The Third World War: The Untold Story

by John Hackett

  Soviet battalions and regiments in some numbers, cut off deep in the rear of the enemy by the change of front of 3 Shock Army, soon ceased to be effective fighting forces. NATO commanders put this short but welcome breathing space to good use in regrouping for counter-offensive operations. The Soviet High Command’s last hope of a timely resolution to the operations in the FRG (and it was a matter of growing urgency that they should soon be brought to a successful end) now lay in the other two tank armies of the Belorussian Tank Army Group, 5 and 7 Guards Tank Armies. These, however, after savage NATO air attack and civilian sabotage on the railways, were widely dispersed over Poland, with little chance of speedy concentration and deployment into action. To open opportunities for the armour moreover, the enemy’s defences, now to some degree reintegrated, would once again need to be broken through. This was again a task for infantry, with strong air and artillery support, but there was now very little infantry available. It would not be possible to move sufficient fresh infantry formations across Poland quickly enough, for the same reasons that it was not possible to bring about a speedy introduction of the tank armies. Rail transportation had been heavily disrupted and the roads were breaking up.

  All this was clear enough at the level of the front command, and at army group and even army level. None of it was known much lower down, in the headquarters of 197 Motor Rifle Division for example, such as remained of it, where staff officers deadened by noise and dropping with fatigue were receiving orders they could not understand and sending off others they knew could not be carried out even if they got through. In the regiments a grim confusion reigned, with half-lifeless robots going through motions lacking either hope or purpose. At battalion level little groups of people clung together, doing what they could.

  As for many another this was to be Captain Nekrassov’s last battle. His weakened battalion now came under heavy air attack from US Apache anti-tank helicopters, operating with US A-10 Thunderbolts and as an organized fighting unit was completely destroyed. Some of Nekrassov’s men survived but he did not care. He did not even know. By this time he was dead.”

  Chapter 12: The Scandinavian Campaign

  Amongst the many documents brought out of Moscow to Sweden by a defector in the confusion of late 1985[9] were certain personal records, of which perhaps the most revealing is that of Colonel A. N. Romanenko, a Deputy Director of Plans in the Soviet General Staff. His notes for 15 August include the following record of a conversation between himself and the Director of Plans, General Rudolf Ignatiev:

  “At about seven o’clock this morning, General Ignatiev came into my office with a harsh look on his face.

  “Those damned Americans,” he said, “have landed marines in Norway. We knew a force of sorts was coming, but the navy was confident it could break it up. Well, it hasn’t. We’ve got to get forces into south-west Norway quickly, or else the Americans will move against us in Bodo. We’re doing well in the Bodo area but we’ve got to stay there. You have your plan for seizing the airfields around Stavanger and for getting troops into the south — we’ve been through it together — and I now want you to put it into operation quickly. But you’ll have to look at it again, to see if it needs modifying to deal with whatever the Americans have got there.”

  Ignatiev said he had already put this to the Chief, who wanted the attack to go in tomorrow afternoon. The Chief reckons it would really shake the NATO governments when they see that we have to all intents and purposes completed the capture of their northern flank.

  “Now we can show that it’s hopeless for them to try to stop this,” Ignatiev said. “We shall get real advantage from having secured air command over the North and Norwegian Seas. I know we’ve had heavy losses in the long-range air forces — well, now we’ll make full use of our medium- and shorter-range bombers and our fighter bombers. We should have enough air defence resources to keep the enemy out. But we’ve got to hurry. Can we go in tomorrow?”

  All sorts of thoughts had been spinning through my mind as he was speaking — this operation was one that I had worked out myself.

  “Well,” I said, “we’ve replaced the airborne division in the Baltic Military District with 7 Guards Airborne Division from the Leningrad Military District. The new one is fresh and ready for use now. We have to find enough air transport to lift the complete division-I think we’ve got them but I’ll get on to the VDV [Military Air Transport Organization] straight away to confirm this. There are assault landing craft still in the Danish islands and there are Ro-Ro [roll-on, roll-off] ships in Rostock and Kiel. Since we have to act very quickly, it will mean using some of the naval infantry and mechanized forces occupying Denmark.”

  Ignatiev was clearly impatient and looked at his watch. “Yes, I know all these sorts of things have to be arranged but they aren’t a problem. I want you to get on with the operation at once. We should clear the plan by 1500 hours today, but in the meantime get some warning orders out.”

  “There is just one other matter,” I said. “If we are to secure the airborne assault, we shall have to attack the Norwegian airfields at Trondheim — Orland and Vaernes. We can’t really get at these effectively without crossing Sweden. If we are going to cross Sweden it would be better to send the air transport stream that way as well. It will be fifty times easier. Are we going to risk that?”

  “Risk?” said Ignatiev. “What risk? Do you think those nervous Swedes will fight to stop us passing overhead? We’ve been overflying them all this last week and they’ve done damn little more than bite their nails. They haven’t fought a war since 1814. They won’t get in our way, don’t worry. Get on with it, fast!”[10]

  Although the history of Swedish neutrality — based on the principle of non-alignment in peace with the aim of neutrality in war — went back a long way it was not all that well understood outside the Nordic countries. This was possibly in part because people of other countries have enough problems sorting out their own identity and history without worrying too much about others — especially when they are remote and neutral, the latter term tending to be regarded by some as synonymous with unimportant. If Sweden resented this, as it did, the country had largely itself to blame. Its impressive, passionate, and highly-armed neutrality was masked to the world by the political posturing of politicians from whatever platform they might be on at the time — ‘Third Worldism’, do-gooding, progressive liberalism, or whatever it happened to be. Sweden’s advice to those who, in its eyes, were enslaved to power relationships and alliances was plentiful, often delivered in a high moral tone which many found irritating. It was therefore easy to misread Sweden and fail to see the fierce determination that buttressed its traditional neutrality beneath all the political preaching. Only military professionals, defence analysts and industrial competitors really appreciated the remarkable quality of Sweden’s defence industry and armed forces, backed as they were by very high-grade planning and training and an infrastructure investment which absorbed one of the highest proportions of GNP of any country in the Western world. All of this was based on a comprehensive and well-accepted system of conscription and a sensible structure of reserves. There was much to be learnt from Sweden — not least that anyone taking it on would find it could curl up like a hedgehog and offer a very formidable resistance.

  Sweden’s non-alignment was not a weak-kneed opting out of European and world events but a fierce determination to preserve itself, irrespective of the folly of others. It would deter attack by its own armed strength. In a paradoxical nutshell, if Sweden had to go to war to stay neutral then it most certainly would, and it was the turn of the Swedes to be irritated that their position was so little understood, especially in the West where they had so many political and economic associations. From the Soviet Union they did not expect very much, for they realized that in a generally ignorant world the men in Moscow were bottom of the class when it came to other people’s history. They were, after all, too busy cooking their own.

  To the Soviet Union, Swed
ish neutrality was of considerable strategic importance. If Sweden threw in its hand with the West the balance in the Baltic could tilt sharply against the USSR. If war should come and the Swedes stood aside, as they always declared they would, they must understand that their country’s neutrality must not be such as to stand in the way of Soviet needs in the sea and airspace of the Baltic area. Provided that was tacitly accepted there was really no reason why the Swedish people should be unduly disturbed by a major thrust into Europe. The strategic and political analysis sections in the Kremlin thought that Second World War history stood on their side in securing this balance — after all, Sweden had played both ends against the middle and come out unscathed and there was no reason to think that this sort of flexibility could not be brought into use again. Moscow assessed that continuing to play for Swedish neutrality was the best option, although contingency plans for persuasion would need to be laid should the Swedes look like failing to see where their true interests lay. With a measure of good fortune on the Soviet side, and sound practical sense from the Swedes, these contingencies need not arise. But Soviet freedom of manoeuvre in the Baltic, and its plans for Norway, were so crucial to the war plans of the USSR in the Atlantic that the posturing of a few Swedish politicians could not be allowed to stand in their way. Nevertheless, the strategic analysts cautioned, steps that might draw Soviet forces into an unnecessary campaign in Sweden should certainly be avoided.

  Swedish comment and pronouncements from politicians, writers and academics had tended, sometimes with rare and much-needed fairness and impartiality, to balance the exaggerations and propaganda of the two power blocs and to illuminate the scene, somewhat naively it was often thought in the West, by adducing innocent motives for some of the Soviet Union’s more questionable acts and particularly its high level of armament. The USSR found this refereeing role valuable, but after a decade of grim events in South-East and South-West Asia and in Africa the Swedes were running distinctly short of whitewash. In particular, the cosmopolitan academic society in Stockholm received a sharp shock from revelations within the vaunted Stockholm Peace Research Institute. This institute, drawing as it did on the intellects and viewpoints of clever men and women from all over the world, could not have been purer in Swedish eyes or further beyond any sort of criticism of its idealistic work. The discovery in the early 1980s that a Czechoslovak research professor in a senior post had, over a period of years, been exploiting the Institute’s worldwide standing by acquiring incidental strategic and technical intelligence and remitting it to Moscow rocked the Swedish establishment to its foundations. The professor departed and the whole affair was played down but the scar that it left was deep.

  The scar was shortly to be reopened very painfully by the intrusion in the autumn of 1981 of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine, which stranded itself on rocks deep inside Swedish waters near the naval base of Karlskrona. The story filled the newspapers and television screens for days and nights on end. Moscow rejected the Swedish protests in intemperate fashion but gave no explanation that would stand up to examination. Sweden stubbornly refused to release the boat until it had made all the enquiries it could, in the course of which it was found — and the information was released publicly — that the submarine was carrying nuclear weapons. Swedish public opinion was incensed both by the incident and by Soviet surliness. Though the vessel was then allowed to go on its way, a seal had been set on dealings between the two countries, one that was to have its effects on subsequent events. Moscow did nothing to try to mend matters. In the next two to three years, Soviet aircraft carried out a programme of minor infringements of Swedish airspace, easily deniable but designed to remind Sweden of its geography and Soviet power.

  There was nothing soft-centred or starry-eyed about the regular elements of the Swedish armed forces. Their intelligence, with the advantage of geography and good technology, was first rate and they had no illusions about the Soviet Union in any of its guises. At the same time, they were very far from blind to faults in the Western world. These highly professional men had learned to live with the contradictory tasks of leading and training their forces to the highest pitch of readiness and efficiency to serve the purposes of a perennially dove-like establishment.

  It was common ground among them that in the last war Sweden had been as helpful to Britain and the USA as neutrality would decently allow. At the same time they knew, and ruefully admitted, that their neutrality had undoubtedly contributed to the woes of their sister country, Norway, under German domination. Was history to repeat itself with a single change of cast? This was an uncomfortable thought within the Nordic family.

  The Swedish defence effort was considerable, the spending per capita and as a percentage of GNP being directly comparable with that of the major NATO allies in Europe. A nationwide call-up was designed to mobilize some 800,000 men and women in seventy-two hours to man defences throughout the country. The air defence was of an especially high order, remarkable for a country of such a small population, based on almost entirely home-grown products like superb Viggen interceptor and attack aircraft, and advanced radars and electronics, in which Swedish industry excelled. Underground shelters and hangars had been tunnelled into the mountain sides.

  The navy had taken advantage of a virtually tideless sea and granite cliffs to blast out vast caverns as tunnel-docks for warships. In 1985 Sweden had a dozen modern diesel-electric submarines; four modernized destroyers, twenty-eight missile-armed fast-attack craft; antisubmarine warfare (ASW) helicopters and various mine counter-measure (MCM) vessels. As a former Swedish naval attaché in London had written: The Royal Swedish Navy must be prepared to operate in narrow waters on what may be called a hit-and-run basis, very often at night or in the darkness’.[11] The submarine force would, of course, patrol off the enemy’s bases, to report and attack his forces and to intercept his invasion fleet. In peacetime, as a matter of routine, submarine surveillance would provide intelligence otherwise unobtainable; and in time of emergency this task could be critical.

  Thus it was that early on 3 August 1985 the Swedish submarine Sjohasten, on reconnaissance patrol just outside Soviet territorial waters, off the Gulf of Riga, sighted a large and heavily escorted convoy of Soviet amphibious vessels. Lieutenant Per Asling, the submarine’s captain, was not aware of any major Soviet or Warsaw Pact naval exercise. But neither had he been told that war was imminent. His duty, he decided, was to remain undetected, while observing carefully the composition and course of the Soviet force. He would then make a short ‘Most Immediate’ sighting report, followed by an amplifying report giving full details. The first of these signals was handed to the Chief of the Swedish Defence Staff at 0957 hours that morning by his naval deputy, and together they studied the chart upon which the position and course of the Soviet force had been plotted. By noon, when the Council of State assembled in emergency meeting, with His Majesty King Carl Gustaf present, the Sjohasten’s amplifying report had been received. As the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy pointed out, the Soviet force, if it held on course, would pass south of Bornholm next afternoon and could have reached the Baltic exits by daybreak on 5 August. As he spoke, an air reconnaissance report was handed to him. It confirmed that of the submarine. Those Soviet amphibious craft were indeed heading for the Baltic exits. They formed the follow-up force to a division detached from 2 Guards Tank Army which, by dawn on 5 August, had reached the Kiel Canal. Before that, however, there had been much to preoccupy the Swedish Council of State, the Swedish armed forces, and indeed the Swedish people.

  A key part of the Soviet plan for the campaign in Norway, which will be described shortly, rested on the amphibious assault on the port and airfield at Bodo. The airfield was an important base for Allied maritime aircraft as well as Norwegian fighters and it was vital to keep it under daily reconnaissance, immediately before and after hostilities began, to supplement the limited intelligence from agents and satellites on which they must otherwise rely. The air route via the Kola Peninsul
a from the Leningrad area, where the high-altitude but short-range reconnaissance aircraft were based, was over 4,000 kilometres and this would involve three refuelling stops. What was more important was that a mission on this pattern could not fail to be detected by the NATO early warning system. To preserve surprise about the amphibious assault this had to be avoided. The decision was therefore taken in Moscow to send a Mig-25 Foxbat B special reconnaissance aircraft at a height of 25,000 metres every day straight across Sweden from Vaasa in Finland, and such was the importance of the task that the management of the missions was exercised directly at a high level by the Soviet Air Staff itself. The reconnaissance aircraft were unarmed. The Soviets would deal with any whining by the Swedes as they had done in the past.

  The first flight was made on 2 August at dawn and repeated on the 3rd. Each time, the battle flight of two Viggen JA-37s swept up the ramp from their mountain hangar at Vasteraas air base and within twenty-five seconds were climbing with full power. But even with their high performance there was much to do and little time to do it. The Viggens could not, in fact, reach 25,000 metres but with the ‘snap-up’ capability of their missiles there was a good chance of at least threatening the Foxbat if they could only get into a favourable tactical relationship with it. With so short a warning time that would be difficult, but less so on the return flight when the limits of the Foxbats, timing could be broadly calculated. That, at least, was how the Swedish Air Staff saw it.