The Third World War: August 1985

Losses in the air were well up to the levels that the peacetime analysts had forecast, but valuable fighters were more often lost on the ground than in the air. AEW aircraft paid the price for having to be far out on station and relatively unprotected, and tanker aircraft were sometimes lost for the same reason. A proportion of airfields were always unusable, but never so many that the defences were totally grounded. The problems of identification in a very active sky and of separation between missile and non-missile zones proved as difficult as exercises had always suggested that they would be. Inevitably some RAF attack aircraft returning from their Central Region targets fell victim to their own defences. The barrier patrol up to the north was there as a tourniquet around the Soviet long-range air forces seeking to threaten soft transport aircraft coming over the air bridge and the shipborne reinforcements coming across the sea. Some inevitably got through the net, but when this happened there was a second chance to intercept them in lower latitudes, though not always until after they had done damage to sea and air supplies.

As one instance, on 6 August two Backfire bombers armed with a massive battery of air-to-air missiles got loose in the procession of air transports wallowing across the Atlantic at 550 miles an hour. It was easy shooting. They knocked down three C-5s and four 747s before withdrawing at high speed to the north. One of them fell to a Tornado trap on the way home.

A system of dispersing the transports when a raider was known to be loose had been introduced, but that time, for some reason, the codeword did not get through. The air bridge had been attacked before, but this was a black day with more than 2,000 men missing from a Central Army Group formation before they even knew they were in action. But for most of the time the losses were at least militarily acceptable.

After eight days it began to look as if the advantage might be lying slightly with the defences. It was impossible to draw up an exact balance sheet, but they were certainly taking a heavy toll of aircraft in the promising ratio of around four to one. All now depended on how long the Russians would keep up the pressure and how long the UK air defences could sustain their reaction.”

The following rather more personal account of events on a day in the second week of full hostilities is taken from an as yet unpublished narrative by the former Personal Staff Officer to AOC-in-C Strike Command. It illustrates the understanding commonly found between top commanders and those who work with them.

“Late in the afternoon of 12 August there was, for the first time, nothing on the radar plot. There had been plenty of action that day. The last incident had been when a force of ten-plus aircraft had turned back as soon as they ran into the Tornado CAP outside the Baltic. As many of No. 1 Group’s attack aircraft as they were likely to see again were now back from their early sorties over the Central Region, and it looked as if things might be quiet for an hour or so at least, while they, and no doubt the enemy, got ready for the next assault.

Sir John came up from the ground for a breather. His surface HQ had been hit several times but his operational control facilities were still working. It was a relief to walk on the grass in the Chiltern Hills on a summer afternoon. The day was clear but up in the sky a milky veil of what looked like cirrus cloud stretched from horizon to horizon. In fact it was the condensation trails of the great transatlantic airlift, each aircraft’s trails being churned up and added to by the one behind it as they ploughed on to their destination airfields.

In 1940 he had been at school in Kent, and he recalled how the masters and boys had had a grandstand view of the Battle of Britain from the playing fields — watching and cheering as Hurricanes chased Heinkels, and Spitfires fought Messerschmitts. The school-boys nowadays, and for that matter the whole civilian population, must be puzzled, he reflected, as they heard bombs explode and saw the grim result, with no action going on in the sky. They would know what that great milky way was because there had been so much about it on television. But would they understand that No. 11 Group, the same group as bore the brunt of the battle back in 1940, was once again fighting day and night for the survival of the country and the West — but this time way out of sight and far from the country’s shores? In due time, and if things came out right, he certainly hoped they would, for these were important matters to be understood by the public. If his reputation meant anything at the end of this war he would do his damnedest, he resolved, to see that the politicans did not forget a second time.

After the luxury of letting his thoughts stray for five minutes he went down the hole again and picked up a direct telephone to AOC 11 Group, his Air Defence Commander.

Air Vice-Marshal Bill Williams, the AOC, was a very experienced fighter pilot, but of course he was not old enough to have been in the 1939-45 war. He had a feeling, one way or the other, that this war was not going to last very long; as an airman to the core he had no wish to have to tell his children that he had spent all of it underground. So that morning he had handed over to the Group Captain Ops and flown one of the Tornados on the Baltic Exits combat air patrol. The very one, in fact, in face of which the raiders had turned back. Later he remembered his telephone conversation with the C-in-C because it seemed to mark a watershed in the relentless battle that he was running.

Understandably, he was keen to give his chief a first-hand account from the front line of battle. The C-in-C, who knew most things that were going on, forestalled him.

“Hello Bill — I see you had a good trip. What were they?”

“Backfires we think, sir, but we didn’t get a visual. They turned back as soon as they got us on their radar. We couldn’t close them — not this end of the Baltic anyway — and we thought they might be spoofing.”

“How are things in the Group?” asked the C-in-C.

“Well, you know our battle claims and our air and ground casualties. We’re still keeping a four to one kill ratio including aircraft losses on the ground and that seems to be good. Everyone’s tails would be right up now except that they’re so bloody tired. The aircrew are still all right — just — and we’re enforcing rest periods between sorties for them, but the ground crew have only been snatching sleep as and when they can since the first scramble. They’ve taken the casualties on the ground absolutely marvellously, especially in the runway repair teams. There have been plenty of medals earned by those chaps if we ever get round to that sort of thing. But they’re pretty well flaked out now. I hate having to say it but I can’t see how we can keep this pace up for more than a day or two. How do you think things are going, sir?” There was a pause before the C-in-C answered — he wanted to be encouraging.

“Several of their raids have turned back in the last eight hours and that must mean something. I think it’s just possible that they’re coming round to the idea that they probably can’t win this one.” He paused again. “I only hope they don’t twig that they probably could if they raised the tempo and kept at us for another week or so. Bill, you’ve got to keep your men going and it may be quite a time yet.”

As the C-in-C hung up, a Sergeant placed a folder of intelligence reports and photographs on his desk. He studied them very closely. Half an hour later he called the Air Defence Commander again:

“Bill, we’re getting some very good Int stuff by satellite now about our counter-air ops. The losses of 1 Group, and of the Germans and USAF, in Tornados and F-111s, have been pretty heavy but COMAAFCE reckons the exchange rate is a very good one and I agree. With what they’re doing, together with the cruise missiles, it looks as if we’re fairly ripping those airfields to bits.”

“Can I pass that round the Group?” asked the AOC, hoping for anything that would help hold back their battle-weariness.

“Of course,” said the C-in-C, “but, Bill — for your ears only in case I’m being too optimistic — if these reports are as good as they look your chaps should be getting a little more rest before long.” “

CHAPTER 20: The Air War Over the Central Region

Since the earliest days of the Alliance, ideas about the use of air power had centred, non-contentiously, on the ability of air forces to bring rapid concentrations of power to bear to redress the imbalance between Allied and Warsaw Pact numbers. Over the years, ways of achieving this had changed with the shifting balance in numbers and quality and with the continually evolving political appreciations of the times. In the late fifties the strong Allied tactical air forces were cut back as the emphasis swung to massive nuclear retaliation and the ‘trip-wire’. In the late sixties, with the change to the ‘flexible response’ strategy, defence efforts were directed to the development of aircraft capable of undertaking both nuclear and conventional operations. As time went on, a numerical Warsaw