In normal times, it might have worked. Unfortunately, The Cambridge Five and others in the service of Lavrentyi Beria had changed the rules of the game, much like the British Ultra program had changed it in their favor during the Second World War. This time the shoe was on the other foot and it was going to pinch quite a bit before it had run its course.
Soviet Tu -2s considered by many to be the best Medium Bomber of WWII
NATO Code Name “Bat”
Son of a Beech
By 0513 hours, the first wave of the Soviets' bombers and escorts were on their way to their mock bomb-runs on French targets designed to mimic their intended British targets. Another wave usually followed within hours and should be on the tarmac waiting to take off. They should be fully-loaded, with bombs and fuel. This was the time that Bomber Harris chose to strike: while the VVS was fueling and arming out in the open.
As usual the chaff-spewing RAF planes were drawing a curtain over the English Channel that effectively blinded the primitive Soviet radar. It was even designed to work on the new American, and best German equipment that the Soviets could have confiscated for their own use. The British electronics experts were confident that their curtain of tin-foil could not be penetrated and they were correct. The Soviet radar was useless.
Unfortunately for the British, Beria's stable of secret agents were deadly-accurate on the details that they conveyed to the VVS. The British plan was to catch the Soviets landing and preparing for their next wave. They fully intended to catch the Soviets with their airfields crowded with fuel, bombs, personnel and low-and-slow fighters and bombers. They came in formed perfectly in their best carpet-bombing formations, packed in like sardines into an airspace that was almost too small for their numbers.
The thunderous sound of thousands of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines flying in concert, makes the heart of every mechanical enthusiast a virtual worshiper of the combination of propeller and internal-combustion engine. On the Russian radar they appear out of nowhere from behind their aluminum-foil curtain of chaff. Every day for at least a week, nothing has emerged from that curtain except for today. Today they blow through it like the avenging angel Bomber Harris has dreamed of for months.
Unnoticed and hidden in the swarm of radar blips generated by the first wave of VVS bombers and fighters heading east, sixty-two Pe-9's armed with eight X-4 air-to-air missiles each, were screaming at top speed directly for the curtain of tin foil. Thanks to Beria’s spies they were fully aware that a thousand planes were about to explode from the airspace over the English Channel.
The massive RAF formation turned and flew from south to north, once it hit landfall and proceeded to start their bomb-runs. With ten kilometers to go before the lead planes were to drop their bomb-loads over the airfields identified in their flight plan, the missiles from the Pe-9's started to hit home.
The Pe-9's would eventually be designated with the NATO reporting name of 'Beech.' This naturally became 'Bitch,' 'Son-of-a-Bitch' and 'SOB,' as time progressed, and with good reason.
As the lead RAF bombers started dropping from the sky another kind of battle took place below a thousand feet. The fighter-bombers were in search of the Wasserfal surface-to-air missiles. Their mission was to suppress the missiles and they were low-and-slow in search of their prey. The Soviet fighters coming from the east were not low and slow and dove on the Hornets, Tempests, Mosquitoes and Typhoons, in an attempt to knock them out of the sky.
Without the Soviet X-4 missiles, and the Pe-9's guidance of them it might have been an even fight. The top cover of Spitfires over the bombers and ground-attack aircraft should have been enough to deal with the expected threat. Under normal circumstances, it would have been. Except for the fact that the Soviet fighters had been timed to arrive from the east in numbers that were intended to be overwhelming.
Without the enemy having advanced information on exactly where and when the raid was going to occur the plan by Bomber Harris was brilliant. As the Allies found out with their Ultra operation, it is much easier to defeat an enemy attack, when you know its time and location. The first thousand-plane raid of World War Three took weeks to organize and during those weeks Stalin’s NKVD was watching every move, and in some cases, actually creating the plans.
The only thing that kept it from being a massacre was another Bomber Harris contingency plan. This one involved the Royal Navy. Beria’s NKVD did not have an operative high up in the Royal Navy and was therefore blind to the additional 256 Seafires and some of the first Sea Furies, coming in from the northeast. These additional fighters did not win the battle but kept it from being a major defeat by distracting the hordes of Soviet fighters from their intended targets.
The Yak-3's and La-7's took on the low-level RAF fighter-bombers and harassed them enough to make their attacks on the Wasserfal missile systems a highly dangerous activity. The Soviet AAA shells tipped with US made Proximity fuses, made live short for many of the fighter-bombers who did what they could do in suppressing the missile threat. Despite the odds, many missile placements were hit and destroyed. Alas for the RAF, they were not operational sites for the most part but well-placed decoys. The sixty Wasserfal sites that contained live missiles were virtually untouched before launch, as the fighter-bombers went after the easier-to-see decoys. As the waves of bombers came into range the Wasserfals lifted off and twelve of them hit their targets, with eighteen planes falling, or crippled by their explosions including three fighters that were caught in the explosions and flying debris.
Almost simultaneously the first launch of X-4 missiles caught the attention of the bomber crews, who had been watching the Wasserfals rising from the ground. They had been briefed on the X-4 by the Americans but it was still a disconcerting sight to see the X-4, obviously being steered, as it got closer. They were targeting the lead bombers of each succeeding group. The planes following their leaders looked on in horror as the missiles slammed into their commanders' planes disintegrating them one by one.
The bravery of those lead crews was beyond belief. No attempt was made to evade the guided missiles. The electronic geniuses in strategically-placed jamming aircraft desperately tried every technique they could to ward off the X-4, to no apparent effect. The missiles that missed did so at random as though some unseen mechanical failure was the cause and not their jamming efforts.
By now they could see that the X-4 was initially wire guided, but soon after launch, appeared to be self-guided as if it had to be pointed in the right direction but then was able to function on its own once it obtained visual sight of the target. The ones that failed for the most part never gained that cone of visual contact with the bomber stream. From inside the Pe-9 Beech formations there was a primitive radar signal but the radar-wizards of the RAF were positive that they were jamming them. The only problem was that the missiles kept hitting home at an unacceptable rate.
The first salvo had been launched by the missile gunners on the portside and nose gunners of the Pe-9 Beeches as they approached the bomber stream at an ever-increasing angle. The first salvo of sixty-plus missiles was guided for the first four kilometers until the internal guidance system took over. As the Beeches, with their accompanying escorts, close the distance on the bomber stream the wire guidance was needed less and less and the X-4 became almost fire-and-forget.
After the nose and portside gunners had fired their missiles the Beeches turned south, and the starboard-side and tail gunners got their chance to launch. With all this going on the RAF formations did remarkably well and stayed in formation to a great degree. The carpet-bombing pattern resembled a jigsaw puzzle with significant sections missing. Where the bomber stream managed to stay in formation, the effects were devastating, just as the Soviets knew it would be.
Il-4 medium bombers (NATO designation Bob) flew above the Pe-9's and also launched missiles. These were not guided and were designed to provide a decoy for the true launching platforms of the X-4. A contingent of the RAF bomber escorts were detailed to drive off the
Bobs and Beeches. They took heavy losses, as the fighter cover for the Soviet air-to-air missile launchers was immense.
The Soviet tactical strategy was twofold: to destroy enough bombers to make any future bombing effort unfeasible but more importantly, to shoot down as many fighters as possible. The theory was that the British loss of fighters was the key component in winning the greater battle for the skies above Great Britain. The attack on the bombers was more of a ruse to put the covering fighters in positions to be attacked.
As a result of the carpet-bombing effort the four airfields targeted were destroyed.
As a consequence of the Soviet espionage effort, they were devoid of personnel, equipment and supplies. The first wave of VVS attack pods took off that morning, knowing that they would not be returning to their former bases. The ground crews were evacuated with enough time to be clear of the pre-designated kill zones.
The RAF tactical bombers and fighter-bombers did remarkably well in destroying the surviving Soviet decoy missile sites. Thirty-seven of the one-hundred fifty-eight ground-attack aircraft did not return to Great Britain. The Soviet AAA batteries knew they were coming, yet the RAF pilots and crews still drove home their attacks. Eighty-three percent of the decoys were destroyed before they could theoretically have been launched. It was an incredible job that was all for naught.
Of the live missile sites, six were discovered and destroyed before launch and seventeen were attacked after launch. At low-level the Yak-3's and La-7's were in their element, and the RAF fighter-bombers and tactical bombers had their hands full. Getting down and dirty at 1,000 feet is not the way to defeat the VVS. The Soviet losses for the fight in the trenches stood at eleven fighters downed.
Up at higher levels the fight was more even. The RAF fighters flying high cover were practiced and experienced in fighting at above 20,000 feet. For the Soviet VVS, this was a relatively new experience and it showed. Without the Pe-9 Beeches and Wasserfal missiles, it might have been a major defeat. As it was the final tally for the fight for the high-ground stood at seventy-six RAF bombers, and thirty-one fighters downed, at a cost of sixty-three new Soviet Yak-3D's and Yak-9D's. In addition eleven Pe-9 Beeches suffered significant damage or were destroyed outright. Fully twenty-four Il-4's were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
As in the Battle of Britain, the aggressor lost their downed pilots and crews to either POW camps or graveyards, while a fair number of the defeated defenders lived to fly again.
These numbers would make both sides pause and take stock, but the obvious fact was that the Soviets could absorb the losses, and the British could not.
Foreknowledge of the enemy’s plans is an almost assured victory, even for a mediocre leader and Novikov was not a mediocre leader.
For now, the era of the daylight bomber was at a halt. These kinds of losses were unsustainable and Harris knew it. It was time to go back to the drawing board. It appeared that World War Three would not be won in the air.
Once again, a few brave men would be asked to do the impossible over the skies of Great Britain. This time the enemy was not lead by a buffoon in the form of Herman Goring but by a master of strategy in the form of one Alexander Alexandrovich Novikov, the man who ruled the skies over Mother Russia, Manchuria, East Germany and now most of Europe.[xl]
End of Book On e
End Note
Second Edition – Author's Edit
World War Three 1946
Addendum One
Far East Theater
Weapons Development
Intelligence
Based on the
World War Three in 1946
Series
By Thomas Figueroa & Harry Kellogg, III
Copyright © 2015 Harry Kellogg III
All rights reserved.
Second Edition, 2016
ASIN: B00V2NF6TE
This book is dedicated to all the fighters and writers that came before me. If not for them, this would not have been possible. This book is especially dedicated to my friend, and greatest inspiration, Harry Kellogg. Without his vision, I would have never realized my talent for writing, or my passion for alternate history.
Thanks, Harry.
Table of Contents
Addendum One
Table Of Contents
Part One: Far East Theater
The Golden Dragon Rises:
The Far East Theater
Chapter One:
Filling The Void
Chapter Two:
National Salvation
Chapter Three:
Rushenko's Flying Circus
Chapter Four:
The Rommel Of The East Introduces Der Panzer Graf
Chapter Five:
“We Are Poor Little Lambs, Who Have Lost Our Way ”
Chapter Six:
“For Home And Hearth”
Part Two: Intelligence
Chapter Seven:
Reshuffling The Deck
Chapter Eight:
The Gate Crashers
Chapter Nine:
The Latest Intelligence Summary
Part Three: Weapons Development
Chapter Ten:
“Say, What's The Deal?”
Chapter Eleven:
Birth Of A Weapon System
Prologue
The stories presented here in this addendum are by a new author with a talent for detail and imagination. If you decided to fact check his work you will find that all the Ts are crossed, and the dots are in place. This is not really fan fiction in the true sense. This is an imagination that couldn’t contain itself. An imagination that had to find a creative outlet, and here it does.
It is presented in three parts, The Far East Theater, Intelligence and Weapons Development. Although written to be interspersed with the overall story, we believe that this presentation of his talent is more suited to the subject matter. This addendum is for the Tom Clancy fans or the readers who want to know all the details and minutia of the story. This also will spare the people who are mainly interested in a good story the anguish of having to slog through a subject they have no interest in but fear they must or lose the essence of the story
For those of us who like the technical aspect of the military craft this is the book for you. Written by someone who knows from where he speaks, you will explore some of the most interesting “what ifs of” the Far East and in particular, China. His research on this possible area of conflict is very thorough as you will discover. We in the West, like to endlessly discuss the Western Front of WWII, but many including, me, do not know the behind-the-scenes story of the second-largest economy in the world. The Far East Theater is on the back burner for most of the World War Three 1946 series. Mr. Figueroa helps us to imagine what may have occurred while our attention is drawn elsewhere.
His examinations of what new weapons systems might have been developed to deal with the unique situation presented are a welcome diversion into the realm of possibilities during this time period. This is a time period before the assault helicopter, the wide-scale use of an assault gun and the dawn of more effective ways to bring the enemy to battle sans direct assault on his trenches.
Foreword
Book One - The Red Tide starts from the birth of Sergo Peshkova and ends with the Soviet Red Army in control of the majority of Western Europe and making slow but steady progress in breaking the NATO lines in the Pyrenees Mountains.
Starting early in 1946 the Soviets has delayed the US production of atomic bombs by assignation and then the final solution for the Soviets is a release of the entire supply of US polonium by the spy DELMAR, killing and incapacitating virtually the whole American atomic bomb program brain trust and at the same time destroying the total supply of polonium in the world.
This systematic crippling of the US atomic program and Sergo’s missile-defense systems convinced Stalin that the time might be right to fulfill his deepest ambitions and once and for all rid Western Europe of capitalism. Combined with the rapid de
mobilization of US, French and British forces, he is convinced that the time is true and strikes on May 2nd, 1946.
In a lightning and classic Soviet Deep Battle, the Soviet Armed forces quickly break through the weak and untrained US, British and French occupying forces and run a typical flanking maneuver designed to trap the remaining western forces against the English Channel.
By combining Germany secret weapons programs, stolen US and British inventions Sergo and his captured German scientists and a talented stable of prisoners, saved from the gulag, started to produce the first successful ground to air and air to air guided missiles based on the German Wasserfal and X-4 programs, married with a new guidance system of a stolen US design. The missiles soon proved lethal to America’s first attempts at strategic bombing against the USSR using the atomic bomb.
The war for air superiority is basically a stalemate with both sides giving as good as they take. Without air superiority, the US and British armor are no match in the open country for the superior numbers and weight of the Soviet heavy tanks, and the retreat continues. Finally the Soviet red wave crashes against the peaks of the Pyrenees Mountains and comes to a tumultuous halt. The dug in heavy tanks and infantry of the NATO forces combined with the unassailable peaks of the mountains brings the Soviet Army to a slow but steady grinding offensive that temporarily brings pause to their swift advances.
Italy falls to Soviet pressure, and Greece will soon follow and become occupied. Stalin is trying for a political solution and attempting to take England out of the war by using the carrot and the stick. This sets the stage for a possible Second Battle of Britain.
Meanwhile, the US is apparently having difficulties convincing its citizens and corporations to make the sacrifices necessary to fight once again to liberate their European cousins. From Finland to Toulouse in France, the iron curtain of Communism has fallen on all of Western Europe as the NATO allies desperately try to counter the sheer size of the forces of the USSR.
World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First Page 36
