by James Philip
In an ideal world the RAF would have much preferred to have dropped the Yellow Suns carried by Just Jane and Rattle and Shake somewhere out in the wilds where no human foot had stepped for decades. Unfortunately, ‘not killing anybody’ had never been an option; the thing was to kill as few people as possible. Whereas dropping the bombs far enough away from Baghdad, Ramadi and Fallujah to avoid killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians just about worked, according to the slide rule calculations of the physicists and ops types back at base; dropping the damnable things on nothing did not work. In the end two ‘compromise’ drop points had been established and in the last week both Just Jane and Rattle and Shake had flown three separate simulated missions against ‘beacon delineated’ target zones far out in the western deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, periodically harassed by ‘friendly fighters’ and ‘locked up’ by equally ‘friendly’ air defence radars.
The best intelligence was that to reach the assigned ‘drop points’ both Vulcans would have to fly at least fifty miles inside the engagement envelopes of the multiple S-75 surface-to-air missile batteries defending Baghdad.
The men flying Just Jane and Rattle and Shake that night knew they were not coming back; each man had written a last will and testament, and left a letter to their next of kin. Unusually in the post-October War RAF, of the ten men flying the mission, all but one actually had a next-of-kin to write to; four had surviving wives and children, another two sweethearts back in England, or parents or siblings still alive despite the predations of the twenty months since the October War.
No man complained about his lot.
The Red Army was about to consign the last hoorah of the British Empire to the dustbin of history and there was nothing to be done but to well... keep on fighting until one could not.
Just Jane and Rattle and Shake received the order ‘EIGHTY EAST’ at 22:08 hours.
Both aircraft acknowledged within seconds.
Just Jane and Rattle and Shake climbed to fifty-three thousand feet with their throttles wide open and headed north. Tonight fuel economy was not an operational factor. There would be a 214 Squadron Valiant tanker lurking just over the Saudi Arabian border on the way back but nobody believed either Vulcan would be topping off their tanks ‘on the way back’.
Just Jane signalled she had crossed through the IP – the initial point of her bomb run – at 22:56 hours.
MOHNE.
Rattle and Shake signalled within ninety seconds.
EDER.
At their IPs each Vulcan nosed down into a shallow drive to attack at Mach 1.1, over seven hundred miles per hour. Their sonic booms preceded their coming by fifty miles, rumbling across the ground ten miles below.
At 23:09 Just Jane signalled in plain language.
GONER.
At 23:11 Rattle and Shake signalled, also in the plain.
GONER.
No further transmissions were received from either Vulcan...
Chapter 49
23:09 Hours
Thursday 2nd July 1964
USS Kitty Hawk, 38 miles south west of Kharg Island, Persian Gulf
Lieutenant-Commander Walter Brenckmann was on the bridge when the incident occurred. The plot indicated Hawkeye Zero-Three had been flying a standard reconnaissance pattern over southern Iran nearly two hundred nautical miles distant from the flagship. Then, without warning the airborne command and control, early warning spy plane had begun to orbit over the eastern foothills of the Zagros Mountains.
Flight operations had flashed an alert to the bridge. It was not a panic alert; more a ‘be aware of a possible problem’ sort of alarm. Shortly afterwards the CAG – Commander, Air Group - requested permission to vector two McDonnell F-4 Phantoms over Iranian airspace to support Hawkeye Zero-Three.
Then things had rapidly spiralled out of control.
“I have Hawkeye Zero-Three on the Command Circuit!”
“Put it on the bridge PA!” Walter had ordered, assuming the distant Hawkeye was broadcasting on the command circuit because it had an emergency. In that event everybody on the bridge needed to know immediately exactly what was going on.
Kitty Hawk was closed up at Air Defence Condition Two but not in an ‘engagement posture’, this being the case aircrew safety remained the number one priority.
“This is Hawkeye Zero-Three requesting permission to talk to Captain Epes. Over.”
Walter Brenckmann blinked into space.
‘What?” He muttered under his breath. Gathering his wits he demanded a handset.
“This is the OOD. State your emergency, Hawkeye Zero-Three? Over!”
Walter had looked to the bridge plot.
Both F-4s had already gone supersonic in Iranian air space.
“Hawkeye Zero-Three. State your emergency. Over!”
The ether hissed, Walter turned, looking to the warrant officer manning the communications consul.
“The channel is good, sir!”
The speakers crackled.
“Hawkeye Zero-Three requests immediate verification of mission protocol Foxtrot Bravo. Repeat. Hawkeye Zero-Three requests verbal verification of mission protocol Foxtrot Alpha. Over!”
It was at that juncture that Captain Horace Epes strode onto the bridge.
“Captain on the bridge!”
“Take that off the speaker!” He ordered angrily as he strode across to Walter Brenckmann and held out his hand for the TBS microphone. With his free hand he held the headset the communication yeoman held out to his ear. “This is Captain Epes. Mission protocol Foxtrot-Bravo is LIVE. Repeat LIVE.”
Walter was a little unnerved to realise that the commanding officer of the biggest warship in the World was trembling with what could only be rage. He was forcing out every word he said between clenched teeth.
“Acknowledge, Hawkeye Zero-Three.”
Everything on the bridge had momentarily come to a halt.
Captain Epes had control of the ‘Hawkeye Zero-Three’ situation. Walter was the OOD and he needed to be looking where the ship was going; likewise, he needed everybody around him to keep their eyes on the ball.
“Hawkeye Zero-Three is aborting its mission!” Captain Epes reported. “Call the two F-4s back to Mother.”
The older man came to join Walter Brenckmann behind the helmsman’s back. Epes waited for his orders to be acknowledged and logged. He was leaning slightly towards the OOD when a new, baffled report came over the bridge speakers.
“Hawkeye Zero-Three and CAP Zero-Five and Zero-Six have gone off air!”
Actually, the whole northern segment of the air plot had gone down.
“EMP!” A man called. “One confirmed EMP bearing three-three-zero degrees magnetic.”
“Second EMP!”
Captain Epes had forgotten whatever it was he was going to say to his young OOD.
“Does CAP have an eyeball on the nukes over Iraq?”
The aircraft flying combat air patrols forty thousand feet above Carrier Division Seven would have a line of sight hundreds of miles north.
“Affirmative. Very distant, sir.”
Suddenly Walter Brenckmann was thinking about the bizarre exchange he had witnessed between Admiral Bringle and his British counterpart on HMS Centaur that afternoon. He was experiencing the uncanny sensation that he had come in half-way through a movie; and it was as if the projectionist had mixed up the order in which the reels ought to be shown. He recognised the faces of the characters but everything was happing in the wrong order and he had no idea whatsoever of the chronology or course of the underlying narrative arc.
“Centaur is launching birds!”
“I have the bridge, Mr Brenckmann,” the commanding officer of the USS Kitty Hawk declared.
“You have the bridge, sir,” the younger man acknowledged. “Permission to report to my duty station in CIC, sir?”
“Affirmative. Carry on.”
In his role as Carrier Division Seven’s Acting Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer, Walter’s r
esponsibilities mainly concerned the operation and deployment of the Kitty Hawk’s ASW Squadron of Grumman S-2 Tracker twin turboprop aircraft. The carrier’s attendant ASW screen of four guided missile destroyers armed with a variety of ASROC – Anti-Submarine Rocket launchers – and the latest version of the World War II Hedgehog spigot mortar system – were under the command of a hard-arsed four-ringer who as a Lieutenant (junior grade) had briefly served on the Buckley class destroyer escort Reuben James, with Walter’s father in the winter of 1943-44 in the North Atlantic.
The Kitty Hawk’s CIC was darkly crowded as Walter went to his desk. The Operations Officer of ASW Squadron 72, a mustang in his forties who had started his Navy career as an observer/gunner on Avenger torpedo bombers in 1945, nodded acknowledgement of his presence.
“We have a situation developing, sir,” he reported.
Walter studied the big Battle Board in the middle of the CIC, then referred back to the smaller ASW ‘threat plot’.
Six miles on the Kitty Hawk’s starboard bow the Coontz class guided missile destroyers Dewey (DLG14) and William V. Pratt (DLG13) had turned onto a northerly heading and stepped on the gas as if something very big and very scary was chasing them. Two miles off the carrier’s starboard beam the cruiser Albany (CG10) was manoeuvring to close the range with the flagship.
The Battle Board lights indicated that all three ships were spooling up their missile systems; the destroyers’ Terrier launchers were at ‘ready’, the cruiser’s Talos and Tartar systems were coming on line.
“What?” Walter mouthed.
The Kitty Hawk’s Tannoy blared warning bells.
“Now hear this! Now hear this! Air action is imminent! Air action is imminent!”
The Battle Board now showed the carrier’s own twin Terrier surface-to-air launchers at ‘ready status’. Mounted either side of the stern in revetments in the aft flight deck Walter Brenckmann had always tacitly assumed it was too dangerous to ‘load the rails’ of either launcher while landing operations were in progress.
The Battle Board showed eighteen of the Kitty Hawk’s aircraft in the air and two in a landing pattern. Other aircraft were queued to take off.
Eighteen aircraft up!
Why?
Six McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms, four A-4 Skyhawks, four A-6 Intruders, two Hawkeyes and two tankers. The board changed. One helicopter had landed; another Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King was taking off.
The klaxons were blaring.
“Action stations! Action Stations!”
“Dewey is flushing her birds!”
What?
What the fuck was the Dewey shooting at?
Moments later the William V. Pratt fired a second salvo of two Terriers.
The bulkhead doors were swinging shut.
There were no alerts or threats showing on the Battle Board.
That was the thing that stuck in Walter Brenckmann’s memory whenever he thought about that night.
THE BOARD WAS CLEAR...
The only other contacts on the Battle Board were those of the Centaur battle group; Centaur and her three escorts, with the British oiler Wave Master escorted by a small minesweeper several miles astern. Other than Kitty Hawk’s aircraft the only other contacts on the Battle Board were two pairs of sub-sonic Royal Navy De Havilland Sea Vixens and obsolete Supermarine Scimitar fighters.
The Dewey and the William V. Pratt were shooting at the British aircraft.
Suddenly, there was a horrible sick, sinking feeling in Walter Brenckmann’s guts.
Chapter 50
23:09 Hours
Thursday 2nd July 1964
Al-Rasheed Air Base, South West Baghdad
Fifty-four year old Minister of Defence, Admiral of the Fleet Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov was in a foul mood by the time his personal Tupolev Tu-114 finally landed. He had hoped to fly down to Basra in the morning and have a private face to face, clear the air and reset the rules of engagement sort of stand up shouting match with Hamazasp Khachaturi Babadzhanian. Babadzhanian had never had much time for Gorshkov; and the feeling was mutual. However, that was old history and right now it was vital that the two men presented a united front and that their personal feelings – mainly loathing and disdain in equal proportions – did not interfere with the successful conclusion of Phase One, the conquest of Iraq and the seizure of Abadan, of Operation Nakazyvat.
Gorshkov had been briefed on the latest developments before he left Sverdlovsk. Although he had intuitively mistrusted the bullish confidence of the Red Army and the Red Air Force staff officers who had been at pains to convey the inevitability of the triumph of Soviet arms over the weak, pathetic, post-Imperial rump of the British Empire things seemed to be going well.
However, the memory of what two small Royal Navy ships had done to the entire surviving Red Navy Black Sea surface fleet off Malta at the beginning of April was still lividly, excoriatingly horribly fresh in his mind.
Gorshkov had been onboard the Project 57A guided missile destroyer Gnevny, one of the old battle cruiser Yavuz’s and the big Sverdlov class cruiser Admiral Kutuzov’s four close escorts during the Battle of Malta. He had watched those two British ships driving towards the big guns of his capital ships through a firestorm of shot and shell; one had dropped out the fight burning fiercely, the other had just kept on coming until everybody on the bridge of the Gnevny had honestly believed it would ram the Yavuz. On and on she came; by the time she swung around to fire her torpedoes she was so close to the big ships that neither could depress their main battery guns sufficiently to engage her.
The captain of the Gnevny had launched two P-15 Termit anti-ship missiles at the British destroyer but the other ship had been too close; the missiles had harmlessly roared out to sea before their clumsy analogue guidance systems could acquire their target. If that day had taught Gorshkov anything it was that a man underestimated the British at one’s peril; if he had not disembarked onto a submarine ninety minutes after the battle he would have been killed when the Gnevny was sunk by strike aircraft flying off the USS Independence. The Americans had come late to the fight but it had been those two small British ships which had actually won the battle.
And now those idiots in Sverdlovsk were telling him ‘the Battle for Iraq is winding down!’ According to them the enemy was ‘beaten’, and that 2nd Siberian Mechanised Army’s four hundred tanks were about to ‘roll over the top of the British and their Arab friends at Abadan’. Apparently, it would all be over in the next twenty-four hours! The RAF’s raid on Chelyabinsk had been no more than one ‘last spasm of defiance’, spies on Cyprus left behind from the Krasnaya Zarya occupation reported that the British had ‘run out of bombs’, and that ‘bomber losses had been so heavy in the campaign over Iraq that there were never more than a handful of aircraft stationed at Akrotiri and Nicosia’. As for the collection of old and obsolete ships the enemy had collected in the Persian Gulf well, ‘our people in Damman blew up most of their ammunition!’
Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov was not a man who took a staff officer’s word for anything without substantive and compelling corroborative evidence. The painful lessons of the Battle of Malta; and everything the High Command had learned about the British way of war in the last couple of years ought to have been burned in the psyches of every soldier in the Motherland by now.
The British did not know when they were beaten.
If the British were to be defeated on the battlefield it was not enough to deny them Abadan, or to sink their ships, or to destroy their army and air force in detail. The British would always keep coming back for more in just the same way the Americans would one day attempt again to bestride the globe.
It still beggared belief that the idiots in Chelyabinsk had neglected to brief him on the progress of the negotiations with the Americans until a day ago! But then in the Soviet Union before, and certainly after, the Cuban Missiles War a man got used to having his credulity regularly tested to breaking point. A month ago the numskulls had given
him the task of ensuring that the Kitty Hawk never got anywhere near the Persian Gulf; that she should be disabled, or preferably, sunk. The priority had been to make it impossible for Carrier Division Seven to intervene on the British side in the defence of Abadan and the northern borders of the American client states of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The talks with the Americans had been so secret nobody had told him they were even going on until after one of his boats had sunk that Yankee cruiser!
Things could of course, have been worse. If everything had gone to plan the two Red Navy Pacific Fleet Project 659 class nuclear submarines K-45 and K-122, would have sunk or crippled the USS Kitty Hawk, and then the Troika might have truly understood what his Red Navy was still capable of!
K-122 had gone silent shortly after the attack on the USS Providence and K-45 had been driven off by a US Navy nuclear submarine whose presence had not previously been suspected. K-45’s commander had requested permission to follow the Americans into the Persian Gulf; Gorshkov had forbidden it. If the Yankees failed to keep their side of the Faustian pact they had made with the Troika, Carrier Division Seven would have to come out into the open ocean again, and by then another boat, the K-151 might be fit for operations. In the meantime he had ordered K-45 to make her best speed south to rendezvous with a supply ship.
The collective leadership had locked Gorshkov out of things since the Battle of Malta; carrying the war to the US Navy in the Arabian Sea was his ticket back onto the top table. His enemies had been circling like vultures over a wounded animal when the RAF had serendipitously eliminated the Kosygin and Chuikov; the former had never trusted Gorshkov, the latter had always viewed him as a threat, a rival.
Brezhnev was different. He had been Nikita Khrushchev’s man, as had Gorshkov. Back in July 1955 when Gorshkov had been First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Red Navy, Khrushchev had brutally purged his chief, Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov. Admiral Kuznetsov, who was no relation to the newly appointed Foreign Minister, had been a ‘big gun navy’ man and Khrushchev wanted a fleet of small missile armed vessels and as many submarines as could be built as soon as possible. Kuznetsov had wanted to spend decades building up a battleship and aircraft carrier navy like the British and the Americans, and this had sealed his fate. When the old battleship Novorossiysk, a ship taken from the Italians in 1945, had blown up at anchor at Sevastopol – most likely having activated an undetected magnetic mine laid by the Germans a dozen years before – Khrushchev had used this act of ‘gross negligence’ to discredit Kuznetsov and to install Gorshkov, the Red Navy’s most implacable missiles and submarine advocate in his place.