by Bart Gauvin
Jan didn’t have time to grieve. Twisting to face forward he saw an outcrop of rock approaching fast. He yanked his stick backwards, and the nimble F-16 cleared the rocks with just feet to spare. The third section of Norwegian jets, forewarned by the carnage ahead, was breaking off to the west, pursued by two MiG-29s, screaming for help.
Olsen’s rage returned now. He wasn’t going to lose more friends to these damned Russians tonight, not when there was any ounce of fight left in him and his aircraft. Continuing to bank around to the northwest, he picked up an intercept course with the surviving members of his adopted squadron.
Mitroshenko watched his target careen into the black waters, sending up a geyser of white spray. That made three of the four Norwegian’s that he’d ambushed. Ace! He clenched his fist in triumph, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He wanted the fourth. Pulling back to gain altitude, and also to allow his radar a better look, he was hunting again. In the gathering darkness he used the radar like an invisible flashlight, searching to the west. After a few moments he saw it on his scope: a lone contact fleeing northwest at treetop altitude.
As he was about to push his throttles forward to give chase, Mitroshenko remembered his fuel, which was perilously low.
In frustration Mitroshenko called his wingman. “Two, this is Lead. I have a contact fleeing northwest at low altitude, twenty kilometers range. Do you have fuel to pursue?”
The responses came quickly. “This is Two. Negative, Lead, my fuel state is critical.”
Mitroshenko swore into his mask in frustration, but there was nothing to be done. Banking back east he called the controller on the A-50, “Control Two, this is Crane Lead. Fuel is critical. I am returning to base.”
Olsen was not fleeing. Quite the contrary, he was seeking an engagement. His instructor, mentor, and friend, Arne Anders, had just sacrificed himself so Jan could get away and he didn’t intend for the man’s heroism to go to waste. He would exact a price from the Russians for Anders, and Sven, and Bjorn, and all the others, and he would start by saving the remnants of this raid from their pursuers.
The two other F-16s were fleeing. They were tearing west at scrub-top altitude over the rocky, snow-blanketed tundra, their pilots trying to open the range from the pair of dangerous MiG-29s pursuing them. Jan didn’t know exactly where they were, either his compatriots or their pursuers, but he put the pieces together based on their radio chatter.
Olsen’s plan was to cut the corner and come up from below the pursuers, blasting them out of the sky before they knew he was there. At least he could put the Sidewinders under his wings to some use, if he couldn’t use them to send planeloads of Soviet paratroopers to their deaths. His eyes scanned the northwest sky ahead and above, where the stars were beginning to wink from a deepening blue.
After a few moments his trained eyes fixed on two small, dark silhouettes. Seconds of squinting confirmed that they possessed twin vertical stabilizers, and now he could see the blue glow of their twin engines. MiGs.
Jan remained at low altitude, maneuvering into the wake of the Fulcrums and kicked on his afterburners to close the range. In short order the seeker of his first missile locked onto the exhaust of the rearmost MiG, the growl feeding his predatory smile.
When Jan assessed the range short enough, he squeezed the triggers twice, sending two AIM-9s shooting out towards the first MiG. Quickly shifting his attention to the other, he locking onto the second Soviet fighter. In seconds two more Sidewinders were darting towards that target as well.
The Soviet pilots never even knew the tables had been turned. Their first warning was when the flight leader’s Fulcrum shuddered, then disintegrated in the twin explosions of Jan’s missiles. The wingman fared little better. In seconds both MiGs, along with their pilots, were oily pyres of red and orange smoke billowing up from the snowy tundra.
Jan caught up with his shaken compatriots, and the three jets turned south for Tromsø. Five, out of the eight that had left to ambush the Soviet transports had been lost, and now those transports were disgorging their cargo of paratroopers into the skies around Banak.
CHAPTER 87
1800 CET, Sunday 13 February 1994
1700 Zulu
Over Banak Airbase, Lakselv, Troms, Norway
SOUTH OF LAKSELV, Ilya Romanov watched parachutes blossom out of Antonov transports and descend over the frozen lakes. He’d long since estimated how small these drop zones were. Each of the four lakes measured just five hundred meters by two hundred meters, and they were separated by necks of rocky ground bristling with low trees and brush. Even if the pilots are perfect in their navigation, Sokolov’s desantniki will suffer casualties just from the landing. He cringed as he watched round, white canopies fall towards the snow and trees among the huge parachutes that were conveying armored vehicles to the ground. He took a notebook from his breast pocket and began jotting notes. If anything, the drop zone that his first battalion would jump into tomorrow was more constrained, and far more dangerous, than the ones he was currently observing.
Retro-rockets on the vehicle platforms began to fire in flashes of yellow flame that were quickly obscured by dirty brown smoke and white clouds of snow and ice. One of the vehicles came down on the steep bank of a lake. Its rockets fired properly, but they were insufficient to prevent the BMD from rolling onto its side as it landed on the slope. Romanov reached into his tunic to finger a pendant of St. Michael and said a quick prayer for the safety of the crewmen inside.
“We expect at least ten percent casualties just from the drop,” Sokolov said, echoing Romanov’s thoughts. Ilya nodded, it was simply the nature of parachute assaults under these conditions.
The first three vees of transports carried armored vehicles and the lead jumpers for the lake drop zone. These aircraft were now banking away to the southeast. The following groups were loaded entirely with desantniki. As the BMDs and mortar carriers on the drop zone rumbled to life and clanked off of their drop platforms, they did so under a blanket of descending parachutes, each one conveying a paratrooper to earth. Several parachutes drifted down among the trees, slamming their human cargo into rocks and tree boughs, though the blows were at least softened by the deep snow. In minutes the drop was complete, and Ilya could see the long shadows of desantniki shrugging out of their parachute harnesses, most donning snow shoes but others struggling through knee-deep snow towards their assembly points.
Then the command plane banked away, and Ilya was treated to a view of the last parachutes descending onto the northern drop zone, where a company was jumping onto a large spit that jutted out into the dark water. This was the landing zone that made his skin crawl. On the frozen lakes, if the transport pilots misjudged, the jumpers would land in the trees, perhaps breaking bones or suffering concussions. If the pilots misjudged the drop over the icy waters of the fjӧrd…I must speak with the pilots before tomorrow’s drop, he decided, thinking of the coming mission. Ilya’s ears perked up as the radio calls began to crackle over the net from the soldiers assembling below.
“Yastreb Command, this is Lev One-One-One, we are thirty percent assembled,” reported the commander of the company on the lake. “I’m moving my vehicles to the western tree line. Mortars are establishing their firing positions, end.”
“This is Yastreb Command, I acknowledge,” responded Sokolov from his seat beside Ilya. “Have the mortars made radio contact with the spotter element?”
“Nyet,” responded the on-ground commander, “but they are setting up now. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”
“Quickly,” urged Sokolov. Ilya knew that his friend didn’t have to outline the consequences of spending extra minutes getting into position.
“Da, Command. I’m moving to them now to see what is taking so long.”
Sokolov looked at Ilya and said, “I hate to rely on the flyboys so much for our fire support. Better to do such things on the ground, in ou
r own hands, da?” Sokolov had lifted his hands as if he were grasping the whole world in them.
Ilya smiled. Sokolov’s bravado was showing through once more, indicating that he was beginning to feel confident about the outcome on the ground.
“Of course,” Sokolov was saying with a smirk, “it is nice to have air support, when they can manage to drop their bombs on target and on time.” Sokolov checked the time, “Speaking of which.” He turned and keyed the transmit button on his radio headset and called, “Control Two, this Yastreb Command. What is the status of Grach Flight?”
The controller on the A-50 responded quickly, “Yastreb, Control. The lead element is five minutes out from Banak. Twelve aircraft total.”
“Very good,” Sokolov acknowledged with satisfaction. His dark hair and dark mustache were making him look ever more the Cossack raider that his forefathers had been.
Johansen could hear the clanking coughs of BMD engines and treads from the lakes to his south. The rittmester had counted a dozen transport aircraft, at least six of which dropped large platforms bearing armored assault vehicles. Now, Erik knew, the paratroopers were assembling to begin their assault on his post. He leaned against the wall and pulled his canteen out from inside his parka, where his body heat kept the water from freezing. He took a swig, returned the canteen, and then checked to make sure the magazine in his long barreled G3 rifle was seated properly. Patience, he told himself, wait until the guns can have their full effect. Minutes passed.
Judging the time right, Erik clapped the artillery kaptein on the shoulder, “Alright, Hans. It’s time. Let them have it.”
The man nodded grimly, then lifted his radio handset to his mouth and spoke, “One, this is One-Two Alpha. Fire mission: battery. Target: Zulu Tango Three-Four-Zero-Seven. Variable time, three rounds. Fire for effect, OVER!” The command initiated a dance that the rittmester knew but that Hans, the artilleryman standing still beside him could have recounted in his sleep.
Five kilometers away, in the wood line to the northwest of the air strip, Erik could practically picture the muzzles of the six howitzers elevate and traverse in unison. Each of the well-trained gun crews performed the same identical drill around their piece, setting the fuse, slamming the high explosive shell coupled with its brass cartridge into the breech. In seconds, each gun was loaded and properly laid to lob its shell towards the Soviet paratroopers struggling through the deep snow of their drop zone seven kilometers away. Beside each howitzer stood a soldier holding the lanyard, a steady pull on which would send the dangerous projectile on its parabolic arc southward.
A metallic voice barked “FIRE” over speakers at each of the guns. Six gun detachment commanders echoed the command. Six hands pulled six lanyards and almost in unison six barrels belched flame and recoiled backwards. Six shells arced southward, unstoppable now with the force of their propellant behind them.
The gun crews would not wait to reload their pieces. The call for fire from the observer meant that each gun would fire three rounds in rapid succession, delivering eighteen high-explosive, air-bursting shells into the target area in a matter of seconds. Erik listened as, within seconds, each gun fired again as it was ready. Not quite in unison now, the muzzles bucked backwards in recoil to send a second salvo southward before the first even landed. Erik watched the drop zone ahead in grim anticipation of the destruction about to be unleashed on the struggling Soviet paratroopers. Nineteen seconds after the guns had first spoken, the first six high explosive rounds reached a point seven meters above the snow-covered lake and blasted a small hell of shrapnel on the Soviet soldiers below.
Romanov cringed as black puffs appeared in the air over the southern drop zone. Beneath the small, ugly clouds, puffs of snow rose from the flat blanket of the frozen lake as shrapnel streaked downward. Ilya saw several desantniki stagger and fall as razor-sharp shards of metal tore into their bodies. At the southern end of the lake, more shrapnel ripped the radio antennae off one of the BMDs, leaving its crew unable to communicate, though the metal shards failed to penetrate the armor of the assault vehicle.
As the second salvo of dirty black puffs appeared above the drop zone, Sokolov was already speaking with renewed urgency into his radio, “Spotter One, get me a fix on those guns! Where are they?”
Atop the cliffs west of Lakselv, Spotter One was well settled. The four-man observer team perched overlooking the town and airfield. Since alighting from the Mi-24s, the team had struggled the few hundred meters through the treeless tundra atop the ridgeline to arrive at their current position, where they were now hunkered down facing the north wind sweeping down the valley as night fell. Below them the broad sweep of the glacial valley formed a darkening panorama for the unfolding Battle of Banak; from the frozen lake drop zones nestled in stunted brush forests to the south, through the grid-like town of Lakselv directly below, to the single runway of the airstrip jutting northward into the waters of the fjӧrd. From the trees at the northwest end of that airfield, the Red Army major of artillery had just observed the telltale flashes of howitzers firing into the deepening darkness.
“Give me the air support radio, now!” the senior observer, a major, ordered.
A junior man complied immediately, handing the major the hand mic and saying, “Command asks where the enemy guns are.”
“Yastreb Command, Spotter One,” the major said quickly, “I see the guns just to the northwest of the airfield, sector B-One-Five. Do you have something for me to hit them with?”
“Call Grach Lead on this frequency,” Sokolov responded from aboard the command plane. “They are two minutes out.”
“Da,” acknowledged the major, then, “Grach Lead, Grach Lead, this is Spotter One, I have a target for you.
Grach, meaning “Rook” in Russian, was the Soviet nickname for the Su-25 ground attack jet. Another nickname bestowed by Soviet ground troops in Afghanistan was the Rascheska, or “Comb,” a nickname it had earned because its underside bristled with hard-points for ordnance. It was heavily armored with two widely-spaced jet engines that ran the length of either side of the aircraft’s fuselage and packed a thirty-millimeter cannon, making the “Frogfoot,” as NATO had dubbed it, comparable to the American A-10 “Warthog.”
Romanov could now see the first four Su-25s sweeping up the valley from the south, wings nearly sagging under the weight of the ordnance hanging off them. Silently Ilya urged them on to their target as more dirty puffs appeared over the frozen lakes, the howitzers’ third salvo.
The pilots bore their deadly cargo northward and, under the direction of Spotter One, veered left. The guns were well camouflaged, but luminescent clouds of ice crystals caused by the expended propellant hung in the freezing air around each firing position, forming halos that provided easy aimpoints for the oncoming Soviet airmen. The four Rooks dove into the attack.
At the window, Johansen was ordering Hans to shift fire to the next target. The Norwegian fire plan would blanket each lake in succession with variable-time rounds: artillery shells that contained a small radio transmitter and receiver that detonated each round exactly seven meters above the snow-covered lake ice. Then the guns would shift to point-detonation rounds targeted at the narrow path that led from the lakes to the E6. These latter rounds would strike the ground before exploding. Although they would be muffled by the deep snow, they were also the best tool for destroying Soviet armor. The kaptein was just completing his second call-for-fire when the tearing roar of jet engines directly overhead drowned out his words. Johansen knew immediately what the sound portended.
Erik grabbed the other man’s shoulder and shouted, “Tell those guns to move, now! They’ve got an air raid incoming!”
The artillery officer swallowed quickly and complied. A moment later he reported, “They’re already displacing. The battery reports they should be repositioned for their next fire mission in ten to fifteen minutes.”
The crackle of
gunfire rattled from the south. The Soviet paratroopers were apparently pushing off their drop zone, encountering the outposts of the troop guarding the approach up the E6. Johansen heard the distinctive, deep rhythmic booming of one of the M2 heavy machineguns, followed quickly by the crackle of smaller caliber rifles. Silently Erik urged the gun crews to work faster to reposition their pieces. He and his soldiers could not afford their loss.
Four of the six gun crews had managed to hitch up their guns to their tracked, snowcat-like Bv-206 prime movers when the Su-25s struck. Aiming for the dissipating white clouds in the dark blue evening light, the pilots swept past the west side of the airfield in a line abreast and released a mixed strike of cluster munitions and incendiary bombs towards the struggling artillerymen. The ordnance slammed into trees amid the battery and exploded in firecracker flashes of white shrapnel and billowing plumes of yellow flame.
The guns of the Norwegian battery had been widely spaced to prevent any one strike from destroying the entire unit, but Erik knew the Frogfoot carried enough ordinance to blanket a large swath of woods with explosives and fire.
Two of the howitzers were smothered by cluster bomblets that wrecked sights, damaged equipment, detonated ammunition, tore through vehicles, and killed soldiers. A third gun vanished in the billowing yellow flame as an incendiary bomb ignited the propellant of the ready ammunition, engulfed it and its crew. Two of the remaining three gun crews took casualties from flying shrapnel. In seconds the battery had been reduced in strength by fifty percent. And four more Rooks were already starting their attack run.
“I have no contact with Gun Three! Gun Two is gone—” the crackle of the fire support radio went in and out. Hans was looking at his handset, blank faced, stunned. Johansen felt the same sinking feeling as the report continued. If they couldn’t use their artillery, his key force multiplier, then…the realization staggered Erik: We’re going to be overrun.
