The Third World War - The Untold Story

by Sir John Hackett

  There was, indeed, scarcely any part of the forward positions of NATO in the Central Region which in the early hours of that August day of 1985 did not come under violent air and artillery attack, with chemical weapons freely in use.

  The position in NATO over chemical warfare (CW) was far from satisfactory. Up to the very moment of the outbreak European allies had not been able to reach general agreement on the acceptance of chemical munitions to be located in their own countries in peacetime. The US, as we have seen earlier in Chapter 5 on weapons, had been manufacturing binary rounds since the early 1980s and under bilateral agreements with the UK and the FRG producing stocks also for them, to be held on their account in the United States until needed. The UK took in some of the stock held on their behalf in air shipments from the United States starting on 1 August and were ready to retaliate on 6 August. The FRG followed suit two days later. Typically, there was on 4 August still no decision in the NATO Council. The Supreme Allied Commander, as Commander-in-Chief of all US troops in Europe, would not wait. In that capacity, with the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, he ordered immediate retaliation by US troops on 4 August. The I British Corps opened retaliatory action on 6 August, the three German corps on 8 August.

  Other allies had no such capability. There was no great difficulty in furnishing them fairly soon, however, with compatible binary round artillery munitions and in lending 2 Allied Tactical Air Force (ATAF) a squadron of F-4s fitted with spray tanks, with which to reply. Warsaw Pact protective equipment was less effective than that on the Western side and chemical casualties were proportionately higher for the same weight of attack. After 8 August chemical attack on ground troops dwindled everywhere, though it continued on airfields where, with the additional use of delayed-action bombs, there was sometimes a serious lengthening in turn-round times of aircraft as a result.

  On 11 August 1985 Mr and Mrs George Illingworth of Bradford, Yorkshire, received a letter from their eldest son Brian, a senior aircraftsman instrument mechanic serving with the RAF at Bruggen in West Germany when war broke out. It ran as follows.

  “Dear Mum and Dad,

  I will tell you straightaway that I am all right except for a broken leg and cuts and bruises. That’s because you will see that this was written from the RAF Hospital at Wroughton. The Doc says I can write and tell you how I got it and I suppose he knows all about secrets and all that stuff.

  Me and the lads were on early shift down the HAS [hardened aircraft shelter] with the Squadron. You remember I moved over to 17 a month ago. I say early shift but that’s not really right because we had all been called up on the base the previous day. There was a lot of talk about the war starting and we had listened in to Forces Broadcasting but we thought it might be just a gimmick by the TACEVAL blokes (you remember Mum, those exercises when we had to wear our noddy suits for hours and play at soldiers), because they were always clever at kidding on that the exercises were for real. Anyway we got a talk from the CO - he’s a bit strict but he’s not bad - and then we got another one from the Squadron Commander who didn’t seem to know whether he wanted a DFC or to go home to Mum. And we were told that this time it was for real and that the Tornado Wing at Bruggen would be a No. 1 target for old Ivan.

  We’d practised a lot for the real thing. We knew that Ivan might attack with ordinary bombs, gas or even nukes, so at midnight when the siren sounded it didn’t take long for all of us to get kitted up in the noddy suits. I couldn’t understand why we simply sat back and waited if we knew Ivan was going to hit us. I’ll bet the Israelis wouldn’t have. It was something to do with the “* * * ing politicians”, according to our Sergeant (sorry, Mum, but he does f and blind it a bit). Anyway, sure enough at half past six the tannoy hollered “RED - RED - RED” which meant that we were about to get attacked. Most of the big iron doors on the HAS were already shut and those that weren’t quickly were, all except ours. You wouldn’t believe how many times we’d practised and never once had it jammed. You can close them by hand but it takes more time than we thought we’d got. So there we were, with a four-foot gap right in front of our two Tornados.

  Luckily, as it turned out, our HAS faced south. Because about seven minutes after the warning there was a thundering roar and at least sixteen, or so some of the other lads said, Soviet bombers came over the airfield. I could only see two or three through the gap in the door as they flashed past over the runway. We thought they might attack with gas but, this time at least, they didn’t. It all seemed to have been ordinary bombs. There was an enormous bang on the roof of our HAS and a shower of paint and muck came down but the concrete didn’t even crack. Just as quickly as they’d appeared they’d gone again and Corp and me and the other lads rushed out to see what had happened. We were a bit daft really, and Sarg didn’t half tell us so too, because of course Ivan could have come round for a second go. But in fact he didn’t and for a minute or two we just stood and stared at the mess he’d left.

  Over to our right the central servicing hangars were on fire - a right old mess, with smoke everywhere. The air traffic control block was badly damaged and so were several of the barrack blocks and SHQ. Some of the fuel bowsers were in flames and a bulldozer belonging to the runway repair engineers was on its side and very bent. Black smoke began to pour across the airfield from one of the other Squadron dispersals and I heard here in hospital that one of the Squadron areas had really been hammered - all the bowsers and one shelter had been hit. Most of us though, to begin with at least, had been lucky, because we’d been in the HAS with the aircraft and I don’t think any of them were damaged. Some of the rockapes (that’s what we call the RAF Regiment lads) and some of the cooks on guard duty got caught out in the open nearer the perimeter wire and one of them’s in the next bed. He says that he lost a lot of mates even though most were in slit trenches.

  The fire tenders were quick off the mark and I saw one tearing down to the near maintenance hangar when it suddenly blew up. Just a flash and a bang and it had gone. That was a bit frightening. That’s when we realized that Ivan had put delayed action fuses on some of his bombs, turning them into mines. That was really nasty because you never knew when there would be another one waiting to go off in a crater or a pile of rubble. The only way you could check was by looking at every square yard of concrete. I could see large bits of the runway untouched and several Tornados were able to get airborne quite quickly, but it must have been dodgy when they had to taxi past craters or rubble. And all movement was slowed down - aircraft, bowsers, fire tenders, ambulances and even the NAAFI wagon. Would you believe the old NAAFI wagon still kept going!

  But you can guess what happened can’t you? I had to walk out across our dispersal to check that 17 Squadron’s area was clear for taxiing. We knew that the Tornados only needed a short bit of runway and if they could get to it they could counter-attack, which was obviously a very popular move. As I was passing a pile of rubble about 30 yards away it suddenly went up. I was very lucky. The blast knocked me sideways up against the wall of the pan and I broke my leg. The bits of flying rubble cut me up a bit but I’m luckier than a lot of my mates who are still (it’s now 48 hours since) being brought in as a result of delayed-action bombs. But we’re all well looked after and I’ll soon be home. Give brother Willie a kick for me.

  Love,

  Brian”

  Artillery and air preparation all along the front of the Central Region was soon, on the morning of 4 August, followed by very heavy concentrations in four areas which preceded four powerful armoured attacks, each on a divisional frontage, on thrust lines that had been largely predicted. All four were into the Federal Republic of Germany. In the north, 2 Guards Tank Army pushed in past Hamburg (which had been declared by the Senat in despair an open city) towards the Netherlands, with one column thrusting up through Schleswig-Holstein towards Denmark. The Soviet 103 Airborne Division had already secured Bremen airfield and exploitation troops were being flown in. Further south 3 Shock Army had
moved in towards Hanover, with the recognized possibility that a drive southwest towards Cologne and the Ruhr might result. It was probable, they thought in Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), that this was the thrust that needed most careful watching. If it got across the lower Rhine in the Low Countries some awkward possibilities would lie ahead, particularly that of a turn southwards along the west bank of the Rhine, upstream to take the Central Army Group (CENTAG) in the rear. Further south, 8 Guards Army was pushing in towards Frankfurt. The country was less favourable to the offensive here, close, hilly and often wooded, but the depth of the NATO position in the CENTAG sector was far less than further North. The Rhine was scarcely 250 kilometres away from the frontier here, and Frankfurt little more than 100. The going, however, was far from good for armour. Well reconnoitred anti-tank weapon positions in undulating country combined with the skilful use of the tanks of armoured cavalry in fire positions which they knew well, together with the intervention of anti-tank helicopters in close co-operation with fixed-wing ground attack aircraft, slowed the armoured advance considerably.

  Further south, where French command in an army group task had not yet been established, the thrust of 41 Army out of Czechoslovakia towards Nuremberg, aiming at Stuttgart, made better progress.

  Such was the pattern of events, briefly stated, on day one of the Warsaw Pact offensive seen as it were, from a long way up. Lower down, at ground level, things were different. There was noise everywhere, distant noise of bombs or gunfire, noise of aircraft screaming overhead, of tracks clanking and squealing as the tanks hurried by, and sometimes the enormously stupefying impact of a close and direct attack, either of crashing bombs, or multiple rockets with their repeated and violent explosions, or those dreaded automatic mortars which fire five bombs in ten seconds, bringing down a curtain of despair. There was also weariness struggling with responsibility. Everybody was tired. Everyone had something he had to take account of. All this tended to leave otherwise quite sensible and stable men in a quivering condition of uncertainty and shock. Some ran to hide, anywhere. Others walked around in a state of dumb non-comprehension, almost as though in a coma. When the moments passed, as they almost always did, men collected themselves, called up reserves of self-control and stamina which were happily still plentiful if not always inexhaustible, and put things together again.

  On the evening of the first day Warsaw Pact gains along the whole front had been considerable. The seizure of Bremen airfield in the north by the Soviet 103 Airborne Division at dawn had been exploited by a motor rifle division quickly flown in under heavy air cover, and a bridgehead had been consolidated across the River Weser in the sector of I Netherlands Corps. Hanover was threatened by 3 Shock Army but I German Corps, though it had been forced back by the weight of the attack some 20 kilometres from the frontier and had taken heavy punishment, was still in good order. Further south, I British Corps had yielded ground west of the Harz mountains while Kassel, at the junction of I British Corps with the Belgians, was under heavy threat, also from 3 Shock Army. Over the boundary between the Northern and Central Army Groups, III German Corps, under command of CENTAG, had been driven back by a powerful assault from 8 Guards Army through the hill country of the Thuringer Wald but yielded no more than 10 to 20 kilometres of ground, while V US Corps on its right was particularly hard pressed defending the more open terrain around Fulda against a determined effort from 1 Guards Tank Army to break through to Frankfurt. The VII US Corps on the right of the V had lost Bamberg in a Soviet penetration by 28 Army of some 30 kilometres but was firm in front of Nuremberg, while II German Corps, having lost ground to an attack by 41 Army from the Carpathian Military District, now deployed in northern Czechoslovakia, was also firm, backed by II French Corps, which had not yet been engaged.

  As the pattern of the day’s events grew clearer on 5 August, the Soviet High Command could view the outcome of the first day’s operations with some satisfaction, even if all its hopes had not been wholly fulfilled. There had been no complete breakthrough on any of the four major thrust lines. There was no sign yet of any opening which could be exploited by the huge mass of armour in the two groups of tank armies in Belorussia and the Ukraine, which were being held there principally for this purpose. But gains had been made, particularly in the north, where Hamburg had been isolated (and, like Berlin, bypassed) and left uncertain of its fate, while the seizure of Bremen had opened, as had been intended, good possibilities of exploitation towards the Low Countries. Most of Nieder-Sachsen was already in Soviet hands.

  Morale in NATO formations, though patchy and showing signs of cracking here and there under the first furious waves of assault, with its head-splitting clamour and the thunderous menace from which there was no hiding place, had not collapsed. It seemed, indeed, by nightfall to have improved somewhat. Progress in the assault against the Americans, where easy gains had been expected, had been disappointing. The forward anti-tank guided missile defences were well sited and skilfully controlled and anti-tank helicopters acting with A-10 Thunderbolt tank destroyers had inflicted many armoured casualties. A weakness on the Western side, which was of advantage to the Soviets and which had been foreseen by them, was some uncertainty as to who actually owned rotary-wing aircraft, with division of opinion between ground and air commanders, as to how best to use them. Where there was a close relationship between rotary and fixed-wing anti-tank tactics, as in the action against 8 Guards Army of US formations in the Fulda area, the result had been distinctly unfavourable to attacking armour.

  The movement of refugees out of the frontier areas, where the population had largely stayed in place as a result of political assurances based on forward defence, was seen as particularly favourable to the attack. Soviet air and artillery had aimed at driving refugee movement on to roads in use for rearward movement by the Western allies, and then off the main thrust lines intended for use in the Soviet advance. Orders not only to disregard civilian casualties but to maximize them to this end had been correctly carried out.

  There was no doubt, however, that the first day, whatever its gains, had not shown the rate of advance expected by the Soviet High Command. This had to improve if the plan were to be completely successful.

  At the outbreak of hostilities the British Prime Minister had instructed that the press be kept as fully informed as possible. There would, it was hoped, be no misunderstanding of the kind that had plagued the coverage by the American media of the Vietnam tragedy. Consequently, Squadron Leader Guy Whitworth, Weapons Leader of 617 Squadron of the RAF, stationed at Marham in the United Kingdom, was not surprised to receive a sympathetic but firm invitation from his Station Commander to ‘Come down and tell some defence correspondents about your Magdeburg trip’.

  It was 0630 hours on 7 August. Guy Whitworth was in the Ops block at RAF Marham, just finishing his debrief to the Wing Intelligence staff. He had landed two hours previously after a three-hour trip in a Tornado which had taken him from the relative peace of Norfolk across Belgium and West Germany beyond the Elbe to an airfield just a few miles east of Magdeburg and through a trough of action he had yet to sort out for himself. This is his description of the flight which had taken eight GR-1 Tornados from Marham in an attack upon a major airfield 100 miles beyond the battle. We reprint it here as it came out in the Christian Science Monitor in June 1986.

  “We were briefed that this particular airfield housed a regiment of MiG-27 Flogger Js. These are the best of the current Soviet short-range offensive support aircraft and we have been told that they make their presence felt in the ground battle. It seems that they can operate from hard-packed earth runways, but that they have not yet begun to do so, perhaps because they can maintain a higher sortie rate by staying close to their weapon and fuel support at their main operating base. Flogger has a very limited night or all-weather capability and we reckoned we had a good chance of catching most of them on the deck in the early hours of the morning.

  Wing Commander Bill Spier, our Squadron Com
mander, led the first wave of four with my navigator, Flight Lieutenant Andy Blackett, and myself as his No. 4. Each Tornado carried two JP-233 anti-airfield weapons, two defence suppression anti-radiation (ARM) missiles - these home on to radar emissions - and an electronic counter-measure (ECM) pod. Our object was to close the Soviet airfield down and stop Flogger operations for as many hours as possible.

  The first leg of our flight was uneventful. After climbing out of Marham we rendezvoused with a VC-10 tanker over the North Sea. We had practised night refuelling, of course, so there was no problem there. We were passed on to the Sector Controllers in Belgium, who I think must have been in touch with one of the NATO AWACS, because the last transmission we received from the ground gave a very accurate position for the Warsaw Pact thrust lines. Andy was monitoring their accuracy through the combined map and radar displays and the TV displays. He hadn’t needed a radar or laser update. Anyway, as we approached the Rhine we dropped down to 200 feet and stepped up the speed to 600 knots.

  Once across the Rhine we caught a glimpse of the war. Thanks to the accurate AWACS update we were spared having to fly over Warsaw Pact armour and its accompanying SAM. We were grateful for that. Over to the left we could see a fair amount of gunfire but when Wing Commander Spier took us down a further 100 feet into the weeds the sky became very dark and very small. Our Tornado was now being flown by the automatic terrain following system (ATFS), following the contours of the earth as closely as its speed permitted. As we approached the northern edge of the Harz mountains the aircraft remained rock steady, wings fully swept to 67 degrees, but as we crossed the inner German border (IGB) east of Kassel it began to get a bit noisier. We heard the “bing, bing” of a surveillance radar in our radar warning receiver and then the high note of a low level SAM tracker. By this time I think we must have been spotted by one of the Cookers, although happily the area ground-response wasn’t all that sharp, perhaps because our pre-planned route was taking us along the boundaries of 8 Guards and 3 Shock Armies.