by James Philip
07:25 Hours
Friday 3rd July, 1964
Sultan Abdulaziz Air Base, Riyadh
Squadron Leader Guy French watched the CO’s aircraft Waltzing Matilda lift off two-thirds of the way down the desert runway and climb steeply into the early morning haze. Beneath his hands The Angry Widow strained like a greyhound in the traps.
All the aircraft which had landed at Riyadh earlier that morning had been re-tasked. The original plan had been to take on a new mixed cargo of death, HE, general purpose and cluster munitions to cart straight back up to Iraq to carry on the good work. However, revised orders had awaited 100 Squadron’s Victors when they landed in Saudi Arabia. Every aircraft was to top off its tanks and make the fastest possible passage back to Akrotiri with empty bomb bays. The new orders had caught the RAF’s Saudi hosts completely unprepared, and presently while the three remaining 100 Squadron Victors queued to take off, a 617 Squadron Vulcan and two 207 Squadron Valiants were parked waiting to be ‘filled up’.
Before, during and after last night’s raid The Angry Widow’s EWO had picked up a huge volume of US Navy chatter and detected heavy multi-frequency jamming across the most commonly employed Royal Navy channels. Something had happened out in the Gulf south of Kharg Island but nobody was saying anything. Whatever had happened was big because in the last hour navigators had been warned not to ‘trespass’ over Israeli air space; all previous overflying permissions having been suddenly rescinded. Given that the Israelis had only just started ‘playing ball’, this and the US Navy’s ECM – electronic counter measures – activities over the Gulf last night would have been eccentric at the best of times. This morning it was anybody’s guess what it signified.
Waltzing Matilda, The Angry Widow and the other two Victors had been held idling on their hardstands twenty minutes while a flight of five 3 Squadron English Electric Canberra medium bombers landed. The newcomers had taxied directly over to the bomb dump.
Trying to understand what was going on Guy French idly ran through the options.
Riyadh was more than a refuelling stop; it was the RAF’s desert bomb dump. Back in Cyprus the bunkers had been emptied of all but a couple of bomb loads of the middle-sized flavours of high explosive and general purpose ‘eggs’. Other than a few palettes of these ‘standard’ munitions, all that was left on Cyprus were ten-ton Grand Slams, six-ton Tallboys and a couple of Blue Danube Hiroshima yield old-fashioned fission bombs. Both these latter weapons had been partially dismantled and retained in storage, with ‘radiological safety’ grounds being cited for not sending them back to England on HMS Hampshire’s second high speed ‘bomb run’.
So what did that mean?
Was a return trip to Chelyabinsk with ‘big’ bombs, Grand Slams, Tallboys, or perhaps even the two Blue Danubes on the agenda? Or did the powers that be have something else in mind? What had gone so wrong last night that the follow up operations scheduled for today had been scratched?
“Control to TAW-ONE!”
Guy French was instantly focused on the job in hand.
“TAW-ONE to Control. Ready to roll! Out!”
The controller was a middle-aged Squadron Leader who had been on the reserve list over a decade before being recalled to the service after the October War. His voice was a laconic drawl.
“Control to TAW-ONE. Permission to roll. SCRAMBLE! SCRAMBLE! SCRAMBLE!”
Guy French slowly advanced The Angry Widow’s throttles against the brakes.
“Roger, Control. SCRAMBLE! SCRAMBLE! SCRAMBLE!”
He waited as the Victor’s great Rolls-Royce turbofans cycled up towards full power.
“Release brakes!”
The Angry Widow thundered forward.
With her bomb bay empty she bounded down the centreline of the runway and soared into the sky, climbing like a seventy ton fighter.
Chapter 73
07:30 Hours
Friday 3rd July, 1964
Army Group South Headquarters, Governor’s Palace, Basra
Lieutenant General Viktor Georgiyevich Kulikov had been struck dumb for some moments when he was informed by the Commissar General of Iraq – whom it seemed had retreated to back into his bunker after Minister of Defence Comrade Admiral of the Fleet Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov had flown south from Baghdad – that the ‘Basra Sector’ was, quote ‘to be a no fly zone’. The Collective Leadership were worried that allowing the Red Air Force to operate ‘south of the 32nd Parallel ‘risked an incident with the aircraft of the United States Navy’. This apparently, would be in breach of ‘the protocols agreed’ between the Troika and the Americans.
‘We’ve been talking to the Yanks?’ Kulikov had asked, dumbfounded.
“Of course we have!” The Commissar General had retorted angrily.
Kulikov had only ever met Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, the First Deputy Secretary of the KGB a couple of times. On both occasions the KGB man had treated him as if he was a witless Kulak and Andropov’s manner had been no less condescending or patronising over the scrambler link to Baghdad.
Minister Gorshkov had decided to come to Basra to ‘personally assess the situation’ upon being notified of the death of the Commander of Army Group South. It was now assumed that the aircraft in which Marshal of the Soviet Union Hamazasp Khachaturi Babadzhanian’s deputy had been flying had been destroyed by one of the two megaton-sized air bursts west of Baghdad. Hearing this Kulikov had not unnaturally, demanded full authority to act as Army Group Commander ‘in the current emergency’.
Andropov had slapped him down.
‘You will attempt to stabilise the front. No major tactical changes to the plans already in hand may be effected before the arrival of Minister Gorshkov.’
It was as if Andropov had not heard a single work he had said to him.
‘Comrade Commissar,’ Kulikov had attempted to explain, or rather pleaded, ‘our forces around Umm Qasr have been subjected to massive air attacks and are under attack by large formations of enemy tanks. If the enemy succeeds in cutting the road from Umm Qasr to Basra, elements of four mechanised divisions and upwards of forty thousand men will be encircled!’
Commissar General Andropov had not thought this was very likely.
‘We command the entire Faw Peninsula,’ he had reminded the soldier.
‘The Faw Peninsular is a low-lying delta area, a marshland without roads. If the road to Basra is cut the only way our people can get out is by swimming, Comrade Commissar!’
‘Don’t be hysterical, man!’
It was a conversation in which two deaf men shouted at each other.
‘Issue a command directive that every man is to stand and fight where he is!’ Andropov had added, probably genuinely thinking that he was being helpful.
Notwithstanding, Kulikov had tried to reason with the KGB man.
‘As if the situation in the west around Umm Qasr is not bad enough,’ he had reasoned as his angst constricted his chest and throat, ‘we are facing a potential disaster on the front of 2nd Siberian Mechanised Army. The enemy has embroiled us in an attritional battle for Khorramshahr which has delayed, possibly ruled out, the planned amphibious assault across the Karun River on Abadan Island. Our losses have been very heavy...’
‘The attack on Abadan must proceed according to schedule!’
‘The enemy has sent warships up the Shatt al-Arab to bombard our assembly areas...’
‘Why haven’t you sunk them?’
‘Because apart from a couple of dozen sorties earlier this morning the fucking Red Air Force has been grounded, Comrade Commissar!’
‘As I said, that is a political matter, Comrade General!’ That was when Andropov had relented and dropped a ground-shaking new bombshell. “Minister Gorshkov has spoken. The Air Force has been assigned new operational responsibilities. The Americans are supposed to deal with the British Fleet.’
Kulikov had stared at the handset, his jaw agape.
‘Are you still there, Kulikov?’
‘Er,
yes...’ The Red Army man swiftly recovered a little of his equilibrium even though he felt a little like he had just been hit in the face with the stock of an AK-47. ‘They haven’t,’ he muttered. ‘The Americans certainly haven’t attacked the British ships in the Arvand River.’
‘What?’
‘To the best of my knowledge the Americans have not attacked the British ships bombarding my men north of Khorramshahr and if something isn’t done about it soon I will have no alternative but to halt all offensive actions east of the Arvand River, Comrade Commissar.’
‘That’s not your decision...’
‘If we go on taking casualties the way we have in the last twenty-four hours we won’t have an Army in southern Iraq in a couple of days time, Comrade Commissar!’
Kulikov was tempted to inform the Commissar General that the attack on Khorramshahr-Abadan had been put in the hands of a Corps Commander who thought war was a question of knocking holes in walls with one’s head, and a paratrooper who knew virtually nothing about armoured warfare.
Babadzhanian must have been delirious by then; he probably had not known what he was doing...
Andropov had terminated the exchange.
In the Soviet Union it was occasionally permissible to ask for a clarification of one’s orders; and sometimes – albeit very occasionally - acceptable for subordinates to have some small, usually insignificant part, in planning the execution of those orders. That was the limit of discussion and dissent was never tolerated. Orders were orders and the penalty for disobeying an order was well understood.
Kulikov marched into the operations room of Army Group South and began to bark orders.
“Command Directive Three-One.” It was the third day of the month and it was his first command to all ground forces. “All units are to hold their ground. Positions will be defended to the last man.”
Several of Babadzhanian’s staffers blanched at this.
Kulikov ignored the frowns and narrowed eyes.
“Command Directive Three-two. Organise a blocking force on the Basra-Umm Qasr road at the first major water obstacle south of the city. Command Directive Three-three. Any man fleeing from the enemy will be summarily executed for desertion.”
Kulikov stepped over to the map table.
“Command Directive Three-four. Operations ongoing on the eastern bank of the Arvand River will continue. The assault on the Karun River front will proceed as soon as possible according to the existing plan. Command Directive Three-five. The movement of artillery and rocket batteries into the Faw Peninsula south of Basra will go ahead to support anti-ship operations and ground forces across the Arvand River. These units are authorised to operate without regard to the expenditure of available ammunitions stocks.”
The distant reverberations of very large explosions filtered into the operations room.
A youthful lieutenant ran into the room.
“There are many, many aircraft over the Abadan Sector!” He gasped breathlessly.
Recollecting his surreal conversation with Commissar General Andropov, Kulikov found himself wondering whose aircraft where bombing whom. If it had not been so galling the situation would have been laughable.
Beneath his feet the ground reverberated softly.
In the heat of battle nobody knew what anybody else was doing.
War is chaos; chaos is war...
Chapter 74
11:05 Hours
Friday 3rd July, 1964
Abadan Island, Forward HQ of 4th Royal Tank Regiment
Frank Waters tried to remember the last time he had had so much fun. It would either have been that time he was caught in flagrante delicto with the wife of that French diplomat in 1955 – the blaggard who burst into the bedroom brandishing a pistol that went off an inch from his head – or that time he emptied his Thompson sub-machine gun into the command car he had honestly believed that Erwin Rommel was sitting in the back of in 1942. On both occasions he had thought, for a couple of minutes, that he would die a happy man.
Ever since he had learned his fate on the night of Airey and Diana Neave’s dinner party in Oxford when the Prime Minister had given him his new marching orders, his life had been a marvellous rollercoaster. Although he doubted if his fellow BBC ‘comrades’ felt the same way that was their problem not his. For him the last couple of weeks had been like being born again. Everything was fresh and new, more important, he felt like a completely new man. In retrospect he had been treading water for far too many years; shamelessly living off past glories and that extraordinary woman had unknowingly given him back the vital spark that had been slowly dimming to nothing ever since the end of his time in the Western Desert in 1943.
He had chivvied his ‘crew’ off the bridge to Abadan Island before it was fully light. They were all tired and grubby, some more irritable than others especially when he had thrown them trenching implements and told them to make the old communications trench adjacent to the 4th Royal Tanks forward HQ ‘deeper’, just as the blazing sun rose above the horizon and began to peep through the smoke from the oil fires.
‘Look, chaps,” he had explained patiently. ‘You can either stay here and witness the best Army in Christendom, or anywhere else that I’m aware of, show you how it deals with the Red menace or you can skedaddle. I really don’t care what you decide. One of the decisive battles in World history is being fought all around us and if you can’t be bothered to film it well...more fool you!’
Presently, the sound engineer was holding a microphone on a periscope-like boom above the parapet, the cameraman had pointed his 16-millimetre film camera at where the pontoon bridge had been before the Royal Engineers blew it up, and Frank Waters was standing on a makeshift firing step viewing the first T-62s creeping out of the ruins of Khorramshahr on the opposite bank of the Karun River.
The 4th Royal Tanks had over a dozen Conquerors and Centurions hull down with unobstructed fields of fire covering the northern curve of the river around the top of Abadan Island. In revetments all along the line squads with L2 BAT (Battalion, Anti-Tank) 120-millimetre recoilless rifles plugged the gaps in the line. The killing ground could not have been better prepared, or the battlefield more expertly salted.
‘If we were stupid enough to throw all our tanks at the Russians in a fair fight they’d roll over us and hardly know they’d been in a battle afterwards,’ he had explained to the others. ‘So what we’re doing is trying to bleed the bastards. We only accept battle if we have to, or if we can dictate the conditions. Khorramshahr was a trap. So is this!’
The only thing that surprised the former SAS man was that the Red Army was meekly, almost obediently conforming to Michael Carver’s master plan. It was as if whoever was in charge had run out of ideas; or worse, was simply following – by rote – a set of orders designed to get the maximum number of his tanks ‘brewed up’ in the shortest possible time!
Only one question nagged at the back of his mind: what had happened to the famous Red Army artillery? Standard Red Army doctrine was that the moment it bumped into any kind of fixed or prepared defences armour was supposed to advance behind an overwhelming storm of rocket and shell fire. Last night the Russians had peppered the desert ahead of the attack on Khorramshahr, and today there had been only a half-hearted shelling of several targets on Abadan Island after the dust and smoke from the early morning high-level bombing raid had finished. The air raid had been a bit hairy, not least because the Red Air Force had not seemed to be aiming at anything in particular. RAF Abadan – what little remained of it – had been thoroughly plastered from end to end, as had the northern section of the already wrecked and burning refinery complex. In comparison the sporadic Red Army shelling was of was of little more than nuisance value. Somebody had said that bombers had gone after ships in the river too, but nobody knew much about that.
“Make sure you get this!” He exhorted his colleagues. “After a few minutes it will be too smoky to get any real sense of what is going on across the river!”
/> Fifty yards away a Conqueror’s L7A1 fifty-two calibre 120-millimetre rifled gun barked. Almost instantaneously a T-62 the best part of a mile away exploded, its circular dome-shaped turret shooting a hundred feet in the air as the tank’s ammunition detonated.
Other British tanks opened fire.
A dozen Soviet tanks were burning in seconds, several of them hit simultaneously by two or three rounds.
A single T-62 managed to fire back across the river before it erupted in a pillar of fire as a round from one of the Conquerors, or a 105-millimetre armour piercing solid shot from a Centurion’s L7 gun sliced through its armour like a scalpel through the skin of an apple.
Belatedly, sporadic mortar rounds fired from inside the ruins of Khorramshahr started falling on the southern bank of the Karun River.
Too little too late.
Or so Frank Waters devoutly hoped.
What was that screeching sound?
A screeching sound like Lucifer’s henchmen dragging tormented souls down into the pit of Hell coming closer, and closer, and...
“GET DOWN ON FLOOR!”
The first salvo of Katyushas – famously dubbed Stalin’s Organ by the Germans – screamed down about a quarter of a mile to the east. A Katyusha launcher had anywhere from fourteen to forty-eight rails, capable of firing rockets with warheads of up to twenty kilograms in weight around three miles. It was not a precision weapon; it was designed to saturate whole areas and its capacity to rain terror out of a clear blue sky perfectly accorded with Soviet ‘blitz’ or ‘shock’, all-arms offensive doctrine.
The first Katyusha salvo straddled the Karun River. The second slashed through the line of hull down tanks and wiped out several anti-tank revetments. Unless a tank like the Centurion of Conqueror was hit in a vulnerable spot – neither machine had many of those – it was relatively immune from Katyusha fire. Not so the tanks’ screening infantry or the men manning the 120-millimetre L2 BAT recoilless rifles, or the telephone land lines linking the 4th Royal Tanks’ with Brigade Headquarters.