even than had been suspected. Its results were manifest in every sphere: in the exploitation of the attack and reconnaissance capabilities of F-15 aircraft and remotely-piloted vehicles (RPV), for example; in the deadly impact of precision-guided missiles (PGM), which were immune to interference; in the netting of tactical electronic units; in the reduction of vulnerability to interference with communications by proliferation of channels; and in countless other ways. Allied electronic counter-measures and counter-counter-measures were at the same time reducing the effectiveness of hostile air and missile attacks without prejudice to their own.
The operation of carefully co-ordinated intercept and interference systems against communications was proving invaluable in the ground battle above all. The location of hostile launchers and their swift destruction by terminally-homing PGM; the jamming of hostile sensors; the diversion of missile attacks; the application of a wide range of electronic counter-measures, behind an elaborate and effective barrier of counter-counter-measures, to reduce the enemy’s capacity to retaliate; and not least a policy of concentrated attack on the enemy’s command and control mechanisms — all this was paying off handsomely. The Soviet system of operational command was particularly sensitive. It was too inelastic to withstand continued and determined efforts to seek out and destroy headquarters installations. The inability of regimental commands to handle a fluid situation when deprived of signals communication with divisional headquarters was now more marked than ever. Forward radio intercept of transmission from penetrating Soviet columns was picking up with growing frequency requests for fresh orders in an unexpected situation.
Anti-tank defences, well disposed in depth, and in a highly favourable electronic environment, could do a great deal to offset a heavy numerical inferiority on the ground, particularly when the Allied tactical air forces were proving more effective than those of their opponents. It could hardly be a complete substitute for adequate strength in guns and armour on the battlefield, however. The commander of II British Corps had not lost all tactical control within his area of responsibility. His corps was still an operational entity, but it was split and penetrated, and between groups now no longer able to support each other the enemy’s advance went on. Though anti-tank defence detachments took a very heavy toll, missile re-supply to the launchers was proving more and more difficult. One by one ATGW crews were pinned down and overrun by motorized infantry in BMP, now for the most part, in a development of high significance, attacking mounted. By the late afternoon of 14 August leading elements of a Soviet tank division were approaching Julich.
During the preceding night, however, a French armoured division had been moving into the area around Maastricht. This was part of a French corps previously intended for the Southern Army Group, but switched by SACEUR to this location at the urgent instance of AFCENT (after hasty discussion with the French government and swift intervention from Washington) late on the 13th. By first light on the 15th, though not yet in contact, this French division was in a useful and well-balanced position. Still rather thin on the ground as its units moved up, it was nevertheless in touch on its right with the left flank of a force of two US brigades, with which German Territorial units were operating in support, deployed and largely dug-in east and west of Duren.
The peacetime location of HQ AFCENT at Brunssum, not far away, had now been finally abandoned, command having been long exercised from a field headquarters whose present location was near Liege. It was into the area of Aachen that the advanced parties of the newly arrived US Corps, the disembarkation of their heavy equipment in French ports now virtually complete, began to arrive just before dawn on the 15th.
To the east of what was now becoming known as the Krefeld Salient two British divisions and one German were fighting with their backs to the Rhine. Their fire on the enemy’s flank, exploited by the timely manoeuvre of armoured squadron groups, could not stop his southward advance but did much to slow it down. On the other side of the Rhine, on the east bank, 14 August was a critical day. NORTHAG was at all costs determined to hold firm in the area south of the Lippe, to get the offensive now in preparation for the following morning off to a fair start. Against the weight of opposition pressing down from the north this was far from easy, but the battle that was now being fought, in great part by German troops both of the regular army and of the reserve, on German soil, was everywhere recognized to be of critical importance to the whole future of a free Germany. The Battle of the Lippe was above all a stand by Germans, to give the best chance of success in the counter-offensive for which Allied formations of six nations were now advancing to their assembly and dispersal areas in preparation for the attack. At nightfall the lines of approach for Allied units were still clear. They were kept clear till dawn.
During the night the boundary between the Northern and Central Army Groups was moved northwards. It now ran from Koblenz to Hannover.
We have treated the operations during these few days in mid-August 1985 with a degree of detail which might seem out of place in a book so limited in scope. The reason is quite simple: 15 August was a critical day, a major turning point in the whole battle for Europe.
What would have happened if the Alliance had done as little for its defences in the past quinquennium as in the wasted years before is, as we look back today, painfully evident. The Russians would by this time have been secure on their stop-line on the Rhine, the Western Alliance would have lain in ruins, and the brutal obliteration of the Federal Republic of Germany would already have begun. The hopes of freedom in the subject peoples of the Soviet Union, both within the USSR and outside it, beginning once more to stir when war broke out, would have withered and died under a suffocating blanket of despair.
What had been done within the Atlantic Alliance was not enough to prevent war. Brought to the edge of it by miscalculation and mischance, with time not on their side, the Russians were not held back from the invasion of Europe by the clear certainty that an invasion would fail. On the contrary, the opening, even if less attractive than before, still looked too good to miss, especially as it might not come again. What the Western Allies had just managed to do, through a new surge of confidence and resolve in some of them at least, was enough to soften the blow when it came, to prevent the swift military resolution on which Soviet Russia depended, to give time and opportunity for the use of some at least of the huge resources disposed of in the West, and eventually to spark off the explosions in subject nations which were in the end to bring the Soviet Union down.
At midday on 15 August, as the units of the new US corps, fully equipped and ready for action, were hurrying under formidable defensive air cover by road and rail through France, while on the far side of the Atlantic further shipping was being marshalled into convoys to bring across the equipment for another, the welcome news reached AFCENT that the NORTHAG offensive had got off well and was making progress.
For the first time Allied ground forces were operating under conditions of local air superiority. A formidable slice of 4 ATAF’s air reserves had been allotted by COMAAFCE to 2 ATAF. CENTAG and SOUTHAG were supported only by what was left of 4 ATAF, with the remnants of 5 ATAF and the French Tactical Air Force, the latter long released from the French government’s insistence that it operate only in support of troops under French command. For the time being, while the main counter-offensive battle was opened in the north, this was enough in the south. SOUTHAG’s turn would come.
Bremen airfield had been seized by US airborne troops and some, if not many, air-portable units had been flown in, under anti-air defences that were now proving more and more effective. The main attack, with three divisions up and two more to follow, moving across the Lippe just before first light, with elaborate deception measures to indicate an attack further west, was very greatly helped by the emergence of well-equipped and carefully hidden stay-behind groups of German
Useful and heartening though the Allied riposte might be, it could by no stretch of the imagination be seen as the victory over the invading forces of the Warsaw Pact which was immediately announced, to the great discomfort of Allied chiefs of staff, by the Western press and TV networks worldwide, above all in the United States. Little else had changed. In Norway, for example, AFNORTH, without much in the way of air support except what could be provided from the United Kingdom, and, with great difficulty, from carriers operating north of the Faroes, was still containing and harassing the Soviet advance in the exceedingly difficult terrain of Troms and Nordland. From the Skagerrak to the Hook of Holland the coast, and the hinterland to some depth, was in occupation by Pact forces under Polish command. Denmark had been overrun more than a week ago. Hamburg had been declared an open city, a declaration which the Russians had ignored. It was being left alone all the same, bypassed for attention later. The Berlin garrison, surrounded by troops from divisions now withdrawn out of the fighting in the FRG, was being almost contemptuously left alone. From the Baltic and Carpathian Military Districts of the USSR some twenty divisions were on the move to come in, as the next echelon, behind those that had followed up, out of Byelorussia,
