The Third World War - August 1985

by John Hackett

  Soviet planners were necessarily aware that the Montreux Convention, which since 1937 had regulated the right of passage through the Turkish Straits, almost totally forbade this right to the warships of belligerents. After the beginning of operations in Europe they would hardly be able to claim not to be in this category, even if no formal declaration of war had been made. Some of them were inclined to assume that, faced with the threat of overwhelming force, the Turks would have no alternative but to accept a bending of the Montreux rules and allow Soviet warships continued passage. Others, who knew Turkey better, argued successfully that this could by no means be relied on and that Turkey was fully capable of living up to her obligations even at great cost to herself. They pointed out that it would do the USSR little good to be in Istanbul if the Bosphorus was blocked. Moreover, apart from Turkish action, it would not be difficult for US aircraft even from the western Mediterranean to make passage of the Straits by Soviet warships exceptionally hazardous.

  It was therefore finally accepted by the Soviet command that the only safe course was to get their ships out first from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Once there they would have shore facilities in Alexandria again since the Egyptian volte-face. They could hope for the use of Malta and the seizure of a harbour in the course of the Yugoslav operation. There might even be a chance to settle old scores with Albania and re-occupy the submarine base at Valona, from which they had been rudely ejected when Albania joined the Chinese in 1961. The ships would thus not be as dependent as formerly on periodic return to Black Sea ports for refitting and supply. Civilian merchant shipping from the Black Sea could no doubt fill up the supply gaps, and their passage through the Straits would pose much less risk of Turkish reaction. In the spring of 1985 there was, therefore, an unusual amount of Soviet naval tonnage leaving the Black Sea for the Mediterranean, for manoeuvres, trials and transfer to other stations; by the outbreak of hostilities in Europe all the units required for naval operations in the Mediterranean had already passed through.

  There was of course a risk that these movements would seem to imply a Soviet intention to prepare for a European war and stimulate precautions in the West. By routing almost all the ships first of all to Alexandria, however, the Russians strove to give the impression that they were still concerned primarily with the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.

  When finally hostilities began and the Russians succeeded in penetrating Italy, causing the removal to Spain of all that was possible of AFSOUTH’s infrastructure, as well as its headquarters, the possibility of active participation by Turkey and Greece was drastically curtailed, since only long-distance US air support with help from the Sixth Fleet would for the time being be available.

  It was not the first time in Turkey’s history that she had been left almost alone to face her great neighbour in the north. As so often in the past, the Turkish government made it quite clear that while their intentions were not aggressive, no Turkish territory or Turkish rights would be conceded without fierce resistance and if necessary sacrifice. Frontier forces were reinforced and preparations ostentatiously made for blocking the Straits should this prove necessary. Local animosities were forgotten in the face of greater danger, and Turkish and Greek forces linked up in Thrace to confront Bulgaria, while the remaining Greek forces strengthened their northern border against any possible incursions from Yugoslavia or Albania.

  The threat of attack from the Warsaw Pact side was a very real one and gave rise to deep apprehensions. In the end, however, the Russians did not find it worth while to divert forces for this purpose, believing no doubt that if all went according to plan in the centre and west they could complete their mastery of the Balkans and of Turkey at greater leisure thereafter. The political and military weaknesses of NATO’s south-east flank had been repaired just in time to make it possible for the flank to hold, even in considerable isolation. It was rash of all concerned to have left the remedial measures so late.

  Since the central issue was in the first instance to be the survival of the Federal Republic of Germany, and since the first great land battle would take place on German territory, it is important to take a further look at the Federal Republic’s land forces.

  The three German corps embodied sixteen armoured brigades (each with three battalions of tanks, one of armoured infantry and one of armoured artillery), fifteen armoured infantry brigades (each containing two tank and two armoured infantry battalions, one of Jager infantry and one of armoured artillery), with units mostly organized broadly on US models, together with two mountain and three airborne brigades. They were on the whole in very good shape, well officered and well equipped. In an army in which roughly half of its regular strength of 350,000 were conscripts, the general level of troop training was not as high, or as even, as that of an all-regular long-service force like the British. Units had on the whole been kept up to strength rather better than the British, however, and there had been fewer reorganizations in the interests of economy (always presented politically in Britain as improvements in military effectiveness) and a more realistic approach by the Federal government to the provision and maintenance of equipment. The Bundeswehr had thus suffered less from its politicians than its brothers-in-arms in Britain, where cynicism and insularity had long traded on a depth of good will and loyalty in the country’s armed forces that few governments of any party had done much to deserve.

  Of two major improvements brought about in the army of the FRG in the five years before the outbreak of war, one was structural, the other operational.

  The first concerned reserves. Three Territorial Commands, each of five Military Districts, had been created. In these commands six Home Defence Brigades formed the fighting core of a reserve force with a peacetime strength of some 63,000 (including 30,000 conscripts still working out their reserve service) and an ultimate full mobilization strength for the Territorial Army of half a million. The Federal government was not at first inclined to place these resources under NATO command. They represented, it was argued, the last armed forces available to the Federal Republic as a sovereign power and should remain at its disposal alone. Arguments for undivided command in time of war proved more persuasive. Events were to show the wisdom of assigning these reserve forces, at least on mobilization, to SACEUR.

  The second improvement reflected a change in outlook on the best method of defending Federal territory. ‘Forward defence’ on the frontier could hardly mean in military terms anything other than a defence forward of the frontier, a point Warsaw Pact planners were not slow to take. The clearest alternative was defence in depth, trading ground at the best possible rate for the time needed to set up a counter-offensive. This, though it made good military sense, was hardly popular with politicians publicly dedicated to the total defence of the integrity of Federal territory.

  The rapid development of anti-tank techniques, the increasing urbanization of much of West Germany and the growing size of the FRG’s military reserves suggested another approach. A network of squads of reservists, locally drawn and armed with ATGW, was incorporated into the operation of the covering forces along the frontier.

  A concept had been gradually gaining favour in the Federal Republic since the end of the seventies under which a defence against attack from the East would be organized in three tiers. These would comprise a frontier defence almost entirely composed of Jagd Kommandos (tank-hunting and skirmishing units), with powerful counter-penetration forces in depth in what was described as Raumdeckende Verteidigung (spatial defence) and an area of Heimat Schutz (so-called Homeland Defence), depending mostly on territorial forces, in further depth behind that.

  The covering forces deployed by AFCENT would still be expected to fight a delaying battle forward. In the late seventies the proportion of troop strengths in forward corps assigned to fight the covering-force battle had been some 30 to 50 per cent of the whole formation, all along the front of the Central Region. New tactics in NORTHAG, appropriate to the terrain, had enabled forward corp
s to reduce this to some extent. The full covering-force concept, however, was still to prevail in CENTAG where lack of depth made it important to give away as little ground as possible.

  In NORTHAG, British experimentation was proceeding on lines closely related to the new concept now under discussion in Germany, with light anti-tank defences exploiting the possibility of ATGW deployed far forward. The system of frontier defence thus created, with counter-penetration forces deployed in further depth, was beginning to be thought of, by many British and some German officers, as a possible replacement for, or at least a modification of, the full doctrine of ‘forward defence’, however the term was interpreted, which had hitherto prevailed. It was still largely experimental, but over several years of continuous exercises it had been showing considerable promise.

  Where the most important advances had been made in preparations to defend the Federal Republic, however, was without any question in the organization of home and civil defence - including the protection of vulnerable points and attention to the problem of refugees - and in the better use of reserves.

  Of the other Allied forces deployed in the Central Region on 4 August 1985 (in addition to their most powerful component, those of the United States), I Belgian and I Netherlands Corps in NORTHAG were almost up to strength (though the training of reservists in some units gave little cause for confidence) and were already, at least in part, deployed forward. Pressure within NATO over the years to increase the long-service content in these formations, thus placing less reliance on reserves, and to deploy a higher proportion of them within the Federal Republic near their battle stations (and less in their adjacent homelands) had met with incomplete success. I Belgian and I Netherlands Corps were not the strongest links in the NATO chain.

  The embryonic II British Corps, composed in part of reserve units manned by former long-service regulars and in part of regular units, had been due this year, as it happened, for the first time to carry out a full formation exercise, with troops, in BAOR. It was building up in north-west Germany. Its equipment, stockpiled in advance but not yet fully up to scale and, where reserve units were concerned, not always of the latest type, had already been drawn. Its personnel embodied a considerable level of experience, fortified both by a leaven of regular units and by judicious cross-posting from I British Corps. The morale of its reservist soldiers was high.

  The much strengthened Canadian Brigade Group, in the rear of the CENTAG area, was held in the Central Army Group reserve.

  CHAPTER 15: The Storm Breaks on the Central Front

  Active hostilities opened first of all in inner space, very shortly before 0400 hours, Central European time, on Sunday, 4 August 1985, with widespread and clearly very carefully prepared attacks on US communications and surveillance satellites. The Soviet interference capability was known to have developed considerably since the resumption of a programme temporarily discontinued in the USSR in 1971. The extent of its development came as an unpleasant surprise. Airborne relay stations of the US Air Force, already deployed, took up some, at least, of the communications load, though with a high initial degradation of efficiency. The sudden removal of large areas of satellite surveillance cover, however, was to be much more acutely felt than reduced communications capability. The latter could be largely replaced at short notice by other means. Satellite surveillance could also be restored in time, but that would take longer.

  A few minutes later, at about 0400 hours, massive air and missile attacks, using both high explosive and chemical munitions, on airfields, headquarters locations, logistic areas and Hawk and Nike air-defence sites, heralded the opening of a major Warsaw Pact offensive on the Central Region of NATO. At the same time under-cover parties, as many as 300 or 400 in number, moved in to attack civil and military communications centres, government offices, fire, police, railway and generating stations, and key road and railway bridges. Almost simultaneously NATO forward troop locations came under heavy air and artillery attack along the whole length of the forward edge of the Central Region’s battle area.

  Surprise was nowhere complete: NATO troops in forward positions were already alert. The expectation that an attack, however likely, would not take place just yet had some effect, at least initially, in reducing the effectiveness of protective and defensive measures in rear areas, but even here the numerous, widespread and carefully prepared strikes by under-cover parties met with gratifyingly little success. It was just not possible, as Kremlin planners had very sensibly realized, to prepare a sudden attack on so many points at once with complete surprise. They had therefore sought concealment in deception planning, particularly in terms of timing. It proved to be ineffective. A few discoveries of under-cover attacks on the very verge of delivery, together with other unmistakable signs of what was imminent, served to set off a general alert among Federal German police and territorial forces already standing by at short notice. Damage there was, even serious damage, but the first armed clash between the Warsaw Pact and the territorial defences of the Federal Republic resulted in at least 75 per cent failure and something of a boost to civil morale. (The attack on HQ NORTHAG noted above was, in spite of initial penetration of the HQ building and some casualties, a total failure, like very many others.)

  Though Allied forces everywhere were already dispersed, as far as possible, in an anti-nuclear posture (with all its inconveniences), no nuclear attack was anywhere reported. Warsaw Pact forces, on the other hand, confident that nuclear release by the NATO defence was at this stage most unlikely, were able to operate with only that degree of dispersion required against conventional air attack, which was much less.

  Chemical agents were used in the attack from the start, but only on some sectors of the front. They were not used against the two US corps, perhaps because USAREUR possessed integral and effective chemical offensive weapons of its own. US policy had consistently been that US troops would retaliate in kind if attacked with chemical agents but would not use them otherwise. The Soviet commanders seemed to have taken this threat seriously and did not use chemicals against any formation in CENTAG.

  In the NORTHAG sector none of the national corps possessed a chemical offensive capability. This position had persisted in the 1980s despite the growing strength of the argument that possession of a retaliatory capability would be a relatively unsophisticated and economic means of discouraging recourse by the Soviet Union to chemical weapons, whose use by them would further add to the Warsaw Pact’s non-nuclear superiority. There was now widespread use by the enemy of chemicals to support attacks against NORTHAG, principally launched in BM-21 rockets. These equipments operated in battalion groups of eighteen which, when fired in unison, were able to land 720 rockets on a square kilometre within fifteen seconds. The warm weather was ideal for the use of non-persistent agents such as HCN. This has a hazard duration of only a few minutes at 10°C in moderate wind conditions with rain, of at 15°C in sunny conditions with a light breeze. Soldiers not wearing respirators within the target area died within a few minutes of inhaling the vapour. The agent evaporated so quickly that Soviet assault troops would be able to move through the target area with only minor precautions. Despite peacetime training, Allied casualties in forward areas as the offensive opened were considerable.

  At the same time, major airfields were attacked with chemical agents (usually mustard, or G- or V-type nerve gases) delivered by missiles, each one of which could put down sufficient of a persistent agent to cause severe disruption over the whole airfield complex. Ground crew were forced to wear full personal protective equipment to carry out maintenance and aircraft refuelling and re-arming. This severely handicapped their performance and increased aircraft turn-round times significantly.

  Major logistic installations and communication points, where large numbers of the civilians operating them had no protective equipment, received similar treatment. Physical removal of persistent agents was virtually impossible while further missile attacks maintained a high level of lethal contamination
. Such attacks upon airfields and logistic installations caused more prolonged disruption than sustained high-explosive bombardment.

  Even a minute quantity of a highly toxic agent such as HCN, either inhaled or absorbed through the skin, was capable of causing death within a few minutes unless prompt medical attention was available. Medical services soon overloaded with battle casualties were severely taxed to cope with casualties caused by chemicals as well.

  Constant precautions and the wearing of appropriate personal protective equipment quickly reduced the casualty rate. Excellent personal protective equipment had been available to I British Corps since the middle 1970s and had been rushed into service by other European NATO countries just in time to prove its value. Without it, very heavy casualties would have resulted from chemical agents delivered against forward troops not only by rocket launcher and FROG missiles but also by conventional artillery and from spray tanks mounted on ground-attack aircraft.

  The Warsaw Pact attack had also been preceded by very extensive ECM and anti-radar activity from the Eastern side. This was initially by no means ineffective, but was very soon seen to be quite dramatically inferior to the resources in electronic warfare available to the West.

  In rather less than an hour after the opening of initial preparations for the land offensive, four powerful armoured thrusts, each on a divisional front led by an advanced group of mixed arms in regimental strength, had moved through swiftly prepared gaps in the frontier defences into the territory of the Federal Republic. The form of the attack, when it came, was by no means unexpected. Preceded by light forces operating as far ahead as the terrain allowed, the first wave in the main assault on each axis was made up of the T-72 tank regiments of the armoured divisions, operating on divisional fronts never more than eight kilometres wide and sometimes as little as two, depending on the nature of the ground. The leading tank battalions were closely followed by motor-rifle companies in their BMP armoured combat vehicles (sometimes no more than 100 metres or so in rear), whose chief purpose was known to be to suppress the opposing anti-tank defences. Following closely behind the tank divisions were the motor-rifle divisions, each consisting of one armoured regiment and three motor-rifle regiments, which were prepared to exploit the breakthrough which such a heavy concentration of armour in the lead could hardly fail to achieve. Turning off the line of march into encounter battles their purpose was to sweep opposition out of the way and thus allow the tank and motor-rifle divisions in the next echelon, piling on into the battle, to maintain the impetus of the advance.