The Third World War - August 1985

by John Hackett

  Gosport,

  England

  24 August 1985

  Dear Mom,

  You should have heard by now that I’m O.K. - some cuts, bruises and burns here and there, but believe me, I’m in good shape. I guess I’ll be back to duty in a couple of weeks. What then I don’t know. Another ship, I expect. I’m being looked after real well, though. Yeah, but how come you ended up in hospital? I hear you ask. O.K., well - you remember I was drafted suddenly to Military Sealift Command, at Norfolk Va? Next thing I was aboard a great big container ship in Boston. I’d better not give you the name. Believe it or not they censor your letters here. At any rate, this ship was loading the Army’s weapons. And then they slung a whole lot of bunkhouses aboard - big containers. About 120. Then came the soldiers, 1,000 or so. My job was in the extra radio team we took for the voyage.

  Things happened fast. Two days after we heard the Russians had invaded Germany we sailed from Boston. Then we waited in Halifax NS until the convoy had gathered. When we sailed there were forty-eight ships, all big and fast, and full of soldiers. We were really four convoys, each of twelve ships, three columns of four in each. Ours was ahead. We also had two aircraft carriers, but they were old ones, and full of troops. There was one at the head of each of our outer columns. My station was on the bridge. I had to pass the signals to the Skipper, or whoever was in charge of the ship - the watch officer. So I could hear and see a good deal. On the third day out things began to; happen. We ran into some submarines that fired missiles. We weren’t hit then, but I could see columns of smoke coming up here and there. Of course there were ships - troopships or escort ships, big and small - everywhere. We passed near where a couple of “choppers” were hunting a submarine. We didn’t think they had much chance of getting a “nuke”. But suddenly there was an explosion in the sea and we reckoned they’d got one.

  A few hours later, when it was dark, there was another missile attack - more ships hit. Again we got away with it. Two of our convoy were hit, though. In a moment they were ablaze, and hauling out of line. The rest of us said a prayer and pressed on. Next day we copped it. I got the missile raid warnings on my radio net. This time, as the submarines opened up on us, there came the air-to-surface missiles. We were a long way from Murmansk, but these boys found us and reached right out. Suddenly there was a terrible flash and bang-crack, all at once. Then in a moment another. We were all thrown in a heap. The Skipper (I think it was) shouted, “Full left rudder! Emergency stop!” We had to haul out of line, you see. That’s about all I remember till I came to in a life-raft. I said, “Where’s the ship?” Some guy squatting there lifted up my head. “There,” he said, pointing. “She’s still afloat, but pretty near burned out.” I could see the smoke. I didn’t feel too good. But I guess I was very lucky. We all were, who were on the bridge, or somewhere aft. The missiles had hit amidships and killed most everyone around. Then the fire took hold. But as we turned out of line we brought the ship’s stern to the wind. And as we stopped, the wind took the fire away from the after superstructure, where we were - and a good many life-rafts. Some of the soldiers who jumped straight overboard when the missiles hit were saved. But hundreds were lost. It was bad. We were lucky. A British frigate found us, and that’s why I’m in Gosport, England, Mom. There’s a great joke going around here that Britain’s been saved by the US Cavalry riding in - like those old movies, you know? Hope you are all well at home.

  Love,

  Dan?”

  In assessing the outcome of the war at sea, which continued unabated until the NATO counter-offensive checked the enemy’s advance in the Central Region, it is necessary to consider the aims of the respective naval commanders, the extent to which these were achieved, and at what cost. In the first place, it may be said that in failing to interdict more than 25 per cent of the immediate seaborne reinforcement sent from North America to Allied Command Europe, the Soviet Navy failed to support the Red Army decisively. SACLANT and JACWA between them had for their part decisively supported SACEUR. As to the war at sea in general, the losses of warships, aircraft and submarines on both sides, during the first phase, had left the balance little changed since the outbreak of hostilities, although at a lower level. Losses had been heavy, and there were virtually no reserves. Replacement by new construction would take years.

  NATO did enjoy one advantage over the Russians, however. It remained a good deal simpler for the NATO navies to redeploy their existing surface forces than for the Soviet Navy to do so. Several important US units from the Pacific were soon on their way to the Atlantic, to replace elements of the Strike Fleet which had been sunk, some by air but more by submarine attack, during the withdrawal of the force from the Norwegian Sea. But the Soviet Baltic and Black Sea Fleets, despite the seizure of the Baltic Exits and the transfer of Black Sea units to the Mediterranean, were unable to support each other. NATO maritime strike aircraft in Britain, ‘the unsinkable aircraft carrier’, and NATO submarines in the Mediterranean, were a constant discouragement to Soviet naval movements. Soviet naval and air forces in the Middle East did succeed, for a time, in dominating the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. But a combined US, British and Australian force, operating in the Indian Ocean, eventually neutralized them. Again, losses on both sides were heavy.

  The movement of oil, food, raw materials and war equipment to north-west Europe was strongly opposed by Soviet submarines and maritime strike aircraft. But attrition of the Soviet forces was such as to wear down gradually the weight of attack. In 1974 Admiral Gorshkov had made this point: ‘The underestimation of the need to support submarine operations with aircraft and surface ships cost the German high command dearly in the last two wars.’ Now his own country had made the same strategic error. Had the submarines been capable of operating submerged in large groups, as the German U-boats had done on the surface in the Second World War, there is little doubt that their campaign would have succeeded. As it was, the submarines could be dealt with in ones or twos - though nearly always with the loss, to missile attack, of one or more anti-submarine vessels. The escort carriers, frigates, patrol ships, helicopters and maritime aircraft had been built, as a matter of great urgency, during the period 1979-85. Of critical importance to JACWA had been the contribution of the Federal German Navy, which, with the strong support of the NATO Council, had been greatly strengthened during the period. The Federal German government, recognizing the supreme importance of the safe and timely arrival of the convoys bringing US and Canadian reinforcements to the Central Front, had increased its light naval forces and naval air forces in the Baltic. This had permitted the release of frigates to work with the additional UK escort carriers.

  When the outcome of the 1985 war as a whole can be assessed, it may be that the downfall of the USSR will be attributed, ironically, to Gorshkov, the greatest Russian admiral of all time, whose forceful and successful advocacy of ever-increasing Soviet sea power led the comrades to disaster - when the seas got too rough the Bear drowned.

  Even on land the Soviet Union appeared to have overreached itself. In the all-important central front of Western Europe, the Red Army had counted on very early and decisive success. This success had eluded its commanders. Instead they were faced with a check to their offensive and serious misgivings about support at home.

  CHAPTER 18: The War in Inner Space

  In 1957 the world ran into its gardens and out into the streets to watch Sputnik streak across the sky. Later they were to be glued to their TV sets watching men walking on the moon. Then came the link-up of the US Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecrafts, the politics of that misleading handshake in space engaging the world’s spectators more than its technology. As Congress cut back the funds for NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) space programme the earthbound mortals with their daily lives to lead rather lost interest. Films like the record running Star Wars, first screened in 1977 and still showing in London at the outbreak of the war, and books about interstellar wars in deep space, fas
cinated and absorbed the public while real men and their machines performing tasks as they orbited the world, no further away than London is from Manchester in England, seemed of no particular account. That was not, of course, true of the small scientific-military groups whose task it was to think about and manage these things; especially so in the Soviet Union. It was this inner space from 300 to, at most, 32,000 kilometres that occupied their attention. The military applications of this extended area of man’s domination over his environment were seen as precisely those first sought in aviation - namely, reconnaissance and communications.

  By 1985 the superpowers had developed astonishing capabilities in those directions. Especially dramatic was space photography of such high resolution that soldiers marching on earth could be counted in their columns. In the event of war, the Russians would be especially interested in seeing what was going on in the Atlantic and on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The US, on behalf of the West, had a prime interest in observing military developments and deployments in the heartland of the USSR by photography and electronic eavesdropping, particularly during periods of tension or actual war, but also in routine times of peace. Communications satellites acting as relay stations in space had not only enormously increased the extent of available facilities, they had enhanced the reliability and quality of radio transmission and reception out of all recognition. They had also provided remarkable navigation assistance, with an accuracy down to a few metres, to ships, submarines and aircraft.

  Just as this inner space was now a quite readily accessible extension of the atmosphere, so its military opportunities proved to be, in the main, extensions of existing earth-based facilities, considerably enhanced but not unique - and therefore never wholly indispensable. There was just one activity, of critical interest to the Allies, where the time advantages in war might be so great that it was perhaps in a special category and an exception to that general rule. That activity was electronic reconnaissance. As noted elsewhere in this book, the West enjoyed a decided advantage over the Communist East in ECM, and for that reason the Soviet Union in peacetime shrouded its communications with every possible veil of secrecy. If the West was to exploit its electronic advantage to the fullest extent it needed to know from the outset of hostilities just which parts of the frequency spectrum, and in what modes of emission, the Soviet forces would operate. This information was urgently needed as soon as the battle was joined; the Soviet cloak of secrecy had to be torn aside. This could all be done very much more quickly and comprehensively from space reconnaissance satellites than would ever have been possible by monitoring the communications networks in the war theatre on the ground.

  After the early scramble to catch up with the Soviet Union, when spurred into competition by the success of the Sputnik shots, the USA soon took the lead. Their vehicles and systems were demonstrably more capable, more reliable and more durable than those of the USSR. Out of that technological and engineering success came a difference of approach that was to be of fundamental strategic importance: the Americans invested their resources in complicated long-life, multi-purpose craft designed to function in orbit for periods as long as a year. The Russians, under force majeure, went for frequent launchings of simple, single-purpose, short-life payloads. The corollary to this in 1985 was that the Soviet Union had a high launch capability - they had put no less than thirty-two photo-recce satellites in orbit in the previous twelve months, and on 3 August they had more than twenty launchers ready at Baikonur and Plesetsk with a variety of satellites ready as their payloads. The USA, on the other hand, had no more than a few giant Titan II rockets designed to put the thirteen-tonne Big Bird II satellites into space, and five Orbiter aerospace vehicles developed for their space shuttle system.

  In the late seventies the US programme seemed to have reached a plateau of development, while the USSR continued with frequent manned launches on research tasks, the exact purposes of which were not always evident to Western observers. It was, however, pretty well authenticated that they were developing a counter-satellite capability employing, in addition to jamming, certainly lasers and other high energy beams. In 1985 both sides had some counter-satellite capability, but it was suspected that the USSR was well in the lead. It refrained from making use of this capability until the early hours of 4 August for fear of still further conceding the advantage of surprise but, as recorded elsewhere, as soon as the offensive was launched in the Central Region it made an all-out effort in space.

  This immediately degraded Allied communications, but it was a degradation that could at least in part be compensated for by switching to atmospheric systems as soon as space circuits went out. When the history of the space war comes to be written the part played by the communications managers in the US control centres will be seen to have made a remarkable and decisive contribution to the Allied war effort.

  On NATO’s declaration of alert in July 1985, NASA, together with the Department of Defense, urgently reviewed the launch schedules for the space shuttle Orbiter vehicles. Of the five in service, one was available. Of the others, one was on long turn-round for replacement of its thermal tiles; one was having its undercarriage renewed after a heavy landing at Vandenberg AFB; one was on a thirty-day refit and one was in orbit recovering a satellite. The European Space Laboratory was on the ground and not scheduled to be relaunched until later in the year.

  At 0600 hours Eastern Standard Time on Friday 2 August the available orbiter {Enterprise 101) was launched from Cape Kennedy with a four-man crew and Colonel ‘Slim’ Wentworth, USAF, in command. It was a multi-purpose mission in which priorities might need to be changed, and a manned craft was the best way of preserving flexibility. Photography and a full range of electronic reconnaissance was required from its regular passes over Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. In addition it was ready with specially prepared tapes in over a dozen languages for propaganda broadcasts, but these would only be ordered if political developments during the mission made it propitious to do so.

  As tension heightened towards the end of July the two Big Birds were so manoeuvred as to photograph the likely dispersal sites for the Soviet SS-16 mobile ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missiles). At the same time the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the readying of two further Big Birds as replacements for any damaged satellites, with priority going to maintaining the electronic surveillance which would be so vital to the Allied ECM campaign if war broke out. He and his colleagues had also ruled that three supplementary navigation satellites should be placed in geostationary orbit 30,000 kilometres up over the Atlantic. This was the system that gave such an astonishing navigational capability and allowed USAF’s F-111 aircraft to be immediately capable of reading out a ground position to an accuracy of twelve metres. It was not thought that these high satellites would be at much risk. They were very difficult to get at, and there must surely be more cost-effective ways of disrupting the system than by days of satellite manoeuvring in order to effect close-range interference. Some corroboration of that view came on 2 August when the FLEETSATCOM (fleet satellite communications) tracking and control station on the eastern seaboard suffered major damage from an undetected saboteur. The very disturbing feature of this was that the damage was done by electronic means and could only have been inflicted by someone with an intimate knowledge of the station and its technology.

  The war in space was very much a matter of move and counter-move and the outcome was fairly evenly balanced. The US were all the time concerned to husband their limited number of launchers. On the other hand, their satellites had much more comprehensive and versatile capabilities in space than those of the USSR. Furthermore, with doubling and tripling up of systems they were very resilient to interference and could accept extensive damage on occasions and still usefully carry on their tasks. The key information on Soviet electronic emissions in the Central Region battle area was in fact extracted very rapidly and early on in the war to the great advantage of the Allies. Ballistic missi
le warning from high satellites was also preserved completely throughout the war. The Soviet system suffered heavily from US interference and from the random effect of its own inherent unreliability and the short life of its vehicles. By dint of frequent replacements the Russians kept up good coverage of the Atlantic and the United States itself, but in the event this was not to give them the same practical advantage that the Allies obtained from their own electronic reconnaissance.

  None of this accorded very closely with popular ideas gleaned from the bookstalls and the cinemas, and it was not to be expected that it would. However, there was one incident that came quite near to the science fiction fantasies, and for what it may presage for the future it may be worth recounting here.

  Enterprise 101 had been in orbit for forty hours by midnight on 3 August. All her systems were working excellently and she had been discharging regular canisters of exposed film back into the atmosphere for recovery and processing. Colonel Wentworth had not been ordered to start the broadcasts but his spacecraft had been under close observation by the Soviet Union; her missions, on which the Russians were well informed from their own sources in the States, were highly unacceptable to them. Apart from the very real strategic disadvantages to the Soviet Union of this space mission, the Politburo and military alike found it intolerable that four Americans should be able to sweep across their country with impunity ten times a day when they were on the brink of war. But they were well prepared, and had already laid plans for putting Enterprise out of business if they could.

  In the early hours of 4 August a Soyuz 49 mission was launched with a two-man crew, and on its fourth orbit the Soyuz craft was manoeuvred to within 150 metres of Enterprise. Wentworth was keeping a visual look-out at that time, and when Mission 49 made its first beam sweep across Enterprise the laser traversed his line of sight and blinded him. The Enterprise crew therefore had plenty on their hands, both in alerting space control as to what was going on and in coping with a blinded and weightless commander. Captain Jensen of the US Navy took over command and ordered an immediate check for further damage. The craft had in fact been subjected to other high energy beam sweeps and the damage check brought gloomy news: their five engine nozzles and their elevons had been damaged, and there was now no possibility of a successful controlled re-entry into the atmosphere. Worst of all, their solar cells seemed to have suffered and electric power generation had ceased. They had a large battery capacity, but Jensen immediately ordered a reduction of all electrical services to the minimum required for life support and for communication with space control.