by Andy Farman
Further south, the Prince of Wales Group, alerted by the Hood’s message had turned east and was still at EMCON but the RN Lynx, Merlin’s and USN Seahawk ASW helicopters, were ranging ahead and on the flanks, in passive sonar operations. The Prince of Wales FA/2 Sea Harriers were still on deck alert, configured for air defence despite an appeal by the pilots to fly an anti-shipping strike against the enemy carriers. The nine RN Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers were no match for the Mao’s and Kuznetsov’s combined air groups.
To seaward of the combined carrier groups, the Akula class attack submarine Gegarin had earlier come close to the surface, using the picket’s cover to raise her ESM mast to sniff the airwaves for anything of interest. She had remained on this listening watch for three hours’ and had caught the Hood’s scent as she transmitted a burst transmission. It wasn’t much but it had sent the Akula off on a fresh hunt.
CHAPTER 4
Belorussia, near the Dnieper River: 2329hrs, 30th March
High above eastern Germany a USAF E-3 Sentry AWACS inscribed its racetrack upon the heavens. A few miles away a Northrop Grumman E-8 (JSTARS), joint surveillance target attack radar system, was flying a similar pattern. Inside the aircraft the two crews had differing tasks, the AWACS was the airborne control for several inter-linked missions, the NATO air superiority fighters battle, ‘Wild Weasel’ SAM suppression and anti-armour missions that were about to commence. In the E-8, the operators were split between two operations. The aircraft incorporated a Norden multi-mode radar in its forward fuselage that was operating in synthetic-aperture- radar mode, (SAR), in order to identify vehicles and buildings. The radar flicked over to doppler mode every so often, in order to track moving targets. The E-8 operators were busy identifying black hats and white hats; the Belorussians being the white. The E-8 had come on station ten hours’ before when distinguishing the two forces had been a simpler task.
The Belorussian army had received the classic Red Army treatment in the early afternoon, a mass barrage by artillery, interjected with airstrike's. This had gone on unabated for three hours’ before the enemy armour had bulldozered forward to the riverbanks.
The Belorussians 1st Motor Rifle Regiment on the western bank had taken a heavy beating; infantrymen who had scrimped on the digging of trenches now wished they had not bluffed the way when the officers had come to inspect their work. Bending their knees as they stood in the firebay’s, to make the trench seem deeper than it was.
Those that weren’t immobile with fear, huddled at the bottoms of their trenches, took every opportunity to hack away at the earth whilst staying below the parapet of the trench. High explosive screamed into and moaned over their positions, isolating them from help. Airburst shells flung splinters of red-hot steel down onto unprotected heads, crouched in their holes.
.02 delay fuses dug deep into the earth before exploding, throwing men bodily out of nearby trenches with their earthquake effect, or collapsing the trench walls on the occupants. Shells fused ‘Super Quick’, detonated on striking the treetops, wiping away natural cover and adding spears of timber to the airburst’s harvest.
New trees on the riverbanks that had grown in place of those destroyed in battles in 1941 and 43 went the way of their ancestors. Old trunks, which carried the scars of the earlier conflicts soon, bore fresh ones, or were splintered and scattered.
The barrage eventually came to include WP and white phosphorus rounds among the falling HE shells. The Geneva Convention forbids the use of WP as a weapon, limiting it to the provision of smoke screens, but there never seem to any observers around to enforce the rule.
WP burns on contact with the air, only immersion in water will quench it but it burns again once if brought into the air once more. WP will burn clean through a man, igniting his clothing and equipment as it does so. The particles have to be removed with non-metallic objects, preferably whilst immersed. If inhaled it will burn from the inside out.
Those defenders not under overhead cover, in the shelter of undamaged shelter bays, suffered miserable ends. Panicked out of their trenches they were soon cut down by shrapnel, if they remained in the trench their comrades often did the merciful act, ending their suffering with a bullet or entrenching tool. Whichever way they died, their fate added to the fear and mounting panic felt by those who remained.
The addition of WP hailed the coming of the enemy assault, using the smoke for cover, they advanced upon the banks. What direct fire weapons remained, undamaged in the forward Belorussian defences, had little effect on thinning the enemy ranks and none at all in slowing their charge.
Artillery fire on the western banks shifted to the rear, preventing Belorussian reinforcement, and AFVs and infantry took over direct fire suppression of the opposite bank.
This was the moment for the Belorussian artillery and ground attack aircraft to strike, whilst the enemy was amassed on the eastern bank and its approaches.
Belorussian Su-17 Fitters swept in from the west, intending to drop their CBU and napalm loads upon the enemy forces.
On the Belorussian airfields to the south, the air assets had dispersed where possible in the day following the attempted coup. Earlier this day, those aircraft that could refuel from NATO aerial tankers had loaded with ordnance and flown west. The NATO air forces attempted to make up for their armies inability to assist on the ground by refuelling the stacked combat aircraft that awaited the enemies attack upon their homeland.
Johar Kegin was one of the Belorussian pilots, the flight commander of four Su-17Ds, recently modified to perform a function that the original designers had not intended, aerial refuelling.
The hard points along the wings carried weapons, on the fuselage below the cockpit were two AA-8 Aphid air-air missiles for self-defence.
With the coming of the afternoon the air bases at Baranovichi, Lida and Roscha came under attack from air launched stand-off missiles, quickly followed up with direct attacks by fighter-bombers targeting runways, stores and maintenance areas. The air bases SA-10 Grumble derivative, the S-300 PMU1 Favorit systems, had been stood-to in readiness, the S-300s anti-cruise and anti-ballistic 46N6E missiles could engage the incoming from a range of 93 miles. Unfortunately, at Lida and Baranovichi the saboteurs had been at work before defecting to the communist side. The 83M6E2 command systems Tombstone 3D surveillance radars there were down; technicians were still working furiously to repair them when the attacks began.
At Roscha the story was different, the 83M6E2-command system was capable of attacking targets approaching at up to 2700m per second simultaneously, and the airfields three self-propelled 5P85S 8x8 TELs, transporter-erector-launcher vehicles quad launchers moved into the vertical plane as the threat was picked up 150 miles out.
Once launched, the single-stage missiles accelerated to their maximum 2km per second speeds and guided from the ground they singled out their individual targets, ranged at altitudes of 200 to 1000ft. Behind the first wave of attackers came a second and third, loosing off their missiles before going to afterburner and fleeing east. Each wave of attackers launched thirty missiles at the airbases, as the defenders scrambled to attach fresh launch canisters on the TELs.
All twelve ready missiles were launched at the first wave of incoming, killing all ten attacking air launched weapons but no fresh missiles were ready for the second wave and only four for the third. All ten missiles of the second wave were aimed at Roscha’s air defence command and control centre, they struck as the defenders launched on the third wave, the second wave of attacking missiles being within minimum range by that time. When the command centre went off the air the four Favorits in the air switched to their CLAM SHELL internal radar for guidance, normally used for the terminal stage of the intercept and with far less range. Only one acquired an incoming cruise missile, its frame absorbed 19g of lateral force as it banked hard to intercept. Five miles out from Roscha the Favorits 145kg warhead obliterated the attacker.
With the Belarus long-range defences silenced, fighter-bombers
sped in to drop their ordnance on specified targets. To meet them on the ground the Belorussian airfield defence forces had shoulder launched SA-7 SAMs and ZSU-23-4 Self-Propelled 23mm AA and ZSU-55-2 Self-Propelled 55mm AA vehicles. The ZSUs were the primary targets but seventeen attackers fell to their guns before they were all silenced.
On the ground at Lida the scene was that of chaos, on the flight line those unserviceable aircraft that had remained now burned, their smoke and flames joined those of the fires at the tank farm, control tower and hangers. Airfield defence troops with small arms aimed twelve to sixteen aircraft lengths ahead of the attackers as they screamed overhead. SAMs left smoky trails in the air as they chased or sped to intercept approaching fighter-bombers. In and around Lida thirteen attackers lay burning, a further five limped home trailing smoke before the attacks finished.
As news of the enemies reaching the eastern riverbanks was broadcast from the front, the surviving Belarus FACs started to call in their own airstrike’s with the fighter-bombers and their CAP escorts. Hind-D helicopter gunships worked their way low toward the battlefield, using cover and watching out anxiously for enemy fixed and rotary wing threats.
Heavy and medium, 152mm, 203mm, 220mm, tube and rocket artillery, preserved for this moment now swung to the bearing and elevations dictated by FAOs, forward artillery observers, and commanders on the ground.
Despite its relatively small 3700kg internal tanks, the Belarus Sukhoi’s carried no external drop tanks; all 3500kg of external stores were munitions.
FAB-500 conventional low drag bombs, CBUs and underwing rocket pods lined the hard points. There was no space even for ECM jammer pods, of which the Flogger had none internally.
Major Kegin’s flight of had tanked over Germany before joining the ‘taxi rank’ of combat aircraft within the cover of NATO jamming stations, whilst they awaited NATOs assistance with thinning out the enemy CAPs, over and near the battlefield.
The Belarus Mig 29s, the five Fulcrum’s that had not been taken by defecting aircrew, each carried two AA-10 Alamo missiles, one an AA-10C, long bodied SARH, radar guided and one long bodied IR heat-seeking AA-10D, along with medium and short range armament.
A Russian A-50, the modernised IL-76 AWACS was the target of the Fulcrum’s AA-10 Alamos. A phalanx of fighters and interceptors escorted them forward to within 120km where the AA-10s were launched. The A-50 and its escorting Mig-31s dived east with track breakers, flares and chaff in operation when their threat receivers detected the AA-10s. One Mig-31 Foxhound was damaged when an AA-10Ds proximity fuse detected it, as it twisted and turned to evade.
The AA-10s electronic brains analysed and discarded the decoys, reacquiring the targets time and again after the track-breakers broke the missiles locks. However, in between time they did not always reacquire the same targets that they had been designated.
The A-50 escaped scot-free whilst half of its escort fell victim, as a second Mig-31 was blotted out of the sky in a fireball. A Su-27J and a Mig-29, in the wrong place at the wrong time, were acquired by AA-10s, their crews survived by ejecting but their aircraft went to join the growing litter of hi-tech wreckage across the battlefield. The remaining six AA-10s ran out of fuel and self-destructed.
Dutch, French, German and US interceptors used long range air-air weapons but avoided close engagement; this was just round one for them. Red Air Force fighter CAPs twisted and turned as they dived earthwards, twenty-nine of the seventy missiles fired scored hits, having been reliant on their own internal systems and having no mid-course corrections from their aircraft to ensure a higher score. The aim of the afternoon’s mission had been one of making a hole in the Red aerial defences, and that was briefly achieved.
With the enemy fighter threat busy for the moment the Belarus fighter-bombers headed for the front
On the other side of the line the enemy controllers had watched and waited. As the airstrike’s left the electronic fog of NATO jamming cover, heading east, the controllers gave the heads up to their own air defences and a full five regiments of interceptors waiting in the wings. Their ambush was about to be sprung.
120mm mortars, tube artillery and multiple rocket launchers began to pound upon the eastern bank and approaches, FAOs adjusted the fire and for a short time the new Red Army was on the receiving end.
Sat in their APC command vehicles, Red Army counter battery plotters pinpointed the Belorussian batteries and passed the information on.
On the opposite side of the line the Belorussians finished firing their first missions and were scrambling to pack up and relocate before firing new missions, well aware of what the opposition would be doing in reply.
The differences between well practised gun crews and the novices was startling, for the most part the good crews were already departing the old gun lines when the counter battery fire arrived, there were few novice crews at the new ones.
Major Kegin’s flight came in low from the northwest, below on the ground the lush farmland gave way to burning crops and dead cattle scattered about shell craters in fields. Selecting FAB-500 iron bombs for the first pass the flight popped up to toss bomb the ordnance at the eastern bank. Immediately their threat receivers had come alive with SAM and ZSU radars locking on. Kegin’s flight pickled off their dumb bombs and dived for the ground, with only their internal stores of chaff and flares as safeguards. All four reached the relative safety of the deck and turned hard to the left, breaking the lock of two SAMs, that unable match the manoeuvre overshot and self-destructed as their seekers snapped over to follow the heat signatures of the flight. Kegin led them south before turning back into the fray.
On his command frequency Kegin learnt that not all of his regiment’s flights had been so fortunate.
All along the front the fighter-bombers of the loyal Belarus air force struck at their turncoat former comrades and their new Red Army and air force allies.
For the next run the flight was to use their rocket pods and cannon on the armour on the bank, the CBUs were for targets of opportunity, such as bridging equipment near the river, triple-A and artillery lines further back.
Kegin and his wingman slipped back into trail several hundred metres behind the other pair, the first pair would call out plum targets for Kegin and his partner, who were the more experienced pilots. If all went as planned the pairs would swap over and repeat the exercise until all munitions were expended, and once that was achieved they would recover to Germany, to refuel and rearm although few NATO stores were compatible with their airframes.
As the first pair reached the river the right hand fighter-bomber staggered in the air, Kegin applied left rudder to avoid pieces of the aircraft that were being chewed off as if by an unseen buzz saw. The aircraft ahead rolled drunkenly to the right, streaming coolant and smoke, too late the young pilot ejected, leaving the stricken aircraft sideways at less than 200ft altitude the pilot, still attached to his ejector seat, had struck the ground in a cloud of torn turf and soil.
Kegin’s wingman reacted to a message from the survivor of the lead pair; a slight touch of stick, a nudge of rudder and CBUs dropped from their hardpoint’s, decimating a pair of bridging sections mounted on T-72 chassis and an engineer vehicle on the bank. Ahead of them the lead aircraft dropped its nose to ripple fire from it’s under wing pods, it was still doing so when it vanished in a fireball. Kegin broke left to avoid and found himself looking at some of his traitorous countrymen’s T-72s that emerged line abreast from a treeline. Selecting rockets Kegin applied hard right rudder and walked his rockets across the end three tanks in the line, then he was past and calling for his wingman.
The aircraft re-joined east of the battlefield, spying support units as they tree hopped but hoping for better prey to expend the last of their stores on. At this moment they and the entire Belorussian air force, such as was left after the defections, was over the battlefield and immediate surrounds.
Back by the river loyal Belorussian Hind-D gunships cautiously edged along behind cove
r, hovering a few feet off the ground as they stalked the armour on the eastern bank, peeping over and between trees, ducking up and down behind hillocks, they looked for targets free of obvious triple-A protection.
On the eastern bank, tanks and APCs exploded here and there as the Hinds across the river sniped at them.
A Ukrainian ZSU-23-4 had picked its spot between two still smoking hulks. Its internal blowers fought to expel the stench similar to that of roast pork that had seeped in from the upwind hulk, an APC. Its commander had watched as a Hind-D had appeared briefly from behind a small hillock on the western bank, each time it had appeared an AFV had died on the east bank. The ZSU commander thought he had detected a pattern and ranged the vehicles quadruple 23mm armament at the left edge. A minute later the Hind popped out to fire again and he shredded its armoured cockpit, the depleted uranium tips of the shells could penetrate twice the depth of armour the tank killer carried. No sooner had the Hind died then so too did the ZSU, as a CBUs bomblets landed on and around it.
Over to the east Major Kegin spotted the muzzle smoke of heavy self-propelled artillery as they fired and steered toward them. The SPs were sat in a woodland clearing in the midst of firing another mission when Kegin’s aircraft passed over, the bomblets from his CBUs exploded them and a logistics support vehicle delivering reloads.
It was time to go home and Kegin led his wingman west, as he calculated the possibility of recrossing the battlefield on burners to minimise risk. As he was about to tell his wingman to go to burner a new threat tone screeched in his ears, the warning that he had been locked-up.
Fighters!
Not all the traitors had fled when the coup in Belorussia had failed, not all the traitors had declared their true affiliations either, which was why the Russian Migs, which sprang the trap, were all squawking the correct loyal Belarus IFF codes. The Belarus fighter CAP had been the first to fall and then the Migs had started in on the fighter-bombers and helicopter gunships.