The Third World War: The Untold Story

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.

South-east of Magdeburg we swung north. Many hours of practice over Canada had taught us that loose station-keeping at night at low level was not easy, but by no means impossible. With 20 miles to go, Andy selected the “attack” mode on the TV display and the “stabilized” mode on the combined map and radar display to bring together visually computed target and aiming markers. I monitored the sequence in my head-up display in the front cockpit, just in case I picked up an aiming error and had to take over from the auto pilot.

For a few seconds we thought we were going to achieve complete surprise, and perhaps our approach from the south-east rather than the west did give us a little extra time, but then we were well and truly lit up by several different surface-to-air defence systems. I loosed off both arm. The automatic self-screening ECM pod was obviously working well. Andy kept his head down. I think he was grateful to have his time taken up with placing his laser range finder on the main runway of the airfield, and with the fine tuning of the aiming marker. There was a fair amount of activity below us by now as we swept over the airfield. It was then that we lost No. 2 and Eric and Ken. I think they must have been hit by the guns or low level SAM. They were just blown apart. The rest of us sprayed the base with the JP-233s. I didn’t see the effect of our weapons but the sub-munitions put down by the Wing Commander spread out beautifully right across the runway. Unless our weapons failed badly, we cut it in three places and in addition scattered delayed-action mines all over the tarmac and the airfield itself. The damage will take a long time to put right. I didn’t see any Floggers but we expected them to be in their hardened shelters anyway. They’ll stay there for a quite a time now. One unexpected bonus was the presence of two Candid transports. Andy saw both those go up. I suppose the other side also has problems of airfield overcrowding. Our second four were thirty seconds behind us and according to their report we can assume that any additional warning the enemy had that they were coming in was more than balanced by the impact of the first wave. As the second four were clearing the area they lost one aircraft after it had dropped its weapons.

So, we headed for home, but we weren’t there yet. We now had two problems to think about. First, whether there was any stray Flogger who fancied his look-down-shoot-down chances. After that there were our own air defence people who quite naturally get a bit tense about high-speed low-level aircraft coming out of the east. One or two of the Tornados still had ARM left but we had to rely on the ECM pod to get us back over the Warsaw Pact SAM. In fact, as we had hoped, their SAM (which had just rolled forward with the armour) were not as well co-ordinated as the kit we had found near the airfield. It takes time to site SAM radars and naturally they tended to concentrate on their fronts, not their rear, which was where we were coming from, still at 100 feet and still tracking quite quickly.

So we crossed the FEBA over the Teutoburger Wald at a height, speed and heading which should have seen us through. As far as I know our IFF (identification friend or foe) kit was functioning but I don’t know how far it might have been spoofed earlier in the night. For whatever reason, some bastard let a SAM go. At least I assume it was a SAM. It could have been one of our own HAWK. I hope not. Andy hadn’t picked up any AI (air-intercept) radar warning and we didn’t see any other aircraft. It got Wing Commander Spier’s Tornado .The aircraft simply disintegrated in a ball of flame. No one could have got out. It was ironical, because one of the last things he had said in the briefing was to take care not to relax on the home leg because that was when the greater number of losses usually occurred.

I took over the lead and we climbed to meet our tanker again. I must admit I’m glad that the mates up at the box (Ministry of Defence) decided in 1982 to go ahead with the VC-10 modification because there was no way we could have launched from Marham against Magdeburg on that routing without air-to-air refuelling. So here we are: five Tornados back out of eight, and one major Warsaw Pact base knocked out for several critical hours.”

The 1 Guards Tank Army, deployed at the outbreak round Dresden, came into action against CENTAG on 5 and 6 August but by now two fresh US divisions flown in from the United States to man their pre-positioned equipment had come under command and the position had to some extent improved. By 8 August all of the Federal Republic east of a line from Bremen southwards to just east of Augsburg was in Soviet hands. Both Berlin and Hamburg had been bypassed but Hanover, Minden, Kassel, Wurzburg, Nuremberg and Munich had all been lost and a huge and threatening salient had developed westwards from Bremen into the Netherlands. The crossing of the lower Rhine by nightfall on that day, 8 August, had been successfully carried out and a strong Warsaw Pact bridgehead consolidated on the left bank of the Rhine as far as the River Waal.

“A “Concentration Centre for Reinforcements” had been set up at Dresden. It was planned for a very high capacity and a rapid through-put, but the movement of tank armies over the Polish rail network had virtually taken up the system’s whole capacity and there was a significant fall in the flow of replacements of material and of personnel reinforcements from the USSR.

Bringing 197 Motor Rifle Division back to full strength took four days instead of the stipulated two. The 94 and 207 Motor Rifle Divisions were in the area at the same time. All the T-72 tanks were taken from the motor rifle regiments of 197 Division and used to replace losses in the division’s tank regiment. To the motor rifle regiments old T-55 tanks were issued instead, taken out of mothballs. The heavy motor rifle regiment was brought fully up to strength with new BMP straight from two factories in the Urals, but there were no BTR replacements available for the two light regiments of the division, which should have been equipped with BTR 70s. The remaining undamaged BTR were collected into a single battalion, with the rest of the battalions having to make do with requisitioned civilian lorries. As for men, numbers were made up with reservists and soldiers from divisions that had sustained too many losses to be re-formed.

At the Centre a collection of captured NATO tanks, armoured transports and artillery had been assembled and a training programme for officers and men was organized. The NATO equipment had usually fallen into Soviet hands as a result of mechanical failure, from damage to tracks by mines or gunfire, for example, though several prize specimens had been acquired when crews were taken by surprise in early non-persistent chemical attacks to which they had at once succumbed leaving their equipment intact as an easy prey to swiftly following Soviet motor rifle infantry. To their great delight both Nekrassov and Makarov, the latter now in 207 Motor Rifle Division, found themselves together in the programme.

There was also a small camp of Western prisoners of war at the Centre. They were available for questioning. A special sub-unit of the GRU Soviet military intelligence ensured that prisoners answered questions willingly and correctly.

The two Senior Lieutenants crawled over and under and through every piece of equipment they could find at the Centre, testing the feel of it all. They inspected the West German Leopard II tank and the Marder infantry combat vehicle. Good machines but very complicated. How could such equipment be maintained in the field if crucial repair facilities and supply bases in West Germany were lost? The US Abrams M-l tank wasn’t bad either, a low-lying predatory machine, but the main armament wasn’t really powerful enough and it had a disproportionately gas-guzzling engine. They were both impressed by the Chieftain and even more by the Challenger, fighting machines to be reckoned with — almost impenetrable armour, super-powerful armament and a dependable engine. The Leopard II was good and so of course was the Abrams. The Challenger was better. A few more thousand of these in Europe and the attack would soon get bogged down.

The GRU officers were happy to give the necessary explanations. The British Army had the best tanks though too few of them, and the best trained soldiers, but it was short on automatic anti-aircraft guns. The British were practically defenceless against Soviet helicopters. The German Bundeswehr was both determined and disciplined with first-rate professional training. The East Germans mostly fought against the Americans.

Nekrassov asked how the Belgian and Dutch units had been performing in battle. He knew about the British.

“Not bad at all,” he was told. “Their supply system is first class. Their equipment is not bad either. There are