlantic was finished operating in support of the US Marines in liberating more of occupied northern Norway, those aircraft carriers were going to come further eastwards towards the Arctic coastline of the Soviet Union and different efforts were going to be have to made to oppose them. The major warships of the Northern Fleet, the big missile-armed surface combatants, had been lost and the submarine arms had taken fearful losses at sea. Now with the strength of the raketonosets severely reduced – arguable negated – there were only the shorter-range defensive forces left to protect the Soviets coastline.
The greater numbers of weaponry, stronger capabilities and better electronic efforts were finally paying off for the US Navy while the Soviets had shot their bolt in earlier successful if bloody efforts to win the naval war. Now the Soviets were truly going to be on the defensive and no one thought that they were going to come out favourably with that.
One Hundred & Fifty–Two
British efforts with their Operation HADDOCK begun a few hours earlier than planned in the mid-afternoon rather than in the evening. Their combat assets had long been in-place but the supporting assets for the offensive operations in southern Norway were ready to assist those fighting elements ahead of time. The RN and the RAF joined the British Army in seeking to retake Sola Airport outside Stavanger from the occupying Soviet paratroopers there while also preparing to defend themselves from distant enemy countermoves.
Capturing Sola and eliminating it as a base for Soviet air operations against the UK – in addition to its projected use to further subjugate the Norwegians – was of great importance to British military interests.
*
Sola Airport was larger than Flesland was and the number of defending Soviets there was greater. The whole of the 76GAD had been airdropped into the area on the war’s first day and there had been at first airborne resupply missions for the division of paratroopers. Those had been halted for several days after the air situation had changed over Scandinavia, though some extra flights had arrived last night and today bringing in fuel and ammunition following the conquest of most of Denmark. The paratroopers were spread over a wide area on land to the north, east and south of the airport with the Norwegian Sea just too the west. Their airmobile armoured vehicles and artillery were positioned to support them yet was also mobile enough to defend against enemy activity.
The city of Stavanger to the north hadn’t been directly approached though it had been physically cut off from the mainland. There were Norwegian troops there – reservists and militia – who seemed content to defend the city against an attack that wasn’t going to come and therefore an unofficial truce had been in-place. Civilians had been expelled from the perimeter which the 76GAD held as they concentrated on establishing dense defences against an attack which they had been long expecting.
The Soviet paratroopers believed that they could hold out here for quite some time even if faced with an extremely strong attack by a NATO force. Their position was a good one and the resumption of the air supply link was seem as a sign of positive things to come… even if on one of those aircraft had come a new Political Officer to replace the previous one who had been one of the few casualties inflicted by British air attacks.
With the new British 6th Light Division acting as the overall headquarters for the ground forces used in HADDOCK, those assigned units under command had moved against Sola in stages ready for their attack.
The victorious 9th Guards Brigade had been transported overland down from Bergen following long, winding roads which had made the men cover twice the distance than had they been able to fly southwards. The Foot Guards and Paras had been concentrated at Sandnes; a small town south of Stavanger and east of Sola at the edge of the outer positions of the 76GAD.
Into Stavanger itself and also nearby small harbours just to the north of the city along the edges of the Stavanger Peninsula had come the 5th Airborne Brigade. They had arrived by boats with the Paras, Gurkhas and men of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers having taken a long trip southwards from their previous deployment up in western Finmark. The 5th Brigade had seen some combat there, especially 3 PARA, but there was an eagerness among many to get fighting again: being told that they were going up against Soviet paratroopers only increased their morale. Instead of going directly southwards from their landing sides, they moves first in a southwestern direction to Kvernevik and then over the Hafrsfjorden Bridge to near the smouldering shipping terminal at Tananger. There were strong enemy defences around Forus south of the city, but the 5th Brigade was now to the northwest where the 76GAD was less so deployed.
Offshore, HMS Invincible with her aircraft and escorts were positioned to the southwest before the attack came after ‘disappearing’ out to sea earlier in the day and coming back towards land again in what was hoped to be an unexpected approach. There were Sea Harriers for air combat and a few RAF Harrier GR3s for land-attack missions carried aboard and the mobile airbase that the Invincible was would assisting in HADDOCK along with RAF aircraft flying from recaptured Flesland to the north.
Like the Soviets did, the British thought that they were in a perfect shape for their successful operations around Sola too.
*
A daylight infantry attack with no preliminary air or artillery barrage and conducted at three o’clock in the afternoon wasn’t something that the 76GAD was expecting. The divisional commander had intelligence pointing to an arrival and subsequent build-up of British troops in the area though he believed that they were in Stavanger and wouldn’t strike until the early hours of the following morning with much external fire support. In fact, his new Political Officer was pushing for him to conduct a night-time spoiling attack past Forus following the main road into the city using the light armour available and that had been under consideration.
Yet, all of a sudden, the British struck first with simultaneous infantry assaults against his forward units to the east and then in a shock move to the northwest too.
MILAN missiles were used in the ‘bunker-buster’ fashion and British infantry launched accurate lightweight mortar fire into trenches too under the cover of careful assaults which suddenly cut through minefields and barbed wire. In both places where the two attacking British brigades made their opening moves they penetrated deep into the defensive lines which had been sent up by elements of a pair of regiments deployed forward by the 76GAD. Attacks then came by light armoured vehicles deployed by the British and while those tracked vehicles were much fewer in number to that mass of BMD-1 & BMD-2 vehicles fielded by the Soviet paratroopers, they succeed because there were armed British helicopters in the sky (though kept back in stand-off positions) firing guided missiles and unguided rockets against Soviet armour.
Everything happened so fast in the opening moves made with the attack of ground forces assigned to HADDOCK. The rifle battalion with the 234th Regiment deployed in the east and the 104th Regiment’s battalion in the northwest suffered shocking losses to men who should have been able to make effective stands behind what should have been solid defensive positions. Infiltration efforts by British troops moving just ahead of the attack, many of them combat engineers, had opened pathways forward that were exploited and it took far too long for those paratroopers at the front to react.
There were local collapses of the defences and when Soviet reaction forces started to move there came the intervention first from British air power. RAF aircraft came racing down from the north and made low-level attacks in a close air support fashion with bombs dropped with near precision. The anti-air defences of the 76GAD consisted of a mass of paratroopers armed with man-portable missile-launchers as well as divisional-level anti-aircraft guns and heavier SAM-launchers. Recent experience against enemy air attacks didn’t do the Soviets any good this time with such low-level attacks rather than ones conducted at high-altitude.
NATO artillery then came into play. There were guns which the British had brought with them which opened up once the Soviets reacted in strength but then those older Norwegian artillery pieces in Stavanger which hadn’t fired in days (they had run out of shells) opened fire at distance too after their gunners had received supplies from the British. The artillery barrage conducted wasn’t the strongest, yet as it came from multiple directions in an arc-shaped fashion it really shook the Soviets. Their own towed D-30 howitzers from their artillery regiment suffered at the hands of British air power and it was up to the self-propelled 2S9 heavy mortars to try to respond to this by providing counter-battery fire. While there were plenty of these with the 76GAD, counter-battery wasn’t the best mission for such weapons despite urgent radio orders for them to be used like this while the damage done to the 122mm howitzers was sorted out.
Meanwhile, as artillery duelled and aircraft zoomed overhead to be chased by SAMs, the British troops kept on advancing on the ground eager to get as far forward as possible.
2 PARA and the Grenadier Guards supporting them managed to reach the little village of Soma as they followed the road running from Sandnes towards Sola. This locality was home to the regimental headquarters of the 234th Regiment, the three battalions of which were deployed to the east and south of the 76GAD’s defensive zone. The men of the regiment’s reserve battalion, along with the headquarters guard company, successfully brought the British to a halt right on the edge of the village and then efforts were made using tracked vehicles to push the British back. In the fierce Soviet counterattack, 2 PARA took immense losses when sprayed with machine gun fire by those PKT 7.62mm weapons, but then the Grenadier Guards used MILAN missiles to knock out many of those offending vehicles. Like they had been trained to, the Foot Guards hit those with command antenna especially and therefore knocked out commanders leading the rest into combat. A halt to the actions of both sides then came into effect as each took stock of their losses.
The men of the 1/6 Gurkhas had lead the initial near Tananger but they were replaced afterwards in the lead by the Life Guards and Paras moving as far south as possible into the rear of the Soviet 104th Regiment. There was only one of that formation's three rifle battalions deployed west of the shallow Hafrsfjorden with the other two in the east near Forus. Most of that initial battalion’s defences had been either overrun or bypassed due to the hard work of the Gurkhas who then had to methodically clear those bypassed strongpoints in fierce fighting. Scorpions and Scimitars led the infantry marching behind them in bypassing the shipping terminal wrecked by a hasty Norwegian demolition effort on the war’s first day. Minefields and devastating missile fire brought this effort by 5th Brigade to rush a seizure of Sola from what the Soviets regarded as the rear to a bloody halt though artillery was brought forward along with further troops to try again soon enough.
The 76GAD command post had been bombed in the initial phases of the RAF attack and then there were even Sea Harriers dropping bombs too afterwards right atop the smashed headquarters. While not killed himself in this, the divisional commander lost most of his staff right at the beginning of the British attack and also his central communications. The 237th Regiment was tasked as his divisional reserve and he had to personally go to see its commanding colonel to get it moving as a reaction force to move against the reported attacks coming in from the northwest and the east.
Further British attacks in the form of deep artillery attacks against Sola Airport severely affected the ability of the 76GAD to react to the attack against it. The divisional helicopters were grounded and then several were blown up whilst on the ground… along with aircraft lost too as there was total British air coverage above. The artillery battery of D-30 guns took losses not just to a few of their howitzers but also to many of the gunners and their ammunition stores too. There had never been an expectation that the British could put together such a well-coordinated combined arms assault as they were conducting and the feeling among the divisional commander was that his enemies in this fight must have included massive American support too.
Though he was wrong on that assumption, such a thing didn’t matter for the British moved to finish off their fight here when their initial attacks came to a stop.
Naval gunfire from several RN warships offshore occurred an hour after HADDOCK had begun. The destroyers York and Gloucester along with the trio of frigates Arrow, Alacrity and Avenger all shelled the Soviet-held positions. The guns aboard those five warships blasted away at land targets called into them from the troops fighting on the frontlines ashore in conjunction with artillery fire from the Royal Artillery elements with the 6th Light Division. Nothing in wartime ever goes perfect and there was an ugly instance of friendly fire where some shelling from Arrow unfortunately targeted the men of 1 PARA, but otherwise the intention of the British to break the Soviets with this went as they wanted it to.
5th Brigade was able to find an opening to move forwards by pushing southwards parallel to Soviet defensive lines facing out from the edge of the airport towards the beach of Sola Bay where the Royal Marines were meant to land if the British Army couldn’t defeat the enemy paratroopers. Those seaward defences had lost their defensive troops when most of the 237th Regiment was moved about and an opening was found for the men of the second battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers to get onto the airport grounds behind the terminal complex. Vehicles with the Life Guards followed them in spreading out fast across the open ground ahead and then they were right in the Soviet’s rear.
The Soviet divisional commander was one of those men who put up a hasty and confused defence of the runway and taxiways and died like his comrades there as the British infantry fought like lions to seize the airport grounds. 1 PARA and then 3 PARA right on their heels then burst forward through gaps which naval shelling had opened for them in the northwest; British troops stormed the airport in strength now.
By this point, only three combat-manoeuvre battalions of the 76GAD had been overrun and beaten in battle (one from each regiment) yet the division was finished as a fighting force with the facility it was spread out to protect overrun and those fighting units at the front now effectively surrounded. The 9th Guards Brigade was ordered forward at that point by 6th Light Division command and took more losses in what later recriminations would declare an unnecessarily rushed move, but that linking-up of both British brigade’s further exasperated the doomed position of their Soviet opponents. It was soon getting dark and just before sunset the rest of the 234th Regiment to the south surrendered to the Coldstream Guards in what the British regarded as an honourable fashion by the Soviet regimental commander as he was in a hopeless tactical situation and there was no need for his men to be slaughtered.
The rest of the 76GAD, squeezed to the north of the British who had gotten into their rear and with the static Norwegians ahead of them weren’t about to give up. Parts of the 104th and 237th Regiments kept on fighting even when extraordinary pressure was brought to bear on them with aircraft dropping bombs on them and shells coming in from land and naval guns. They were bunched up around Forus and Sornes too with all offers of a ceasefire leading to an organised surrender rebuffed with gunfire.
With night having fallen, efforts were made by Paras to move against those Soviets paratroopers who wouldn’t surrender. They were attacked from their rear when it was known that their defensive lines would have been constructed previously facing northwards and any last-minute works only improvised. There was only repeated heavy fire from those trapped men though and the Paras involved took too many casualties to make a rush assault worthwhile. It was decided they the resisting enemy would be pinned down by artillery overnight and attacked again the following day after they had taken a full night’s worth of shelling against them along with the hope that they would realise the terrible tactical situation which they were in. There was a movement of troops from the Grenadier Guards northwards by helicopter – with a roundabout routing taken to avoid anti-helicopter fire by those stubborn Soviets – to reach the Norwegian positions directly in front of Stavanger just in case the enemy decided a breakout that way might be in order, but for now the Battle of Sola was over with.
*
Like the fight at Flesland late last week, this second British operation on the ground here in southern Norway had resulted in major losses taken. There would be eleven hundred casualties listed after the battle with four hundred of those being lives lost. The butcher’s bill here was terrible among Britain’s elite troops… though of course nothing like the losses taken last week in Germany.
There had been no need for the Royal Marines to undertake their planned landing in Sola Bay at the last minute to finish off Soviet opposition and so those men aboard their ships remained at sea. There were fewer men and fewer ships than there should have been – that attack submarine against them in the Ofotfjorden three days ago had been devastating – yet the 3rd Commando Brigade was still capable of action. There were Polish troops down at Kristiansand who the Royal Marines would now be off to fight now that they weren’t needed here at Sola. The carrier Invincible would escort the amphibious ships down there now that its work was done in supporting HADDOCK.
British troops would be fighting again soon in southern Norway.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 18:49:24 GMT
One Hundred & Fifty–Three
And the Soviets tried again with their diplomacy.
This time an approach to the Americans to bring an end to the fighting – on exclusive Soviet terms – was made in New Delhi through the ambassador there Vassily Nikolayevich Rykov. He struggled to use his previous good connections with the Indian government to gain an audience with the controversial US Ambassador to India John Gunther Dean late on the Monday so that once again the Soviet Union could make an opening at finding a diplomatic solution to ending the conflict. With India being a large, influential and neutral nation, the intention that Rykov had was clearly to use the considerable connections that his country had with that country to assist in this effort. Unfortunately, the Indians wanted nothing to do with his weak attempts at diplomacy; the Soviets were fast running out of friends worldwide after the manner in which they were conducting their war.
When they finally met, after Rykov had to do the legwork all himself, Ambassador Dean was not at all receptive to Rykov. US Ambassador’s worldwide had already been briefed in secure diplomatic communications as to what the Soviets had done in Vienna and then New York with their approaches made… and also what their proposals entailed. Unless the Soviets were to offer what the United States wanted to hear then there were to be no talks between the two nations even at an unofficial level like Rykov tried in New Delhi.
News of the approach made in India was shared like the substance of what had been said in Vienna and New York among America’s allies. This decision to keep everyone up to date on what the Soviets were up to by trying to get the United States to publicly request talks and then accede to Soviet demands while those views and needs of their allies were ignored was extremely wise. Countries were not being left out of the loop and their national leaders felt emboldened by their strongest ally being honest with them.
The West Germans had a significant portion of their country under occupation and the rest of it having suffered immense damage. Kohl and his ministers in their bunker were worried that at any moment their country above them was to become a nuclear battlefield or that Soviet armies would sweep away the remaining NATO troops there to conquer the rest of it without using such weapons. To know that diplomatically the United States was standing firm in support of them was only a little consolation amongst all their other troubles with a destroyed army, civilians being mistreated as they were and a national economy ruined, but it was still something of enough importance to make sure that they were going to stand firm.
Soviet efforts to ignore them only made the French mad. President Mitterrand was furious at such Soviet diplomatic manipulations and made sure that everyone knew this; not least President Reagan who he had a long trans-Atlantic telephone conference with this about. France had been hurt badly by the war but was left determined to finish it on the winning side, especially after the news as to how the Soviets were trying to end it.
Across other parts of Western Europe, there were similar reactions. The Norwegians and the Danes were in a lot of trouble militarily but their governments remained firm with the joint NATO cause. In Sweden – the victim of such a vicious and unprovoked attack which had almost brought them down – the new government wanted to play a bigger role on the diplomatic stage yet as it was still trying to get organised while the country remained under attack it was willing to vocally support if not truly assist US diplomacy; Swedish diplomats worldwide were respected for their country’s neutrality and this was exploited among foreign governments. Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and Portugal were all important NATO members and each had suffered in this war quite a bit. Again, these countries were firmly behind the American refusal to enter any sort of agreement with the Soviets, especially upon such terms as what had been offered.
The Netherlands was a special case. That Cabinet vote on March 18th followed by the death of Queen Beatrix the following day were events of immense national significance. Pressure was brought to bear on Prime Minister Lubbers by some members of his government to continue upon the course of action which they had voted upon and take the Netherlands out of the war, one which they said was lost. Simultaneously, other members of the Dutch government had been contacted by American, Belgian and British contacts imploring them to continue fighting and warning of the dangers of walking away from the conflict to an uncertain future. The sharing of intelligence by the United States concerning Soviet diplomatic failures with the Dutch showed how the West was standing together despite problems on the battlefield.
Away from Europe, those nations fighting with the United States and NATO all continued to remain firmly with the alliance of an ever-growing number of nations actively opposed to the Soviets and their war. Canada and the vast majority of Latin American nations were all with the United States as the New World fought with the western portions of the Old World. South Africa had finally brought its advances to Angola to a halt though held a large portion of that nation under occupation; in North Africa Morocco was still continuing to form up a small expeditionary force to be eventually sent to Germany to fight with the French. Oman had been joined by Saudi Arabia and several of the Gulf Kingdoms on the side of the West while Thailand and Brunei in South East Asia were officially at war alongside Singapore and the Philippines. Japan and South Korea both remained committed to the war and were still fighting as much as they could. Australia, New Zealand and a few Pacific island nations brought the number of sovereign nations fighting the Soviets to almost fifty now.
The whole world was turning against Moscow and most of those nations were engaged in combat with their military forces or soon preparing to do so even if those were insignificant in number during the overall instances of conflict.
*
The attitude from India towards the Soviets was nothing like that of Cuba as the new military regime there took drastic steps to remove itself from Moscow’s orbit and attain its objectives in the stalled talks with the Americans following the US-Cuban ceasefire.
The senior military officers in charge following the demise of the Castro Brothers had put General Ochoa to work again after his return from The Bahamas and sent him to talk with the commander of the Soviet garrison in Cuba as well as the KGB and GRU people there too. To US Intelligence, ‘Brigade Cuba’ was the name of the garrison on the island though it was officially designated as the ‘7th Special Motorised Rifle Brigade’. This independent-level formation with almost three thousand soldiers also now commanded several hundred spooks which had previously been spread across Cuba but who were now all concentrated around the garrison at Narakko outside Havana. There were figures from the Castro regime within the confines of the garrison too; men who wanted to restore the old order which the Cuban people had gotten rid of.
Ochoa had met several times with the Soviet commander before the war though faced a man who acted like a stranger when they met against the background of the current situation. The Cuban explained that his country wished for the Soviet garrison here to stand-down from its alert status (with weapons pointed outwards) and to be disarmed. Full protection would be offered to those Soviets inside the garrison though Cuba wanted the surrender of the Castro regime officials protected by Soviet guns. This was sovereign Cuban soil and the country was engaged in peace talks with the Americans; the presence of heavily-armed Soviets forces inside their country outside of their operational control couldn’t continue.
Of course the Cubans weren’t expecting the Soviets to just give up their weapons and put themselves at the mercy of the new military regime, but what they weren’t expecting was that Ochoa would be shot and killed by a GRU officer during those talks. The killing occurred late in the evening of March 21st and also included that of Ochoa’s entourage too. It wasn’t planned and wouldn’t result in any good outcome in the long term for the Soviet forces on the island, but that was the response of the 7th Brigade to the Cuban demand that they give up their weapons and the Cuban political figures which they were protecting.
As it had been since the war’s first day, the situation with Cuba and World War Three was extremely complicated… to say the least.
One Hundred & Fifty–Four
In the early hours of Tuesday March 22nd, NATO naval forces fought against the Soviet-led combined Baltic Fleet in the Battle of the Baltic Exits. American, British, Dutch and West German warships combatted Soviet, East German and Polish flagged vessels which came through the Danish Straits into the Kattegat with the intention of getting out into the wider Skagerrak and then the North Sea beyond.
A week of combat against Danish, Swedish and smaller ships of the Bundesmarine had seen the Baltic Fleet blooded but eventually victorious to the east of Denmark and now they aimed to establish a strong presence to the north and west. Opposition was expected by their NATO opponents in this endeavour yet the Baltic Fleet was ready for such a thing. Meanwhile, NATO was more than aware of Soviet aims with the Baltic Approaches and was positioned to act to stop this. A showdown was to commence in these shallow waters.
The first priority for the Baltic Fleet was to get out of the Oresund and past the restricted waters between Sweden and Zealand. With Copenhagen in the hands of Soviet and Polish troops, Danish and Swedish ground forces still fighting in Denmark were concentrated in northeastern Zealand and were using the Helsingor-to-Helsingborg connection to send civilian refugees one way and military freight the other. There were missile batteries (SAMs and anti-ship surface-to-surface missiles too) protecting the connection across the water along with coastal artillery, extensive minefields and light naval forces. Such defences were engaged by extreme violence as well as a little bit of cunning.
Aircraft tasked with providing naval air support were sent against those surface-to-surface missile batteries on Zealand and the Swedish coastal guns. There were many careful attacks made by those aircraft though losses were incurred when trying such deliberate strikes against targets which both the Danes and Swedes expected to be struck. Several of the Danish Harpoon missile batteries were located despite extensive efforts to conceal these mobile firing platforms and even with only a couple being successfully hit, the destruction of aircraft was viewed as justifiable due to the damage such weapons had caused the Baltic Fleet’s smaller ships earlier in the war. The Swedish coastal artillery consisted of several batteries with a trio of three-inch radar-guided guns. The locations of them were known due to pre-war intelligence as these were fixed facilities but so too were the defences of such guns. Television-guided bombs were dropped as close as possible to hopefully damage, bend or even destroy the barrels of such weapons above ground yet the successes of those strikes were minimal at best. Light NATO warships – remains of the Danish and Bundesmarine eastern fleets – in the Oresund were attacked too to clear the way ahead with short-range air-to-surface missiles being used hit them; again with varying success.
When it came to overcoming those minefields, the GRU provided the Baltic Fleet with intelligence on their locations and composition gathered pre-war and also what had been gathered in wartime from interrogations of not only captured NATO officers but also civilian mariners. The Danish Straits had seen many ships moving across them with captains and navigators of civilian ships warned to avoid certain areas. Minesweepers were sent forward of the Baltic Fleet with the intention of clearing channels through them though losses were still expected from them when it came to the big warships transiting northwards towards the open waters ahead of the Baltic Exits.
There was to be no disappointment here.
The Polish Navy’s missile-destroyer Warszawa was one of the first ships to go through the final stretch of the Danish Straits and enter the Kattegat ahead of the rest of the Baltic Fleet. This vessel was the largest in the Polish Navy and had only very recently been transferred from Soviet service to be manned by Poles instead. Guns, missiles and sensors adorned the Warszawa and she was following a minesweeper on the eastern side of the waters separating Sweden and Denmark. Many weapons were trained out to port as well as ahead with the threat to the Warszawa deemed as being greatest from the Danes and what NATO naval forces were ahead rather than the Swedes at the moment.
Rather than NATO warships, aircraft or land-based missiles, Warszawa was crippled when passing near Helsingor by a mine instead. An influence mine detonated with extraordinary force in the wave of the passing destroyer and left the Polish warship dead in the water afterwards. This had been laid by the RN only the day before and was a ‘smart’ mine with it being able to detect targets of a military value rather than just strike against any hapless vessel which may come across it. The Danes didn’t know about its emplacement… nor the other twenty-three in the immediate area too just away from the shipping channel heading east-west.
The dark skies were momentarily lit by the blast which crippled the Warszawa and crews above deck aboard those following warships all watched as darkness returned afterwards. There were radio messages passed from the minesweeper which had been with the unfortunate Polish vessel informing those following of a suspected mine strike but word of what happened wasn’t shared among the crews of the warships approaching apart from those who needed to know.
Those who were in the know all realised that this wouldn’t be the only action which the Baltic Fleet would see.
Out ahead in the Kattegat and the Skagerrak behind, there was a large flotilla of NATO warships waiting for the Soviets to push through the Danish Straits. Enemy activity had relegated defence of the Baltic Exits to these waters rather than in them, though there was now more room to manoeuvre for the destroyers and frigates assembled.
The Bundesmarine had lost many smaller warships and submarines in the Baltic Sea during the past week. Its missile boats, patrol boats and coastal submarines had won many notable engagements though few had eventually survived against the numerical might of the enemy. With land bases in the Baltic coast all now in enemy hands, there were a few vessels left to operate from Danish islands not under Soviet control or also in Swedish bases, yet for all intents the Baltic Flotilla of the Bundesmarine had been lost. There was still the North Sea Flotilla though with its destroyers and frigates. Many of these vessels were in the North Atlantic providing escort for trans-Atlantic convoys and while a few losses had been taken there too, the West Germans had shown their worth: especially in anti-submarine warfare. Five of those warships were in the Kattegat tonight with three being destroyers and the other two were frigates. These were each well-armed crewed by patriotic sailors who knew quite a bit about naval warfare based upon their experiences of combat so far.
Three frigates of the Royal Netherlands Navy were with the West Germans. The Dutch Navy was having a much better war than their countrymen on land or in the air with only a quarter at most of the overall strength of the force lost so far in the war. Those three frigates and one submarine which had been lost had all been sunk in the North Atlantic engaged in combat there escorting convoys though while it wasn’t yet realised, that submarine which had gone down with sixty-six men aboard – the Tonijn – had been hit by a torpedo dropped by a Norwegian P-3B aircraft in an unfortunate friendly-fire incident. Each of the frigates assigned to stop the Baltic Fleet were deployed forward in the Kattegat ready to see action.
RN forces in the Baltic Approaches were split between two separate task groups. There was the Amphibious Group now approaching Polish-occupied Kristiansand ready to assist in the planned dawn landing by Royal Marines there and some of those ships had assisted yesterday evening in the naval gunfire barrage which had hit Sola Airport before it was retaken. The other grouping was down with the Dutch and West Germans and consisted of five warships, including the Brave which had seen combat in the Baltic a few days beforehand. The destroyer HMS Newcastle and the frigate Brave were joined by another three frigates: HMS Euryalus, HMS Argonaut, and HMS Diomede.
The lone US Navy warship present for the battle was the missile-destroyer USS Arthur W. Radford. This vessel had been working with the frigate USS Patterson (a vessel taken from the Reserves as part of REFORGER) in many wartime duties along the English Channel and then into the North Sea as the war had progressed. Yesterday, the Radford had opened fire upon the western exits of the Kiel Canal with her pair of five-inch guns against East German efforts to clear the block-ships scuttled there on the eve of war. In the midst of that successful action, the destroyer and its escort the Patterson had been caught too close to the enemy-held shore in daylight and engaged by land-based aircraft flown by the East Germans. The Patterson had been hit by bombs dropped from MiG-21s and had to be abandoned when fires had reached her magazines; most of her crew had been rescued though twenty-four of those had been killed in the attack which had fortunately spared the bigger Radford.
Avoiding where the Warszawa had struck that mine, the Baltic Fleet soon passed through the Baltic Exits and entered the Kattegat. It was just before four o’clock in the morning when they did so and they went straight into battle at this ungodly hour. Electronic intelligence and radar data from smaller boats sent ahead pointed to many NATO warships being ahead and so the Baltic Fleet opened up upon those vessels at distance with the intention to get the first shots away and damage the enemy fast and hard.
The missile-destroyer Stoykiy was ordered to fire off a full barrage of carried long-range missiles and with haste eight P-270 Moskit (NATO: SS-N-22 Sunburn) were shot out of launch canisters arrayed down the side of the warship. This vessel had been built at Leningrad and was originally meant to have gone to the Pacific Fleet yet had been kept behind due to international tensions in Europe. It was a fine warships bristling with potent weapons and excellent combat systems: only six of those missiles which it launched had successful launches though with the other two soon malfunctioning and not lancing like the others towards distant targets. This was a ship plagued with problems and such a high failure rate had actually been anticipated.
The Stoykiy had been at the rear of the Baltic Fleet formation coming forwards and many of those vessels out front had their own missiles too which were fired alongside the P-270s flying towards the enemy. Several more warships suffered mis-firings as well in what were regarded as the nature of warfare though not all of them had their full complement of missiles as the Stoykiy had. They were a long way from bases back at Baltiysk, Kronstadt and Liepaja where resupply of their missile batteries from earlier engagement would come from; this situation was exasperated especially since closer bases in East Germany and Poland had been bombed by NATO aircraft during the course of the war.
Nonetheless, many P-15 and P-20 missiles (variants of the SS-N-2 Styx) were shot from missile tubes to join those P-270s in-flight and these all went towards the NATO warships.
HNLMS Witte de With, a Dutch missile frigate outfitted for air defence and with a big air-search radar, used the LW-08 and DA-05 radars which it mounted alongside electronic warfare systems to track those inbound Soviet missiles. While the NATO combat flotilla wasn’t encountering such an attack as Striking Fleet Atlantic had with Kitchen missiles engaged in terminal dives, the waves of Styxs and Sunburns were moving fast and were a major threat. An AEGIS cruiser of the US Navy would have come in handy at this point for dealing with those yet those vessels which were here were still armed with many anti-missile weapons.
The NATO warships were spread out over a wide area in a semi-circle fashion northwest of the approaching Baltic Fleet. There were significant gaps between them to guard against a missile saturation attack though there was an invisible defensive shield up with their mounted jamming systems. Plenty of intelligence had been gathered during the war on how Soviet weapons systems worked and this had been shared worldwide among the military’s of those fighting. In direct contrast, the Soviets were relying on plenty of pre-war intelligence – much of which gathered from the Vietnam conflict too – and when they did learn anything new it was dismissed as not fitting in with previous intelligence and then not even shared among allies or even different armed services.
The Styx missile had been encountered many times by NATO navies and defeated in several engagements using jamming and this morning electronic efforts were put to full use once again. Direct jamming was commenced against the radars mounted in nosecones of the missiles while false targets were created in the skies too.
As to the Sunburns, NATO had only had a few encounters with these and their systems weren’t as capable of defeating these.
The missile barrage which the Baltic Fleet unleashed was an all or nothing gamble as missile tubes were emptied and any resupply would have to come from damaged port facilities a distance away… should those warships survive the morning.
In the face of immense jamming and then the active efforts of NATO warships to defend themselves further with their SAMs and anti-missile guns, the effect of the missile attack was minimal. The Bundesmarine’s destroyer Bayern was the biggest casualty with this thirty-three year-old ship being struck by a pair of Sunburn missiles that had undertaken a sea-skimming attack. Those missiles hit the warship along her starboard side and penetrated the outer hole before the warheads detonated inside. Fires immediately started and raged out of control aboard leading to a need soon enough to abandon ship.
HMS Argonaut, which had barely escaped destruction on the war’s first day when the bigger Engadine had been lost to a submarine-launched missile attack, was sunk today when hit by another one of those Sunburns. In 1982 when hit by Argentinian bombs in the Falklands the frigate had survived then, but not the blast from the warhead today which exploded upon contact with her Exocet missile battery.
The other twelve NATO warships all walked away undamaged. The Goalkeeper anti-missile gun on the Newcastle along with an identical system aboard the Witte de With engaged further Sunburns and so too did the Vulcan-Phalanx aboard the Radford. Full attention had been able to be paid to those inbound missiles with multiple guns firing on lone missiles as the Styx missiles were all either decoyed away or engaged with ease by SAMs. The Bayern and the Argonaut just too unlucky to be caught in the fortunes of war.
Once that was over with, the NATO ships counter-attacked. They mounted guns, torpedoes and missiles of their own and they were to go forward in pairs to break up the enemy ranks.
It was thought that the volley of missiles fired at distance would have devastated the NATO ships and therefore it came as an unpleasant surprise when reports started to come back that several of the smaller vessels of the Baltic Fleet ahead were being engaged. Some NATO warships were known to have survived due to the intense radar jamming ahead but no return massed volley fire of missile came just small ship-on-ship attacks. One of those corvettes hit by NATO in retaliation was the East German Navy’s Eglehofer – the ship whose missiles which had killed those Danish sailors back in January near Bornholm – as the five-inch guns of the Bundesmarine destroyer Molders raked her with gunfire. The Soviet frigate Silnyy was smashed by Harpoon missiles fired at close-range by the Dutch frigate Pieter Florisz while another Krivak-class frigate, the Bodryy was also struck with Harpoons which had come from the Radford.
The command ship for this operation of the Baltic Fleet was the old cruiser Sverdlov, which armed only with guns but had extensive communications facilities. Aboard it the battle-staff struggled to realise the scale of the disaster which they were leading the other ships into until the destroyer Prozorlivyy (which had empty missile tubes) nearby and which was meant to be providing protection was blasted to pieces by the Newcastle. The RN destroyer had come forwards fast and used its main gun first to fire shells into the Prozorlivyy before then a pair of Sea Dart SAMs were put to use as anti-ship missiles rather than anti-aircraft weapons. With the Sea Darts being fired at a short distance against a slow-moving big target, they added to the destruction caused to the Soviet warship by the Newcastle’s gun and the shells fired from the accompanying Diomede too.
Exocets were fired at the Sverdlov next with the defences upon the cruiser jammed and overwhelmed by RN electronic capabilities and then the deliberate fire towards those guns from the guns of both RN warships.
When attacking the Soviet destroyer Smelyy, the Dutch frigate Piet Hein and the Bundesmarine’s Lubeck faced furious defensive fire even if that was unguided in the darkness by the bigger warship which the two of them had taken on. Gunfire and missiles fired at close-range were poured into the ship but both NATO vessels took return damage even if it wasn’t as severe as which they inflicted upon their target. The Augsburg, another West German frigate working with the Euryalus wasn’t as lucky and had her superstructure blown to pieces by gunfire from the Soviet destroyer Neukrotimyy before the Euryalus could silence that targets defences and set it alight.
The Molders was flush with pride after eliminating that East German ship which it took on but then it faced the Stoykiy. This Sovremennyy-class destroyer had no missiles left but plenty of guns which to fire at the Molders and its rapid-firing AK-176 anti-missile guns took down Harpoon missiles fired at close-range. Both destroyers fought each other to a bloody standstill with only the intervention of the Pieter Florisz at the last minute as escort for the West German warship arriving to save the day; three-inch main gun shells along with 30mm rounds from her Goalkeeper anti-missile gun ripped apart the Stoykiy.
This use of vessels escorting each other with in most cases the ships being from different nations worked out very well for NATO here. The navies of the Western alliance were used to working with each other and there were different capabilities put to use effectively. The Radford and the Brave were another effective pairing as they both took on the Soviet destroyer Spezhnyy and the frigate Svirepyy in the final major engagement of the morning. The Americans and British worked together here to fire missiles and shells into those opposing warships and after both enemy vessels had been knocked out, they withdrew from the fight covering each other.
When the surface battles were over with NATO had lost three warships and had several more damaged, yet they had sunk eight major warships and another six smaller ones. There was jubilation among the crews of many of those victorious vessels as they pulled away northwards knowing that they had beat up the Soviet Navy so bad and made sure that the Baltic Fleet was smashed as a fighting force. However, such a withdrawal was needed for the air support which the Baltic Fleet had been promised arrived late, but in number.
The NATO warships were engaged by Fitter and Fencer strike aircraft carrying bombs and short-range missiles. Witte de With commanded the air defence action yet the Dutch frigate was then hit by a missile right into her dome-shaped radar antenna. Newcastle assumed such control duties afterwards though found that her Sea Dart missiles weren’t as effective as hoped against low-flying Soviet and Polish aircraft. The Hamburg and the Piet Hein would both soon be sunk by those air attacks just as the sun was coming up with the Radford being hit badly like the Witte de With was.
Once those aircraft had departed, NATO took stock of their own losses and set about rescuing their sailors from the water. A Soviet pilot was also saved from the cold water as his aircraft had been one of seven shot down by SAMs fired from the NATO warships targeted from the air.
The Battle of the Baltic Exits had been an expensive victory for NATO but a victory nonetheless.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 18:59:59 GMT
One Hundred & Fifty–Five
The Great Polish Rebellion didn’t start in Warsaw nor even in the cities of Gdansk or Gdynia at the shipyards there were so much labour trouble had occurred in previous years. Instead, it was outside Hannover in occupied portions of West Germany where the first active dissent and shots were fired of that revolt which could later consume Poland along with its armies abroad was to first happen.
Those initial instances of trouble where Poles decided that no more would they be treated as they were by the Russians – the Soviets were always ‘Russians’ to the Poles not matter what their technical nationality – came from Polish soldiers. During the previous evening, the Polish Fourth Army had arrived near Hannover after being redeployed from the Berlin area westwards to be used as unwitting cannon-fodder to eliminate the Hannover pocket. There were three combat divisions with this field army and the men who manned them were all reservists: men in their mid- and late-twenties who had been recalled to service from their civilian lives after leaving the military a few years ago following conscription. Many of these men were from ‘reliable’ political families or from state-controlled enterprises across the nation as the Polish Armed Forces preferred such people to be in their top tier of their reserve forces which had gone to the front just as expected in wartime. Less reliable former conscripts across Poland who had too been forced back into uniform were tasked with less-important roles rather than being sent westwards as the Polish Fourth Army had.
Originally assigned to the Polish Front, a Soviet-led second echelon command, this field army of sixty-four thousand men in total had been sent to West Berlin at the beginning of hostilities and assisted there in the activities of the lone regiment of the East German 1MRD and the Soviet 6th Guards Brigade. Those East German and Soviet troops had taken on and overrun the surrounded Western garrisons in the city with the Poles providing fire support for them in doing so using tank and artillery fire as well as crew-served weapons. There had been no discipline problems with the Polish reservists in West Berlin and they had performed as expected, though there had been some instances reported up the chain of command where the soldiers had been a little too professional: a hesitancy to shoot wounded prisoners and also waiting for civilians to be clear of their fire. Afterwards, Soviet officers with the field army, who occupied key command positions throughout, had recommended that suspected ringleaders of compassion and ‘professionalism’ should be transferred elsewhere: to penal units away from the formation. These Polish soldiers were not the drones which they had been as young conscripts years beforehand and it was thought that exposure to Western opulence in the form of material goods observed as being in the possession of foreign soldiers they encountered as well as with West Berlin’s civilians had corrupted them.
This morning, on the war’s ninth day, the purged Polish Fourth Army was tasked with a post-dawn assault into the Hannover pocket. Two divisions would each push into the defences of the pocket from the eastern and southern edges of that – against Bundeswehr and British positions respectively – with the third held back just in case there were opportunities for exploitation. The expectation was that the trapped NATO troops there would keep fighting as hard as they had previously done but would use up much of their finite supply of ammunition in combating the Poles. Fixed positions were to be taken on in combined arms assault though the equipment fielded by the Polish Fourth Army wasn’t the best available and even if it had been those defences were going to be a tough nut to crack. A further intention of the Soviets in directing the Poles against the Hannover pocket was to stiffen its ranks too so they could fight as ‘soldiers of a socialist Poland should’… such was in the text of the orders read out to the men before they prepared to go into battle.
The first dissent occurred almost two hours before the attack was due to commence when the soldiers of the trio of divisions were all being simultaneously awoken before they were pushed forward towards start lines outside the NATO lines and from those into battle. The Polish Fourth Army was encamped several miles back from their starting positions and the men needed to be roused, fed and then led forward ready to fight. In one of the field encampments of the 3MRD – a formation of men from the eastern regions of Poland, near the Soviet border – an argument broke out between tired men who didn’t want to be up so early. Fisticuffs ensued followed by intervention from an officer and then from Polish military police when the situation was exasperated by further men joining in what become a brawl over which no one could remember the cause. Matters fast got out of hand when the whole battalion which the initial two fighting men (who quickly became friends again) were assigned reacted strongly to the attempt by Soviet security troops to intervene with guns rather than rubber truncheons as the Polish military police had done and failed with. The Soviets were on edge for the possibility of revolt and the Polish Fourth Army had been unfairly labelled as a hotbed of trouble; that trouble now came to an unprepared detachment of a few Soviet junior officers who found themselves in the midst of a physical stand-off which they couldn’t win even with their few pistols.
Rumours of the Soviet intervention, which had been halted when they pulled back, reached other battalions of that regiment involved and very quickly the story got out of hand. The initial trouble between two fellow countrymen and the internal intervention was blown up into something else which played upon the natural distaste of Poles when confronted with Russian authority. All four combat-manoeuvre battalions of the regiment involved were soon refusing to respond to orders to move forward into battle positions in no time at all. The men had their individual weapons but their divisional command had quickly managed to make sure that they couldn’t get their hands upon any ammunition.
Several thousand Poles were in revolt against orders to undertake any fighting. Democracy broke out within their ranks as the men elected spokesmen who would deliver lists of demands to their superiors concerning a wide range of demands from better rations, proper shelter from the elements, to have nothing to do with any Russians and, most-importantly, not to have to go into battle. It was a crazy situation on the ground among shouting, angry men who fought each other on occasion too: especially when they ganged up against long-suspected informers among them.
The opportunity was still present at that time to nip the situation in the bud. It was only one regiment of men and they were unarmed. The regimental commander – who was either brave, naïve or foolish… maybe a mixture of all three – volunteered to talk to his men even though his staff were dead set against such an idea. His protestations that his men were all from good communist families and also politically reliable weren’t listened to by the senior Soviet security officer present who had such a man arrested and taken away to be later shot. There were standing orders as to how to react to such a situation among the Soviets and these followed on from trouble which had occurred last week down in Czechoslovakia where the men of two full reserve divisions had revolted in a bloody fashion when action wasn’t taken fast enough to stop them. KGB troops were assembled with tear gas and machine guns and sent into action fast to surround and then conduct an armed assault upon the regimental encampment less those men spread out and possibly get their hands upon ammunition for their rifles or even reach their nearby tanks.
Unaffected by this act of ill-discipline, the rest of the Polish 3MRD was then ordered not to take part in the Polish Fourth Army’s assault. It was meant to attack the West Germans but was replaced by the 9MRD joining the 1MRD too. A delay was incurred as the 3MRD was stood down from immediate attack and such an action wasn’t something that forward scout elements from those NATO forces in the Hannover pocket missed. They were aware of the field army approaching them though didn’t know of its composition nor the last minute trouble within its ranks. All NATO saw was a reorganisation of attacking forces and their reaction forces which were getting ready for a spoiling attack were unleashed first.
Bundeswehr Leopard-2 main battle tanks leading a two-battalion raiding attack smashed into the Polish 3MRD and 9MRDs as those two formations were changing places with predictable results. The Poles were unprepared for such a move and their formations were torn apart as the West Germans ran riot tearing past tank and infantry units into artillery, air defence and then supply units in the rear. Some small unit commanders of the Bundeswehr formations involved – these were part of the shattered 11th Panzergrenadier Division which was now nor more than a large brigade in strength – wanted to do more than they were allowed to but with no mass of infantry support available as well as the overall strategic situation of the Hannover pocket the tanks were recalled back to NATO lines with their mission complete.
While the West Germans were doing their worst, the Soviets moved in against their Polish allies who they regarded as being in open revolt. The tear gas was unleashed and the machine gun fire started with the intention that the latter would go over the heads of the Poles. Of course, with this being wartime, some of that gunfire was directed against the stunned and incapacitated troops left choking by the tear gas. The Soviet security troops achieved their objective of making sure that the Polish troops which they attacked weren’t going to be capable of doing anything else and they moved afterwards forwards to detain those rebellious men with the ultimate aim to be to later send every single Pole involved to penal battalions across Germany as well as shooting any which were thought to be particularly troublesome. A lot of effort had been put into making sure that word wouldn’t be spread about the revolt yet that Bundeswehr attack disrupted these plans. The tanks of that raiding force, which had made short work of the T-55s fielded by Polish Fourth Army units, had come nowhere near the scene of the crushed revolt yet their attack had scattered rear-area units all over the countryside in the haste to get away from those marauding Leopard-2s.
There was a truck driver whose name is lost to history but who was part of the 3rd Supply Battalion. In post-war Poland there was a cultural phenomenon among soldiers who had served in WW3 as to his identity, where he was from and the type of man he was; something which baffled outsiders due to the intensity of the argument among supporters of a particular name and imposters being exposed. Surviving KGB records acknowledged the truck driver and his unit along with what he did, but didn’t give him a rank let alone a name. This Pole managed to witness the assault against the revolting Polish troops and then would later spread word of it. The KGB got hold of him and gave him the punishment of a bullet in the back of the head, but by then the damage was done. It would take time yet word would spread across Polish military units in Germany and later back home among the people there as to how loyal Polish soldiers had been massacred by their Soviet comrades-in-arms. The numbers would be inflated and the situation exaggerated, but with the story having a tenant of truth it was successfully spread.
This was how the Great Polish Rebellion begun on March 22nd.
One Hundred & Fifty–Six
There had been disagreements, arguments and threats of resignations of commissions among senior US Army personnel involved in Operation EAGLE PUSH. The drama surrounding the planned counter-offensive which the US Seventh Army wanted to commence in the lower and middle reaches of the Main Valley had gone all the way back to the United States with the President, the NSC and the Joint Chiefs of Staff getting involved with General Galvin as SACEUR ultimately being overruled due to political interference in an operational matter where he should really have had the final say. This certainly wasn’t the finest hour for many of those involved in the debate as to whether EAGLE PUSH should commence and afterwards, when it was clear that those thought to be in the wrong had in fact been in the right, many of those who had stuck their nose into the matter deflected blame away from themselves onto innocent others.
EAGLE PUSH should never have taken place for all the deaths which come from it along with the damage to much of the combat power of those elements of US Army deployed in Europe.
Through late Sunday and into the following Monday, tactical and strategic reconnaissance efforts, from Green Berets on aggressive forward patrols to high-flying surveillance aircraft, had been observing Soviet and East German forces ahead of the US Seventh Army reorganising themselves and redeploying. The Soviet First Guards Tank Army – which had been taken apart last week in the Gelnhausen Corridor – had moved forwards to a position to the left (in the west) of the Soviet Sixth Guards Tank Army with the East German Third Army on the right (in the east). These three field armies manned the frontlines from the Taunus Mountains and Wiesbaden all the way across to Wurzburg. There were lighter units out ahead with stronger forces behind. Formations had been transferred about all over the place with units marked down by NATO as destroyed now reappearing though at a greatly reduced strength.
The Soviets and East Germans were observed digging-in with extensive defensive works underway. NATO reconnaissance would see how kill zones were being constructed to funnel attacking forces into free-fire zones where those would be attacked from all sides after being led into minefields. This was all an immense undertaking on the part of the enemy and had brought about two distinctly separate reactions as to what should be done on the NATO side.
To many, these Soviet preparations to ready themselves for a massed American-French counter-offensive on the part of the US Seventh Army meant that undertaking such a thing wasn’t to be done. The unpleasant experiences which those ARNG forces with the US Fifth Army had had in the Lahn Valley when they had hit defensive works was an important lesson and couldn’t be allowed to happen again. It was argued that the Soviets were doing just what NATO was doing: building new defensive lines to which have the other side break its forces against and bleed them dry. To attack those would be foolish, reckless even an act of wholescale murder and shouldn’t occur if the US Army wanted to have available forces to stop another massed Soviet drive westwards which was anticipated to be coming sometime in the not too distant future.
The opposing argument was that this Soviet redeployment of their combat forces presented NATO with a great opportunity. Enemy forces were being moved around along shattered communications routes through an area where the US Army knew very well. The mass of armour which had come pouring southwards on Friday was being broken up and redeployed. There was an opportunity open to the US Seventh Army to drive forward to smash apart the Soviets and the East Germans ahead of them and stop them from being a further offensive threat. The defeat suffered by the US IV Corps in the Lahn Valley was seen as being a failure due to the rushing of ill-prepared forces into place and then that those were inexperienced ARNG troops. Those formations of the US V Corps and VII Corps, along with the French, were regarded as veterans who had beaten the Soviets up plenty beforehand and could do so again… if they were given the opportunity to do so.
As EAGLE PUSH was being conceived, it was initially shot down by General Galvin as being impractical. SACEUR would have none of it as the US Seventh Army was instructed to continue to improving its fixed defences to make sure that the when the Soviets pushed forward again (this wasn’t seen as an if scenario) they wouldn’t be able to reach the Rhine. Any attempt at a counter-offensive wasn’t something which he wanted his weaken forces to attempt to do.
Word reached the Reagan and the NSC of the planned EAGLE PUSH through sources which General Galvin suspected he could identity yet whom he couldn’t prove had gone over his head in such a dramatic fashion. Defence Secretary Carlucci was all for the counter-offensive throughout the Main Valley. As far as he was concerned, the operation would allow for lost territory could be regained, the West Germans still holding onto the now ruins which Frankfurt was could be relieved and American military prestige restored. He argued furiously for it in the face of opposition from others aboard the aircraft which the National Security Council flew upon, especially General Colin Powell as National Security Adviser. Admiral William Crowe – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – was someone which both Carlucci and Powell tried to influence as those two men became the proponents for the yes and no arguments respectively for EAGLE PUSH.
Eventually, Admiral Crowe broke the deadlock and came down in favour of the counter-offensive in the Main Valley. He was convinced by Carlucci that American military strength was always best on the attack rather than the defence and this was evident in previous ground battles in Germany, in addition to the success which the US Marines were having in northern Norway where they had finally overcome Soviet naval infantry in the Porsangerfjorden area. The Soviets were believed to be brittle and susceptible to one big attack before their positions would collapse. He recommended to President Reagan that the US Seventh Army be sent into action… and that would later cost him his job.
At that point in time, the President was of the misunderstanding that EAGLE PUSH was something which everyone on the ground in Germany – from General Galvin downwards – wanted and it was only his NSC where there was spirited discussion. General Powell would several day’s later blame White House Chief-of-Staff Howard Baker for this misapprehension occurring though there were other factors involved with the particular mental place which Reagan was in rather than Baker not keeping him thoroughly in-the-loop as General Powell had suspected was the case there.
General Galvin was more than a little bit angry at such political interference coming from the Doomsday Plane and those frightened men airborne for nine days. To be overruled was something that he could accept, though he had been so because subordinates of his had acted as if they weren’t subservient to his commands. He was looking at the big picture where they were only acting with what he regarded as vanity and seeking possible appreciation from politicians in a post-war world where medals were being handed out and sinecure staff appointments would be on offer if everything went right.
EAGLE PUSH was given a green light to spectacular failure.
For several hours throughout the Tuesday morning, the US Seventh Army made their attacks. In the west, the French II Corps pushed forwards into the Soviet First Guards Tank Army with the intention being to reach those crossings over the Main which the Soviets had near Rhein-Main Airbase as well as getting close to the edges of Frankfurt. The US V Corps struck in the centre from that sprawling aviation facility on their left and to Aschaffenburg on the right, they moved against Soviet Sixth Guards Tank Army forces south of the Main which were making use of the extensive communications links there. Over to the east in Bavaria, from Aschaffenburg to near Wurzburg the US VII Corps moved against the East Germans.
Both the French and the American forces involved made good use of combat supporting arms to assist their attacking forces with artillery, helicopters and air support being heavily present. One of the 82nd Airborne Division’s brigades was assigned to the US V Corps to be used to recapture Hanau Army Airfield on the far side of the Main with the aim being for the armoured forces to cross the river directly west of Hanau and race to relieve the paratroopers there. USAF aircraft were redirected from their usual 4 ATAF assignments to blast through the Soviet defences across the battlefield with ANG units which had now arrived in strength in Europe, especially those extra A-10s, given free rein to do their worst.
Just as the naysayers said, EAGLE PUSH ran into Soviet forces ready and prepared for such a move. In many places that French and American attacks were stopped cold without an inch of ground being gained though generally where the US Seventh Army attacked they were forced to grind through a few miles of extremely heavy defences while facing murderous fire. The extent of the enemy defensive works was greatly than had been seen from reconnaissance and only when NATO troops were dying in those minefields, kill-zones and camouflaged anti-tank ditches was it realised the immense levels which the Soviets had gone to. Those East Germans to the east weren’t weak like they had previously been when they had been engaged earlier in the war as they managed to stop the US Army just like the Soviets could.
The assault upon Hanau Airfield turned into a massacre when the 82nd Airborne Division walked into an ambush. The Green Berets which had scouted the abandoned facility had been taken in by the deception efforts which had been made to disguise the fact that the Soviets were waiting for an assault and when they moved to light and deploy flares for the paratroopers and Rangers arriving from low-flying transport aircraft above, Spetsnaz troops took on their ultimate adversaries. Those American special forces troops were cut down and then when their comrades arriving by parachute arrived those men then faced barrages of rocket fire coming in from distance. Every square inch of the facility had been zeroed-in by multiple-barrelled rocket launchers which poured fire upon the exposed American troops which had come in by air as the first wave. The follow-up wave of the rest of the brigade assigned for this mission was aborted, but those who had come into Hanau Airfield were all killed or taken prisoner.
By late morning, EAGLE PUSH was halted. The casualties being inflicted were unsustainable and there was no sign of the counter-offensive achieving anything. Only the French got anywhere close to success but even then they had taken losses comparable with the Americans in their stalled efforts. Where the US 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division – part of the US VII Corps – had tried to push through the oak forests of the Spessart Mountains they had instead been counter-attacked by Soviet forces attached to the East German Third Army and pushed back past their start-lines some distance south. Some of the urban area south of Frankfurt alongside the Main was retaken by the US V Corps but nowhere near enough to justify the great losses taken there let alone reaching Frankfurt itself. In the air, the appearance in number of ANG aircraft wasn’t enough to change matters as despite their presence alongside regular USAF aircraft and the great skills of the aircrews, there were massed Soviet anti-air defence ranging from the latest SAMs to older anti-aircraft guns liberally spread out across the Main Valley and beyond.
The US Seventh Army had utterly failed and EAGLE PUSH would afterwards be remembered as an embarrassing display of American arms where so many lives were lost for nothing at all.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 19:20:38 GMT
One Hundred & Fifty–Seven
There had been no discipline issues with the Polish 6th Airborne Division when it was active as a fighting forces and any news of Russian mistreatment of their fellow soldiers in Germany and later civilians across Poland would only come when the men of this formation were sitting in NATO POW camps in the south of France several weeks later. The men of that brigade-sized formation which had long since been taken apart when on the ground in southern Norway would all later wish to see action as an exile force and wouldn’t hold any grudges against the Royal Marines who had so thoroughly defeated them at Kristiansand… in fact many of the Poles would wish to fight alongside those green bereted men against their real enemies.
The battle which they had lost at Kristiansand had been a real fight for those Poles with heavy losses taken though there had been plenty of honour in it afterwards with the manner in which prisoners and the wounded were treated. In a perverse way, fighting the Royal Marines had been something to be proud of for those Polish troops involved despite being beaten as they had been.
The Royal Marines went into action at Kristiansand during the early evening of March 22nd. Originally, the plan had been for them to land there at dawn though external factors came into play with the recaptured Sola not being available in time to support air operations and then the worry over whether the Soviet Baltic Fleet had been defeated enough to stop it coming northwards towards the Skagerrak. The runways at Sola were eventually opened (though the facilities there were still wrecked by the fighting) and NATO intelligence was able to confirm that there were no major missile-armed warships coming up from the Oresund. Therefore, once the local tides in the Kristiansand area were judged to be suitable for landing operations, yet not as good as they would have been for an earlier landing, the second part of HADDOCK commenced.
The damage done to the RN and RFA landing ships up in the Ofotfjorden late last week meant that the capabilities of Britain’s maritime forced-entry forces had been severely weakened. Landing craft which operated from those ships had been destroyed and the patched-up amphibious ships themselves had lost crew members. With a total of five marine infantry battalions assigned with supporting assets too, the 3rd Commando Brigade was never going to fit into those ships available and after the air and submarine attacks which had taken place such a thing was impossible. 45 Commando had been left behind in northern Norway along with the Dutch marines yet there still hadn’t been enough room in the available ships. Therefore, a pair of US Navy vessels – the tank landing ships USS Sumter and USS Harlan County – which weren’t immediately needed to support the US Marines had been temporarily assigned to RN control. These two capable vessels had US Navy crews though were carrying British troops and equipment aboard them.
Sea Harriers from Invincible drew the first blood of the operation when they dispatched a trio of Polish MiG-21s coming fast out of Kjevik Airport. Those MiGs had been dispatched in a hurry and carrying little armament in addition to having incomplete intelligence on the threat they faced from slower, but better-armed Sea Harriers waiting in ambush for them. RAF Buccaneers now flying from Flesland with Sola as a forward operating base arrived over Kjevik not long afterwards dropping bombs in a low altitude attack and while one of those old strike-bombers was shot down by defensive fire, the small runway there was closed for Polish air operations afterwards.
There remained Norwegian troops holding onto the port area of Kristiansand and much of the city even though they had been surrounded on land. To directly reinforce them and send Royal Marines through their lines to attack the Poles besieging them wasn’t what the British planners of the second stage of HADDOCK wanted to do and so instead an opposed landing was conducted nearby to directly engage the enemy outside of a crowded tactical environment.
Royal Marines were landed instead at both sides of the entrance to the Topdalsfjorden. On the western side of the fjord assault landing craft brought men of 40 Commando into the outskirts of Kristiansand behind the lines of the Polish paratroopers besieging the historic centre of the city. At once the Royal Marines moved fast away from their landing sites overcoming lighter opposition to get into the Polish rears. At Vagsbygd 42 Commando landed there at the shipping terminal which had been wired for demolition by its few Norwegian defenders last week but those charges had then misfired. There were Polish paratroopers in good defensive positions which the Royal Marines overcame with not serious casualties before moving inland to take the Poles from their rear too though this time from the other side. 41 Commando was put ashore on the eastern side of the Topdalsfjorden at Korsvik and once they got past the first line of defences set off for a long, lightly-opposed march northwards aiming for the distant airport.
There was air and naval gunfire support for the Royal Marines at each of their three landing sites where they engaged Polish defences facing seaward. Those defences consisted of trenches and mobile heavy weapons though a distinct lack of minefields. Using shock and manoeuvre the Royal Marines were able to push forward as the attention of the defenders was always on those stubborn Norwegians in the city centre rather than defending the outskirts against such a landing as this, especially three battalion-sized assaults over a wide area. There were some Mil-24 Hind helicopters in support of the Poles which escaped the initial air bombardment though these were engaged by man-portable SAMs of the 3rd Commando Brigade Air Defence Troop and also a successful kill by Sea Cat missiles from HMS Alacrity too.
There wasn’t any cowardice on the part of the Polish paratroopers; they just weren’t ready to combat such a well-supported maritime assault like this.
Coordinating with the Norwegians, the aim was for 40 and 42 Commandos to link up outside the city to the northwest along the Otra River to trap those Polish troops besieging Kristiansand in an envelopment manoeuvre. Whilst a good operational concept it didn’t work due to the lack of mobility on the part of the Royal Marines along with the fact that the further they advanced forward the stronger the opposition to them came. As an example, B Rifle Company with 40 Commando had taken two dozen casualties moving forward and those had been caused by going up against Polish paratroopers who wouldn’t budge from their fixed positions because they weren’t being outflanked or overwhelmed by strong British fire support. Thankfully for the Royal Marines, extra fire support was soon on-hand.
From both the Sumter and the Harlan County, towed artillery and also a platoon of light armour from the Life Guards was unloaded with haste and brought forward. There was still naval gunfire coming from the RN warships which had entered the Topdalsfjorden, but to have guns and light tanks brought forward finally gave the Royal Marines what they needed. Those L-118 Light Guns from the 29th Commando Regiment RA were used to blast Polish positions while the Scorpion light tanks with their 76mm cannon provided enough firepower to blow apart further defences. Only once these had done their worst would the Royal Marines move forward again and hopefully not again into murderous defensive fire.
Many of the Poles had fallen back from besieging Kristiansand to deal with the British attack upon their flanks and it was units unwittingly tasked with providing a suicidal rearguard which had slowed down the attack so that the main body of troops could try to escape an envelopment. They fell backwards following the Otra River upstream away from the city and moved along its western banks aiming to get into the high ground away from the coast. Unfortunately, the skies were full of helicopters buzzing around from the 3rd Commando Brigade Air Squadron and this attempt was spotted. Naval gunfire and attacks by some of those helicopters was soon directed against those troops in retreat and once the rearguard elements had been overwhelmed, those in retreat were engaged by the Royal Marines before they could get clear. The Poles were slowed in their advance as they tried to take their casualties with them and also the efforts of Norwegian troops which had broken out of Kristiansand to follow them. Eventually, those elements of the 6th Airborne Division on the western side of the fjord were caught by the British and engaged in battle where they were on the move and not in fixed positions. There was no immediate fire support available for them as the division’s own light armour and artillery hadn’t yet made it to Norway due to Kjevik Airport not being able to handle such big aircraft needed and ships not reaching here either. The fight over here in the west was one which the Poles were destined to lose.
Across in the east, 41 Commando moved fast northwards from where they had landed. They encountered scattered groups of Poles as they moved though these were air defence and supply troops rather than combat soldiers who weren’t able to put up a real fight. Those air defence units which they fought had been left without equipment following naval gunfire attacks on their lightweight SAM systems while the supply troops were guarding small ammunition dumps kept where the Poles thought they would be hidden from attack over in the east.
The march of these Royal Marines, who had unlike the other two battalion-sized Commandos seen action beforehand (the fight at Skibotn against those Soviet tanks), brought them to the stretch of the Topdalsfjorden which separated the airport in the north from them in the east. There was a bridge over the icy cold waters which they marched towards with the aim of seizing before the Poles could reach and blow it… if that occurred a delay would have to be imposed. Luckily, that little crossing was still standing as the Poles had been so unprepared for this manoeuvre in the east and 41 Commando went across and then directly into the airport grounds. Like the fight for Flesland and Sola, there was some resistance at this airport though it was nowhere as strong as that put up elsewhere in southern Norway. Again, this was no failing on the part of the Polish paratroopers here but rather a lack of number of defenders present.
Victory had been achieved by nightfall and through the hours of darkness the Royal Marines across Kristiansand spent the night gathering up prisoners and taking care of the wounded on both sides. There were civilians who had been trapped in Kristiansand with its Norwegian defenders who needed food and medical assistance too. Kjevik Airport was then reached by specialist RAF personnel who got to work preparing the facility for a later transformation into a strategic NATO air facility for further operations in southern Norway as well as the wider Baltic Approaches.
This had been a success which NATO badly needed and one which the Royal Marines were glad to provide.
One Hundred & Fifty–Eight
As they had done every night so far of the war, aircraft from the 3 ATAF once again went eastwards from their bases in Britain towards the enemy’s rear area past the frontlines. There were fewer aircraft available than there had been at the start of the conflict with many losses taken and even with reinforcements added, the strike aircraft tasked with these strategic strikes were less in number than they had first been.
There were very few aircrew of lost aircraft which had made it back to NATO lines let alone to their units. Those aircraft which had been downed over enemy-held territory or forced to ditch when flying home with major damage had in the majority of cases been lost to anti-aircraft defences rather than to enemy fighters; the night skies over Europe were arguably owned by NATO with in daylight those same skies contested. The RAF Tornado GR1s which were part of the 3 ATAF had been shot down in great numbers and there were only half of those left while the USAF aircraft assigned in the deep-strike role had suffered casualties of about a third. The Tornados were still flying though the RAF was now very hesitant to use them in extremely dangerous missions due to the need to keep some aircraft for the possible nuclear strike role should the war turn that way even at this late juncture. Therefore, it was mainly USAF aircraft heading east tonight with just a few Tornados in the air being sent against strategic targets not so deep in inside Eastern Europe.
The 3 ATAF’s strike force had in recent days been reinforced with further USAF units which had crossed the Atlantic to be assigned to operations in Europe. SAC had released some more aircraft with the second FB-111 wing (380 BW) leaving their dispersed bases across New England and a wing of B-52s (397 BW) also making the long flight across the ocean too. Further F-15s for escort duty had arrived too after coming from a training wing (405 TTW) out in Arizona; the Americans were maintaining their commitment to their strategic strike force based in Britain with everything that they could transfer being moved into place.
Airborne tankers met the strike aircraft and escorts flying towards their distant targets as those aircraft flew above the North Sea and over the Low Countries before the strike packages broke away to enter their attack runs. There were RAF Tornados heading for the lower Weser valley and targets just across the river while the fourteen B-52Gs turned towards their far-away strike objective in the upper reaches of the Weser opposite where the US III Corps was on the ground. Both of these strikes were escorted by F-15As as they were making heavy strikes close to the frontlines in number and air opposition was expected in such places with that many aircraft being used. When it came to the F-111s (A, D, E and F models), the FB-111As and the F-117s, these aircraft flew with few or no escorts in strike packages of four, six or eight aircraft and in the case of those stealth aircraft wholly alone against deeper targets.
Those targets were a mix of fixed and mobile ones over a wide area stretching geographically from the Baltic to the Austrian border and from the frontlines into central Poland. The 3 ATAF aircraft were aiming to bomb improvised bridges across rivers where fixed crossings had long since been downed and railway links. Ports along the Baltic shores of East Germany and Poland were on the target list and so too were airfields which were old and new. Supply points for the Soviet-led armies in the field far back from the frontlines along with their fuel distribution system were further objectives to be bombed, with a focus upon those now dispersed and supposedly hidden in the countryside. There were command bunkers and intelligence centres slated to get a visit from 3 ATAF bombers along with radio jamming stations which the Soviets had set up to drown out NATO military forces with electronic interference.
The selection of where was to be bombed had come from intelligence assets which worked twenty-four hours a day to locate where was to be struck. There were reconnaissance aircraft forward and in the stand-off role as well as satellites and men on the ground; some of the later ready with hand-held designation systems to highlight targets for laser-guided bombs. Those reconnaissance efforts also pinpointed where defensive systems were from radars to anti-aircraft guns in addition to SAM batteries. It was the latter which had been taking their toll upon the 3 ATAF's deep strike efforts with many aircraft lost to these, especially the latest models which the Soviets had deployed in number across Eastern Europe. The versions of the strategic S-300 system – the SA-10 Grumble and the SA-12 Giant / Gladiator – had been responsible for the loss of many NATO aircraft but so too had more tactically-orientated Buk-M1 (NATO: SA-11 Gadfly). The ability of these systems to track and attack multiple targets and to be immune to many jamming efforts of 3 ATAF aircraft was something which had been difficult to overcome at first though with time NATO intelligence had started to understand how to defeat them. Much effort on the part of the 3 ATAF in striking their targets was directed against engaging these SAM batteries along with their command-and-control rather than trying to avoid them because such systems were rather mobile and therefore were moving about on a constant basis.
There were losses tonight, as there always were, though this was always going to unfortunately happen.
A trio of RAF Tornados were downed in their strikes against Soviet and Polish targets east of Bremen yet the crews of two of these aircraft would manage to parachute into French-held territory east of the Weser; the two men in the third aircraft were both killed outright when a SA-10 blew their Tornado to pieces in mid-air. The escorting F-15As with them had one fighter shot down too – with the pilot being unable to eject in time – yet they managed to take down a total of four Soviet MiG-23s which foolishly tried to interfere.
The B-52 raid was directed against enemy troop formations massing opposite the weakened US III Corps in what was regarded as a prelude to some sort of planned offensive across the Weser the next morning. The heavy bombers were set in low with their escorting F-15s as well as EF-111As flying top-cover and ahead of them respectively, and the bomb-bay doors of the bombers opened to release hundreds upon hundreds of cluster bombs: in both anti-armour and anti-personnel form. The sub-munitions of these were spread across selected areas rather than in a wide fashion as would have been the case had those bombers been flying high, but they went right into enemy formations moving about in the darkness. A pair of the B-52s were hit, one by heavy anti-aircraft fire which was radar directed and the other by a shoulder-mounted SAM, and each aircraft would then smash into the ground into Soviet-held territory, making epic fireballs as they did so. This mission was regarded as a success despite these losses due to the continued weapons effects of those deployed cluster bombs which went off all throughout the night as many of the sub-munitions were time-delayed as thus hurt the enemy forces which were unlucky enough to encounter them.
With the other bombings, those aircraft involved met with much success though also instances of failure too. Not all gathering intelligence from reconnaissance efforts was correct with there being cock-ups as well as elaborate traps being laid by the Soviets. An immense amount of ordnance was put where it was meant to be though with devastating results all across East Germany and western parts of both Poland and Czechoslovakia. Those targeted bridges were taken down and supply dumps blown up; harbours along the Baltic shore were bombed along with airfields. Communications and intelligence centres were struck along with those electronic jamming stations with had been causing NATO so many problems. Command bunkers and mobile headquarters columns were hunted down in their camouflaged locations with the FB-111s and the F-117s going after these in particular as these were regarded as very important to knock out.
While a few interceptors rose to challenge the attacking 3 ATAF aircraft, it was mainly ground-based air defences which challenged this mass of NATO air strikes. Not all radars could be jammed and there were also infrared systems for many of the anti-aircraft guns and SAM batteries present for detection if not direct guidance. Many older missiles would be blind-fired into the skies when air attacks were detected inbound and then there were the tens of thousands of armed men on the ground who would fire their rifles into the sky at the sound of an approaching aircraft – friendly or not – without thought as to where their bullets would land afterwards. Several NATO aircraft on these deep strike missions were brought down over enemy territory or were too badly damaged to make it back to their home base yet their crews managed to escape over friendly territory. One of those F-117s was hit by an SA-12 missile when above northwestern Czechoslovakia and returning from a strike mission near Prague; it then came down in a field near the village of Polaky relatively intact after it’s pilot had bailed out. Thankfully for NATO, curious but hapless locals who reached the wreck before military or intelligence operatives could managed to cause the one remaining bomb which the F-117 was carrying to detonate and blow the aircraft to smithereens… along with some residents from Polaky too.
Another F-15, a trio of F-111s and pair of FB-111s would join those two B-52s, the three Tornados and the other F-15 in being lost along with the lone F-117: thirteen 3 ATAF aircraft were brought down by enemy action tonight while another F-111 returning to RAF Upper Heyford had an unexplained electronic failure throughout the aircraft when above the North Sea and crashed into the sea short of the Essex coast.
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The 3 ATAF was also the command organisation for those air defence assets on the British mainland too. There had been an effort made by some senior RAF people to split the offensive and defensive air assets based in the UK into two separate command before the war started, yet such a thing hadn’t been granted by the highest ranks of NATO due to the believe that two independent commands in close geographically proximity would interfere with each other. Moreover, those voices in the RAF which had been calling for a separation were drowned out by those more numerous vocal opinions which stated that having the USAF bomber escort force sharing command with RAF interceptors meant that it would be easier to have the mass of F-15s which the Americans brought into Britain on-hand to assist in air defence missions above the UK.
Britain had faced air attacks right from the beginning of the war with those coming from the north, the west and the east. Soviet Bear bombers acting in the raketonosets role had devastated many military and civilian targets when flying far out over the Atlantic and coming at Britain from the flank while there had been those attacks which had come afterwards across the North Sea first from Norway and then from Denmark using short-range missiles and bombs too. Dealing with such a wide range of threats coming in from different direction on an on/off basis had been difficult for the RAF assets assigned to 3 ATAF air defence missions, but they had done very well indeed. When faced with raketonosets attacks, Tornado F2s & F3s along with Lightning F6s had all operated in the long-range interceptor role aiming to hit those bombers before they could launch their cruise missiles. AWACS support was available and there were often warships at sea which also could help with radar guidance directing the interceptors towards threats. The long-range interceptors also engaged aircraft coming out of Continental European bases which struck from the ease and the northeast with attacks made at closer range. Phantoms and Hawks had been busy combating these attacks too again with the aim of getting those aircraft before they launched their missiles or dropped their bombs… if that failed striking them from the skies as they flew home so those aircraft couldn’t return.
There were ground-based air defences in the UK too. The RAF and RAF Regiment operated Bloodhound and Rapier missiles respectively with there also being some captured Argentinian Oerlikon-35 twin-35mm anti-aircraft guns operated by Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment units. Mobile radars and communications stations operated in support of these air defence units along with volunteers who watched the skies with binoculars and the occasional pair of expensive night vision goggles. American operators of HAWK missile batteries worked closely with their British counterparts and kept their SAMs mobile like the RAF did with its ground assets so as to make sure that the enemy couldn’t accurately predict where defences would be before an attack.
When air attacks did get through to the British mainland in the face of all this opposition, they continued to have a highly-destructive effect. Those attacks by Bears had come to a halt as the big raketonosets were being kept back for purposes so far unknown and then the Norway route was shut down by British troops capturing the airports outside Bergen and then Stavanger from their Soviet paratrooper defenders. It was across the North Sea from bases in northern East Germany and through occupied Denmark that Soviet aircraft were now flying their air attack missions.
Military facilities such as airbases and naval installations remained targets for enemy bombers while so too did the civilian transport and power infrastructure. When they got through past the defences, such attacks caused damage and death on a big scale in an already war-ravaged Britain. These needed to be stopped for all the short- and long-term damage which they were causing, but for now they remained ongoing while NATO aircraft of the 3 ATAF were doing exactly the same.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 19:26:18 GMT
One Hundred & Fifty–Nine
Marshal Korbutov’s mobile headquarters had been bombed during the night by an aircraft which GRU intelligence had told him was a secretive American tactical bomber that was covered with radar-deflecting materials. The technology behind it was all unknown, but there was no need to worry for the air defence forces were working on something similar. With three specialist BTR-70s and half a dozen trucks blown up along with thirty men dead, the capabilities of this certain aircraft were something which Marshal Korbutov did worry about. There was no defence against such aircraft apparently and they had killed the majority of his senior battle staff with him and the few survivors lucky to get away.
Afterwards, C-in-C West-TVD had taken what remained of his command post forward across from his previous concealed (or not so concealed as it was) position inside East Germany across into occupied West Germany to a new location. His thinking was that he would actually be safer from air attack there through the rest of the night and early the next day with NATO aircraft concentrating on hitting targets far from instead of close to the frontlines.
Marshal Korbutov also reasoned that it would be better to be closer to his forward attacking units too when they struck at daybreak on the war’s tenth day.
There were to be large-scale ground attacks were to be undertaken for political purposes today. Marshal Korbutov understood that need for this though he didn’t like it one bit. To commence massed armoured assaults on the ground to take territory and inflict heavy casualties upon the enemy so that diplomatic moves could run alongside these to get them to give up wasn’t a strategy favoured by many; Marshal Korbutov included. This was the type of thing taught to all senior Soviet military officers as they climbed the career ladder though. ‘Proof’ of the success of such strategies used in warfare throughout history was taught to those students in Soviet higher military academies. If the enemy could be made to understand again and again that the longer it kept on fighting the more casualties it would suffer then there would be a clamour for fighting to cease. With such offensives linked to favourable diplomatic moves away from the battlefield itself, then the thinking was that ultimate victory could be won.
Marshal Ogarkov had explained all of this to his subordinate and made it clear that this was the course of action which was to be taken. NATO was failing to understand that the war in Germany was lost and so needed to suffer further major reverses among its remaining ground forces. Alongside this was the need to induce the West German government to surrender with further important pieces of their territory seized and those civilians inside left to the mercy of the East Germans; once Chancellor Kohl’s government was ready to give up then the war would be over on the ground in Europe… such were the further explanations given by the head of STAVKA to his commander on the ground in Germany.
There were to be three separate attacks made in north, central and southern Germany each aiming towards highly-populated regions and where already-weakened NATO forces were located. Marshal Korbutov had no say in these directions as to where he was to have his forces strike and his own expressed worries over the strength of his own forces wasn’t something which was figured into the plan. He was told what to do and when to do it with his only control being at a tactical level rather than a strategic one as he thought should have been the case.
To C-in-C West-TVD this was all a recipe for disaster.
Located beneath the cover offered by a forested area in the western reaches of the Harz Mountains, Marshal Korbutov’s command post was no more than a few armoured vehicles, some trucks and a few tents. The radio broadcast antenna which he needed to issue his orders and fight the battles from were positioned several miles away while the armed soldiers of his understrength headquarters guard tried their best to patrol the nearby area against possible enemy commandos or guerrillas.
There were plenty of maps as well as intelligence briefing documents present with his surviving staff – some of which were walking wounded and possibly should have been excused from duty – and it was with these along with his radio which he intended to fight with. The maps were like giant chessboards with friendly and enemy pieces located at points all across them; there were pawns, middle-ranking pieces and then the Kings and Queens. Since Sunday night when the initial orders had come for a major attack to be again launched, this time without the use of chemical weapons to prise open enemy defences, Marshal Korbutov had been moving his own pieces around while keeping an eye upon those of his opponents. He had them in check at the moment though his orders were to checkmate NATO. To actually achieve this goal wasn’t something that was going to be easy, especially with the bruises which his own attacking pieces were afflicted with.
Every single major combat-manoeuvre unit from regiments up to divisions and then field armies which he commanded had seen action. Some had been ground down to almost nothing while everyone else had been blooded, with some of those in multiple engagements. NATO forces had fought hard and well using every weapons which they had to hand to engage Soviet, East German, Polish and Czechoslovak units which had been moved forward first under his predecessors command and then under his own.
Away from the frontlines, combat support assets from artillery, engineers, air defence and aviation had been knocked about in fighting too. Then, of what he regarded as of greater importance, where the rear area forces which were absolutely necessary for the business of warfare. All of those logistics links which his forces relied upon to keep them able to fight had come under continued attack by the enemy at night from the air and during daylight on the ground. If it hadn’t been for the immense war-stocks of munitions, fuel and food gathered forward with the Groups of Forces deployed in Eastern Europe pre-war and then those brought forward with haste in the few days before conflict erupted then the war would be over by now… and Marshal Korbutov wouldn’t be on the winning side. So much of these supplies had been destroyed when stored in the rear by the enemy while those men and vehicles which were tasked to move them forward had been massacred in careful and repeated attacks from aircraft, helicopters and special forces teams on the ground. Traffic directors, military police units, mobile intelligence stations and communications units had faced those relentless attacks too, which only compounded the problem. If it hadn’t been for the multiple redundancies in system overlaps then there wouldn’t be any fighting capabilities left in his forces because they wouldn’t have rear area support which they like every army needed to survive.
Those denoted forces marked upon the clear plastic overlays on the maps which Marshal Korbutov stared at didn’t show the damage inflicted upon the combat units which they represented, nor the smashed support network behind them. All they depicted was the forces which he had slowly and carefully moved into place during the past few days in the face of intense NATO reconnaissance attempts from the air and on the ground to spot such a move. He was certain that these hadn’t been spotted for what they were even with the attack which had come during the night and he heard about not long before dawn from B-52s against some of his forces in the nearby Gottingen area; that was just put down to an unfortunate error, not a major mishap in keeping his strike forces un-concealed from the watching eyes of the enemy.
Furthermore, should NATO have been aware of what he was planning to unleash against them, then the American attack south of Frankfurt yesterday surely wouldn’t have taken place as it had. His own intelligence told him that NATO had tunnel-vision when it came to what was going on behind the frontlines and believed that everything going on under his command was to do with moving defensive forces into place – as it actually was in most places – rather than a series of big attacks coming their way.
Dawn was fast approaching and at a quarter to six local time, Soviet-led forces were about to go on the attack again. Losses to frontline and rear area units aside, Marshal Korbutov had assembled what he regarded as capable attacking forces for the mission which he was given.
*
Fighting a war from the cramped confines of an armoured command vehicle wasn’t the best way of doing things, but to be out ‘in the field’ where he could see what was going on would not only be probably suicidal (NATO had shown that identifying enemy commanders for targeted killing was their speciality) but would also deny him the ability to see the ‘big picture’. There were many of Marshal Korbutov’s key staff missing following that blast which had come from the invisible bomber and he missed them as operations started this morning. His chief-of-staff would previously be on-hand to effectively manage the flow of information which C-in-C West-TVD received while his Chief Intelligence Officer was a level-headed man would could review everything with a cold and calculating manner. The bodies of both of those men had been left behind back across the border though along with many other including the senior KGB man with his headquarters… the only man upon his staff which Marshal Korbutov didn’t regret losing. He still had his Chief Operations Officer and his GRU Attaché, both effective men, and the deceased intelligence chief had been replaced by an able deputy taking over, yet Marshal Korbutov knew that his staff had been weakened. He needed those around him know instinctively knew what information was important for him to see and what wasn’t. There were people missing who had good relationships with junior people out in the field and now the latter would be frightened to report problems back to his headquarters without the feeling of knowing that they had a friend at court.
Almost at once, as soon as the dawn operations begun, reports started arriving at Marshal Korbutov’s headquarters from his forward attacking units which needed greater attention that he and his debilitated staff could give them.
The Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army was attacking in the north and engaged in crossing operations over the Weser south of the bend in the river near Porta Westfalica. This reorganised field army consisted of some newer formations replacing other ones, though those in the former category were previously-smashed combat units used in the war’s first days; overall, the army wasn’t the same force as which had reached the river on Friday with many more motorised rifle units assigned to all of those tanks along with ‘breakthrough’ artillery units. The objectives of this attack were for the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army to drive along the route of Autobahn-2 towards the cities of Bielefeld and then Paderborn deep inside the western portions of Lower Saxony. These cities were major communications centres for NATO forces in northern Germany with logistics sites all around them. There were tens of thousands of civilians which hadn’t left the cities and also more who had flocked towards them seeking civil assistance following their flight as refugees from Soviet-conquered territory further to the east. An advance in that direction would also see Soviet forces marching towards the Ruhr… Marshal Korbutov knew his forces wouldn’t be able to get that far yet it would hopefully produce the desires results that his and Marshal Ogarkov’s political masters wanted in putting immense political pressure upon the West German government.
Those crossings over the Weser which combat engineers attached to the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army were meant to quickly construct weren’t going up. There was immense defensive fire from NATO troops on the western banks of the river in beating back the assaults by infiltration of their lines so that the engineers could get started. Moreover, those bridging units stuck on the eastern banks of the river then faced artillery fire directed against them. Soviet guns hadn’t silenced NATO guns and the specialist equipment was being destroyed while those highly-trained engineers were being killed.
Such panicked reactions came less than fifteen minutes into the assault commencing long before any appreciable strength of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army could get into action. There was a mass of tanks and infantry waiting behind the river assault units – reorganised formations from the disestablished Soviet Third Shock Army were included in the field army – and they hadn’t even got into action before the army commander was telling Marshal Korbutov’s Operations Officer that the attack was failing. The field commander was in the process of receiving a reprimand as to his behaviour when radio communications with him and his headquarters were suddenly cut; it would be later found out that a patient Bundeswehr artillery unit had waited until it had a fix on the headquarters of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army before opening fire using radio-detection equipment.
There were problems with the Soviet Twentieth Guards Army too.
The original formations of this field army had been taken apart by the Americans early in the war with those survivors reformed and strengthened with Soviet Seventh Tank Army units for today’s assault in the centre towards what was called the Kassel Salient.
In the northern portions of Hessen, the frontlines extended all the way back to the east almost to the Inter-German Border around this city with Territorial Troops of the Bundeswehr defending this region: no more than a division’s worth of troops from various units. The terrain wasn’t suitable for major combat operations and Kassel hadn’t been attacked directly due to this factor in addition to major military objectives being elsewhere. The stubborn defenders of the Kassel Salient had held on and also maintained connections westwards. Marshal Ogarkov had called the bulge in the lines there an affront to the Soviet Army and decreed that the salient was to be smashed along with its defending forces; the city itself was meant to be flattened by artillery rather than directly entered.
That American air attack with their B-52s which had struck forces of the Soviet Twentieth Guards Army during the night – with the thinking on their part being that they were to cross the Weser and engage then rather than strike in a southwestern direction – had caused much damage, but there were other forces unaffected by that attack.
Marshal Korbutov’s headquarters received reports from the attacking field army’s commander that his men were moving forward but were engaging extremely stiff resistance. He had called for the massed air support he was promised only to find that it wasn’t forthcoming; the Air Force was blaming enemy air activity. The Chief Air Operations Officer with Marshal Korbutov’s staff was one of those walking wounded from the air attack and he wasn’t up to his duty. It took some time to realise this for the others, but when they did they only then understood why the Soviet Twentieth Guards Army wasn’t advancing like it should have been due to that very real lack of air support which had been sent to the wrong place.
It would take some time to correct this failing.
In eastern Bavaria, the frontlines in the region between Nurnberg and Regensburg ran along the route of Autobahn-3 with neither side effectively controlling the north-south running highway which cut through a heavily-forested area. The Soviet Fourteenth Guards Army faced French troops here and this Soviet formation was tasked to attack in strength along a wide frontage with the aim being to turn in a northwestern direction. Nurnberg could be attacked head-on by Soviet Thirty-Eighth Army troops in a frontal attack to provide distraction, but the Soviet Fourteenth Guards Army was to penetrate behind and take that urban area as it was regarded as a major political objective.
The French I Corps was thought to be weak on the defence and better at counter-attacking. All the intelligence which Marshal Korbutov had pointed to it being a tank-heavy force with little in the way of infantry which could fight dismounted rather than alongside tanks in their own fast armoured vehicles. Nothing had disproved this assessment during the planning for the attack against them and the Soviet Fourteenth Guards Army went into action against them mounted-up itself expecting to breeze through thin defensive lines and fight a battle of manoeuvre where it would have the upper hand in numbers of tanks and armoured vehicles.
Instead, the Soviet Fourteenth Guards Army ran into defences like which the Americans had the day before further to the west. The French had been bolstered by reinforcing infantry – reservists but men who were in trenches and strongpoints armed with a wide array of anti-tank weapons – who very quickly brought the daring thrust forward which was planned to a bloody standstill. Artillery and aviation support had to be called up all over the battlefield to deal with the infantry which wouldn’t give way to conform to Soviet plans before the French did the unexpected… they counter-attacked on a moment’s notice.
Elements of both the 1st & 7th Armored Divisions made local, small-scale counterattacks against the lead units of the Soviet Fourteenth Guards Army and ripped those to shreds in fierce tanks battles during the first hour of the offensive. French helicopters buzzed around the battlefield to firing at Soviet forces on the ground while Soviet helicopters were ineffective in comparison. The French had their artillery all linked-up and coordinated ready to deliver effective counter-battery fire to silence Soviet guns. The minefields which the French had planted ahead of them were avoided by their own counter-attacking forces, but were death-traps for Soviet tanks which stumbled into them.
It was all a disaster for the Soviet Fourteenth Guards Army. As this news of failure in the south came back, Marshal Korbutov and his staff were temporarily at a loss as to what to do with this situation in conjunction with the problems which the other attacking formations were having too.
*
Though only at the beginning of the day, things were going terribly wrong for Marshal Korbutov’s planned strikes westwards to finish off NATO on the ground in Germany. Further Western forces were meant to be committed to halting these penetrations forward and thus destroyed in battles which were expected to also blunt his attacking units, though he had the forces to spare whereas NATO didn’t. Instead, his opponents were holding their own with what they had.
He would come to realise as the morning went on that there had been a major failure of intelligence. NATO forces were nowhere near as strong as they previously had been with so many of their troops dead, in captivity or cut off, yet they could still defend the rest of unoccupied West Germany. His own forces weren’t strong enough to take them on and defeat them with all their own problems, especially those in the rear. What he realised he needed was those four field armies of the Reserve Front which were still a day’s journey away back to the east. STAVKA had ordered that the attacks commence today though, not tomorrow when those reinforcements would have arrived.
Very soon Marshal Ogarkov was going to be breathing down his neck and he was sure that the reasons he would give as to why the planned armoured thrusts forward hadn’t happened weren’t going to be accepted. This was all meant to help Soviet political objectives be achieved but the sluggish performance of the Soviet Army going forward was only going to have the opposite effect there.
Marshal Korbutov was going to have an unpleasant day indeed.
One Hundred & Sixty
Hope for the best yet prepare for the worst.
This was the unofficial motto which the Finnish military followed after they had delivered their ultimatum to the Soviets requesting that they leave Finnish sovereign territory. Such a request was met with stony silence from Moscow, something which actually hadn’t figured into Finnish plans. A counteroffer, a refusal, or even an agreement (should Finland have been really lucky) had been expected in response but instead there was no reply forthcoming.
The deadline for the Soviets to leave was to pass tomorrow morning after the period of seventy-two hours had elapsed. There was absolutely no sign of any action by the Soviets to start withdrawing their forces out of Finland and either further into Norway or better yet back into their own country. Military convoys of trucks on the ground were still moving through Finnish Lapland though there remained the spectacularly high rate of breakdowns among those vehicles on Finnish roads in the north. Aircraft still overflew the country heading westwards for nefarious purposes. In isolated spots in the Arctic there were still a few instances of Soviet mistreatment of Finnish civilians which were occurring too. It was as if nothing had changed with how the Soviets were prepared to step upon Finland and its rights without regard to how the countries emergency rulers felt about that.
Before they had acted, the Finnish military had started to prepare its own troops to see hostile combat action if there was no accession to their demands on the part of the Soviets. This was all part of their strategy of readying themselves for a fight if it came to that, yet only with the intention of expelling Soviet forces from Finnish territory and certainly not engaging them on their own… not when the Soviet Union maintained an arsenal somewhere in the region of forty thousand nuclear warheads. The army, air force and navy had all been mobilised when war broke out between NATO and the Soviets and following their seizure of power from the weak civilian government, the Finnish generals moved many of those forces into combat positions in an expectation of fighting the Soviet forces inside their country.
Finnish military equipment was of a general good quality with much of it supplied by the Soviet Union along with some locally-produced and Western weapons too. Those tens of thousands of men under command and manning these weapons were all expected to be fully able to use them in defence of their country from the deployed positions which they were in. There were troops at all points nationwide, though especially concentrated in the north, along the eastern border a-joining the Soviet Union and along the southern coast in the Helsinki area too. Everyone was standing ready for a fight with many of the combat forces already issued with orders as to what to do in the face of hostile Soviet military action if they were faced with a surprise attack which knocked out central command and control from the generals now in charge…
…which was exactly which occurred this morning in Finland.
In dramatic fashion, Soviet forces struck in Helsinki with GRU Spetsnaz commandoes making a combined maritime and helicopter assault to capture and kill the senior men of the Finnish military. Their action was one of shock and awe with clear propaganda benefits being part of what was hoped to be a successful operation.
Those speedboats and light helicopters arrived in the eastern part of the Finnish capital at the Gardestaden District of the city. Soldiers poured from the fast boats which had arrived in the shipping terminal area and those men moved on foot towards the nearby Ministry of Defence complex where the helicopters had deposited further troops. The fast and small boats had like the light, low-flying helicopters avoided Finnish naval and air defences to get inside Helsinki due to their own actions and the hostile electronic warfare activity which accompanied them. Over seventy men were used in the direct assault and within moments of these Soviet commandoes arriving in Helsinki they were engaged in combat.
Despite the surprise of such an audacious move as this, Finnish soldiers inside the centre of Helsinki positioned to defend against such a move as this, reacted very quickly indeed. The Parachute Jaeger School based in the Helsinki area had several days ago deployed its military instructors around the city in key areas with these men having seen all of their students deployed to combat units elsewhere in the country. It was these highly-trained regular soldiers, men who were specialists in urban warfare, which fought against the Soviet commandoes deployed against the Ministry of Defence building. Furious fire-fights erupted on the streets and then inside neighbouring buildings and the two opposing forces fought each other while those civilians caught up among the fighting – and there were many of them – tried to avoid the deadly crossfire which occurred. The Spetsnaz hadn’t just brought their combat rifles and grenades with them as standard infantry equipment but also man-portable heavy weapons in the form of RPG-22 rocket-launchers and PKM medium machine guns.
One of those Soviet helicopters, dual-tasked for emergency airborne fire support should the Spetsnaz come unstuck as they did, was summarily engaged and shot down by a shoulder-mounted missiles fired by one of the Finns. It wouldn’t have made the attacking Soviets very happy had they realised that this weapon was a Soviet-built Strela-2M missile: known to NATO as the SA-7 Grail. The crashing of the remains of this helicopter right into the urban terrain near the Ministry of Defence building only added to the carnage caused by the fighting on the ground.
Though the strength of opposition encountered was far greater than had been expected, elements of the Spetsnaz team still made it inside the targeted building. They had tactical maps of the building layout which showed access routes from the roof areas down to the basement and the command bunker located beneath… along with intelligence as to how strong the physical defences were guarding that bunker. A long-term Soviet agent inside Finland had previously supplied his GRU masters with such information which they put to great use aiming to get at the generals which were supposed to be there and no doubt sheltering from the fighting above their heads.
The assault through and downwards into the lower reaches of their target building led the Spetsnaz to the access to the bunker and they used explosives to blast their way in. The radio channel which their commanding officer was using was full of frantic calls from his principle subordinates stating that their external positions outside were on the verge of being overrun, but all attention was focused upon the core aim of the mission. Reinforced steel doors were blown apart and under the cover of grenades, the Spetsnaz rushed into that bunker.
It was empty: the Finnish generals hadn’t been here in days.
Those speedboats left with minimal crews at the international shipping terminal were later engaged by Finnish troops and none of those vessels nor the men with them managed to escape Finland like the rest of the Spetsnaz force had failed to do. Those commandoes were either all killed or taken prisoner when seriously wounded and not able to die fighting as they might have wished to. The complete elimination of the Soviet strike force came at a price though with immense levels of destruction during the short but vicious fighting in the heart of the city along with more than three hundred Finns left dead.
The Finnish generals, dispersed and a distance away from Helsinki, had their answer to their request of the Soviets. They were also now rulers of a country which was effectively at war.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 22:15:18 GMT
One Hundred & Sixty–One
Dealing with a large number of combat casualties in wartime among not only friendly troops but those of the enemy which had fallen into their custody was something which NATO war-planners had long created procedures for. The French had had recent experience of combat casualties in their low-level conflicts in Africa and the British had dealt with wounded men during the Falklands War. Then there was the Americans who had suffered all those wounded men when the US Marines were bombed in Beirut and then the invasion of Grenada. These instances were only practise runs for World War Three though and were minuscule in comparison.
Tens of thousands of fighting men were wounded during the initial stages of World War Three to say nothing of those who were killed. NATO medical services were wholly overwhelmed in dealing with these numbers away from their plans on paper in peacetime.
The NATO countries had capable medical units which were part of their service support formations due to operate back behind the frontlines. There were fixed and, of great importance, mobile facilities so that those wounded during fighting could receive urgent as well as later care to facilitate rehabilitation. Doctors and nurses who served in the military of their home countries either as a regular or a reservist were assembled with all the necessary equipment to allow them to treat mass casualties. Procedures for medical evacuation (Medivac) were followed so that those who needed specialist care far away from the frontlines could be treated in safety. Stocks of medicines were assembled and parcelled out to those medical units where they were setting up. Unarmed field ambulance units were activated in the last days of peace too.
NATO had thought that it was ready to deal with large numbers of wounded fighting men. Casualties were meant to be dealt with by first responders who would triage them and sent them to different medical facilities from field hospitals near the frontlines to dedicated military hospitals in their distant home countries. Being a multi-lingual organisation, NATO planned for speakers of different languages to be available to assist in the treatment of wounded from their allied countries. When it came to treatment the nationality (even if the patient was an enemy) nor the rank of the patient was supposed to matter, just the level of care required. There were flow charts and computer modelling in those pre-war plans for numbers of wounded men expected and the particular medical needs anticipated for those involved in different types of battles or instances of armed conflict were figured into these too.
But then double, even triple the number of combat casualties started to arrive for medical treatment and all those careful plans were discarded and chaos ensued.
All across Europe, men were wounded and needed medical care. There were those soldiers at the frontlines but also many of those in the rear too who suffered combat injuries. Men sustained gunshot injuries or were wounded by shrapnel from artillery and bombs. There were burn victims and those who had crush injuries. There were head traumas suffered and limbs blown off fully or partially. Others were blinded or had their insides torn out. Men screamed in pain, acted stoically or were unconscious. There were those who presented mental health problems in the face of combat and those who wounded themselves to get away from the horrors of war. Some patients which the field medics, nurses and doctors treated saw being taken to field hospitals as an injustice as they wanted to carry on fighting alongside their buddies while others were desperate to escape combat and the very real possibility of further injury.
When chemical weapons were used against NATO forces, the terribly wounded survivors of such strikes using blistering agents and nerve gases needed treatment and they presented immense problems for those providing medical care. Their injuries were present and hidden, with neither being the better alternative for those tasked with trying to treat them.
Twenty-four hours a day without respite the wounded arrived to be treated by the overwhelmed medical services which were part of the NATO military forces. Many medical personnel wouldn’t cope with the emotional and physical strains of seeing the sights which they saw and outwardly suffered though in most instances where this occurred such problems could be fast identified among their fellows. The vast majority of medical personnel kept on doing their duty in the face of the adversary and would suffer in later life from the images which they saw, but not at the moment.
A large number of soldiers from the Soviet-led attacking forces were treated by NATO medical personnel across Europe and many of those too were transported further to the rear as part of medivac efforts. There were enemy soldiers who had surrendered, who had been captured or who had been found unconscious who ended up in the care of NATO doctors and nurses with the same wide range of injuries which their opponents suffered. Many were glad of the care which they received from their apparent enemies, though there were more than a few instances where violence broke out as these foreign soldiers reacted strongly to being in the care of the enemy.
When Soviet-led forces conducted their great offensive on March 18th that overrun a large portion of West Germany, they tore through NATO rear areas and engaged support troops everywhere they went as they drove forward. Everyone who could was ordered to retreat to halt encirclement and this order was extended to those in the medical services too. There were many medical personnel who were caught up in the enemy advance and who were either killed or captured by the Soviets like other members of the NATO armies were, yet at the same time many full units were captured intact by invading armies driving west and south. Field hospitals in the NATO rear areas at that time were full of their ‘usual’ combat casualties and were starting to receive those wounded by the effects of chemical weapons when everyone around them started to withdraw in a hasty fashion yet they couldn’t easily get up and move. Instead they had to stay in-place and treat those who needed urgent care.
Soviet, Czechoslovak, East German and Polish soldiers invaded those temporary facilities looking for the enemy… and found them. Wounded men were shot and bayoneted to death to make room for the wounded enemy soldiers who demanded medical care. There were shocking instances where nurses were gang-raped by marauding soldiers whom their officers couldn’t or wouldn’t control and doctors were murdered for trying to do their duty. Medicine stocks were raided, equipment trashed and field hospitals burnt down. In the very few rare cases a few hospitals were saved from destruction by some disciplined units though wounded NATO soldiers were ejected to their fates and replaced by Soviet patients – these particular field hospitals in Germany ended up in crude propaganda films where the Soviets tried to sell a false image to the world.
Medivac to the rear was something which a lot of planning had gone into like those field hospitals close to the front. Most patients who needed specialist, long-term care were transported from the initial sites where they were triaged were moved by road in ambulances or in trucks used as improvised ambulances as well. There were single vehicles and convoys moving men back westwards far from the frontlines. In addition, aero-medivac took place on a large scale with helicopters and aircraft put to use.
From the fighting in Norway and Denmark, wounded NATO soldiers went to Sweden or in a few cases the UK and Iceland. Out of Germany, the Low Countries, France and Spain too received patients who needed further treatment. Those road convoys and aircraft were joined by ships moving men to military hospitals and also civilian sites put to exclusive military use. There was enemy interference in this effort though this was almost exclusively unintentional. Large-scale aero-medivac took place from Europe to more distant locations though: the United States, Canada and (surprisingly) Ireland as well. The Americans flew specialist medivac aircraft – C-9A Nightingale jets with the USAF – though the NATO air forces all had transport aircraft involved in this effort as well while requisitioned civilian airlines which flew troops one way took the wounded in the other direction. Thousands of patients were evacuated this way going to hospitals very far away from the fighting where civilian medical services which weren’t overrun by refugees needing medical care as they were in countries closer to the frontlines were. America and Canada had some of the best hospitals in the world with medical staff who were experts in their field.
Into Ireland came several thousand wounded NATO troops after airliners returned to that country after flying out several battalions of Irish troops which were moving to assist in lines-of-communications duties and POW guarding support in mainland Europe. Ireland was a part of this war even though it hadn’t wished to be and it was to play a major role in the treatment of wounded if not in direct fighting. Irish hospitals and civilian medical personnel were charged by their government in treating wounded soldiers and volunteers flocked to help them, especially members of religious orders nationwide. There would also be transfers of injured British soldiers direct from the UK mainland across the Irish Sea as the war went on as Ireland assisted the British military in dealing with so many of its wounded fighting men… all while the flames of civil war were burning up in Ulster.
Despite defeats which the NATO armies suffered, the medical personnel kept on working and doing their duty. They faced death and mutilation themselves and witnessed scenes which no one would wish upon their worst enemy. Wounded men needed their assistance and they did their best… and then some.
*
There were always going to be those whom the very best and most urgent medical care couldn’t save. Soldiers died in field hospitals, being transported and also when in hospitals far the rear a long way from danger. Death came too on the frontlines instantaneously or before medical care could be rendered. The deaths incurred directly in combat were staggering too and defied all of those pre-war estimates.
Once again, NATO’s carefully-laid plans to deal with the losses of its soldiers were torn apart by the wholescale carnage unleashed in modern warfare between opposing armies of the late 20th Century.
Removing bodies, identifying them, storing them for repatriation and the process of transporting these were again covered by staff exercises in peacetime. The NATO countries were all expecting these to occur yet not in the staggering numbers which they did. This put a terrible strain upon the men involved in the efforts to deal with them both physically and emotionally too. Those involved in this difficult process were in the main military reservists too with only a select few among the thousands having any peacetime experience of such a role let alone to do this in wartime with all the attendant military action ongoing. Road convoys, ships and aircraft all carrying bodies were caught up in the crossfire of war like those transporting the wounded.
Field mortuaries in West Germany were overrun by advancing enemy troops with those working such a role either fleeing or killed at their posts. Others were targeted by enemy air or tactical missile attacks when mistaken intelligence analysts on the Soviet side misidentified these as logistics hubs due to the activity around them. Ships were sunk and aircraft were downed when thought to be moving military equipment or live men rather than dead bodies. The chaos of war saw bodies erroneously identified or not given a name at all. Pieces of bodies rather than whole corpses were recovered from battlefields and in other cases those removed were later lost too when things went wrong. Some bodies had to be left where they fell because the situation was too dangerous to get to them and those personnel who should have done so faced verbal attacks from the buddies of those deceased soldiers who couldn’t see the dangers for themselves.
Like those medical personnel, those whose wartime roles involved dealing with the dead carried on doing their duty in the face of all of this adversary.
Dover AFB in Delaware and the Port of Savannah in Georgia were where American military dead were flown to and shipped to respectively. Thousands of these who had been killed in the war’s first few days were transported across the North Atlantic from ‘holding sites’ in Western Europe though with many more to follow later. The United States was starting to receive its war dead and those fallen men would soon be arriving at their final destinations all across the country.
British military war dead weren’t immediately shipped back to the UK like the Americans wished to do with theirs. These men of course hadn’t been left where they had fallen, yet Thatcher’s War Cabinet, when they had discussed this issue, had carefully considered that the best course of action to take was not to rush repatriation. British ports were still immensely busy with military cargoes outgoing and wounded men inbound; the strain of dealing with the thousands of dead bodies coming back into the UK through them wasn’t needed, especially as there were the continuing air attacks too. In peacetime there would have been an almighty political stink kicked up about this and there was the anticipation that there would be a negative reaction post-war too, but for now that was the way that it was.
The bodies of deceased British military personnel were stored in improvised sites across Belgium and northern France for the time being.
There were enemy war dead too whose bodies NATO forces recovered from the battlefield or who died either while undergoing medical care or in custody. There was a moral duty not to leave those remains to rot where they fell if they could be removed and there was no interference with the war effort in doing so. Thousands of these came into NATO hands too just as they knew that the bodies of their soldiers were ending up with the enemy. To set to work burying these men brought up a lot of political issues with the West German government in particular being adamant that it didn’t want the bodies of invading Soviet soldiers inside its borders; Norway felt the same too. Storing the corpses of NATO soldiers before they could be repatriated was already taxing enough and many were already being buried across West Germany, the Low Countries and France, but no one wanted to take on such a responsibility of interning the remains of so many men from their enemy.
This was an ethical failing of enormous proportions on the part of many politicians across Western Europe which again would have caused a political scandal had this been peacetime. Eventually, President Mitterrand of France decided to take the moral high ground and pronounced that such soldiers would be buried with haste but decency inside his country rather than let them rot in storage sites… which were unrefrigerated warehouses across Western Europe.
Just like with the wounded, the dead caused all sorts of issues to crop up which hadn’t been appreciated in peacetime.
This war was only ten days old and there would be many more bodies, along with wounded fighting men, who would need to be attended to before it was all over with.
One Hundred & Sixty–Two
Belgian military prowess was something not something regarded with a high degree of esteem pre-war. However, during the conflict, again and again, the military forces which the small Kingdom of Belgium fielded didn’t let down either themselves or their NATO allies. Whether it be on the ground, in the air or even at sea, when the Belgians fought they did so with great professionalism and often more than was expected of them.
The equipment which the Belgians fielded wasn’t always the best and there had been the troubling issue of the pre-war low level of preparedness, yet when it came to a fight, those Belgian military units gave it their all. Alpha-Jets, F-16s and Mirage-5s of the Royal Belgian Air Force flew multiple missions with the 2 ATAF in tactical support of frontline ground units as well as important air defence missions; losses were taken but those Belgian jets kept climbing back into the sky to duel with the enemy. At sea, the small Royal Belgian Navy had gone to war with four frigates and a host of mine warfare vessels, the latter of which were very busy throughout the conflict. Those frigates all ended up on escort duty for trans-Atlantic convoys and hunting down Soviet submarines in North Atlantic too with much success although two of them wouldn’t return home.
The Belgian Army had initially fielded a pair of divisions as part of the Belgian I Corps with the British Second Army as well as an independent airborne regiment of brigade size. Earlier in the war that corps was broken up and one division assigned to the British I Corps – with the majority of the combat support assets linking up with their British counterparts – and the other division joined Kampfgruppe Weser before it became the Bundeswehr IV Corps. Both formations had seen action and put in a fine show though the 1st Infantry Division with the British had taken a lot of casualties during the Soviet chemical weapons attack.
The 16th Armoured Division, stationed alongside the West German 7th Panzer Division on the west bank of the Weser, had previously seen action on the eastern side of that river and today it would fight again against enemy forces crossing over the Weser.
Those crossings had been made at Bad Oeynhausen-Holtrup and Vlotho-Uffeln, where the bridges over the Weser had been downed ahead of Soviet armoured spearheads on Friday. In the early morning the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army used infantry to get across though the army commander and much of his battle staff had then been killed in a long-distance Bundeswehr artillery attack using American-supplied Copperhead laser-guided shells. Under the direction of the field army’s chief-of-staff, an immensely strong artillery barrage had then been unleashed to allow the cross-river operation to continue so that both attacking divisions – one at each location – could get their tanks over the Weser and to properly take on the NATO troops which they encountered.
Light infantry units attached to the Belgian 16th Armoured Division had stopped the Soviets on the riverbanks, but those troops in their trenches and fortified strongpoints were overwhelmed by the barrage which came their way of shells, mortars and unguided rockets. The survivors fell back to the south in good order though there weren’t many of them. As they did so, they made way for Belgian counterattacks at both crossing points.
Attacking at Bad Oeynhausen-Holtrup, the 17th Brigade struck against the pair of motorised rifle regiments which had come across the Weser here. These were under Soviet 28TD command (the tank division’s own regiment plus that from the 29TD) and already wounded from earlier fighting. Their BMP-1 infantry combat vehicles and T-62 tanks were rolling through the eastern side of Bad Oeynhausen and striking southwest away from the urban area of that town towards the road links moving away into Westphalia.
The Leopard-1 tanks, the Jagdpanzer-Kanone mobile anti-tank guns and the M-113-B/MIL missile-launchers ripped into the Soviet ranks just like they had done on Friday. The Belgians of the 17th Brigade were a counter-attacking force and they put their training in such a role to good use in breaking up the Soviets. Infantry teams were deployed from tracked AIFV-Bs (a better-armed, Belgian-built variant of the M-113), though the majority of the work through the late morning in combating the enemy was down by the armoured vehicles. They were facing Soviet forces with second-line equipment and their well-maintained older equipment did extremely well. The 105mm cannons on the Leopard-1s and those 90mm cannons which the Jagdpanzer-Kanone vehicles fielded would have struggled had these Soviets had newer and better-armoured vehicles, but not the older BMP-1s and T-62s. Then there was the MILAN missiles on those M-113-B/MILs as well as the same weapon which dismounted anti-tank killer teams carried.
Back towards their crossing points the Soviets were pushed by the furious Belgian counterattack and then there was the flanking manoeuvre coming in from the north of Bad Oeynhausen which the 17th Brigade also undertook. A company of tanks moved with light British-built Scorpion and Scimitar reconnaissance vehicles through a weak defensive line which the Soviets had yet to get fully set up and went straight for the bridges which the 28TD had used to move its infantry units across and was soon to try to push tank regiments over. Those pontoon bridges were engaged from distance by tank fire with the faster, lighter Scorpions and Scimitars darting around giving covering fire. The Belgians started blowing up those bridges and trying to kill engineers, especially when they got in close, to trap enemy units already over the river inside a pocket while also stropping reinforcements.
In the skies above both sides had friendly aircraft operating. The USAF F-4s and the Soviet MiG-23s both engaged each other rather than supporting ground operations as they were meant to and there was also the presence of Soviet Army SAMs in the sky too… which hit any aircraft they could reach. This aerial combat meant that those on the ground were left unmolested, thus benefiting the Belgians in tearing through the Soviet crossing operation and destroying their targets. This armour now at the crossing site soon turned their guns to the west and south and waited for the rest of the 17th Brigade to push what troops who had made it over the Weser towards them with no escape route remaining.
At Vlotho-Uffeln, the motorised rifle regiment of the Soviet 193TD had been committed for the push over the Weser here with the tank regiments due to follow. This was meant to be a supporting effort for the 28TD with the 193TD being a weak unit after fighting at the end of last week had hurt this formation badly. Once clear of the frontline Belgian defences, the BMP-2s and T-72s were edging forward through Vlotho ready to break free to the southwest as well. Heavy Belgian artillery guns from distance slowed them down though and some of those howitzers dropped small anti-tank mines all over the place. The gunners of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army’s own heavy artillery, back over the river, used counterbattery fire to silence those Belgian guns. The artillery duel was one which the Belgians would lose, yet it slowed down the Soviet forces over the river enough for the bulk of the 10th Brigade to deploy from their positions to the east of the crossing point here. This formation of reservists fielded much of the equipment as the regulars with the 17th Brigade used with tank and tank-destroyers though MILAN missile teams in jeeps rather than in armoured vehicles with fixed mounts for those.
The newer equipment which the 193TD had here caused the Belgians problems. The shells from the Jagdpanzer-Kanones couldn’t knock out the T-72s – there was an understrength battalion of these across the Weser with the motorised rifle regiment – and the guns of the Leopard-1s struggled with the same task. BMP-2 infantry vehicles still blew up with hit by those Belgian cannons yet the Soviet tanks poured fire against the offending Belgians. When the 10th Brigade committed its MILAN teams, the Soviets sent their own infantry forward under artillery cover to combat those. The aim was to push the Belgians back away to the east to allow the bridgehead to be expanded where far more tanks could come over.
Vlotho, just like Bad Oeynhausen, was a strong point in the NATO lines with the whole town having been fortified as a defensive position. Further downstream, the 28TD had avoided the death-trap which Bad Oeynhausen had been made into, but the point of attack for the 193TD was here and that meant that they had to come through this town. It seemed like every house and commercial building housed defending troops with light anti-armour weapons. Machine guns covered improvised minefields in the streets while there were snipers everywhere. Vlotho was defended by men of the Bundeswehr 27th Airborne Brigade’s fourth parachute battalion, reservists who hadn’t fought (and subsequently been lost) on the other side of the river last week like the rest of their higher formation. These men of the 274th Battalion were dug-in and artillery barrages only made their defensive positions stronger.
Hundreds of Soviet troops were killed with many more pinned down in the town and unable to break free of the West German defenders. The 274th Battalion also wouldn’t stay fixed in certain buildings to be blasted out of them but rather kept moving from one firing position to another – even through holes knocked between walls – while those Soviets pushed forward to engage them on foot were slaughtered in small set-piece ambushes. The lead battalion of the following tank regiment coming over the river next in-line via the pontoon bridges was directed by the headquarters staff of the 193TD to avoid the town and move away where there was some countryside available to the northwest. It was planned that these T-72s could avoid both the still-dangerous Belgians and the West Germans as well.
Hidden there and waiting for this move, were the Leopard-1s of an independent tank battalion attached to the Belgian 16th Armoured Division: the 2nd Mounted Rifles. They had quickly moved into a pre-scouted ambush position and there had been fears that the Soviets wouldn’t cooperate with Belgian defensive plans, but into that ground where perfect firing positions had been selected should such a crossing be tried at Vlotho-Uffeln be tried came the enemy. Again, the Belgians were faced with T-72s and they had trouble, though a company of British-built Striker anti-tank vehicles were deployed with them. Swingfire missiles flew from these vehicles at minimum range while the T-72s were distracted by the shells from the Leopard-1s.
The Swingfire missiles did what the guns of the Belgian tanks couldn’t.
NATO air support for the Belgians finally managed to get through after this with Luftwaffe Alpha-Jets making an appearance and bombing the pontoon bridges while reinforcing Soviet tanks were on them. These were from Fighter-Bomber Wing 44 (JBG 44), a wartime-formed formation operating under 2 ATAF command and flying aircraft based in peacetime in Portugal as part of a training unit there. Standard high-explosive bombs were dropped over the bridges during the first Luftwaffe attack with enough of those striking home. Anti-aircraft guns and SAMs were fired from both sides of the river by the Soviets and three of the attacking Alpha-Jets were downed, but the bridges were knocked out of action so that the loss of these aircraft was worth it. A second wave of Alpha-Jets raced in behind the first and before Soviet fighters high above could swoop down in time (they had been caught unawares by the low-level attack) and these then dropped anti-armour cluster bombs across the Soviet formations which had made it over the river; another pair of Alpha-Jets were again lost by SAMs as defending missiles filled the skies… which also managed to hit a MiG-23 as well.
The anti-armour ambush and then the air attack managed to bring the Soviets to a halt. They faced stubborn West German paratroopers in Vlotho and the bulk of the Belgian 10th Brigade on their flank too. For the rest of the day these NATO forces would keep engaging those Soviets trapped on this side of the river and take losses doing so, but meanwhile wearing them down when they had no immediate support on hand plus hadn’t brought much ammunition with them when crossing the Weser. It would take many hours, but like those attacking troops of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army up at Bad Oeynhausen too, these here at Vlotho were to be overwhelmed and the survivors would surrender by midnight.
The Belgians, with assistance, had held the Weser Line.
*
Around the Kassel Salient, the West German Territorial forces deployed there weren’t able to hold the Soviet attacks to straighten their lines. The 64th Brigade and 93rd Regiment, home-based respectively at Mainz and Aachen, both places far from Kassel, didn’t have the strength to fight off the attacking Soviets striking at them from the north.
The 3GTD, part of the Soviet Seventh Tank Army, but with an extra motorised rifle regiment replacing a missing tank regiment, used its armour to push back the West Germans. There were some up-armoured M-48 tanks which were meant to stop the position falling and these did well against Soviet T-62s, but there were too many of the latter against not enough of the former. Hundreds of West Germans firing their man-portable anti-tank weapons weren’t enough either to stop such an onrush of armour, especially when the 3GTD had plenty of infantry of its own moving against those dismounted men. Artillery blasted away in support knocking out West German defensive positions and a lot of ammunition was expended, but it was worth it for the attacking Soviets got in behind the city through the thick forested hills there. The 93rd Regiment – three battalions of dismounted men – was practically destroyed in this effort to turn the flank of the West Germans and the M-48s couldn’t disengage from the frontal attack in time to assist them.
The 64th Brigade fell backwards along with many independent company- & battalion-sized formations away to the southwest and further back through rear positions. Rear-guard units were ordered to make a stand in the city and its suburbs to delay the enemy acquisition of such a major communications network which Kassel was, but it was realised that they wouldn’t last long once fully surrounded and with few weapons.
Fighting as they withdrew, the 64th Brigade ended up having to lose its battalion of towed howitzers along with combat engineering equipment too in the rush to get away. There was a constant worry that the Soviets would have a second pincer moving up from the south too despite intelligence pointing to the Soviet Twenty-Eighth Army being a spent force incapable of such a thing. A lot of immediate good defensive ground was given up though this was an organised withdrawal backwards to escape the 3GTD’s initial drive to find new fighting positions back to the west.
Such a withdrawal was made on the edges of the operational zones where the British Second Army met with the US Seventh Army with forces of the US III Corps and the Bundeswehr III Corps holding such defensive sectors. Neither of these formations were in a good shape at all with the Americans having lost almost half of their strength in the encirclement at Einbeck and the Bundeswehr previously having taken so many losses to nerve gas.
On paper, the Soviets were striking at this juncture where military theory stated that such a point was always good operational action to strike. The lone division committed to the attack, one weakened by the removal of a third of its tanks, disproved this suspicion that this was a major attack and NATO could understand that in this unfavourable terrain the enemy were only straightening their lines rather than making a major offensive. Nonetheless, to do nothing in the face of the attack wasn’t an option.
General Galvin at his mobile headquarters liaised with General Kenny and General Schneider to have elements of both their commands have subordinate units get involved in this combat to try to stop the Soviets in their tracks.
Those Bundeswehr units to the south could do no more than release a battalion task force with tanks and mechanised infantry from the 5th Panzer Division to move northwards to aid the 64th Brigade in withdrawing and linking up with them when they found a better position to make a new stand at. The US III Corps made an attack though with elements of that corps being put to use in the counterattack role.
The 2nd Armored Division’s 3rd (Forward) Brigade moved southwards down Highway-83 and through the town of Calden before moving cross-country into the attack. These troops knew Germany the best and were well-trained in operating in such a role as this aiming to crash into the Soviet flank and do them much damage before pulling back. Orders were not for a major penetration to be made through the enemy deep into the hills west of Kassel less the Forward Brigade have to engage the full strength of the 3GTD: the rest of the American division wasn’t employed in this and strength needed to be conserved against an anticipated bigger Soviet attack at a later point.
Going up against BMP-1s and T-62s, the Forward Brigade did what was expected of them. Their Armored Cav’ elements guided the M-1A1s and M-2s of the main body into perfect attacking positions and then assisted in the attack themselves. A tank regiment from the 3GTD was caught off-guard and then given a thrashing by the US Army in a short but furious battle. The Forward Brigade had its mobile anti-air assets with it – man-portable Stingers and tracked M-163 Vulcan multi-barrelled 20mm guns – and these were put to use to fight off Soviet helicopters pushed forward to help the tanks on the ground being destroyed at distance from well-placed shots.
Such an engagement was almost one-sided. The Soviets couldn’t get close enough to return fire and the Americans were moving all over the place. Last week had seen the Forward Brigade tear apart the higher-grade troops of the 20TD in action such as this near Salzgitter when the Soviet Twentieth Guards Army had been smashed to pieces and now they were doing it again. Eventually some return fire from Hind helicopters and T-62s undertaking suicidal drives forward caused casualties, but this still wasn’t enough: the M-1A1s were almost invulnerable to these attacks and only M-2s were hit enough to be knocked out. The US Army knew how to hurt the Soviets with hits to the sides of the Soviet tanks and also those with command antenna too. Junior officers on the Soviet side were killed in terrible numbers and those other tank crews left without guidance were then picked off.
It took the Forward Brigade less than an hour to wipe out a full Soviet tank regiment. They destroyed four combat-manoeuvre battalions of tanks and infantry as well as destroying the regimental artillery and support elements as well. In exchange, only two M-1A1s were knocked out along with seven M-2s: an amazing kill ratio. Those US Army officers present would afterwards call it the Battle of Ahnatal (named after the nearest town) and it was again yet another example of the ground war here in Germany were the US Army had done excellent when faced with weak opposition unprepared for them and their fantastic and accurate fire-power. They wanted to drive on afterwards to take Kassel back with the argument being made by the Forward Brigade’s commander that he could take on the next tank regiment which the 3GTD fielded too.
Major-General Price, the divisional commander, was having none of that though. The remaining Soviet troops ahead would be ready for that and the Forward Brigade would probably blunder into a trap before they got anywhere near Kassel. Even if they did reach that city… then what? The West Germans had withdrawn and he was under orders from his corps commander, back to General Kenny and then General Galvin, to conduct an armoured raid to smash and slow the Soviets before withdrawing. The Forward Brigade was a well-trained and excellently-equipped combat force with plenty of experience which was going to be needed again elsewhere and not lost driving on an ambush before Kassel. The job had been done and the attacking force needed to be conserved.
The Forward Brigade would pull back.
*
And so that was how NATO dealt with Marshal Korbutov’s great offensives on March 23rd. Those were all stopped before midday as NATO defences did just as the Soviets did and stood firm in the face of an enemy armoured offensive.
The Belgians had held their positions on the Weser without external assistance just as they were meant to do. Kassel had been lost though there were only a few hundred West German civilians there rather than the thousands who had called it home pre-war. More than half of the defenders there had escaped and those had been the mobile forces rather than the unfortunate dismounted infantry; the devastating counterattack by the Forward Brigade had mitigated their loss. That attack in Bavaria had been beaten back before it got started by the French reacting fast and strong.
When General Galvin received this news, his immediate reaction was one of a smile: the first one he had raised all war. NATO ground units in Germany had finally managed to stop multiple Soviet attacks with what they had to hand through local counterattacks without calling upon reserves (there were none available) and not given up huge areas of defensive ground to avoid mass encirclement.
The Soviets weren’t ten foot tall supermen and they could be stopped.
Yet, that smile faded some when he reflected upon what this meant. The enemy couldn’t successfully launch mass offensives anymore through his defences yet at the same time it had been shown that those under his command couldn’t either. Stalemate had ensued on the ground in Germany… while all of those NATO prisoners of war and West German civilians were trapped behind the frontlines to the east.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 22:32:10 GMT
One Hundred & Sixty–Three
What would become Operation PLIMSOLL had begun two days ago with the discovery of an aircraft wreckage inside a small patch of woodland northeast of the Suffolk market town of Stowmarket. There had been a little fire when the aircraft had crashed though with a fierce downpour having taking place all through the night and into the morning too, those flames had been greatly dampened and hadn’t spread very far from the wreckage. A patrol from C Company, 6 R ANGLIAN – a TA light infantry unit, not HSF security troops – were guided to the scene of the crash by a local farmer and those men of the Royal Anglian Regiment were accompanied too by a senior officer from Suffolk Constabulary as well as a liaison officer with the USAF. That policeman soon enough called for assistance from MI-5 once he realised what he was seeing while the American military intelligence officer got in touch with his superiors too.
Late on the Sunday night, an unidentified aircraft refusing to make contact with either ground or AWACS controllers had been downed in the darkness when flying above East Anglia by a USAF F-15A flying from RAF Coltishall. Gunfire from the fighter-interceptor’s cannon had been used instead of a missile though the American pilot had failed to visually confirm the target below him and heading on a course taking it southeast towards the distant North Sea. There had been no evasive manoeuvring from the aircraft and after the 20mm shells from the F-15 had slammed into it – tracers had been used – the USAF had claimed a kill when it disappeared off radar several radar screens. There were Soviet air attacks going on at the time which needed greater attention, though the kill of the defenceless aircraft trying to rapidly flee from British airspace had been noted and thus acted upon this morning.
The remains were of a Learjet, an early model of the business-jet and one which had been painted black without any identifying marks. The front and middle sections had been crushed upon impact with the ground and the wings blown off too, yet the rear section of the fuselage and the tail were intact enough. There were human remains aboard though impact trauma and the small fire afterwards made them for now unidentifiable. Attention was drawn to both the rear access door and an external electronic feature attached with the USAF intelligence man taking out his camera to capture many images of these.
Further analysis conducted in what was a joint British & US investigation pointed to the crashed aircraft as having entered UK airspace the night before undetected initially while travelling low and fast. It could have flown as far inland as Bedfordshire or Cambridgeshire before turning around and flying back towards the sea. Only during its egress had it been tracked by radar and then engaged and this was after it had been put to use providing a platform for a small number of a parachutists to jump from using a specially fitted rear access. To avoid being initially detected there had been the distraction of a Soviet air raid and then the efforts of a fitted electronic jamming system unlike none which either the RAF or the USAF had encountered before. It was thought that this had failed during the flight back towards the sea and only then had a radar fix been attained. As to where the Soviets had got their hands on an aircraft like this and the where the work undertaken to convert it into a platform for the role it had been undertaking, that would come from later analysis of the aircraft away from the crash site.
For now, attention was focused upon the men which were suspected to have jumped out of the aircraft when it was overflying Britain. They had to be found and either detained or fought because clearly they hadn’t come to Britain as they had for a pleasant jolly…
The Americans, their British allies had said, had been unnecessarily paranoid about Soviet Spetsnaz commandoes on the ground in eastern England attacking their aircraft when they were on the ground. The measures undertaken with Transition to War had meant that British airspace was locked down and the coast was patrolled heavily too. Should anyone manage to make a landing, the presence of so many troops in East Anglia – both British and American – would make such a task very difficult along with a hostile local population, many of which who lived in the countryside were armed with shotguns and even pistols ready to provide some warning. There was more danger to American and other NATO aircraft on the ground from commando teams across in Continental airbases, something was very quickly proved the moment conflict erupted. Britain was a secure rear-area base with plenty of defensive assets in-place; the USAF were told that they were far too worried.
The first assumption when it came to PLIMSOLL was that half a dozen men at the most could have parachuted from the downed Learjet carrying at most personal weapons, maybe a couple of shoulder-mounted missile-launchers and even some explosive charges in satchels. Such a Spetsnaz team could cause a lot of damage should they have accurate intelligence and also get lucky in avoiding a hunt for them. However, with reflection, that initial supposition was shown to be one of folly. This could easily have been not the first flight which this aircraft made and nor could there have been only one aircraft. This flight could have been carrying reinforcements for an earlier small Spetsnaz team or another detachment. It could have been making a weapons drop for a larger force already deployed as well. Those who didn’t think that too much effort should be expended with PLIMSOLL – and those weren’t just British personnel but some Americans too – pointed to the fact that no enemy commando attacks had occurred yet in East Anglia. They had occurred in northern Scotland and down in the South-West, but not yet in Eastern England.
Just because one hadn’t come yet didn’t mean that the enemy wasn’t building up their strength had come the counter to that. Such talk of dread came true soon enough this evening in East Anglia.
Almost two dozen Spetsnaz commandoes launched a daylight attack (it was thought that such a thing would only ever come in the dark) against RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk. This was a USAF flight station home to AWACS aircraft, specialist electronic support aircraft, CSAR aircraft & long-range helicopters and airborne tankers too. Troops from USAF Security Police units were present there as a defence force along with SAM batteries manned by both the RAF and the USAF.
The Spetsnaz got through the outer wire on foot and raided the flight ramp as well as one of the main administrative buildings where flight operations with 3 ATAF were conducted from: there were many valuable personnel at the latter location.
The raid which these elite Soviet soldiers conducted was fast and extremely violent. They used RPGs to blow up as many of the big aircraft which they encountered sitting out in the open and also tried slaughtering ground crew. USAF personnel fought back with their own personal weapons only to be outfought and outgunned along with being taken aback at the intensity of such an attack. Inside that building where some of the Spetsnaz went into those men darted from room to room opening fire with their AK-74 assault rifles as well as lobbing grenades. They wanted to kill as many staff officers as possible along with any flight crew and senior officers present as well. Pistol shots greeted them though again the Americans which they came across were utterly shocked to be faced with such an attack as this.
It was all over in under fifteen minutes as they Spetsnaz then withdrew with only half their number able to fall back towards the perimeter fence and a prepared exit point in that. While they had inflicted massive casualties, the numbers had been against them and every American present at RAF Mildenhall seemed to have immediate access to a weapon… weapons which were used once the shock of being attacked as they were wore off. Three E-3B Sentrys, two EC-135Hs, a HC-130P Combat King, a pair of MC-130E Combat Talons, three MH-53J Pave Lows, two KC-135R Stratotanker’s and a visiting C-141B Starlifter thankfully missing its usual human cargo of aero-medevac casualties – fourteen valuable aircraft and helicopters – were left destroyed or badly damaged behind the retreating Soviets along with fifty-three dead and forty-seven wounded USAF personnel.
The Security Police detachment had been dealt with by having their throats cut during the approach, their guardroom blown up by a satchel charge to announce the commencement of the attack and then engaged during the fire-fight. Thus as the remaining Spetsnaz fled towards nearby woodland they weren’t initially pursued as USAF officers reined-in eager ground crew who wanted to chase them: there were also some Spetsnaz down wounded across RAF Mildenhall who needed to be secured. The airbase wasn’t an island in the middle of nowhere but rather one of many USAF facilities across East Anglia and there were armed reaction forces at others which were called upon to go after the murderous attackers while those who remained at RAF Mildenhall tried to sort themselves out.
PLIMSOLL had procedures to deal with the immediate aftereffect of a worst-case scenario such as this attack. The headquarters of the British Army’s Eastern District were alerted and they in-turn instructed the 54th Reserve Brigade (a non-deployable, home defence organisation commanding troops across East Anglia) to converge its mobile troops upon the area around RAF Mildenhall. RAF Alconbury, RAF Bentwaters, RAF Lakenheath (located very nearby) and RAF Woodbridge were all USAF-manned nearby 3 ATAF facilities with reaction forces immediately available and helicopters with armed men started lifting off from these to also congregate upon the region around the stricken RAF Mildenhall.
Orders for all British Army and USAF troops involved were to hunt down and kill the offending Spetsnaz.
Those thirteen Soviet commandoes had split into two groups and were racing away from the scene of their strike. There had been four Land-Rovers – old, beaten-up four-wheel drive vehicles – which their GRU contact had long ago acquired and stored hidden for their use. That man who had in peacetime done so much for the Spetsnaz in addition to keeping these vehicles maintained was now lying in a shallow grave near one of the hides which he had spent a long time carefully preparing: he hadn’t been a Soviet GRU operative with a ‘legend’ but rather a traitor to his country and a fool for trusting the Soviets to let him live with all of the knowledge which he had in his head.
Two of the Land-Rovers were left behind with those being disabled in haste while the other pair raced across the countryside in different directions laden down with men and their equipment. It was a tight fit inside each vehicle and they raced down country lanes at any moment expecting a roadblock or a helicopter. Mission orders stated that they should flee as fast as possible to put as much distance between them and their target before they could reach new hides instead of trying to find shelter near RAF Mildenhall and none of these men disagreed with that at the minute. They knew that they had done very well in their attack yet to lose eleven of their comrades when faced with what they had thought would be placid opponents had come as a nasty surprise. Several men in each vehicle were carrying wounds of their own while their comrades were eyeing those wounded men up thinking whether it was necessary to kill their comrades less they slow them down.
One of the Spetsnaz parties ran into trouble near a little anonymous village called Soham. There was a roadblock which they stumbled into too late to avoid and a set-up which hadn’t been here this morning when this route had been scouted. It was manned by the RAF with two older reservists acting as officers for RAF Regiment trainees and some Air Cadets mobilised in defence of their country. A confusing fire-fight erupted almost instantaneously as they Spetsnaz shot their way past these men and teenagers blocking their route, but their vehicle was disabled and one of their number killed. The men scattered aiming to meet on the other side of the village once the fast-approaching darkness arrived and try to find another vehicle then. Unfortunately, they moved too fast to make sure that all of those RAF personnel at the roadblock were dead. One of those wounded youngsters there had at-hand the most dangerous weapon known to man: a radio. There were soon helicopters in the sky, a pair of UH-1H Hueys loaded with men from RAF Lakenheath’s reaction force.
There was sniper fire from the helicopters above. First one than a second and finally a third Soviet commando caught in the open went down when in the crosshairs of patient USAF snipers who had a perfect raised platform to shoot from. Both Hueys were taken under fire though that was wild and inaccurate. More radio calls were made directing troops on the ground towards Soham to make sure that the three remaining Spetsnaz here weren’t going to get away no matter what.
The other Spetsnaz team, the six in the second Land-Rover, had gone northwest away from RAF Mildenhall towards the small village of Littleport. They had hoped that the crossing over the Great Ouse River there would be undermanned or not even defended, but there were British soldiers arriving to pass through the roadblock which USAF Security Police operated. The Land-Rover was abandoned four hundred odd yards short of the village and the Spetsnaz broke into a trio of pairs with the aim of making their way northwards away from the road across the fields in the coming darkness. Off in the distance, on the other side of that not-impressive water barrier was a hamlet called Tipps End and their hides there.
Through the night these half dozen Spetsnaz would slowly make their way towards there with haste for they knew that they would have awoken a hornet’s nest.
PLIMSOLL would continue into the night as those few Soviet commandoes near Soham were engaged and killed while those who had abandoned their vehicle near a farm just ahead of Littleport would be tracked too, though with nowhere near as much success. Hundreds of British and American troops would operate in the darkness trying to locate those who had struck at RAF Mildenhall and this wasn’t an easy task due to the even-widening area of countryside which they had to scour. In an unfortunate incident, a Suffolk farmer eager to join in the military operation ongoing around him using his shotgun would accidentally be shot and killed by a machine gunner atop a Ferret armoured scout car operated by a detachment of the present Queen’s Own Mercian Yeomanry.
At the same time there would be continuing post-attack activity at RAF Mildenhall. Those dead and wounded needed to be dealt with while the undamaged aircraft there moved away from the smouldering remains of those which had been hit by RPGs. The commanding officer of the USAF Security Police force was a casualty of the Spetsnaz attack and with many of his men dead the detachment here was spent and would require immediate replacement… along with the station commander who was relieved of his duties by 3 ATAF’s furious commanding general. It was thought that security at RAF Mildenhall had been too complacent. How else, it was asked, could twenty or so men get into the facility, do so much damage and then many of them manage to escape afterwards too?
Three wounded, but alive Spetsnaz prisoners were removed from RAF Mildenhall by an undamaged MH-53J and taken to RAF Upper Heyford: there would be an interrogation for these men and it wouldn’t be pleasant.
RAF Mildenhall wasn’t alone.
Not directly simultaneously, but in a similar time-frame, there were Spetsnaz commando raids in NATO rear-areas thought secure where important airbases vulnerable to attack were hit by strike forces built-up over some time. Istres Airbase in southern France, Lajes Field in the Azores, Dyess AFB in Texas and CFB Cold Lake in Alberta – locations even further away front the frontlines than East Anglia – were all struck at. Soviet commandoes had travelled a long way to get to them through hostile territory, but attacked with murderous intent to not only blow up valuable support aircraft but also kill personnel presence from flight crews to staff officers at these important military bases in the rear. Attacks against RAF Lyneham in Britain and Scott AFB in Illinois both failed due to factors beyond the immediate control of the Spetsnaz and those two air transportation points were left unmolested, though it was only luck which assisted NATO there where it failed them elsewhere. The passage of time from the opening of hostilities and initial attacks had widened and with it the foolish belief among many in the rear that they were safe away from a relentless Soviet war machine which would through away the lives of its elite solders in distant lands where NATO wouldn’t do the same themselves without at least giving their own commandoes some chance of getting away to fight another day.
The clash of these two opposing military systems – like their political ones – brought about a vivid exposure of just how each side conducted warfare very differently indeed.
One Hundred & Sixty–Four
Striking Fleet Atlantic waited until darkness fell before undertaking the first of its air and missile strikes against the Soviet coast on the Kola Peninsula. A high-speed run had been commenced by the carriers, warships and escorting submarines southwards after a day spent trying to ‘lose’ Soviet detection efforts as the primarily US Navy naval flotilla had commenced operations in the western reaches of the Barents Sea.
Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles were followed by carrier-launched aircraft which set to rain destruction upon military facilities along the coast and inland too throughout the very most northwestern part of the Soviet Union. A strong defensive effort was expected to be made on the part of the enemy, yet the US Navy believed that they had correctly judged the tactical situation so that this was the most opportune moment to strike. In addition, they didn’t hold anything back and, short of nuclear warheads, deployed all available weapons of war at their disposal in their attacks.
Previous efforts to destroy Striking Fleet Atlantic on the part of the Soviets had caused many losses, yet it was still able to fight and hit back with a vengeance.
It had been said pre-war when what role the US Navy’s Atlantic Fleet would contribute in wartime was being planned that in a non-nuclear scenario it would be dangerous for a multiple carrier task force to enter the Barents Sea and unleash warfare at close-range against the Kola Peninsula. The Soviets had early warning systems connected to their nuclear warfare forces positioned at bases there and direct military attacks against Soviet soil would bring forth the risk of nuclear weapons being deployed against a naval task force certainly leading to an escalation. The argument ran that in a US-Soviet conflict neither side would hit the homeland of the other so as to not unleash that dreaded nuclear escalation from tactical warheads to those of a strategic nature as one side then the other upped the ante.
Such thinking by so-called war strategists and endorsed by some politicians had left the US Navy aghast. To not go after the home bases of the raketonosets, warships and submarines sent against it’s ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres was an abomination! They had always argued that if open warfare commenced with the Soviets, at the soonest opportunity their strike assets should be attacking the Soviet mainland. They anticipated that their bases on the US mainland would be attacked and wanted to do the same.
When WW3 did erupt, the Soviets thankfully decided the issue themselves. Of course the senior US Navy admirals weren’t happy to see Alaska, Hawaii, the West Coast, Florida and New England hit as they were by the Soviets and their Cuban stooges, but that put pay to any idea which certain politicians might have had at an unspoken agreement with the Soviets where their home soil was left alone if they did the same.
What hadn’t been foreseen by the US Navy was that it would take them ten days to finally begin striking at the Kola Peninsula with Striking Fleet Atlantic. The two successful attacks which the Soviet Navy had made in crippling both the brand-new Theodore Roosevelt and then the older Forrestal had hurt and so do did the heavy reinforcement of Northern Fleet Aviation with extra raketonosets aircraft. Orders from the National Security Council had first had Striking Fleet Atlantic supporting the ground war in defending the Fortress Norway position before later assisting the US Marines in eliminating their Soviet counterparts in the Porsangerfjorden area. Finally though, orders had now come for direct attacks to be made against the Soviet North-West.
This delay stood in stark contrast to the situation in the Pacific with retaliatory air, missile and even naval gunfire attacks being made by the US Navy Pacific Fleet working in conjunction with the USAF and the Japanese Self-Defence Forces. Those had commenced onwards from the war’s second day and taken place right from the Chukchi Peninsula on the Bering Strait down through the Kamchatka Peninsula and the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk to the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin and the Soviet mainland north of and around Vladivostok. Across the wide area of the Soviet Far East military targets of a non-nuclear nature had been struck at though those attacking forces hadn’t been able to concentrate their strikes: it would be different with the Kola Peninsula.
Just as in the Pacific, three aircraft carriers and a battleship were involved as the biggest naval vessels attacking the Soviet mainland. The Coral Sea, the Saratoga and the Eisenhower were alongside the Wisconsin with six cruisers, eleven destroyers and nine frigates (including one with the Dutch Navy and another one with the West German Navy) as the surface force for Striking Fleet Atlantic with five American submarines and a lone RN submarine too – HMS Warspite. This immense concentration of naval power, with all of those aircraft flying from the three carriers too, had managed to get free of Soviet detection efforts and unleashed warfare upon the Soviet coastline.
The Wisconsin along with the cruisers Leyte Gulf, Mobile Bay, San Jacinto and Mississippi as well as the submarines USS Key West and USS Pittsburgh all fired barrages of Tomahawk cruise missiles. These were lofted into the sky and then darted southwards at high subsonic speed and cruising just above the waves. It was hoped that not until they were very close towards the shore would Soviet radars start to detect them and by that point it was be far too late anyway. Tomcats, Prowlers and Hawkeyes were airborne ready to support the Corsairs, Hornets and Intruders heading towards the coast not that far behind the cruise missiles.
Warspite was the lone submarine out ahead while those of the US Navy with Striking Fleet Atlantic were behind. After a slow start, the Warspite had seen much success in this war with several enemy vessels encountered and sunk in the Barents Sea from corvettes and patrol boats to surveillance & electronic warfare ships. Those kills had been made at short-range with big torpedoes used against small Soviet Navy ships with the targeting of them being regarded as important for either the war effort or the survival of the Warspite itself. No opposing submarines nor major warships had been encountered, much to the chagrin of the crew, though that was to now change as the submarine went forward towards waters close to land where the enemy had vessels off the coast in number. An anti-submarine corvette of the Grisha-class manned by KGB Border Guards was attacked first with a Tigerfish torpedo fired at distance to eliminate this potent threat before there came the detection of a real ‘catch’: a Udaloy-class destroyer. This large warship was armed with guns, torpedoes, anti-submarine rockets and many missiles. Of the latter, the Udaloy was known to be armed with SAMs which while mainly for self-defence when conducting hunting of NATO submarines, were still quite lethal and would pose a grave danger to any aircraft from Striking Fleet Atlantic which came into range. The destroyer was taken under a twin attack by the Warspite with first a trio of Tigerfish torpedoes being fired and then a pair of Sub-Harpoon anti-ship missiles too. To eliminate such a target as this was why Warspite was with Striking Fleet Atlantic and it needed to be destroyed.
The Soviet coastline ran northwest to southeast from the Norwegian border towards the White Sea. The maritime-orientated military bases were in the main in the northwest from the Rybachy Peninsula down to the Murmansk Fjord. There were airbases inland though along the shoreline, and inside the many sheltered bays and small fjords sat naval anchorages and base facilities for the Northern Fleet’s warships and submarines. There were SAM batteries operated by the Soviet Navy in abundance along with anti-aircraft guns and radars to guide both of them along with interceptors from the Air Defence Forces. In-place of naval artillery like the neighbouring Nordic countries to the west operated, the Soviets had anti-ship missile batteries – mobile launchers rather than fixed sites were used to protect their coastline and these weapons were nothing to laugh at.
Warspite, acting as forward scout, had been sent towards the waters off the Murmansk Fjord to the east as that was where the majority of at-sea defensive assets were expected to encountered. About half of the Tomahawks and strike aircraft from both the Saratoga and the Eisenhower were too heading in that direction, though the rest of the cruise missiles and aircraft from the Coral Sea were directed towards the west. Strong opposition was expected with US Navy aviators being told before lift-off that they couldn’t be expecting CSAR missions to be launched towards them if they went down over Soviet territory due to that. This was a strategic area of the Soviet Union which was to be attacked, everyone was told, and it would be defended to the best of the enemy’s ability.
The Tomahawks were fitted with either conventional high-explosive impact warheads or sub-munitions dispersers; the latter for dealing with radar sites to destroy delicate antenna. They smashed into their targets along the coast and inland hitting air defence and coastal missile installations with some success though with many of these being mobile, not all of these targeted weapons were where they were thought to have been before the cruise missiles arrived. Only a few of the Tomahawks had drawn fire themselves and only then in the last moments of their flight as their approach had come almost undetected until they were about to strike.
Further anti-air defence weapons started to arrive soon afterwards to prepare the way for the incoming waves of aircraft. HARM missiles were fired against radars operating in spite of the Tomahawk strike and these flashed away from their launching aircraft to tear into further radars and SAM-launchers. Soviet air defences were now reacting as their radars were blinded by immense electronic jamming coming from offshore but what was pointing to an air attack approaching. Long-range SAMs were launched blind towards the dark skies offshore with the hope of breaking up the attack.
In addition, alert interceptors were scrambled from airbases.
The US Navy aircraft were already close to the coastline though because they had come from carriers which had come what many regarded to be dangerously close before launching and only after the Tomahawks had started impacting had active airborne jamming measures been employed where previously their operation had been in the passive mode. The strike aircraft were suddenly over the Soviet mainland along a forty mile stretch of the Kola Peninsula shore and missiles were starting to be fired from many of them while others were on bomb-runs. Further anti-radar missiles – Standard-ARMs – were launched and so too Mavericks as well against fixed targets. The first line of air defences were now taking a battering from the air as they managed to only launch a few SAMs while the fire from anti-aircraft guns was wild and sporadic. Many of the squadrons involved flying from the trio of carriers were far from at full-strength with losses in combat over Norway and aboard those earlier struck carriers of Striking Fleet Atlantic, yet there were still many of them in the sky and on attack runs.
It was the naval bases which the majority of these aircraft were sent against. The Northern Fleet may have lost its large surface combatants in open conflict out in the Norwegian Sea, yet there were still many warships left operational using these facilities. Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic had either been sunk in co-ordinated and relentless NATO anti-submarine warfare efforts or returned home for resupply of empty magazines; those in the latter category needed to use the bases. There were older vessels, long since retired from service, undergoing hasty mobilisation to partially replace losses and these were present at the naval bases targeted too. The big shipyards were undertaking repairs of damaged warships; again more targets for the American aircraft in the sky.
Down in Murmansk Fjord from Nerpa in Sayda Bay all the way to the city of Murmansk itself bombs and missiles slammed into targets. Skalisty, Olenya Bay, Polyarny, Severomorsk and Roslyakovo in between came under air attack. There were ships and submarines lying at anchor and even a few vessels underway too. Cranes towered into the sky next to carefully-selected other structures which made up the Northern Fleet’s shore establishment. This was a weapons-free environment for the US Navy pilots and weapons officers aboard their aircraft with anything which looked like a military target open to be attacked.
Westwards, following the coast, Vidyaevo on Ura Bay, Ara Bay and the several facilities in the Andreeva Bay area were attacked too. These were all submarine bases with some vessels in concrete pens and thus protected against attack but many others open to attack from the air as they were on the surface. For so many years the US Navy had looked at these locations from satellite reconnaissance and the odd stand-off surveillance flight planning to attack them if it ever came to war and this evening they did just that – their only regret was not having more aircraft available.
There were far more air defence sites along the coast defending these naval bases than had been thought. Many were hit by the Tomahawks and then the attacking aircraft themselves, but more remained operational. Radars were switched on and off to guide SAMs and anti-aircraft guns while there were also infrared detection and tracking systems to guide defensive weapons too. Only the scale of such a wide-ranging attack which came from seemingly out of nowhere without what many would have regarded as a proper warning time to get organised hampered the Soviets in their air defence efforts. They combatted intensive American jamming efforts by filling the skies with their missiles and shells.
Aircraft from Striking Fleet Atlantic went down in a large number. The Corsairs and Hornets from the Coral Sea used to the west saw nine of their number lost in their strictly coastal attacks, which were far too many for such losses to be sustained if Striking Fleet Atlantic wanted to use them again in an attack like this, but there were worse losses elsewhere. Ten Hornets and a dozen Intruders were lost in operations above the Murmansk Fjord, many of these occurring when those aircraft went down into the fjord as far as Severomorsk and Murmansk and then made their egress afterwards chased by arriving Soviet interceptors after they had braved ground-based air defences. There were Tomcats circling back at the fjord entrance which fired off long-range Sparrow and even Phoenix missiles to assist the strike aircraft but the Hornets had been meant to defend themselves against airborne threats.
These losses were really going to hurt Striking Fleet Atlantic’s offensive combat power for further operations… while the fact that a quarter of the aircrews from the downed aircraft would survive ejection from doomed aircraft to face Soviet captivity was going to be another blow.
Nonetheless, those aircraft had achieved so much. There was immense damage done to those targeted naval bases with warships and submarines hit alongside the smashed infrastructure. At Ura Bay a Hornet had dropped a quartet of 500lb bombs atop a docked Oscar-class submarine making sure that that vessel wouldn’t be going back to sea with Shipwreck cruise missiles while several older large warships at Polyarny were sunk at their moorings or on fire; these were just some examples of the damage wrought.
The Wisconsin, still carrying her war-wound from being hit by a Kitchen missile on the war’s first day and with only six of her nine sixteen-inch gun barrels operational, had a different mission than just firing her Tomahawks as part of the opening barrage to announce Striking Fleet Atlantic’s presence. It had been sent with a pair of escorts – the missile-destroyer USS Sellers and the Bundesmarine multi-role frigate FGS Koln – towards the Rybachy Peninsula, located over near the Norwegian border.
On that little island-like piece of land there were air & coastal defence missile and radar sites along with an electronic warfare station. Coastal maritime traffic heading from the Murmansk Fjord towards the remaining parts of Norwegian Finmark which the Soviets occupied had previously been spotted transiting through waters around there while small warships were known to be forward deployed at the port of Liinakhamari. A fast raid was planned with the battleship due to use its guns and missiles to strike at enemy targets and then withdraw quickly back into the Barents Sea once the air attacks to the east – which should distract the Soviets – were over and done with.
Unfortunately, even before the trio of NATO warships got close enough to land for the planned strikes to commence, the Sellers struck a naval mine. There was a huge blast which tore off part of her bow and caused terrific flooding aboard. Both the Wisconsin and the Koln came to a halt as they tried to work out whether the Sellers had hit a floating, independent mine or they were all in the middle of a minefield. There was no dedicated mine warfare vessel with them and it was too dark for any visual scouting to be used. That flooding of the Sellers was brought under control and her weapons were still active yet there was too much damage for the destroyer to continue onwards. Neither warship should have started moving again with the threat of further mines though the Wisconsin’s captain, as the senior NATO naval officer present, ordered that his ship and his West German escort do so due to the worry that the striking of that mine by the Sellers could have possible drawn enemy attention to what was meant to be a fast and silent approach.
He was very correct in this assessment.
The Wisconsin and the Koln had only just started turning back and no firm decision had been made as to what to do with regard to completing the mission when an attack came. Radar acquisition signals were identified aboard the battleship by its electronic warfare team alerting them to the fact that there were Osa-class missile boats very nearby lining them up for attack. The radar picture was confused with brute-force Soviet active jamming cancelling out the weaker efforts of the systems upon the battleship and then there came further alerts: Styx missiles were in the air.
Very quickly, four of those big missiles came screaming across the sky and lanced towards the NATO warships. The Wisconsin’s defensive systems managed to deflect those missiles though both the unmoving Sellers nearby and also the Koln weren’t so fortunate. Each warship was hit by two missiles and even though one of those which hit the Koln had a dud warhead the force of the impact combined with its unspent missile fuel along with the other impacting missile blew apart the frigate. The Sellers was blown up too and the Wisconsin was now left all alone without its escorts. The captain knew that his ship would be able to withstand impacts from missiles because of the WW2-era armour which the Wisconsin had, but these were now very dangerous waters to be in and it would be best to abandon the mission. Four of the eight Harpoon missiles carried by the battleship were launched as fire was returned towards those offending missile boats and then the Wisconsin started racing away.
This was certainly the best idea. Missile batteries on land armed with more capable systems were trying to locate the Wisconsin at that time hoping for a saturation attack to overwhelm her defences while more missile boats were streaming out of Liinakhamari; there was also a coastal submarine active in the area too with torpedoes. Alone, these Soviet forces might not have been able to severely damage or even destroy the Wisconsin, but acting together in concert they would have stood a very good chance of doing so.
The Wisconsin would live to fight another day but there were several hundred American and West German sailors left in the freezing cold waters behind her as she fled. Should the battleship come back again here or nearby to do something like this again, more thought and more support would need to be put into how to have it operating in waters where the Soviets were sure to use low-tech but effective mines as well as massing their light naval missile forces.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 22:38:17 GMT
One Hundred & Sixty–Five
It was said that logistics was a military art which the United States Armed Forces created. Of course this wasn’t true, it was just that as the première Western military power with its armed forces spread across the world, the United States put plenty of effort into maintaining a superb logistics infrastructure. They expected to fight a global war and those forces fighting in Europe and Asia – maybe South America and even Africa too – would need timely and reliable supply. Every organised army from the dawn of time has needed to be adequately replenished when in the field. Weapons, whether they be spears or the most modern assault rifles, need to be sent to the fighting men. Soldiers needed to be fed, a supply of drinking water and medical care; these were just the very basic necessities alongside weaponry and ammunition.
To have an army in the field without the capabilities to provide, transport to and distribute everything that they needed would be national suicide for any modern country. If an army doesn’t have even the most basic logistics system supporting it when operating then soon enough it will just become a horde of starving useless mouths who wouldn’t be able to put up a fight to defend themselves let alone their country’s national interests.
Logistics wasn’t sexy. The military task of providing ammunition, fuel, food, water, and medical supplies didn’t have the perceived glamour of a tank gunner or a fighter pilot. No one was going to win any medals or get a heroes homecoming, it was said, by being a member of the supply chain rather than engaging in mortal combat with the enemy. That was a foolish notion, though one that was widespread across the world. Storemen, truck drivers and supply clerks were insulted behind their backs and often to their faces too that they were too cowardly to fight at the front; those who made those remarks could conveniently forget that there were many people involved in the process of getting the bullets to their rifles.
The unappealing nature of logistics to many meant that in the majority of armies around the world the ‘talent’ went elsewhere. A promised young officer or a rising enlisted man would enter a combat arm or combat support arm of their country’s military or be transferred there if they started out initially in a service support arm. Intelligence and signals units got better men than supply and transport units did. Worse, those who failed in the former where transferred to the latter. Again, this had been something done since the dawn of fighting armies. Many smart soldiers were aware that this was the most-stupidest of actions to take, yet it was what always had been done and would continue too. It was the same where money to be spent on the armed forces was concerned: it was thought by many to have the latest modern tanks or fighter aircraft than invest in new supply trucks or the latest pallet-handling system.
This was how it was in most of the militaries of the world, including that of the Soviet Union… but pointedly not those of the NATO nations.
Armies have lived off the land throughout history. Food and weapons could be taken as the ancient rights of the conqueror were said to apply and there was limited need for logistics apart from the most specially-used items. Napoleon’s armies which had overrun almost all of Europe in the early Nineteenth Century had done this with a lot of success, yet in Portugal they had met towns and countryside stripped bare of anything of any use to them in a deliberate effort to deny them from living off the land. In the modern era, that wasn’t something which any army could do either, let alone a modern air force or navy. Presuming that an opponent didn’t follow the British example of 1810 in Portugal and leave a scorched earth behind their retreat in war, then where were modern militaries meant to find infrared sights for their tanks and radar-guided air-to-air missiles or such similar items were never going to be found was in civilian homes or supermarkets. Even taking food and fuel from civilians wasn’t a good idea because there was never going to be enough during wartime and all this achieved was to seriously upset those locals and certainly lead them on the path to more than just passive resistance.
A military force in the modern era, even one on the defence rather than attacking forward continent-wide, needed a logistics system that not only was capable of supplying all of those forces but was able to work too with the transport and disruption side even in the face of enemy attacks to destroy that supply network.
The Soviet military logistics system failed in all aspects of the immediate above. There was no adequate and working supply network to support their deployed armed forces. Neither could they defend the attempts made to maintain even a rudimentary system of keeping their soldiers supplied with what they needed in the face of NATO attacks against this.
In stark contrast, they had what was needed to supply those fighting men though.
There were bunkers and warehouses through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union stocked with mountains of ammunition, military equipment and the necessary spare parts for their tanks and everything else. There was a tolerable supply of food and drinking water available and fuel was also present too. What was lacking was a working transport set-up, effective command & control for this network and the ability to defend the logistics system as it was. Everything that their military forces needed to fight the West was stocked and in theory ready to move though the majority of that wasn’t getting forward to where it was needed.
The reasons for this were many.
The transportation system employed by the Soviet military for its logistics need was a sick joke. No money was ever spent on it and no one seemed to care how ineffective it was. The trucks which the Soviets should have had were few in number, lacking in capability and to be driven by reservists with little idea on how to effectively load them and how to navigate their way to where they needed to go. There were ports all along the Soviet coastline and when it came to the war in Europe those Baltic harbours were meant to ship cargo forward yet the necessary ships hadn’t been assembled pre-war and when they were the loading of them was slapstick and thus caused immense waste of space and man-hours. Trains from the Soviet civilian network were meant to be laden with cargo and sent forward yet with those there again was wastage of capability along with the fact that their rail routes were known to the NATO enemy as well as partisans and guerrillas. Air freight transport was minimal with what there was focused upon moving paratroopers; only a few cargo aircraft were operated and these were mainly for bulky not heavy loads.
The management of the logistics network was truly terrible. Senior officers involved were either dullards or drunken failures who had long allowed rabid theft and spoilage to occur. They would send towards those deployed forces forward whatever they had at-hand rather than what was requested or what was needed. Much of what was allocated for movement to deployed forces was also junk as what sat in warehouses wasn’t properly maintained or kept in the correct conditions. Everyone senior involved was doing what they wanted when it came to disruption with supplies sent wherever a location was dreamed up rather than where it should have gone to. Reports coming back about these failures were ignored and there was no one willing or even able to take charge of the situation.
NATO struck at the logistics systems with all its available might. Once road and rail bridges over rivers across Eastern Europe were downed, bottlenecks were caused and these were open for further NATO air attacks. Ports, railway junctions and transport airfields were attacked too from their air blasting apart them, the transport assets and all the supplies. These distant attacks using air power deep in the rear were then joined by localised commando strikes on the ground behind the frontlines blowing-up what was managed to get forward while also killing those involved in that haphazard disruption.
When those supplies finally did reach the units and locations which needed this – that was when the trickle did get there – what was delivered didn’t meet the specific requirement. 152mm artillery shells would be sent to a communications unit instead of radio antenna; an airbase defence unit might get SAM’s arriving yet they would be missiles for older systems which they didn’t have and thus no good. Wrong supplies, meant for someone else, would end up being effectively abandoned by discarding units and often too there would quickly become mountains of this which might attract enemy attention for destruction. Those units who hadn’t got what they needed would wait and wait for something which might never arrive meaning that they couldn’t undertake their wartime role. A system which was as unloved in the rear was the same at the front with no one able to get any control over this and every moment that it continued it only got worse.
This utter failure of a logistics system and the chaos which putting it into action caused hadn’t stopped RED BEAR from commencing. The Soviet military offensive to stop Barbarossa #2 from occurring and then the efforts made to bring an end to conflict on Soviet terms through further armed action had taken place despite this.
The logistics system which the Soviets had was meant to provide a follow-on supply for what military units deployed in combat had immediately available for action so that they could continue to fight after this was spent. On land, at sea and in the air, the Soviet Armed Forces had military units which in peacetime had prepared stocks of everything that they would need to engage in a sustained period of combat. There was ammunition, there was fuel, there was replacement military equipment, there were spare parts, there was food, there was drinking water and there were medical supplies. For a period of time what was at-hand could be effectively put to use with an effective localised supply network controlled by combat and combat support formations deployed into combat. This was why a motorised rifle division could fight and advance for almost a week with almost no external support and an air regiment could be moved forward taking its already in-place stock of supplies with it to a new location. Of course problems would pop up with this, but none of those were that serious.
Eventually though, those immediate supplies were going to run out. More ammunition than anticipated would be expended or it would be destroyed by enemy action. Casualties were higher than they were thought to be and field dressings were needed in a greater number. NATO aircraft were using electronic jamming to defeat SAMs and the idea was to fire off waves of missiles to fill the skies with these rather than just ones which were carefully aimed. And so on…
That was where the rear-area logistics system which the Soviet military had was meant to kick-in. It didn’t though and this meant that combat units started to run out of what they needed. When supplies did get through they weren’t what was needed or sent to the wrong place.
The immediate solution from those at the front, while launching furious complaints up the chain of command towards those in the rear, was to ‘make do’. Anything captured from the enemy which could be put to use was. There was weapons, ammunition, fuel and some military equipment that while not interchangeable with what the Soviets had still had much military value. There was food available if not in great quantity while fresh water supplies were sometimes open to be used too. Hospitals were raided for what they had in terms of medical supplies and there were civilian vehicles in captured enemy territory too which were useful.
Across Eastern Europe, just behind the frontlines, the Soviets acted there as conquerors like they did in the parts of Western Europe they held. There was no care for the economies of East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia as what the Soviet Armed Forces needed from these countries they took. Food and fuel was stripped from them to keep the Soviet military functioning. Downed bridges were replaced by new ones where riverside buildings were demolished. Civilian vehicles were taken away and put to Soviet military use. Factories were suddenly instructed to start producing spare parts for tanks and such like with no regard for whether they could or what they were making beforehand. Able-bodied men were rounded up to be used on great infrastructure projects to support the war effort and those roads, airbases and harbours were put where the Soviets wanted them.
The nominally independent governments in those countries – diplomatic and trading partners – were uninvolved in this process and when they tried politically to do something about this they found no one in Moscow willing to listen to them. On a local level civilian authorities in these allied countries were sometime forced at gunpoint to do what the Soviets needed them for. There was plenty of what was needed – though of course not everything – available across Eastern Europe and the Soviets took it so that they could continue fighting. Their own logistics system wasn’t supplying them and they considered their immediate needs to be all-important.
In East Germany and in western parts of Czechoslovakia, the civilians there generally blamed the West for these Soviet actions which so greatly impacted their lives. At first this might have seemed inexplicable when it was the Soviets not NATO taking their food, knocking down their places of work and stopping them from getting supplies of electricity (the fuel was put to military use), but it was the West which they blamed. These civilians faced air attacks every night from NATO air forces and so they linked everything to those; this was actually quite a rational line of thinking. Across eastern parts of Czechoslovakia and, more importantly for the future, in Poland the opposite occurred. The population was soon very put out at this to say the least and they quite naturally turned their ire towards the Soviets. There were a few air attacks in Slovakia and many in Poland yet no one was blaming the West for what was going on as their countries were torn apart by the needs of the Soviet military. Passive resistance begun to this process and the seeds had been sown for that to soon turn to active resistance.
The Soviet Union was a superpower and one even if not directly meaning to aiming for world domination through its military actions. The country couldn’t feed itself though, despite having immense areas of arable and fertile land along with an educated population who should have been able to exploit technology to put food in the bellies of its citizens. Foreign shipments of grain paid for by gold mined from the resource-rich nation kept those bellies full in peacetime. This came to an abrupt end when RED BEAR got underway.
There were countries around the world which were still willing to trade with the Soviets and could have conceivable sent them food yet those nations were unable to. An unofficial blockade was in-place maintained by the West which meant that no neutral shipping was going to go to Soviet ports. Governments were bought, coerced or threatened into cutting their ties with Moscow and some were even convinced to declare war too. Soviet military attacks against truly neutral countries – Sweden and Ireland as prime examples – did further damage to their worldwide reputation and meant that they had no international trading partners. Shipments from the Soviet Union of goods, minerals and arms weren’t going anywhere which meant that foreign currency wasn’t coming in either.
Such a situation had left the country broke. The national economy was now wholly focused on war with nothing else being produced apart from war materials and basic civilian essentials. With no international trade and a demand for military materials – which wasn’t successfully going to where it was needed with fighting forces either – meant that the whole economy was completely, utterly and thoroughly destroyed.
There was no one to do anything about this though: to put a stop to the rot. Many different people from senior military officers to spooks to politicians could see what was going on and tried their best to intervene, yet they couldn’t reverse the devastation being caused to the country by the destruction of its economy. Chebrikov remained in his bunker worrying over assassins and Marshal Ogarkov cared for nothing other than military operations: anyone else of any real significance was lying in a shallow grave as they had been regarded as a threat to the arguably paranoid insane Chebrikov.
Just like with the chaos that was the military logistics system that wasn’t working and the resistance which was growing in Eastern Europe trying to ‘make do’ due to that, the Soviet economy was on a collision course with reality too with that being a solid wall which once struck would only bring shattered pieces of irreparable ruin.
One Hundred & Sixty–Six
Aircraft from Arizona’s Davis Monthan AFB and the AMARC facility there were now beginning to arrive in Europe. There were hundreds of them from the Aerospace Maintenance & Regeneration Centre – AMARC – which had left the dry air and hard sands of the site where they had been stored for many years outside the city of Tucson and flown across to Europe. These were older combat aircraft retired from service when newer models became available but stored ready for such a situation as this.
Aircrews had flown these aircraft on their long journey so they could join deployed USAF and USAF-Reserve squadrons already in combat and having sustained losses while also forming new formations. There were training officers and reservists flying these, many of whom had flown similar aircraft to the ones they flew now as long ago as the Vietnam War and beforehand. A-7 Corsairs and F-4 Phantoms were already over the skies of Europe though those which reinforced their number were much older aircraft with less-capable systems than the ones they replaced and reinforced. Present too now after coming from AMARC were F-104 Starfighters and F-105 Thunderchiefs along with some slower OV-10 aircraft for forward air control missions rather than intensive air combat behind the frontlines. There were transport and support aircraft put to use as well as these combat jets and older models of B-52s had also left AMARC for service with SAC in the mainland United States. Moreover, many aircraft from Arizona were off elsewhere for service with the US Navy, the US Marines and many air forces of NATO nations: the West Germans, the Low Countries, Portugal and Britain too.
Those aircraft which had come all this way to join the USAF weren’t the very best of reinforcements. They had long ago been retired from service and their avionics and radars were old. They weren’t wired to carry the best external jamming systems or weapons either. AMARC had done a lot with these aircraft as part of their regeneration efforts to get them ready for service – some of that started when REFORGER got underway – though there was only so much that could be done.
The combat aircraft brought to Europe as reinforcements joined USAF units deployed as part of the 2 ATAF and the 4 ATAF as well with Allied Air Forces Northern Norway, though not with the 3 ATAF in the UK.
In the build-up to the conflict opening with the Soviets, the USAF already in-place across Europe had already been reinforced with first regular and then reserve formations from the United States too. Later had come training formations and US-ANG units again too from across the width of America and flying good if slightly less-capable aircraft.
Operating alongside their NATO counterparts, USAF aircraft had shown their ultimate superiority overall against their Soviet and Soviet-led opponents. The enemy had some outstanding aircraft in operation along with excellent weapons, radars and jamming equipment, though in the main those aircraft which filled the skies were quite often ill-fitted to combating those flown by the West. The Soviets had numbers on their side yet not with the very best aircraft which they could field. The air combat tactics of American and NATO aircrews were able to defeat those of the Soviets after a short period of time had elapsed as the latter stuck with what they knew even when faced with defeat in the skies while those of the former were able to easily adapt when things didn’t go right for them. In the war’s first few days the two opposing sides had been almost matched in the air with the Soviets managing to equal those aircraft of the West with their greater numbers and how they initially operated. Once this was witnessed and the lesson learnt the hard way, those NATO aircrews were able to change how they fought and thus took the lead in the air – especially taking control of the night skies over Europe.
Despite this, the USAF joined their counterparts in other NATO air forces in losing aircraft due to Soviet missile activity. SAMs were present across the military forces of the West, yet nowhere near as important to them or deployed in as many numbers as those used by the Soviets. There were so many different systems operating in different roles from the tactical to strategic deployed and using either radar or infrared guidance. There were mobile and fixed units which provided overlapping coverage for one another. During NATO air activity the Soviets would launch waves of SAMs into the skies even if it meant that their own aircraft were exposed to ‘friendly fire’ so that enemy aircraft could be cleared from the skies.
Western aircraft were knocked down over and over again.
During ten days of warfare over Europe, the USAF alone suffered losses of twenty-three percent of combat aircraft fielded. Many were lost on the ground to commando or long-range surface-to-surface missile attacks away from actual aerial combat. The majority were lost in the air though when facing Soviet aircraft as well as their SAMs. The fixed air defence system over Eastern Europe and then the mobile one which rolled forward with the invading armies was like nothing encountered before by an attacking air force. The strength of the defences eclipsed those over North Vietnam during the air war there and also what the Egyptians and Syrians fielded against the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War.
Those losses which the USAF took grew every day and night. As the training and Air National Guard units arrived, they took over combat duties which lost aircraft had done but they were downed too like those before them. Much of NATO’s strength lay in its air warfare capabilities and this couldn’t be scaled back in the face of losses: more aircraft were needed and thus they came from older aircraft stored at AMARC.
Both McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics back in the United States were instructed to at once begin building further F-15s and F-16s to replace those lost in conflict already and more expected to be sacrificed as the war progressed. In St. Louis, the production line for brand new F-15E Strike Eagles – the strike-fighter version of the pure fighter-interceptor F-15A/C Eagle – was put on twenty-four hour shifts to get some of those aircraft into service at the earliest possible moment; the plant in Missouri was tasked at the same time to build more FA-18 Hornets for the US Navy. This wasn’t something which could be done overnight: state-of-the-art multi-role combat aircraft couldn’t be quickly constructed even if all conceivable effort was put into manufacturing them. The United States Armed Forces would have to wait some time for these aircraft like they were waiting for a lot more new-build military equipment too from tanks to helicopters to warships to submarines.
Therefore, the older and less-capable aircraft from AMARC were now going to have to fill the gaps made by losses. It was anticipated that many of these would be lost – Starfighters and Thunderchiefs over Europe especially – but it was all that could be done for now.
Britain had nothing like AMARC with hundreds upon hundreds of aircraft sitting parked outside in the desert carefully-preserved for one day future use. Aircraft retired from service with the RAF were either sold abroad to military customers in friendly nations or scraped. A very few might escape those fates and end up in the hands of museums or as gate-guards at RAF stations, but such aircraft had most of their combat equipment removed and were not going to realistically ever see wartime service again.
There were aircraft stored at ‘war reserves’ in peacetime though and these were models which were already in frontline service with the RAF. Harriers, Jaguars, Phantoms and Tornados were flown by operational squadrons with a complement of usually twelve though sometimes up to fifteen or sixteen on strength. When the mobilisation for war commenced with LION put into place, the RAF received many of these stored aircraft to beef up the numbers of those operational squadrons. Training units across the country, including the Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment with Tornado strike-bombers at RAF Cottesmore, formed ‘shadow squadrons’ to further support RAF operations alongside those stored aircraft now with operational squadrons.
The RAF flew missions ranging from UK air defence to tactical bombing in Norway and Germany as well as long-range strategic strikes across Eastern Europe. Like the USAF, aircraft flown by the RAF were lost in great numbers to enemy activity from commando and rocket attacks when they were on the ground to Soviet fighters and their infernal SAMs. The rates of losses exceeded those anticipated in pre-war studies even worse than with the USAF and soon enough aircraft held back to be used in the nuclear attack role should the worst happen were being forced to fly too so that the tempo of non-nuclear combat operations could continue.
There was no possibility of Britain being able to even begin the process of building new combat aircraft. British Aerospace facilities across the country had been wrecked by Soviet raketonosets attacks and then there was the destruction caused in the domestic and trans-European supply chain; it was impossible for new combat aircraft to be manufactured with the war going on as it was.
The RAF ended up getting extra aircraft from two different sources. Firstly, ten Tornados from RAF Cottesmore and that multi-national training unit there which the Italian Air Force colours were put to use by the RAF: Italy wasn’t going to be happy about this yet Britain wouldn’t care after Rome had abandoned its NATO allies. Then there were Phantoms that came from AMARC that ended up in Britain too. The RAF had long flown Phantom’s and there were aircrews who only needed refresher training and assistance from the USAF personnel who had flown them across the Atlantic as to how to use their older systems. Harriers and Tornados would have been preferred yet the RAF knew all about the Phantoms and still operated them.
As the losses in combat continued and with at first the worry that there would no more reserves to be put to use, the RAF had been worried with the disconcerting possibility that at one point soon enough there would actually be no more aircraft left to take to the skies in RAF colours. The Phantoms were for now going to save the day.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 22:50:03 GMT
One Hundred & Sixty–Seven
The SAS had gone to war like the rest of the British Armed Forces as ready as it could be. Following the LION deployment pattern, formations of the SAS were moved to West Germany in number along with smaller deployments to northern Norway and also back in the Low Countries to support UK military interests there as part of the NATO logistics network. There was also a substantial portion of the SAS kept on the UK mainland in addition to being in Ulster too: again to protect UK military interests as well of those of a political nature. All of the regular, reserve and TA units with the three battalion-sized regimental formations of the SAS were fully-manned with some men having to be turned away when they were recalled due to that high turnout number: such men joined the Paras and even provided some officers for one of the Gurkha Demonstration Companies used as guards for General Kenny’s field headquarters in Germany after leaving their opposing forces training duties at Sandhurst far behind them.
Unlike the rest of the British Army, most members of the SAS were on a temporary attachment to this elite commando force as they remained on the operational roles with their ‘home’ regiments elsewhere. Tankers, engineers, gunners and signalmen joined the SAS alongside infantrymen after passing special forces training and served for several years before returning back to where they would spend most of their military careers. This meant that there were thousands of serving soldiers with the British Army who had special forces experience and it was almost all of them who wished to come back to the SAS for the upcoming conflict. The SAS had been unable to take all of them while the British Army top brass was happy to have such capable men deployed elsewhere with ‘normal’ combat and combat support units putting their skills to work there too.
The first battalion of the 22nd SAS Regiment was the regular component of the British Army’s special forces with 1/21 SAS and 1/23 SAS from the TA. It had been men of 1/22 SAS who had in 1980 conducted Operation NIMROD – better known as the assault to end the Iranian Embassy Siege – and those had been serving with the Counter-Revolutionary Warfare Wing, an ad hoc group of SAS men always ready in the UK to respond to terrorism threats. The SAS was widely known for NIMROD yet that was only a peacetime function away from its preparations for war. There was the stay behind role in Germany which they trained for along with combating enemy commando forces and also providing an elite strategic surgical strike force to take the war deep into the enemy. This was conducted at home and abroad in all sorts of conditions and over a diverse range of terrain so that the SAS could do what most would regard as impossible. Those TA men, who formed two thirds of the full mobilised strength of the SAS, were as fully trained as the regulars and the small reserve component.
Equipment for the SAS was light but some of the best around. Their weapons, communications equipment and personal gear was expensive and only what was absolutely needed. Deployed elements of the SAS were expected to be out on their own with little or no external support available to them: if they got into trouble they were to either get out of that on their own or die trying.
As the SAS moved into its wartime positions, it was deployed for a wide range of roles. The SAS units in Germany were tasked with patrolling the frontlines before conflict erupted and then moving over the frontlines in the stay behind role like other NATO special forces were to as well. Many other detachments would remain in the rear hunting down expected enemy commandoes and also available for selective strike missions too; this was the same with the small force in Norway too. Those who remained in the UK were to again hunt for enemy special forces operating on UK soil and were tasked as mobile detachments rather than static guard forces where their capabilities would be wasted. Finally, in Ulster the SAS men there were to do what they had been doing there for years: help in the fight against armed terrorism.
Then the fighting started and the SAS went to war.
The Guards Sabre Squadron from 1/22 SAS saw action in northern Norway. Two of the platoons were split into the traditional four-man operational teams for commando actions and they disappeared away from the frontlines into the stay behind role while the other platoon was held back.
All across occupied parts of Finmark and then into parts of Finnish Lapland, these SAS teams operated on reconnaissance-patrol missions. They used sniper rifles and small explosive charges for ambushes against fixed and mobile targets where opposition was weak. Observation points were set up near airfields and roads to report back how they were being used and also to guide in air strikes. Downed NATO pilots were pointed in the direction of safety while there were also some incidents of ill-equipped but determined Norwegian militia being given assistance in the form of fire support for guerrilla-type operations. Supply points were raided and blown up while several Soviet scout helicopters were shot at with sniper rifles or even a man-portable SAM.
The cold, snow-covered terrain was something which the SAS had long practised operating over and the men were equipped to deal with this. They had cold weather gear with them thus could not only survive but also thrive in the snow. Such conditions along with the sparely-populated terrain allowed the SAS teams to effectively disappear. The Norwegians had officially evacuated their population though what few people remained weren’t able to report to Soviet interrogators that they had seen any of the SAS men because such British commandoes were able to hide from sight. It was the same with the Soviets attacked: they couldn’t see those who hunted their supply trucks on lonely roads which they tried to use or follow with reaction forces the SAS who blow up radar sites set up atop high ground.
Those remaining SAS men in Norway had been held back initially near the airbases at Bardufoss and Evenes smarting at the fact that they weren’t sent forward. When the Soviet Sixth Army came crashing towards Fortress Norway again these SAS men were kept away from the fighting and a chance to raid the flanks of the attacking enemy. Operation WRITER was then drawn up by General Howlett’s planning staff and only then, finally, were the remaining SAS men released for combat operations. They were parachuted into the area around Kautokeino… right before political intervention from London cancelled British involvement in this planned operation. Nevertheless, the SAS were on the ground there and without the planned later arrival of Paras and Gurkhas, they raided the Soviet supply point set up in the town and then disappeared back into the wilderness. There was a major road which ran through Kautokeino connecting Alta in the north with Enontekio down in Lapland which was raided to strike at Soviet forces present before the SAS troops here split into four-man patrols and set off independently of each other in a southwestern direction.
The whole point of the abandoned British contribution to WRITER – the US Marines would move against the Porsangerfjorden and US Army elements would capture Karasjok regardless of London withdrawing its troops – was to heavily attack the flank of the remains of the left wing of the Soviet Sixth Army inside the Finnish Wedge. The Paras and Gurkhas of the 5th Airborne Brigade may not have arrived to do this in strength, but the SAS went ahead with this mission on a much smaller scale. They tore into the eastern-facing flank of the beaten Soviets and hit their air defence sites allowing for NATO aircraft to come forward unmolested in places. After crossing the mountains which ran down the centre, the SAS were soon enough reaching Highway-21 where the bulk of the Soviets were and attacking their isolated outposts as well as reporting back to higher command locations where attempts at reorganising the troops were occurring far from prying eyes forward. There was the hope that active Finnish participation in the war on NATO’s side would see a huge pocket formed of three Soviet divisions plus the majority of the army-level supporting assets of the Soviet Sixth Army trapped here if that should happen while the SAS held onto the eastern side of that pocket. There would only be three dozen men, a minuscule force, but the terrain wouldn’t be passable for the Soviets to slip away unmolested.
Throughout Lower Saxony and into the Low Countries, two sabre squadrons with 1/21 SAS and the Reserve Sabre Squadron with 1/22 SAS operated under the direct control of British Second Army’s headquarters special forces commander. Each company-sized force operated in platoon- & squad-sized detachments rather than small four-man groups. They were used as a reaction force to chase down Soviet Spetsnaz forces which were operating far and wide in NATO’s rear areas and also for selected strike missions behind the frontlines separate from those other SAS men on stay behind duties.
These men of the Artist’s Rifles – this TA regiment pre-dated the regular 22nd SAS Regiment – fought hard in many engagements tracking Soviet commandoes by the trails of blood which the Spetsnaz left in their wake though took many losses in counter-ambushes when wily Spetsnaz units got wind of their hunters. There were also a few raids conducted by the 1/22 SAS element in Germany as they struck at command posts identified and also a mobile intelligence analysis site which the GRU had set up too close to the frontlines; the SAS arrived to kill then intelligence officers there, nab a few prisoners and also collect documents.
Requests for the SAS to rescue downed NATO pilots were refused by higher authority as those on the western sides of the frontlines were few in number and needed there rather than being sent eastwards to do such tasks which would certainly see them wiped out. Yet, there was a small SAS operation conducted along similar lines to a rescue mission late in the evening of Friday March 18th when a squad-sized force (those reservists not the TA men) was sent forward in a trio of low-flying Army Air Corps Lynx AH1 helicopters to the tiny village of Domane Dahle, located near Springe. A column of vehicles with the British I Corps’ military intelligence staff had been forced into the village when cut off by Soviet tanks pouring towards the Weser and there were some senior, valuable men among those who ended up there. Such people couldn’t be allowed to fall into Soviet hands with all of the knowledge that they had in their heads and were slated for immediate evacuation when so many other people across the West German countryside in rear-area roles weren’t going to get such special treatment as being saved. A Brigadier, a pair of Colonels and a single Captain – just these four staff officers – were airlifted out of there ahead of Soviet tanks closing-in. Many of the SAS men involved in the operation and those British officers on the ground left behind couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about when others had been left behind with room in the helicopters for more men too, but those four men were deemed by the top brass to be invaluable to the UK national interest.
There would be some post-war drama about this small little operation with a then retired SAS man involved in the mission writing a book that he couldn’t get published due to government interference concerning who those men were, the effort expended to save them from Soviet captivity and the fate of the others caught that evening at Domane Dahle.
E Sabre Squadron with 1/21 SAS had been mobilised at its South Wales depots as part of LION and these TA commandoes had been sent to Northern Ireland to replace regular special forces troopers pulled out and sent to Germany to undertake stay behind duties. It’s commander was an experienced Major on his second SAS tour who usually served with the King’s Regiment TA battalion: he was a Catholic from Merseyside and someone who had spent his career in the regulars and then the TA without personally witnessing any prejudice against himself or other Catholics.
The Major’s deputy was an Australian SAS man on an exchange program who had remained where he was in the build-up to war as Australia set itself on a course to be committed to war breaking out. The rest of this Captain’s comrades were waiting on Okinawa for the chance to see action and he himself would rather have gone to Germany, but instead it was to Ulster where he ended up. Within days of arriving in Northern Ireland (before war erupted) the Captain informed the Major that he had become aware of a very troubling situation at the base where E Squadron was operating from outside Newry. The SAS men were deployed against IRA activity in South Armagh but the Captain felt that there was a threat to the Major personally from members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) who were sharing the base where the SAS had their headquarters. There had been talk which had got back to the Captain of the Major being regarded as an enemy because he was a Catholic: no other reason than that was given. Those UDR men were not just all talk, the Captain believed.
Like the situation with Domane Dahle and the military intelligence officers lifted out of there in a shroud of secrecy, what later happened in Ulster at Newry was something which caused controversy post-war. The Major was suffocated in his sleep and then his corpse set on fire in an unnecessary and gruesome fashion during the fourth night of the war while he was in his supposedly-secure quarters. Most of his men – who he was rather popular with – were away from the barracks out on deployment across South Armagh at the time though there were a few present when his body was found; the Australian Captain wasn’t there. Six UDR men and a further SAS trooper lost their lives afterwards in gunfire and even hand-to-hand combat that rocked the military base as men who were meant to be on the same side fought each other.
An excellent job was done afterwards by Headquarters Northern Ireland in hushing this all up with no news of what happened at Newry leaking out during the war: the SAS men in the field engaging the enemy didn’t know that they had further enemies among them too.
The Captain took over E Squadron for a few days before he was later recalled back to Sterling Lines Barracks at Hereford (before he actually went all the way back to Australia in an outraged mood) while some UDR officers and volunteer enlisted men in Newry were transferred away from there. The squad of SAS men who were at the base that night were also moved from Ulster and ended up in Germany. The unofficial word spread deliberately was that the IRA had killed the Major and this news helped give an extra boost to the SAS men across South Armagh as they did immense damage to terrorist activity there. There were almost a hundred of them and they smashed apart the nationalist terrorists who tried to run weapons and fighters across the border from the Irish Republic. They weren’t actually aware of further events across Northern Ireland as the war was ongoing with the ethnic cleansing that went on and were solely involved in fighting the IRA in their operational area rather than any collusion with loyalist militants and the UDR which occurred elsewhere.
Of course though, many years later, those SAS men who lost their commander and nine comrades fighting against a real enemy in South Armagh, found out that they had other enemies too. The information dribbled out in the post-war world and there was a diplomatic incident between London and Canberra over what that then retired Australian SAS Captain said to the media. Three UDR men who had initially been in Newry when the Third World War started were murdered in horrible manners while another two were officially listed by civilian authorities as missing. Part-time soldiers they might have been, but these SAS men when they later found out the truth acted like avenging warriors hunting down those who had wronged them.
Ulster was an ugly place during World War Three and this wasn’t the only incident like this to take place within the ranks of the various British military elements deployed there… though such episodes were rare and nothing on the scale of the civilian strife that occurred there.
Two more squadrons from 1/21 SAS were on the UK mainland: the Artist’s Rifles were deployed across all theatres of British military action during the war.
One of these (B Sabre Squadron) was broken up with detachments deployed throughout the country reporting to several district commanders. Those SAS men who had taken part in Operation GORDON on the eve of war down in the South–East District were part of this formations deployed as well across the Eastern District, the North–Eastern District and the Scotland District. None of them managed to ambush Soviet Spetsnaz commandoes successfully like was done on the eve of war though they tried their best to track down such foreign commandoes following hot on the heels of all the blood spilt by other British and American military personnel which the Spetsnaz encountered as well as many unfortunate civilians too.
The Spetsnaz spread terror in a manner which the SAS would never have been able to match, even if there had been an inkling to do so.
That second squadron was maintained as a strategic reserve under the command of General Sir John Chapple as C-in-C UK Land Forces. D Sabre Squadron restlessly sat out the early stages of the war at RAF Abingdon: an airbase located between Oxford and the huge transport aircraft hub of RAF Brize Norton. There were helicopters and transport aircraft on stand-by for their use along with access to trucks that could move them fast along empty main roads all across the south of England. These SAS men were kept waiting though without being moved to see action anywhere. An alert had seen a Hercules C1 warming up over at RAF Brize Norton to make the short hop over the RAF Abingdon to pick them up and take them to Den Helder in the Netherlands on the morning of March 21st, yet that mission had been cancelled at the last minute… many of the SAS men when they later learnt the details had been relieved.
A Soviet submarine had surfaced just off that Dutch port and joint naval base and there had been men in boats landing there. Initial information had come to the UK that there was a Soviet commando operation going on there and this news arrived when the War Cabinet was meeting beneath Whitehall; George Younger had instructed the SAS to be sent to combat that suspected landing at once with no preparation made so that it would be broke up before regular troops were sent there from across Holland. Thankfully, those boats which had landed men had been those of the Royal Netherlands Navy which had gone out to rescue crew members from a Soviet Navy submarine which had surfaced and volunteered a surrender after an on-board radiation leak. The foolish haste with how the SAS had nearly been sent to parachute over the peninsula where Den Helder was could have cost them very dear with the terrible weather probably sending them into the cold waters of the North Sea near when that submarine was leaking radiation as it was. This was against the background of the still unresolved situation with the Dutch war cabinet having voted as they had and Britain finding out about that, yet it still wasn’t one of Defence Secretary Younger’s finest moments of the war.
Three regular squadrons from 1/22 SAS and all five from the TA-manned 1/23 SAS were all in Germany on stay behind missions. They were deployed over a large area initially up close to the Inter-German Border as the Soviet first and second echelons paid an extremely bloody price for their advances but then extending their operational areas when the enemy third echelon made it as far as the Weser.
In four-man teams operating without external control the hundreds of SAS men went to work there in the enemy rear. They did what was done up in northern Norway only on a greater scale. Targets of opportunity from artillery and engineering units to columns moving reinforcing troops forward were ambushed. Supply points and communications sites were struck at in armed raids. Radar stations were blown up and sniper fire directed against staff officers dispatched as messengers from headquarters as well as vehicle traffic controllers. East German occupation authority detachments were gunned down after SAS patrols became aware of what they were doing to defenceless West German civilians who hadn’t been evacuated in time. There was much scouting done so that air strikes could be guided-in and also reinforcements moving forward detected when possible. The SAS mission was to make those Soviets in the rear frightened and distracted from their job and they did this rather well.
Cities and towns were avoided though this wasn’t northern Norway with mass expanses of wilderness. The SAS did their best to hide when they stayed still during daylight and usually only operated at night, but they still attracted hostile enemy attention. Rear-area troops moved against them though such second-line forces rarely caused the SAS trouble unless those hunters got lucky or a major mistake was made on the part of an individual SAS patrol. As long as the SAS teams kept mobile and avoided fights where they couldn’t win, they were free to carry on as they were unleashing widespread chaos and tying up many enemy resources to try to locate and engage them.
There was often accidental contact made with downed NATO pilots and small groups of NATO soldiers cut off but trying to avoid inevitable capture. Many of these encounters were with fellow British servicemen though military personnel from across the NATO countries were met. The SAS teams weren’t able to have pilots or regular soldiers join them if they wanted to continue to operate as they were and so they did their best by pointing such people towards the general direction of safety, warning them of what dangers ahead to expect and also arming them with weapons captured from the enemy too when available.
Abandoning such people without the training to survive in such an environment as it was behind the lines brought up many moral issues for the SAS men involved though it was in their mission orders. Further crises of conscience came with what to do with Soviet, East German and Polish prisoners that ended up in their hands when they strove to avoid this. Badly wounded enemy soldiers just couldn’t be taken with them though neither could they be shot out of hand; there had been allegations that those SAS men who took part in NIMROD in London in May 1980 had done that though. Those wounded enemy were left behind even though they might give vital information to Soviet forces who came across them when hunting the SAS because nothing else could be done. Killing the enemy in combat was what the SAS did, and did well, but murder to protect yourself from the possibility of later death or capture due to those who had seen you was too hard of a thing to do.
There were quite a few occasion where that moral objection came back to haunt those involved too as several SAS teams were tracked by pursuers given clues by wounded men left behind from SAS actions.
Slowly, the losses among the SAS teams built up. This was always going to happen as they were out on their own but until each team was finished, the SAS kept on fighting and undertaking their missions just as fellow NATO stay behind teams were doing too. It was to be a long war for them.
One Hundred & Sixty–Eight
The British 7th Armoured Division was very far from ready for combat. It could be argued that as long as many further months were needed to get the formation up to the necessary standard to engage in full-scale combat in Germany. There had been no time though, none at all. The division was an emergency formation and this was a great emergency. Some small elements were left behind along with quite a few of the volunteer troops who were still in basic training, but the old soldiers who formed the majority of the personnel with the formation left Britain with the division and headed for the Continent. Towards Harwich and Felixstowe on the East Anglian coastline – two ports which had suffered much damage from air attacks yet were still operational – the 7th Armoured Division was transported towards and then loaded onto ships gathered to take it across the North Sea. Civilian roll-on/roll-off ferries along with an ad hoc group of freighters and even a few container ships were rapidly loaded under the cover of darkness and then left Britain to race across to the Dutch coastline escorted by missile boats and minesweepers.
The choice of entry to Europe through Holland had been because there was no other choice. The 7th Armoured Division had been formed up in East Anglia and it was to be sent to northwestern West Germany: Holland lay between the two. To try to move it through Calais or Zeebrugge to the south meant using those ports which had taken move damage than those in the Netherlands and also crossing southern England first before the sea could be reached. To go to the West German ports of Emden and Wilhelmshaven meant exposing the shipping and then the unloading operation to Soviet air attacks. The only choice was to go through Holland no matter what was going on with the Dutch government wanting to quit the war yet not having made any public steps to do so. It was thought that the Dutch wouldn’t like thousands of British troops rolling through its harbours and then road network but the Dutch military rear-area forces on the ground there were still working with the NATO logistics network and therefore the movement of British forces across the country shouldn’t cause any difficulties there unless direct and overt political interference came from above.
Through the Hook of Holland and Vlissingen (the latter better known in the English-speaking world as Flushing) the low-loader trucks carrying much of the 7th Armoured Division moved with Centurion tanks and the Saracen & Spartan armoured vehicles rather than having those vehicles tear up paved roads. The majority of the troops were being flown forward to meet them in Germany yet still many men were with the convoys which rolled through western and southern parts of the Netherlands. There was a noticeable shortage of specialist components brought with the 7th Armoured Division from artillery and engineers in the combat support roles to communications and supply elements providing service support. Most effort with this formation had been composed to build its combat power with supporting attachments to be added once in Germany from those of other, smashed divisions there which had lost most of their combat units but still maintained rear-area elements.
When approaching the crossings over the Rhine – from Arnhem down to the northern reaches of the Ruhr region – there had been a delay incurred with a security threat in the area around the German town of Rees. The crossings there were avoided instead as Bundeswehr rear-area troops moved to deal with a Spetsnaz commando attempt to seize a blow up the several crossings there: Soviet tanks were never going to get there now, it was thought, and so the enemy was out to demolish them to damage NATO war efforts. Afterwards, troops were met at airheads across Westphalia with the 7th Armoured Division closing-in first upon the important communications centre at Bielefeld.
Three of those new brigades raised remained with the 7th Armoured Division (the heavy 10th, 21st and 23rd Brigades) as it headed towards the frontlines while the fourth one – the 29th Light Brigade – had been detached with its light infantry and instead ended up southeast of Bielefeld rather than to the direct east. The 29th Brigade became part of the shattered British 5th Infantry Division giving that formation a second combat brigade after it had previously lost two of its three. The armour all remained with the 7th Armoured Division though and reached the northern portions of the British I Corps operational area.
By the morning of March 24th, these reinforcements direct from the UK were ready to take part in what was to be Operation BLACKSMITH.
BLACKSMITH had been something which had been in the planning and preparation stages since the end of the weekend. It was General Kenny’s brainchild and took up a lot of his attention. The commander of the British Second Army had seen his operational area west of the Weser shrink along with a loss of combat power under his command. The three combat corps under his command – the Bundeswehr’s IV Corps (previously KG Weser), the British I Corps and the US III Corps – sat along the Weser down from near Bremen to near Kassel. This was still the majority of the portion of the front in northern Germany yet the French Second Army was on his left and the still-growing US Fifth Army to the right.
He had not committed his forces to the failed NATO counter-offensives by the French and then the Americans either side of him on Sunday morning and neither attacked when the US Seventh Army had failed with their EAGLE PUSH attempt two days ago. There had been pressure on him to do so from his fellow NATO contemporaries and also much strong urging from home too. Some US Army officers had called General Kenny ‘Monty’ (as in Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery) and not meant that in a flattering manner; he hadn’t minded for he admired all that Field Marshal Montgomery had achieved as a military commander.
The British Second Army had been building up its smashed strength and undertaking careful reconnaissance forward to assess the situation on the other side of the Weser for when General Kenny was ready to move forward. Yesterday’s failed Soviet attack against his Belgian troops in the opposite direction had barely troubled his command overall even if the Belgians there were beat up some. In fact, he had welcomed that failure on the part of the Soviets against his forces for the situation which it left them in afterwards as open as they were to his own planned offensive: BLACKSMITH.
The ‘Monty’ slur had been because what quite a few senior American officers not involved believed what General Kenny was planning was as ambitiously foolish as MARKET GARDEN in 1944. The use of paratroopers to open the way ahead for a single main drive forward with armour, though this time over only one river rather than several as in Holland towards the end of World War Two, brought about that linkage between BLACKSMITH and the failure forty-four years ago. Such criticism was unfair but it was still there.
The operation which faced all this denigration before it began called for an attack westwards to be made over the Weser in the Hameln area with Belgian, British and even Portuguese paratroopers opening the way ahead in multiple drops so that an armoured drive could be made in a northeastern direction towards the lines of the Hannover Pocket. Hameln sat on the occupied eastern side of the Weser and the positions of the British I Corps opposite it were the closest to Hannover along the frontlines in northern Germany. Opposition ahead was composed of the left-flank of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army, a field army which had used up most of its available weapons, fuel and best troops yesterday. Forward reconnaissance on the ground and in the air had pointed to the Soviets in this region being very weak indeed with most fuel for manoeuvre now used up, their defensive minefields having little depth, internal communications within the field army being weak and empty stores of ammunition after they had failed to get adequate resupply: they had a shortage of artillery shells and SAMs especially.
The Hannover pocket behind the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army was still fighting and there were tens of thousands of British and Bundeswehr troops there fast running out of everything they would need to keep up resisting. They were still active due to the failure of a Polish field army deployed right near them to yet attack – there was no firm intelligence as to why this was the case – but would eventually collapse should either of the two detected Soviet field armies moving forward through East Germany as part of a Soviet fourth echelon make a move to finish them off.
General Kenny believed that with BLACKSMITH launched today he could reach and relieve the Hannover pocket before the certain collapse that would soon happen there and rescue those trapped troops… which would mean a massive boost to the numbers of men and equipment under his command. Moreover, such a move would have the benefit of forcing the three Soviet and Polish field armies downstream along the Weser – the Soviet Eleventh Guards, the Soviet First Guards and the Polish First Armys – to reconsider their positions less a further advance from Hannover cut them off with a march northwards. Maybe such grand later attempts at encirclement were too much, but reaching Hannover was regarded as something which could be done.
Before BLACKSMITH was launched, General Kenny had carefully assembled his forces in what he hoped was out of the eye of Soviet intelligence efforts.
The British I Corps would lead the ground offensive with three combat divisions involved plus supporting attachments. Crossing over the Weser first would be paratroopers from the finally-committed Belgian Para-Commando Regiment with three of their own parachute battalions along with 4 PARA (a TA formation moved from strategic reserve in Britain) along with the new and understrength 5 PARA too. These men would be air-dropped all around Weser with combat engineers attached to take apart the Soviet frontline defences from the rear. At the same time, the Portuguese Light Airborne Brigade would be parachuted into the area around the town of Springe halfway between Hameln and Hannover. This formation would have five parachute and commando battalions and spread over a wide area near Springe to take control of Highway-217: one of their drop-zones was near Domane Dahle. There was a worry among many over the fighting capabilities of the Portuguese with them having seen no action and only having been in Germany for a few days, but General Kenny had a lot of faith in them and their ability to cause serious damage deep in the Soviet rear as Springe was a major communications point for the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army.
A lot of artillery and engineers would strike at points all around Hameln where the ground forces of the British I Corps would launch their offensive from. The Royal Artillery was present in strength with it’s heavy guns while the Belgians and Portuguese had many ready in-place too; the Bundeswehr was providing short-range multiple-barrelled rocket launchers in further support. More rockets would come from Royal Engineers firing Giant Viper mine-clearing weapons at range over the heads of assault engineers going forward over the river to clear obstacles as well as further mines in an area where the depth of those fixed defences was known to be narrow. Combat bridging elements were ready in number ready to throw pontoon bridges over the Weser and also some road-mobile amphibious ferries too to assist in the fast transport of tanks and armoured vehicles.
There would be massed air support on-hand from the 2 ATAF's tactical elements though not many RAF aircraft after their staggering losses so far in this war. A strike by B-52s had been planned but later cancelled as part of BLACKSMITH as there was the worry over bombs falling unintentionally upon engineers doing their work yet the 3 ATAF was sending some FB-111s to do some better-targeted strategic strike missions with large payloads as part of the opening attack.
All of this external support was for the heavy ground forces: three British Army divisions. Moving on the left over the river and deploying afterwards to guard the northern flank of the initial main effort was the 7th Armoured Division. Losses were expected to occur here yet it was believed that those old soldiers with their outdated but still capable equipment could do their job. On the other flank, facing south, would be the understrength 5th Infantry Division as a much lighter force and again it was expected that many casualties would be inflicted in that role as well. The drive towards Hannover would be made by the 4th Armoured Division after its 11th & 20th Armoured Brigades had been recently joined by the 33rd Brigade. The ‘Tiger Division’ was to race forward linking up with airborne elements ahead and have its flanks protected by the two other divisions. There would be a breakout from the Hannover pocket made to meet them and that would hopefully occur north of the Diester Hills, a chain of high ground running in a lateral direction near Springe and again halfway between Hameln and Hannover.
It was hoped that the Tiger Division didn’t get bogged down in those hills where a defending force would be able to take them apart if it came to that disastrous situation.
That opposition ahead of the forces assigned to BLACKSMITH was regarded as very weak. There was an understrength though large (in terms of subordinate units, not actual combat elements) divisional command in the immediate area as part of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army. General Kenny’s intelligence assets couldn’t identify the divisional number, but it was one of those from the Belorussian Military District which late last week had tore through the NATO rears on the North German Plain. Losses in terms of tanks hadn’t been replaced and there were estimated to be only half of the original three hundred number left following ground combat and then NATO air interdiction. Mechanised infantry units from reorganised Soviet Third Shock Army formations were known to have joined the division though this regiment assigned was again weakened and nowhere near as capable as it had once been. The Soviets were meant to be short on everything when it came to combat supplies and the division had nothing behind it apart from KGB rear-area security troops and also East German security units doing their worst against the civilian population which remained.
Everything was in-place and so this morning, just before the first signs of dawn appeared, BLACKSMITH begun. Aircraft filled the skies, artillery started opening up and small boats laden with combat engineers started crossing the Weser near Hameln.
It was time to see if all of General Kenny’s preparations had been made properly as well as whether the faith put in him by General Galvin as SACEUR (when others doubted the British offensive) was going to pay off too. The British Army was on the attack and heading to rescue those in the Hannover pocket.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 23:03:36 GMT
One Hundred & Sixty–Nine
As the British went into action on the North German Plain, massed Soviet aircraft did the same over the Kola Peninsula. From airbases throughout the northwestern portion of the Soviet Union, eventually almost two hundred aircraft would climb into the skies aiming to strike against US Navy forces in the Barents Sea which had the evening before struck the Soviet mainland. There were Naval Aviation raketonosets, further missile-carrying bombers from Long-Range Aviation, interceptors from the Air Defence Forces and strike aircraft from the Air Force’s Seventy-Sixth Air Army.
Devastating the American naval flotilla and sinking those carriers had become a priority and thus this immense effort was expended to do just that as first light approached.
The US Navy was waiting for this to occur though – admittedly not on such a scale as it did – and was thus prepared to counter it with their own aircraft and missiles as well as the advantage which they believed they had in electronic warfare capabilities. Tomcats and Hornets (many of the latter flown by US Marines pilots) waited on the decks of carriers and also on airborne alert for such an enemy strike while missile launchers upon warships were pointed skywards.
The resulting Battle of the Barents Sea was to be the biggest naval-air clash of the war.
Before the raketonosets attack came the fighter sweep made by the interceptors of the Air Defence Forces. The PVO unleashed Flankers and Foxhounds along with some MiG-25PDS Foxbat Es too. These aircraft came from air defence regiments across the operational zone of the Soviet Tenth Air Army and had been pulled away from other missions so that they could come in from multiple directions. All of these aircraft were the best that the Soviets could field with the PVO pilots and weapons officers which flew them this morning told to engage defending US Navy fighters and to also try to hit Hawkeye AWACS aircraft operating from the American carriers too.
Those interceptors came from the south high above land and from the east over the water too. They were in flights as small as four aircraft up to squadrons of eleven or twelve. External fuel tanks were jettisoned by those flying from distance though all were armed with as many air-to-air missiles as could be carried so that those could fill the skies and hit as many defending US Navy aircraft as possible.
Hawkeyes picked them up at distance, even the Flankers coming from low over land trying to use the background terrain to mask their approach, and the radars aboard those small, propeller-driven aircraft flying from the carriers ‘burnt through’ the jamming employed. Alert fighters were shot off the carriers to join those already airborne and priority targets assigned by fighter controllers whose screens were full of contacts.
The resulting air combat took place at beyond visual range: neither set of opponents actually saw each other despite the daylight apart from what was on radar screens. Striking Fleet Atlantic used its fighters rather than SAMs from warships as the latter were being saved for the correctly anticipated cruise missile barrage which they were sure was to follow. Those Tomcats and Hornets were sent to challenge the Soviet aircraft heading their way and the first missiles which they fired were long-range Phoenix and Sparrow models. These were joined soon enough by long-range Soviet missiles heading the other way.
Both sides shot at each other and then moved to avoid those missiles coming towards themselves. The Phoenix missiles which the Tomcats launched had the longest range of all of those fielded by both sides and this, combined with airborne radar, gave the US Navy a major advantage. Yet, the Soviet aircraft were fast and manoeuvrable and sought to dodge them and the Sparrows which followed. Those latter American missiles plus the ones fired by the interceptors of PVO needed to be guided-in towards their targets with the launching aircraft’s radar needing to remain fixed upon the engaged aircraft. Such an action meant not manoeuvring too much even when faced with incoming fire: not something which any pilot on either side wanted to do. Therefore, the first missile barrages either way weren’t that successful with not enough aircraft being taken out by either side to attain any high level of success for either.
The attacks were judged by Striking Fleet Atlantic to be attempting to pull their attention away to the east and the thinking was that a major strike against their carriers was soon afterwards going to be tried from the west. Many aircraft had been held back to deal with that and thus a lower number of US Navy aircraft had been committed as opposed to those of the Soviets. When air-to-air missiles did eventually close with targets, both sides had aircraft knocked down yet with hundreds of missiles fired only twenty-three aircraft were eventually struck: fourteen PVO interceptors and nine US Navy fighters. For the US Navy this was regarded as a victory as they had lost a fewer number than the Soviets while their Hawkeye airborne radars were untouched and free to redeploy after the enemy interceptors were flying home. Conversely, the Soviets too believed that they had won a great victory as their aircrews had claimed a number of victories triple to what they had actually achieved and thus their distraction effort had drawn away many American fighters.
The raketonosets came next. There were Badgers, Backfires and Bears with two thirds of those aircraft being from Long-Range Aviation after Naval Aviation had taken the losses which it had. None were to fly over open water but instead launch their cruise missiles when back over the Kola Peninsula and have those missiles guided towards their targets by naval reconnaissance Bears remaining over land too.
US Navy Tomcats were expected to have been drawn off so in the main only SAM-armed warships would oppose the barrage of cruise missiles which were to be fired: in previous saturation attacks some missiles had always got through the SAM defences when there had been no fighter attacks against the launching raketonosets.
The strategic missile-bombers followed the plan perfectly and undertook their missile launches far from danger. They were operating from forward airfields and had got airborne with the maximum number of cruise missiles which they could carry as they soon intended to land again. Targeting data had been gained by a pair of reconnaissance Bears which reported that they had overcome American jamming attempts. Kelt, Kingfish and Kitchen models of anti-ship cruise missiles fell away from raketonosets which then turned away before those missiles had their wings extended and rocket motors kicked-in so they could thunder away at high Mach numbers.
A significant portion of the remaining war stocks of cruise missiles available to the Northern Fleet’s raketonosets were expended with this strike. The Badgers each fired two Kelt or Kingfish missiles with the Backfires laden with a trio of Kitchens. Then there were those Bears each carrying eight Kitchen missiles. Such a use of so many of these valuable missiles for one mission was thought by many to be overkill but the damage which the American carriers had done – and could keep on doing – was used to justify such an expense.
During their flight and in their terminal dives, the cruise missiles were left unmolested. Among the mass waves of these were specially modified versions of the less-capable Kelt fitted with an electronic warfare package which its designers believed would render opposition to them impotent. At first it seemed that this was the case as the missiles faced no air-to-air missiles nor SAMs coming towards them and then no mass of last-ditch automatic cannon fire. They then slammed into targets with large numbers of impacts upon high-value target as their on-board systems used artificial intelligence programmes to coordinate such hits to destroy the aircraft carriers which they flew into.
The only targets which these cruise missiles hit was seawater. They hit the ocean and broke up upon impact with warheads detonating with immense blasts of explosives weakened by the surface of the Barents Sea. The US Navy had spoofed these missiles away from them to quite a distance too after nearly two weeks of learning how they worked and testing countermeasures to defeat them. The Vampires weren’t getting their kills this morning and were all used up for absolutely no gain at all.
Strike aircraft from the Soviet Seventy-Sixth Air Army attacked last. They had a few escorts from the Soviet Tenth Air Army with some Flankers providing support, yet there weren’t many of either strike or fighter aircraft available. These were meant to go out over the Barents Sea and finish off surviving US Navy warships and thus make sure that there was no long a threat to the Soviet coast.
Just over forty Fitters and Floggers were available and these were aircraft which had late yesterday been flown out of airbases established inside Finnish Lapland at the beginning of the war. These and others with the Soviet Seventy-Sixth Air Army had been given urgent orders to leave and head back over the border as Finnish ground troops moved towards their bases; when they flew away they left behind their ground crews, maintenance equipment and a lot of weaponry… and then the Finns had yet to attack those bases either.
Survivors themselves of the failed air war over northern Norway, these strike aircraft flew out over the cold waters of the Barents Sea carrying heavy loads of shorter range radar- & TV-guided anti-ship missiles. Only self-defence systems on a few US Navy warships were meant to oppose them, not interceptors and AEGIS warships. Yet such defences were employed against them with support from Hawkeye AWACS aircraft too. The individual flights were attacked by air-to-air missiles coming from above them and SAMs lancing upwards too. This all occurred before the Fitters and Floggers could get anywhere near any US Navy warships, vessels which had during the night moved a considerable distance offshore to allow their electronic defensive systems to operate free from Soviet interference. Those aircraft were down in number with the few remaining aircraft soon withdrawing backwards land.
Not a single warship had even been scratched.
Striking Fleet Atlantic had just won a famous victory. Nine of its fighters had been lost in long-range aerial missile combat yet that was the extent of losses incurred. There was no Soviet naval surface or subsurface activity alongside their failed mass air attack and the coastal missile batteries along the Soviet shoreline hadn’t opened fire wither. Maybe the collection of US Navy warships could have been overwhelmed with a combined assault though their defences were rather strong and it was now a certain opinion among the senior ranks of the US Navy that they had the measure of the Soviets.
Ahead of Striking Fleet Atlantic lay the Kola Peninsula while off the east lay the entrance to the White Sea. There were still many Soviet military facilities along the coast and inland too, including airfields where the aircraft which had flown against them had returned to. This whole stretch of the enemy shore was open to their attacks with the prospect of another massed Soviet air attack being successful, even if it could be managed, regarded as almost impossible.
Within a couple of hours, Striking Fleet Atlantic would be back attacking the Soviet mainland again.
One Hundred & Seventy
The official war diary of the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards would state that Chieftian tanks from the regiment’s battle group made contact with Warrior tracked armoured vehicles manned by the 1 GREN GDS (first battalion of the Grenadier Guards) battle group at eleven in the morning on a stretch of Highway-217 just outside the village of Ronnenberg; the Grenadier Guards stated that they met with the Irish tankers at a quarter to eleven that morning and the link-up took place about a mile and a half further south around Weetzen. The two formations were with the Tiger Division’s 11th Armoured Brigade and the Iron Division’s 6th Armoured Brigade; the former riding to the rescue of the latter. This minor discrepancy was in the main due to the fog of war but also in part a reflection of the feeling by those trapped within the Hannover pocket that they had played a major part in liberating themselves rather than being thoroughly saved for the certain disaster they were facing.
Nevertheless, the meeting between the two lead units, one advancing northeast and the other southwest, meant that the British and Bundeswehr troops trapped in the greater Hannover area had been relieved. It had taken the British I Corps’ leading elements just over five hours to tear through the frontline defences of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army and then charge deep into their rear to reach trapped NATO forces which should long ago have been finished off.
BLACKSMITH – at least in its initial stages – had been a success. The link-up had been made from the Weser to Hannover yet it had cost the British Army a lot to get there. Moreover, just reaching the outer parts of the pocket which had widened this morning was only the beginning as that connection needed to be secured.
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The Weser crossing operation at Hameln and the parachute drops there and beyond at Springe had come so unexpectedly for the Soviets that at first the British and the NATO troops with them taking part in BLACKSMITH had thought that they might get all the way to Hannover almost unopposed. The Soviet 8GTD elements around the town on the eastern bank of the Weser had their defensive positions directly attacked from the air and with artillery before assaulting troops struck hot on the heels of bombs and shells. Everything happened so fast for the Soviets here with the collective mentality before the assault commenced unwittingly being complacency in what was thought to be a secure and unassailable position.
There was counter-attacking fire from the 8GTD though when this occurred it was immediately pounced upon British fire support. Soviet artillery was silenced by Royal Artillery counter-battery fire (hitting unspotted howitzer positions) and when hidden tanks started to manoeuvre ready to push the British back over the river they found that there were NATO aircraft filling the skies to strike at them as well as paratroopers all over the general area armed with man-portable missile-launchers. Bunkers and trenches were shelled when the men in them opened fire and while this didn’t necessarily mean the destruction of such positions and the deaths of the men inside, they were silenced by the attack made against them too.
Moving away from their crossing sites to the immediate north and south of Hameln itself, the Tiger Division moved to close-in behind Hameln to reach the highway that ran from behind the town away to the northeast.
They advanced through open fields and along small roads which had been cleared of mines through explosives used to destroy those defences and engaged those defenders while on the move. There was extra infantry support deployed on foot behind tanks and armoured vehicles that the British used to advance and it was those dismounted soldiers which bore the front of Soviet defences when those actually put up a fight rather than the Chieftains, Warriors and FV432s which should have been engaged. Soon enough, the Tiger Division was out of the Hameln area and moving along that highway behind leaving those dismounted infantry and paratroopers behind to deal with what Soviet forces wanted to fight on while others were surrendering.
Just to the north, the 7th Armoured Division had gone over the Weser near the villages of Wehrbergen and Wehrberger Werte and then started to advance through woodland and abandoned fields aiming for the distant Suntel Forest beyond. Their infantry quickly left their lightly-armoured Saracen six-wheeled armoured vehicles as these were easy prey for Soviet dismounted missile teams which managed to avoid the fire of the machine guns fitted to those vehicles and also the Centurion tanks present too.
There was a lot of caution in the advance of the 7th Armoured Division as it moved to protect the flank of the Tiger Division and the former formation was faced with much stronger resistance while doing so. They smashed into a regiment of Soviet infantry who had seen plenty of action so far in this war and knew how to effectively fight. Little hamlets and the undergrowth of woodland were established as kill zones and hadn’t been levelled by the massed air and artillery strikes which supported the attacks through Hameln. Nevertheless, the 7th Armoured Division managed to successfully advance to the left of the main British I Corps effort. The Soviet position was brittle and once initial strongpoints were overcome there was nothing of substance behind them apart from a mobile force of BMP-2 infantry vehicles mounting 30mm cannons but carrying no infantry. The big 105mm rifled guns on the Centurions made short work of those using HEAT rounds and then encountered smashed batteries of towed Soviet anti-tank guns which had been hit from the air; those guns had been bombed by FB-111s and would have posed a major threat to the 7th Armoured Division’s operations had they not been dealt with as they had.
Afterwards, it was on towards the Suntel Forest and the roads connecting villages all around that area which would be used by enemy counter-attacking forces in they were able to make an effort to stop BLACKSMITH in its tracks with such an attack. There were Soviet rear-area forces to be engaged and none of those were anticipated to be able to put up any sort of fight when the lumbering Centurions met with those.
The 5th Infantry Division had a tough time too at first when going over the Weser to the south of Hameln at Hagenohsen. The terrain and the opposition was just as it was a little bit further downstream with defending infantry dismounted and their armoured vehicles held back as a reaction force of light armour. Little villages and woodland were cleared by the two attacking British brigades with their own dismounted infantry and then Challenger tanks of the 14th/20th King’s Hussars dashing forward to surround such positions from the rear as they escorted FV432s laden with more infantry. T-62s were encountered supporting the Soviet infantry from their own fixed positions and the British took advantage of this Soviet mistake in throwing away their mobility by using the better range and capabilities of the Challenger tank to engage those tanks before they could leave such positions.
Fire support poured in to assist the British here in getting through the defensive lines which the Soviets had built across the German countryside and they were again very narrow with little depth. There had clearly been plans to make these much denser – the preparations had been made – but that effort had not been completed and then the 5th Infantry Division was moving forward. There were some tanks and mechanised infantry present though the British here were a general light force: this slowed them down as the majority of positions couldn’t be bypassed. The 14th/20th King’s Hussars had gone to war short a squadron (D Squadron with fourteen tanks deployed as part of the doomed Berlin Brigade) before being engaged in combat preceding BLACKSMITH. Those remaining Challengers did their best but it still took time to slowly but surely extend the bridgehead over the Weser before a breakout could be made.
There was a KGB field security unit which had fallen back into the woods of the Hassleburg and those men with their light but lethal weaponry had to be beaten back while the anti-tank guns deployed around the village of Voremberg as a blocking force took out several Challengers before they were smashed by follow-up air power.
Finally though, the brittle defences near the river were clear and the 5th Infantry Division could edge further forwards.
Springe was where the Portuguese paratroopers landed and this town along Highway-217 hadn’t just been chosen for its geographical position. British intelligence had pointed to Springe being a major field base for the rear-area support of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army as a whole with supply dumps there and troops being sent to the frontlines moved through there.
The Portuguese landed in strength all around the town after being met by pathfinders which had arrived through the night and moved against it. They only had light weapons but surprise on their side as well as an eagerness to fight. There were several penal units they met as the enemy foolishly used these men as immediate reaction forces and those condemned men suddenly overwhelmed many Portuguese units with the numbers of them eager to surrender. The KGB guard companies meant to escort such men fled in disarray when this occurred as they were lucky that their charges hadn’t turned their weapons on them and instead wanted to defect to the NATO troops which they encountered.
Still, many Portuguese units were unencumbered by this and attacked the Springe area on foot aiming to destroy rear-area forces there and take control over a large part of the highway up which British tanks were soon expected to arrive. They came across supply dumps around the town which were guarded but almost empty while trucks that were full of useless junk that should have been necessary military supplies. An apparent detention centre used by East German security forces to the north against the slopes of the forest around the Diester Hills was attacked and the Portuguese paratroopers killed those guards, liberated the mistreated civilian prisoners and then set fire to the place.
It was an important piece of real estate which the Portuguese were in possession of and while intelligence before BLACKSMITH begun had pointed to no enemy forces of armour present nearby which the Soviets might use for a counterattack, anti-armour positions were quickly sought. The Portuguese paratroopers were actually controlled by their country’s air force with the commandoes with them part of the army; there were different weapons used by both for anti-tank defences from recoilless rifles to Carl Gustav’s to a very few TOW missiles.
Thankfully, the intelligence was correct and the only tanks which the Portuguese saw were soon to be British rather than Soviet ones which they would have in all honesty struggled to deal with effectively.
From Hameln, the Tiger Division had moved northeast aiming for Springe first. They drove forward as the morning got brighter and light springtime rain fell in shower bursts which they knew was playing havoc with their air support. There was an intention to follow the main road as that would lead them directly to Hannover though just charging up that two-lane tarmac-covered road wasn’t done without the immediate flanks being covered. The 7th Armoured Division was covering the most dangerous northern flank at distance but meanwhile there were light enemy units which needed to be engaged and destroyed by the Tiger Division itself.
The 11th Brigade was the unit tasked with the lead advance with its tanks from the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards and then two infantry battle groups (2 QUEEN’S & 3 R ANGLIAN) in tracked armoured vehicles. The 20th Brigade was behind them with one armoured battalion and three battalions of infantry while the 33rd Brigade was tasked with the immediate support mission. There were countless small engagements off the sides of the highway with the lead advancing units having to stop and wait again and again for those to be blasted and then overrun if they couldn’t be bypassed. It was frustrating for those out front yet they were making progress and also knew the risks of leaving those Soviet forces in their rear to cause havoc with all the other vehicle traffic which was soon to use this road which they followed.
Once Springe was reached and the paratroopers there relieved, the 11th Brigade continued following the road as it looped around the edges of the Diester Hills before heading up to Ronnenberg and Weetzen. Chieftain’s with the 20th Brigade supported by Scimitar & Scorpion reconnaissance vehicles plus infantry mounted in their vehicles cut off the corner there and went into the high ground through the forest. This was due to forward air reconnaissance in support spotting Soviet forces facing two pincers closing in upon them fleeing that way with light armoured vehicles and infantry making that move.
Thankfully, the British didn’t go too far inside that broken terrain. They at once ran into a lot of defensive fire from what was quickly interpreted as a planned move to do a lot of damage to them. Those 20th Brigade elements, bloodied by combat earlier in the war, pulled back fast and called for massed rocket artillery support to blast ahead of them before their dismounted infantry component – the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders – could be later brought up to do into that covered ground afterwards.
Away from that nasty instance of close-quarters combat, the 11th Brigade finally reached troops coming down from Hannover.
The 6th Armoured Brigade had moved out of the southwestern portion of the Hannover pocket and through smouldering remains of the city’s industrial areas to begin their breakout attack. They had followed the course of the smashed railway line out of Hannover rather than Highway-217 as it was thought that lighter opposition could be expected with such an attack.
Those forces involved were all issued with the final combat stores which they would get should their mission fail. Everything was running out inside Hannover as the supply convoys caught in the pocket when it was created had finally been exhausted and nothing else was forthcoming in terms of ammunition and fuel. Many armoured vehicles had to be left behind as they were missing the necessary spare parts to allow them to function properly while there were a lot of missing soldiers too among the ranks who were either dead or dying back in the filthy field hospitals which the NATO military forces in Hannover were forced to make do with.
The advance here by the 6th Brigade was truly a last gasp and they were very glad when they made contact with those who had come to rescue them even if their pride wouldn’t allow them to properly show how grateful that they were for not being abandoned as many had at first thought they had been.
It had been the mass use of air power, which while operating alongside carefully-marshalled ground forces making use of the best ground and accurate intelligence upon the enemy, had allowed BLACKSMITH to take place and achieve success in the link-up between Hameln and Hannover.
NATO aircraft from the 2 ATAF had filled the skies above the battlefield and across the North German Plain to allow General Kenny’s careful offensive to work. There were RAF Harriers, Jaguars, Phantoms and Tornados alongside Belgian, Luftwaffe and USAF tactical aircraft: Alpha-Jets, A-10s, F-4s, F-15s, F-16s, Mirage-5s and Tornados. These flew tactical close-air support missions, deep strikes behind the battlefield and fighter cover high above. Previously-identified targets as well as ones of opportunity were bombed while there was an accurate assessment made of Soviet fighter interference which was then dealt with.
This massed air support was available for BLACKSMITH due to the situation on the ground in occupied East Germany now starting to be exploited by NATO aircraft away from this battlefield as well: the lack of ability by the Soviets to defend themselves from air attacks. The Soviet ground-based air defences were nowhere near as capable as they had previously been and this wasn’t just due to the previous destruction of the integrated air defence system in combat operations, something which NATO had been doing very well, but down to the ever-worsening supply situation that they were facing. There were no more missile reloads coming forward nor anti-aircraft artillery shells or radar antenna and further necessary pieces of support equipment to replace losses. Those air defence units which had been busy for a week and a half filling the skies with as much ordnance as possible had finally started to run out of what they needed. Resupply was again and again promised and what was at-hand was used up with the knowledge that at any point the logistics links would work and the trucks would roll forward from distribution points with all that was needed for the multitude of different air defence systems to keep operating. The forward stocks were fast depleted and then were now eventually running dry.
Some air defence units actually reported back to battery and battalion command that they were all out of SAMs and shells for their anti-aircraft guns when they had a very small amount of these left so that they could defend themselves from direct attack, but that still meant that they might as well have been completely out of such anti-air ammunition as they weren’t firing those skywards. Soviet warfighting capabilities depended upon ground-based air defences for their armies in the face of NATO air superiority: the less number of enemy aircraft were technically more capable than their own. Those messages of promised resupply and demands for information as to when that was coming would continue to bounce backwards and forwards but meanwhile those armies of theirs sitting on NATO territory were now open for hostile aerial interference… not just in the area where the British I Corps had attacked either.
*
Reaching the Hannover pocket was only the initial goal of BLACKSMITH. General Kenny had gathered together a large collection of trucks which were loaded with military and civilian supplies and hidden those under camouflage back from the Weser area near Hameln. Much of what was aboard these vehicles could have been put to use elsewhere and it was also vulnerable to Soviet air or commando attacks had this all been detected by them. He had kept such stores ready to move for several days now and those trucks got moving behind the British I Corps’ attacking units.
Only with the air cover available was this effort able to be made. Those NATO fighters whizzing through the sky protected the mass movement of trucks over bridges which the Royal Engineers had thrown over the Weser and then around Hameln and the small-scale fighting which continued there with Soviet units holding out in places among the urban terrain. They went up Highway-217 guided by traffic controllers and through secured areas clear of Soviet forces that hadn’t been bypassed and left behind. There were some breakdowns which occurred and of course every single Soviet soldier with a rifle or a RPG hand been killed or captured, but still the convoys kept moving as it headed for Hannover.
Linking up with those trapped forces in Hannover would do no good if those British and Bundeswehr troops couldn’t be put to use afterwards. There was a large quantity of ammunition, fuel and medical supplies for those troops there in the Hannover pocket with a lot of necessary equipment too to keep their remaining tanks, armoured vehicles and self-propelled artillery functioning. It wasn’t enough for them to at once start conducting full-scale combat operations, but this was only the start. In addition, many trucks carried food and medical supplies meant for the West German civilians in Hannover; again, this wasn’t enough for the tens of thousands of them there but this was the first effort to assist them. There was a moral objective to this but also a military need too with this: those civilians had been an immense drain on the troops which had been trapped in Hannover for almost a week now. Eventually, they would start to be evacuated backwards through the corridor opened though only once it was safety expanded and as always military need would come first.
Highway-217 was the key artery up to Hannover but it was only one road. There were smaller roads nearby across the German countryside yet none of them could carry a significant weight of traffic and they were all not in the correct geographic location… apart from Autobahn-2. This major highway lay to the north though all of it east of the Weser lay firmly under Soviet control at this point with strong armoured forces all around it. The right flank of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army and then the Soviet Eleventh Guards Army was to the north of Hameln where the Autobahn ran from the Weser: an area far from that under control with what had been achieved in the BLACKSMITH operation.
By lunch time, General Kenny was in radio contact with both General Inge as his corps commander and also General von Sandrart who had been in command in Hannover since he had been trapped there. The two of them spoke of the major problems which troops in the Hannover would have to overcome before they could be again put to effective use. The ammunition and fuel which was arriving was fast being distributed but that wasn’t going to solve all problems with weakened units and instances of bad morale. The area could still be defended by those troops, especially now with the Tiger Division arriving, and maybe even expanded some yet those troops there weren’t going to be able to go over on the offensive anytime soon.
There was the question of what was going on with the Polish Fourth Army which was put to General von Sandrart: why hadn’t they attacked Hannover when they were apparently positioned in a manner suggesting that they had moved to do so rather than just surround the pocket? The Bundeswehr general who had been one of SACEUR’s two deputies before he had entered up trapped in Hannover and generally incommunicado for six days told of how two separate Polish soldiers had defected to his men late yesterday. Both had been questioned by British military intelligence personnel under his command (they hadn’t been very friendly with his fellow Germans) and told wild tales of massacres of their fellow countrymen by their supposed Soviet allies and that the Polish Fourth Army wasn’t going anywhere as the KGB decimated it of suspected disloyalty. The truth of all of this was too much to believe, but that didn’t matter… if that was what those tens of thousands of Polish troops believed then that field army wasn’t going nowhere. It would be a magnet for Soviet repression efforts and thus that would assist NATO forces in northern Germany. Furthermore, General von Sandrart was also of the opinion that those stories would have gone far beyond the immediate area too and he reckoned that the tall tales would be spread far and wide as a further, future benefit for NATO and the overall cause of the West.
The situation which the 7th Armoured Division found itself in was also up for discussion, something which had occurred in the late morning. The old soldiers of that formation had established contact with a pair of tank regiments from what was believed to be the Soviet 193TD. This Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army formation was the Soviet field army’s reserve and had been spotted by air reconnaissance moving to attack the flank of the British I Corps after their drive towards Hannover had commenced. First at Messenkamp with forward scouts and now around the village of Eimbeckhausen – both located between the Diester Hills and the Suntel Forest – two of the 7th Armoured Division’s brigades had engaged what Soviet tanks which had survived the air attacks unleashed against them to put a halt to this attack. The Centurions were again showing their worth there and, backed up by air support, they could hold the flank just as planned.
The subject next discussed between the three men in their improvised radio teleconference was what to do next. General Kenny had always intended that getting to Hannover was just the first step of BLACKSMITH but now it was looking like all that could be achieved. He had just pushed a salient in Soviet lines and got behind the river barrier which they maintained here in occupied West Germany. He could expect that they would want to move against his forces and those would need reinforcing… there were those two field armies still moving forwards heading this way though NATO air power had yet to properly have a go at them.
The best option available was for the British I Corps to have the 7th Armoured Division brought from its flanking position once it had done its work there and join the Tiger Division plus whatever Iron Division elements could be quickly put to use even if they weren’t at full strength. The momentum was on General Kenny’s side and there were a lot of Soviet troops which would be trapped against their own defensive lines to the immediate west of him if he did what he now believed that his troops could do rather than what he would have liked them to try to achieve. Hamburg and the Elbe were a long way away and even if General Galvin had the French again advance in the Elbe-Weser Triangle and finally end their see-saw battle with the Polish First Army for there, that was probably still too far with his small forces.
What he would do was still go northwards though and have the British I Corps move towards the Aller River ahead. The lower reaches of the Leine would be on the left and two Soviet field armies could easily be effectively trapped there even with a small French advance. There were still American, Belgian and Bundeswehr forces back on the western side of the Weser and they could be brought up to complete and then exploit this planned move if the situation further went NATO’s way. This would all have to happen tomorrow as all of the pieces needed to be moved into place, yet General Kenny was going to try to build on his success unless the enemy could find a way to stop him.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 10, 2019 23:20:59 GMT
One Hundred & Seventy–One
The vast majority of Denmark faced occupation during World War Three and during that occupation there was marked level of violence ongoing throughout. All of Jutland, several large islands south of the Great Belts and most of Zealand came under the control of Soviet and Soviet-led forces which after they had defeating their armed military opponents, sought to establish control of the territory they occupied against an unorganised but fierce Resistance movement from the Danes. Nothing had prepared Warsaw Pact forces for what they encountered from what were at first thought to be weak and placid Danes and those engaged in occupation duties there would react to the opposition they faced with the harshest means available… only to continue a circle of extreme violence.
Danish special forces operating in the stay behind role were one element of this resistance but so too – and operating to a much greater degree – were those Militia forces which disappeared into the countryside and set about fighting a guerrilla war against those occupation forces. The latter didn’t respond to higher orders and acted wholly independently as they tried to hide among the civilian population from where they received active support. All Soviet attempts to defeat these small Militia forces which transformed into the Resistance active in operation everywhere ultimately ended in failure and further intensified conflict.
Hostages were taken and shot in response to supply trucks being ambushed: more trucks were hit with roadside bombs. The countryside would be set alight with homes burned after sniper fire harassed Soviet and East German military patrols: further patrols would be machine-gunned. Public executions of captured guerrillas would occur to frighten others: additional guerrilla attacks would target those firing squads. Danish public officials cooperating with the occupation forces for the good of their citizens would publically plead for the people to stop providing guerrillas with shelter: such people would be killed in their homes at night or in the streets during broad daylight.
All across the country, occupying forces could do nothing to bring the attacks against them to a halt with their men being murdered during their sleep, attacked when out on patrol and facing an enemy that wouldn’t stand up for a proper fight but preferred to keep coming back in sneak attacks in the face of the most severe reprisals against them. Every Dane was thus viewed with suspicion with an unofficial ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ policy being brought in by the occupying forces only to find that even this wouldn’t bring to a halt the attacks against them as this gave even further momentum to the cause of the Resistance.
The war crimes committed in Denmark by occupying troops against real and suspected guerrillas would be matched by the brutality which the Resistance put to use themselves in response. The Soviets begun killing five Danes for every one of their soldiers killed so the Resistance, unable to match that, countered this by putting any captives they managed to gain to death in gruesome fashions and leaving their bodies on display for their comrades-in-arms to find. For many years afterwards the Danes would be finding mass graves of their missing citizens while also dealing with random acts of extreme violence undertaken by traumatised civilians who saw things that no one should see during the conflict and repeated those in peacetime. Horror stories of what occurred in Denmark told around the world were treated as wartime propaganda when they were heard everywhere but in Denmark itself as those were known to be true occurrences that took place against Danes. The professional Danish military had been overwhelmed and beaten in stand-up conflict with the invading enemy and it was the military history of the Resistance in certain sanitized instances which would later be remembered by those who had lived through the occupation and told to those who came into the world afterwards.
Denmark was not a good place for anyone involved to have spent the war in.
Those occupation forces across Denmark which bore the brunt of Resistance activity which their rear-area security forces struggled to combat were spread across the occupied parts of the country. There were East Germans in northern and western Jutland with Poles and Soviets across in Zealand. After a period of intense military activity, by the later stages of the war’s second week they had in the main settled-in and were positioned to defend what they held with the majority of their campaigns over. There were still Danish and Swedish troops fighting in the northeastern part of Zealand, but everywhere else outwards defensive positions were being manned… thus leaving their interior lines of communications open for attacks on the ground against them from the Resistance as well as those few in number but very capable special forces commandoes in the stay behind role.
Facing the North Sea from Jutland were those tank divisions with the East German Fifth Army and the remains of the pair of reserve motorised rifle divisions moving up from Hamburg. These East German Army troops were positioned all the way from the shores of the Skagerrak in the north to down the western coast as far as Sylt Island over the German border facing the North Sea. The T-72s were kept back in battalion-sized groups at inland communications points with the majority of the regular infantry in their armoured vehicles too; the dismounted reservists along with much artillery was deployed along those coasts in what were fast becoming a mass of interlocking fixed defensive positions. Engineers and forced labour from captured Danish military personnel was put to work building those trenches, machine gun nests, bunkers and fortified strongpoints. The threat of a NATO counter-invasion was thought to be minimal though with the situation at sea and in the air in their favour, that couldn’t be ruled out.
Across on Zealand, the Soviet naval infantry and Polish marines were too few in number to control the large area of that island which they occupied. They were deployed in Copenhagen and further northwards from there along the western side of the Oresund facing Sweden while also outside the perimeter around the Helsingor bridgehead. Short on tanks and other armour, these troops lacked a counter-attacking force to be used against an enemy landing yet intelligence pointed to the fact that there was even less chance occurring on Zealand.
The island of Fyn and other islands in the middle of Denmark lay unoccupied though they were devoid of organised Danish military forces. Local airports and harbours had been raided to rid them of a few NATO military assets which had made use of them though that was the scope of military activity there. The Soviets weren’t aiming to conquer the whole of Denmark in a post-conflict environment and therefore for now this area had been left alone.
Communications links between the occupying military forces were based on road, air and sea connections. Denmark was a modern, first world country and while there had been war damage along with selective demolitions, those links still remained even if at certain terminal points there had been destruction. The Soviets and their allies tried to make use of what was still intact to move troops around and more importantly to supply their occupying forces. To do so was very difficult though in the face of opposition. To the east of the Jutland Peninsula, in the Danish Archipelago, the waters there were full of mines which the Danes and their NATO allies had laid while there still remained too some light Danish and West German naval forces: missile boats and coastal submarines which had survived the attention of the combined Baltic Fleet. Ships were sunk or damaged and when those made it to shore there were few capable port facilities left to use. The airports through which men and supplies were moved faced random mortar attacks and those had been badly damaged by NATO demolitions and mine cratering as well. Helicopters which were used by the occupiers also faced attacks from man-portable SAMs with far more of those weapons in Danish hands (used by special forces) that could have been anticipated.
On land was where the occupying forces faced the most problems though. The rail network was devastated by combat and those roads which were used instead were magnets for the Resistance. Everywhere there lay the burnt out remains of trucks hit by bombs or rockets with quite often thought being put into those attacks: the lead and rear vehicles of convoys were taken out first to bring those to a stop so the rest could be attacked. Fuel and ammunition was blown up when the trucks in which it was carried were hit and all of this therefore wasn’t getting where it was needed along with everything else too. Newly-created anti-partisan units tried sweeping the roads ahead of the convoys but the Resistance was learning all the time – helped by Danish stay behind units they came into contact with as well as some arriving US Green Berets too – and there were nowhere near enough troops to do this either.
To add to the effects of these attacks was the fact that the East Germans in Jutland and then those naval infantry and marines across on Zealand weren’t at the top of the list for the distribution of supplies… they were at the bottom instead.
Only the dregs of what was available was sent to Denmark and then what survived Resistance attacks was often wrong or spoilt before it reached where it was meant to. Food was a big issue alongside fuel and ammunition for air defence systems. Thankfully, there was food that could be taken from the civilian population (yet that was a finite source) and vehicle fuel and SAMs weren’t needed as there was no NATO invasion to fight off nor major air attacks present. Every day things got worse though and there was a worry with the senior men in-charge of the occupying force that should they have to face an invasion or maybe a major air campaign launched against them, they wouldn’t be able to fight that off due to the inability of the logistics network to support them here along with the intense level of activity by the Danish Resistance.
One Hundred & Seventy–Two
Turkey had mobilised its armed forces when its NATO allies begun doing so and by the start of the war had more than a million and a half men under arms with two thirds of those being reservists. This was an immense undertaking unmatched by any other Western nation except the United States and one which caused the country many domestic problems politically, economically and socially. Nevertheless, the Turks were in a position to defend their country against any external threat short of nuclear war. They perceived threats from all directions – the Soviets to the north and northeast, the Syrians to the southeast, the Greek-Cypriots on Cyprus, the Greeks in the Aegean and the Bulgarians to the northwest – and thus were prepared to defend their nation against all of them at once if that was the case.
There were US Marines waiting in the Sea of Marmara and USAF aircraft on the ground in Asia Minor with the added support of warships of the US Navy in the Turkish Straits area as well as a pair of American carriers further back in the Aegean and the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean. This external support from the country’s greatest ally was welcome yet the Turkish Armed Forces themselves had been positioned to defend the country foremost with American assistance to mainly come in the form of a logistics link connecting back to the United States.
When war came to Turkey, it arrived from the Soviets not the Syrians (Soviet-aligned as they were but in the end a declared neutral in World War Three) or even the Greeks who were meant to be their NATO allies but instead sat out the war in the face of treaty obligations. There was an initial flurry of naval air activity over the Black Sea north of Istanbul and then later there came regular missile strikes from raketonosets launching against military targets across the country. The Turkish Air Force and Navy both saw extensive combat and faced losses in combat yet there was an awareness on the part of the Turks that they weren’t facing the full might of the Soviet military deployed against them.
The Naval Aviation assets with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet had been deployed to the Kola Peninsula pre-war while the major surface combatants of the Black Sea Fleet didn’t seek battle but rather aimed to protect the Soviet coast from counter-strikes. The majority of the Soviet Air Force assets across Moldova, the Ukraine and the northern parts of the Caucasus had gone to Europe while those in the southern Caucasus were content to conduct air defence missions leaving attacks against Turkish air and naval bases to come from stand-off bombers not entering Turkish airspace directly.
The Turkish Army was literally bursting at the seams with so many reservists successfully mobilised before war broke out and those men deployed on the country’s borders. All of them found themselves with nothing to do and there was a struggle to first arm all of them and then stop their morale from sinking by keeping them busy. The only ‘active’ frontier on land that Turkey had was with the Soviet Republics in the Caucasus but the terrain there was in no way favourable for either side away from the border. There were artillery duels and aggressive patrolling where both sides put men over the border into the territory of the enemy, yet the Turkish Third Army didn’t attack over it neither did the Soviet Seventh Guards & Ninth Armys either. All of the weaponry which the Turks had and all of the huge stocks of ammunition, fuel and further military supplies for their armies (there was the First Army in Thrace and the Turkish Straits, the Turkish Second Army along the long Black Sea coast and then the Turkish Fourth Army deployed facing the Greeks) was ready to be put to use but none of it was actually used up.
A wartime intelligence study of Soviet intentions conducted by the Turks with much NATO assistance pointed to there being a Soviet plan to generally ignore their southern flank and just harass Turkey and US forces there – and through the wider Southern Europe area – while all attention was focused upon other theatres in Western & Northern Europe. No powerful, hidden forces were identified as being kept back ready to strike later should there be a withdrawal of NATO attention from Turkey and therefore unless NATO lost the war in Germany, Turkey faced to real danger to her national sovereignty.
The resulting application of this intelligence put to use by the Americans was correctly beforehand seen as something which would upset the Turks, but was nonetheless done anyway due to military need. The Americans placated the Turkish government by sending even further stocks of military equipment and supplies their way, but instead of reinforcing their forces in Turkey as they had planned to or even keeping all of those in-place, they did the opposite.
US ANG fighter-bombers which were meant to be sent to Turkey went to Germany instead to reinforce the 4 ATAF while older Phantoms and Starfighters from AMARC in Arizona were transferred for Turkish Air Force use to replace losses. A big shipment of M-48 Patton tanks, towed M-101 howitzers, Redeye man-portable SAMs and Huey helicopters (all of which the Turks already used in quantity) was also sent from storage sites in the United States even though the US Army felt the loss of every single item as they were mobilising their new divisions for later overseas service. Then there was the US Navy: it withdrew from the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.
The US Marines, their assault ships – the USS Guam and the USS Inchon among them – and some smaller warships remained behind, yet the carrier battle groups had set a course to take them westwards at first before they were to eventually go north. The America had some of its aircraft see action over the Turkish Straits yet the US Navy didn’t want to see their carrier sent into the Black Sea where the water was shallow and if Romania and Bulgaria were brought into the war the ship could see hostile airbases on three sides of it and face annihilation without enough room to manoeuvre. Then there was the John F. Kennedy which had yet to be put to use in this war while three other carriers elsewhere had been severely damaged and another one sunk while this ship and her air group had played no active part at all.
Both carriers had headed for the Straits of Gibraltar after nine days of the course of the war leaving these vital strategic assets effectively without a war role… something which just couldn’t stand.
The pair of carriers and their escorts met with the battleship USS New Jersey a hundred odd miles west of Portugal during the afternoon of March 24th. The Iowa-class battleship had been steaming at thirty knots for most of her eleven days journey all the way from Long Beach in California where it had been pulled out of its overhaul on the eve of war and raced for the Panama Canal before crossing the Caribbean and then the North Atlantic. There had been no delays in Panama as US Green Berets with the 7th Special Forces Group, and backed up by the highly-trained 193rd Light Infantry Brigade, had secured that important international communications link from threats against it (two separate Soviet attempts by commandos to do much damage to the locks had been defeated in bloody gunfights before those Spetsnaz men got anywhere near their targets) to allow the New Jersey to do as she was designed to and squeeze through.
When coming across the North Atlantic, the New Jersey had passed by much Western naval activity ongoing throughout the ocean between North America and Europe. There were escorted convoys of freighters, container ships and tankers steaming in both directions as they took a more southern routing than ships in peacetime would usually do. Those ships went to Europe laden with military equipment and then returned empty to go back to get even more from the endless depots across the United States. Other ships were coming northwards from Brazil and South Africa, even Australia and New Zealand, too heading to Europe carrying food stocks, other civilian relief for refugees in Europe and strategic minerals and such like for the war effort; there were also tankers from the Middle East carrying oil which were being tasked to go around the Cape of Good Hope rather than through Suez.
To protect all of this shipping, there were groups of several warships but also many lonesome warships too afloat on the surface as those hunted for the few Soviet submarines which remained at sea and maybe still armed. The threat of long-range Soviet naval raketonosets hunting for convoys was now gone and so the attention was all now upon attacking the subsurface threat as there had never been one on the surface. Plenty of Soviet submarines were at the bottom of the ocean leaking the contents of their nuclear reactors everywhere and many more were reported to be heading home to bases which Striking Fleet Atlantic was busy destroying, but a few remained at sea. The New Jersey had passed by this immense Western logistics effort to keep their fighting forces supplied and the protection of those links with massed naval forces: something which the Soviets could never hope to match.
Those carriers themselves had seen similar if smaller activity in the Mediterranean with both the Egyptians and the Israelis shipping arms to the Turks, and then France and even Spain assisting Morocco in transferring its ground component of the Moroccan Armed Forces (while only an understrength division, this was a major effort on the part of King Hassan II) to Europe. There had been practise for the air defences of the carriers too in tracking and then conducting mock interceptions against Western airliners flying those Moroccan troops and also French colonial troops back home from distant locations such as Chad, West Africa and the island of Reunion.
With the carriers now joined by the battleship, plus all their escorts in terms of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines and support ships, this gathering of US Navy strength started racing northwards towards the Bay of Biscay before they would turn towards the English Channel and then the North Sea. Their ultimate destination was the Baltic Approaches and the portions of NATO territory which Soviet-led forces controlled a-joining the seas there.
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