by John Hackett
It was a thoughtful and reflective Air Marshal who flew the remaining few kilometres back to his headquarters that afternoon. Much had been done to gear up defences since the penny had dropped with the Western governments. The crucial question was whether there had been time to do enough. On the answer to that question might well depend not only the continued existence of an independent United Kingdom but the survival of Western democracy.
Five days later, as we know, the Soviet offensive opened in the Central Region. Sir John Hazel did not take much waking in the early hours of 4 August. He was not greatly surprised to learn that heavy Soviet pressure was already being exerted along the whole length of the Central Region. He knew that many of his strike-attack forces would be committed immediately to interdiction and counter-air operations, for which they were ready, in an effort to slow down the momentum of the Soviet advance. He also knew that such of his aircraft as were assigned to SACLANT would be required for a pre-emptive attack on the main Soviet Backfire base in the Kola Peninsula up in the Arctic Circle. This would be carried out by Tornados and Buccaneers from the UK, supported by tanker aircraft for refuelling during the mission.
Hazel thoroughly approved of this objective. Maritime air defence philosophy had long been a lively subject for debate between differing schools of thought, but he saw this attack on the source of the threat as entirely consistent with his own strongly held view that the best form of maritime air defence was to prevent as many of the enemy aircraft as possible from reaching the sea area where the targets were. In the EASTLANT area this meant an emphasis on a barrier defence across the routes that geography forced on the Soviet long-range bombers. This philosophy, which was not shared by all, did not rule out air defence forces being dedicated to the needs of a specific surface group, but resources were sparse and point defence was an extravagant way of using aircraft. He certainly would need strong arguments before he would divert significant effort from the more cost-effective tactic of hitting the enemy at or near his point of origin.
In less than an hour the radar plot started to show intruders approaching the UK Air Defence Region from the far north. In the next few days the defences were to be very hard pressed indeed as wave after wave of attacks were launched against the UK mainland. The pattern suggested that the Soviet long-range and naval air forces hoped to achieve four main objectives: the neutralization of the air defences; the elimination of nuclear-capable forces on the ground; the disruption of command and control; and the impeding of the transatlantic flow of reinforcements by sea and by air.
No one as yet knew an effective way of hiding a radar aerial, but mobile equipments complicated the attacker’s job and made gap-filling feasible — with the underlying strength resting in the flexibility and resilience of the new command-and-control data system which could accept and process information from any source. Radars were knocked out, AEW aircraft were shot down, and air defence ships were sunk; continental early warning was nullified quite early on by the speed of the Soviet advance on land. At no time, however, was the air defence system so bereft of data as to prevent it from reacting. In some of the worst periods the Tornados, supported by tankers, ran autonomous combat air patrols, providing their own raid information and directing their own interceptions until replacement AEW aircraft could come back on station or a mobile radar could be brought on line.
Airfields presented a less tractable problem. If only there had been time and money to prepare more satellite airfields and dispersals — better still, if the fighters had been less dependent on those wretched concrete surfaces. Dispersal to reduce losses on the ground increased the operating problems on bases already short of manpower and the time needed to get aircraft into the air. Cratering and mining were among the most disabling forms of attack: an airfield with its runway out meant that all the aircraft on the ground were neutralized until repairs could be effected. Rapid runway repair units had been a key feature in the improvement programme, and now paid off well. They took many casualties, especially from delayed action mines, as they courageously pressed on with their vital repair work. In one way, things turned out rather better than Hazel’s men had expected. Low-level attacks did not seem to be the Soviet Air Forces’ strong point. After 1,500 kilometres or more of transit flying, and of fighting their way through the defences, many of them failed to locate their targets with sufficient precision. Those who climbed to 500 metres or so for a quick verification of their navigation were almost always picked off by the Rapiers positioned around the airfields.
As was expected, not all the attacks were at low level. Some came in at medium levels with a massive shield of electronic counter-measures and a high-speed dash to the point of release for their stand-off weapons. Against these tactics the Tornados, pushed well forward on combat air patrol and supported by tankers, proved the only effective counter. From the outset it was clear that the electronic war was going to be as closely and tenaciously fought as any other aspect of the air defence battle. The Soviet command of the art was clearly high, but air force thinking within the Alliance had foreseen this and the in-built counter-measures proved equal to the task when the test came. The revived emphasis that the RAF placed on tactics after the sterile years of the trip-wire strategy also paid off handsomely.
The corollary to the development of precision-guided stand-off weapons was that targets had to be selected with great discrimination. This was evident in the pattern of Soviet air attacks. Apart from airfields and vital points in the air defence system, key targets such as ports, ordnance and aircraft factories all received attention and suffered substantial damage. Whitehall was strewn with masonry. Many buildings (including, ironically, the Treasury, as well as parts of the Defence Ministry and the Palace of Westminster) were destroyed — though key members of the government and central administration were safely established at alternative and hardened centres. Civilian casualties, while not on the scale of the 1939-45 war, were nevertheless considerable, and because of the selective nature of these attacks they were often very disruptive.
As the Allied forces were pushed back in Central Europe a great hole was torn in the NATO air defence system in the northern area. This opened up new and shorter lines of approach for the Soviet Air Forces’ attacks on the United Kingdom. Their aircraft could now come out through the Baltic with comparative immunity and fly across, or down, the North Sea. The response to this was to mount Tornado combat air patrols (CAP) and tankers forward in the direction of that area in the same way that CAP were mounted at focal points to intercept Soviet aircraft coming around the North Cape and into the North Norwegian Sea. Soviet aircraft, dropping to low level, could now pose a much stronger threat to the French Channel ports which were so vital to JACWA for the reception of the massive transatlantic CAVALRY convoys. Hitherto the Russians had found it difficult to find a short, and sufficiently soft, line of approach to be able to attack with intensity. Now, if they could skim through the Channel undetected at very low level they had a chance of doing very serious damage indeed to the installations and the sea transports themselves. In addition to the barrier patrols across the Baltic Exits, the C-in-C now agreed with HQ Third Air Force, and with COMAAFCE’s ready consent, that some of the recently arrived F-15s held in reserve should be dedicated to meeting this threat and protecting the French ports (in conjunction with the French Air Force). This was done, and the brilliantly versatile F-15s had great success against those attacking aircraft that managed to evade the barrier patrols to the north.
Losses in the air were well up to the levels that the peacetime analysts had forecast, but valuable fighters were more often lost on the ground than in the air. AEW aircraft paid the price for having to be far out on station and relatively unprotected, and tanker aircraft were sometimes lost for the same reason. A proportion of airfields were always unusable, but never so many that the defences were totally grounded. The problems of identification in a very active sky and of separation between missile and non-missile zones proved as
difficult as exercises had always suggested that they would be. Inevitably some RAF attack aircraft returning from their Central Region targets fell victim to their own defences. The barrier patrol up to the north was there as a tourniquet around the Soviet long-range air forces seeking to threaten soft transport aircraft coming over the air bridge and the shipborne reinforcements coming across the sea. Some inevitably got through the net, but when this happened there was a second chance to intercept them in lower latitudes, though not always until after they had done damage to sea and air supplies.
As one instance, on 6 August two Backfire bombers armed with a massive battery of air-to-air missiles got loose in the procession of air transports wallowing across the Atlantic at 550 miles an hour. It was easy shooting. They knocked down three C-5s and four 747s before withdrawing at high speed to the north. One of them fell to a Tornado trap on the way home.
A system of dispersing the transports when a raider was known to be loose had been introduced, but that time, for some reason, the codeword did not get through. The air bridge had been attacked before, but this was a black day with more than 2,000 men missing from a Central Army Group formation before they even knew they were in action. But for most of the time the losses were at least militarily acceptable.
After eight days it began to look as if the advantage might be lying slightly with the defences. It was impossible to draw up an exact balance sheet, but they were certainly taking a heavy toll of aircraft in the promising ratio of around four to one. All now depended on how long the Russians would keep up the pressure and how long the UK air defences could sustain their reaction.”
The following rather more personal account of events on a day in the second week of full hostilities is taken from an as yet unpublished narrative by the former Personal Staff Officer to AOC-in-C Strike Command. It illustrates the understanding commonly found between top commanders and those who work with them.
“Late in the afternoon of 12 August there was, for the first time, nothing on the radar plot. There had been plenty of action that day. The last incident had been when a force of ten-plus aircraft had turned back as soon as they ran into the Tornado CAP outside the Baltic. As many of No. 1 Group’s attack aircraft as they were likely to see again were now back from their early sorties over the Central Region, and it looked as if things might be quiet for an hour or so at least, while they, and no doubt the enemy, got ready for the next assault.
Sir John came up from the ground for a breather. His surface HQ had been hit several times but his operational control facilities were still working. It was a relief to walk on the grass in the Chiltern Hills on a summer afternoon. The day was clear but up in the sky a milky veil of what looked like cirrus cloud stretched from horizon to horizon. In fact it was the condensation trails of the great transatlantic airlift, each aircraft’s trails being churned up and added to by the one behind it as they ploughed on to their destination airfields.
In 1940 he had been at school in Kent, and he recalled how the masters and boys had had a grandstand view of the Battle of Britain from the playing fields — watching and cheering as Hurricanes chased Heinkels, and Spitfires fought Messerschmitts. The school-boys nowadays, and for that matter the whole civilian population, must be puzzled, he reflected, as they heard bombs explode and saw the grim result, with no action going on in the sky. They would know what that great milky way was because there had been so much about it on television. But would they understand that No. 11 Group, the same group as bore the brunt of the battle back in 1940, was once again fighting day and night for the survival of the country and the West — but this time way out of sight and far from the country’s shores? In due time, and if things came out right, he certainly hoped they would, for these were important matters to be understood by the public. If his reputation meant anything at the end of this war he would do his damnedest, he resolved, to see that the politicans did not forget a second time.
After the luxury of letting his thoughts stray for five minutes he went down the hole again and picked up a direct telephone to AOC 11 Group, his Air Defence Commander.
Air Vice-Marshal Bill Williams, the AOC, was a very experienced fighter pilot, but of course he was not old enough to have been in the 1939-45 war. He had a feeling, one way or the other, that this war was not going to last very long; as an airman to the core he had no wish to have to tell his children that he had spent all of it underground. So that morning he had handed over to the Group Captain Ops and flown one of the Tornados on the Baltic Exits combat air patrol. The very one, in fact, in face of which the raiders had turned back. Later he remembered his telephone conversation with the C-in-C because it seemed to mark a watershed in the relentless battle that he was running.
Understandably, he was keen to give his chief a first-hand account from the front line of battle. The C-in-C, who knew most things that were going on, forestalled him.
“Hello Bill — I see you had a good trip. What were they?”
“Backfires we think, sir, but we didn’t get a visual. They turned back as soon as they got us on their radar. We couldn’t close them — not this end of the Baltic anyway — and we thought they might be spoofing.”
“How are things in the Group?” asked the C-in-C.
“Well, you know our battle claims and our air and ground casualties. We’re still keeping a four to one kill ratio including aircraft losses on the ground and that seems to be good. Everyone’s tails would be right up now except that they’re so bloody tired. The aircrew are still all right — just — and we’re enforcing rest periods between sorties for them, but the ground crew have only been snatching sleep as and when they can since the first scramble. They’ve taken the casualties on the ground absolutely marvellously, especially in the runway repair teams. There have been plenty of medals earned by those chaps if we ever get round to that sort of thing. But they’re pretty well flaked out now. I hate having to say it but I can’t see how we can keep this pace up for more than a day or two. How do you think things are going, sir?” There was a pause before the C-in-C answered — he wanted to be encouraging.
“Several of their raids have turned back in the last eight hours and that must mean something. I think it’s just possible that they’re coming round to the idea that they probably can’t win this one.” He paused again. “I only hope they don’t twig that they probably could if they raised the tempo and kept at us for another week or so. Bill, you’ve got to keep your men going and it may be quite a time yet.”
As the C-in-C hung up, a Sergeant placed a folder of intelligence reports and photographs on his desk. He studied them very closely. Half an hour later he called the Air Defence Commander again:
“Bill, we’re getting some very good Int stuff by satellite now about our counter-air ops. The losses of 1 Group, and of the Germans and USAF, in Tornados and F-111s, have been pretty heavy but COMAAFCE reckons the exchange rate is a very good one and I agree. With what they’re doing, together with the cruise missiles, it looks as if we’re fairly ripping those airfields to bits.”
“Can I pass that round the Group?” asked the AOC, hoping for anything that would help hold back their battle-weariness.
“Of course,” said the C-in-C, “but, Bill — for your ears only in case I’m being too optimistic — if these reports are as good as they look your chaps should be getting a little more rest before long.” “
CHAPTER 20: The Air War Over the Central Region
Since the earliest days of the Alliance, ideas about the use of air power had centred, non-contentiously, on the ability of air forces to bring rapid concentrations of power to bear to redress the imbalance between Allied and Warsaw Pact numbers. Over the years, ways of achieving this had changed with the shifting balance in numbers and quality and with the continually evolving political appreciations of the times. In the late fifties the strong Allied tactical air forces were cut back as the emphasis swung to massive nuclear retaliation and the ‘trip-wire’. In the late sixties, with the cha
nge to the ‘flexible response’ strategy, defence efforts were directed to the development of aircraft capable of undertaking both nuclear and conventional operations. As time went on, a numerical Warsaw Pact superiority in the air, as well as on the ground, looked as if it was to be a permanent feature in the balance of power. This placed a high premium on maintaining the Allied technological lead. It also demanded attention to methods of improving the effectiveness of the amalgam of national air forces through better standardization of their weapons and tactics and of their engineering and logistic support. These were not easy aims to achieve, for a variety of national reasons, and progress — though happily considerable by 1985 — had been slow and painful.
The NATO air forces in the Central Region were made up of two tactical air forces, 2 ATAF associated with the Northern Army Group and 4 ATAF with the Central Army Group. This structure was a hangover from the occupation of Germany after the Second World War. Its appropriateness came into question in the late sixties and early seventies. The problem was resolved in 1974, when an overall United States Air Commander (COMAAFCE) was established, with his own headquarters, to exercise central control of Allied air power at the highest level of air command in order to exploit the flexibility and concentration of the numerically inferior Allied air forces. COMAAFCE was responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, Central Region (CINCENT), and his two immediate subordinates were the commanders of 2 and 4 ATAF who retained, in peacetime at least, the same close contact with the army groups.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain we have seen how, during the 1970s, the Russians had developed a more sophisticated concept of air power. What had once been an air arm with very narrow aims, and an almost exclusively battlefield role, had evolved into an air force as the West understood the term. COMAAFCE saw the need to organize his air forces so as to counter this increased threat, while still being able to support the defensive land battle in the critical phase before full reinforcements arrived. He also saw the difficulties. Land and air commanders were agreed on the immediate, full-blooded use of air power in the first hours of an offensive. They saw it as a strategic task of the first importance to identify and slow the enemy’s main thrusts on the ground. At the same time, COMAAFCE realized better than anyone that the success or failure of this plan would depend on the security of his air bases. In particular, his mind often dwelt on the fact that the bases from which 2 ATAF operated were uncomfortably far forward.