In spite of the splendid news from France, with the First French Army moving eastwards to strengthen the southern flank and the French Tactical Air Force already in action ahead of it, the day, 5 August 1985, ended in uncertainty and gloom.
It was by now clear that at any one of half a dozen points at once, on either army group front in the Central Region, the Russians could develop a high degree of local superiority in armoured and armoured infantry attacks, under massive artillery and air-to-ground support, and would press any advantage with the utmost vigour and complete disregard of casualties. Soviet momentum was maintained by heavy concentrations of armour and firepower on narrow fronts; flanks were largely ignored. With the weight of the attack and the determination — even the recklessness — with which it was pressed wherever it took place, penetration at one or more points was inevitable. Swift exploitation by troops of the second echelon would then follow hard on the heels of the first. Immediate counter-attack from the Allied side was in the early stages rarely possible. The Russians made no attempt to consolidate ground. It was hard to find a moment, however fleeting, when they could be caught off- balance. Counter-attack often simply ran head-on into the armour of the next wave and was smothered almost before it had got under way. Even the concentrated fire of Allied divisional and corps artillery could for the most part only attenuate somewhat the force of attacks pressed with such violence and in such numbers, with so high a disregard for loss. Air-to-ground attack, in this first forty-eight hours, was nothing like as plentiful as the corps and subordinate commanders would have wished, but the Allied air forces were, on CINCENT’s express order, being used to counter the enemy’s air forces both in the air and on the ground in an endeavour to establish a tolerable air situation in addition to their continuous pounding of ‘choke points’ now in rear of the main battle.
It was only rarely that the attacks of Soviet tanks and armoured infantry could be stopped. Tanks would almost always get through, and fresh waves of attacking armour would move in behind them. Equipment for equipment, sub-unit for sub-unit, man for man, the NATO defence was by no means inferior to the attacking forces. In one important respect at least, that is in almost every aspect of the whole field of electronic technology, NATO was already showing up better. On the first day, however, the defending formations were simply being swamped by numbers, dominated and driven on by blind faith in the doctrine of the total offensive.
But even on the first day weaknesses began to appear in the way the Russians fought their battle. The handling of armoured infantry provides an example which deserves attention, for it was to be of critical importance.
The BMP, improved but still essentially the same machine, had originally been evolved as an armoured infantry combat vehicle for use in exploitation of nuclear action. Its chief purpose was to move in swiftly to overwhelm, by mainly mounted attack, whatever NATO defences still survived the nuclear attack, travelling in close company with the tanks whose further action would resolve the battle. To maintain the impetus of the armoured advance some protection of the tanks by infantry was indispensable. But the BMP was itself highly vulnerable to anti-tank attack. The precision-guided missiles now deployed by NATO in very considerable numbers showed that mounted attack was often suicidal. The toll of BMP on the first day was heavy.
The Red Army had long recognized that in the non-nuclear battle mounted action for motor infantry was not always feasible, though it was certainly worth trying, particularly in the first assault. The alternative was to dismount the infantry for an attack on foot against such NATO anti-tank defences as survived the suppressive fire of artillery and air forces. In the event, well-located Allied missile launchers survived, even on that first day, in considerable numbers. Dismounted infantry had no hope of keeping up with tanks moving at their best speed. When motor-rifle infantry were prevented by anti-tank fire from going in mounted, therefore, the whole attack slowed down.
We have seen how Soviet tactics for the penetration of hostile defences in the non-nuclear variant of the land battle had latterly come to depend upon manoeuvre at least as much as on massed frontal attack. Manoeuvre by mounted infantry demanded both tactical surprise and effective suppression of anti-tank defensive fire. In the battle of the Central Region neither, for the Warsaw Pact, was complete, even on the first day.
Professor J. Erickson, one of the best informed and soundest observers of the Soviet military scene, had said in 1977: ‘Above all the Soviet command will pay the closest attention to the loss-rate in the
A battle drill to deal with the differing requirements of each combined arms tactical engagement had proved, for the Red Army, impossible to find. When should the infantry dismount? How were the varying
The Allied maxim was a simple one, even if to follow it demanded fortitude: stay put, keep your head down, and go for the commander. He was not all that difficult to locate. The information coming in from many sources, processed in JTIDS and almost instantaneously disseminated, could often pinpoint centres of command at divisional and regimental level. They had then to be attacked, which was rather less easy.
At lower levels the problem was simple. Junior commanders on the NATO side had been taught to look for the command tank. Its behaviour pattern at company level, for instance, gave it a quite unmistakable signature. The temptation to take the easiest shot first was one to be resisted. Take out the command tank; this would not stop the attack but it would at least blunt the follow-through. Battalion command was harder to break, but to take that out was even more rewarding.
Few junior commanders, in the heat and confusion, the clamour and horror, the fear and growing weariness of those battles on the first days, would perhaps have thought of putting it quite that way, but what they were trying to do was to uncouple the parts of an interdependent whole. This would not stop the onrush. To do that in the case of 3 Shock Army would have meant the elimination (or at least the neutralization) of some 120 artillery batteries and 2,800 armoured fighting vehicles (AFV). To hold a single breakthrough on one axis would have meant accounting for some thirty batteries and 800 AFV. What was already just beginning to happen, however, if not on the first day at least towards the end of the second, was the emergence of a hope in those Allied commanders whose nerves were strongest that, if wedges could be driven between the main elements of the Soviet combined arms operation, the enemy might just be prevented from breaking all the way through to the Rhine. There was also now a growing awareness on the other side that to reach it in nine days might not be easy.
What was also beginning to emerge was that a battle seen superficially at the outset as a mainly armoured offensive against an anti-tank defence was becoming more and more a contest between firepower and counter- measures. In an older terminology it would have been called an artillery battle between battery and counter- battery; in newer terms it was seen as a battle between rival arrays of electronics.
On the 5th, after a night in which the pressure had been hardly less than by day, the advance went on. In the north the enemy secured crossings over the Weser north of Minden and leading elements were reported moving west towards the Netherlands. I Belgian Corps had been pushed back west of Kassel; I British Corps was still fighting in the outskirts of Hannover and, in the built-up areas and the hill country of the Harz, exploiting with German reservist
On the CENTAG front the first of the newly arrived US divisions, which had already fought such a valuable action, had been withdrawn from V US Corps to join the strong Canadian Brigade Group in army group reserve. The First French Army, taking II German Corps under command, had now assumed responsibility for that sector of the region which ran from Nurnberg south to the Austrian frontier, coming for the time being under command to CENTAG, with which French ties, as has been seen, were close.
By the evening of 5 August further enemy attacks had opened a salient on the left of III German Corps, in the extreme north of the CENTAG sector on the Corps boundary with the Belgians, and a Soviet thrust was developing towards Giessen. This was checked by flank action from the V US Corps between Alsfeld and Schluchtern. It was
