The Third World War (47 page)

The control staff were of course well abreast of the war situation and they knew that, in political terms anyway, the threat of a nuclear attack was small. But they were not there to make judgments of that sort. Warning of an attack rested with the automated system coupled to the scanning and tracking dishes in the great radomes.

369

p.

Anything detected that was not immediately reconciled with the ever-growing catalogue of known objects was subject to an instantaneous analysis in spherical trigono-metry by a battery of computers. These would assess the probability that the radar return indicated a missile and, as further radar tracking information came through, discard, decrease or increase the assessed degree of probability in the threat. If things ever went as far as that, the computer and the cathode ray consoles would show, in a somewhat academic way it might be thought, the estimated point of impact of each missile and the seconds to go before its strike.

A system that had to have the highest reliability that man’s ingenuity could devise was inevitably hypersensi-tive, and operators highly trained in monitoring the auditory and visual responses grew instinctively to feel the computer’s mood. Occasionally, even in peacetime, the alerting bell would sound as particles or atmospheric conditions produced a response from space that the computer took longer than usual to analyse. When it was identified as innocuous the computer would apologize seconds later and explain its overeagerness.

This was the way it was meant to work, and it was the pattern to which the controller and his staff were* accustomed. During the last two weeks at Fyiingdales and its sister stations in Alaska and Greenland bells had sounded frequently as the Soviet rockets launched more satellites into orbit to maintain their space activities. There had been plenty going on.

The station was a sitting-duck target for an air attack but no guided weapon had come anywhere near it. This was not surprising—indeed it was to be expected— because it was very much in the interests of the Russians, in their non-nuclear war policy, not to risk anything that might so much as vibrate the hair-trigger of the allied nuclear response. For the same reason the persistent jamming to which the other electronic warning systems had been subjected from the sea and air had not been directed against BMEWs.There was an occasional indication from badly tuned airborne equipment to remind the crew that the electronic battle was still in progress, but otherwise the displays were clear.

At 1005 hours a neighbouring air defence radar warning station rang to say it was no longer affected by jamming. Wing Commander Warburton, the Controller, entered this in his log and thought it curious enough to tell his controller colleagues in the other operational centres. An airwoman brought round the tea. It was all very different from the smoke, dust, blood and horror of the battle raging in the Central Region—but they were concerned here with a different kind of war. Warburton had finished his tea when an American controller from the Detection and Tracking Centre at Colorado Springs called to say that they had detected a launch via a warning satellite over the Indian Ocean. It had come from a distance, west of Baikonur, the site from which the satellite launches had been flying during the last sixteen days, and they had not reconciled it. It would not be visible within the Fyiingdales detection range for a while, and he said he would call back as soon as they had any tracking information on it.

The line to the Springs was crystal clear. The whole watch had strained their ears to piece together the message and they had all mentally worked out where the response would appear on the display before the American controller had finished what he had to say. There was a scraping of chairs as each one took up a position so that he could see over the observer’s shoulder. The seconds ticked by and the radar movement seemed more sluggish than it had ever been before. Suddenly there it was: the next scan of the radar confirmed it and the computed display gave a very firm digital threat assessment on one missile on an approaching path. Instantaneously the threat light flashed and the tracking radar slewed.

The Royal Air Force control staffs were well used to calming their adrenalin flow, both through exercises simulated on magnetic tape and by the frequency with which bells punctuated the various steps in the computer process, but this had a very different feel about it. A single missile launch against the UK. or the US was a highly improbable event, but the confident mood of the computer had come through to them, and with war raging in Europe anything could happen. Very definitely something was happening now.

It was twenty-four minutes past ten when the digital display abruptly upgraded the threat as the tracking radar picked up the missile soaring out of the atmosphere into space. The computer instantly calculated that it was on a sub-orbital trajectory with 353 seconds to impact. The whole watch was galvanized: if this was a real nuclear attack how could a single missile on its own make any sense? The digital warning display had gone instantaneously to all the other operations centres, including the Government Situation Room, but the Controller pressed the switch which connected them all on the voice circuit to confirm, even though they could make no sense of the alarm, that the
BMEWS
was 100 per cent serviceable and that the computers were continuing to upgrade the threat assessment.

While he spoke one of the plotters called out ‘impact somewhere in UK, sir’, and the computer print-out typed that before his eyes. The digital time-counter had now spun down to 317 seconds to impact. Warburton kept the’ voice circuit open to his fellow controllers with an additional hand-set to his ear connecting him directly to the Controller at Strike Command, High Wycombe, where he knew his commander-in-chief would be standing behind the control desk.

The Polaris Executive was the man in the system who would have the most to do if the President and the Prime Minister decided that a nuclear response was to be made, but it seemed hardly likely that they would agree to let sixty-four submarine-launched megaton missiles fly to the heart of Soviet Russia in response to this one baffling radar trace. ‘We still don’t understand it,’ said Warburton as he confirmed the amplification of the threat which had just gone up on the display, showing the Midlands as the impact area. The two plotters were poised over the print-out waiting for the next mathematical refinement of the target information as the seconds to go slid down to 227. It was the
RAF
Strike Command Controller who had the news first: ‘It’s real—it’s the real thing,’ came over the voice system. The Government Situation Centre have just told us that a message has come in on the hot-line. Acknowledge—acknowledge—and Fylingdales have you any better estimate of the point of impact yet?’

The print-out started up again and in a split second it had written ‘Lat/Long 52°23N. 001°49W.’ As this appeared simultaneously on the main display there was no need to plot it on a map, for by one of the miracles of electronic automation a luminous green circle with a cross in the middle had appeared on the cathode ray map of the British Isles. It was over Birmingham. ‘It’s Birmingham— repeat Birmingham,’ Warburton called into the voice circuit. The other controllers acknowledged this grim news in the disciplined and mechanical way in which they had been conditioned for so long to think about the unthinkable. But on the other hand-set at his ear Warburton detected more than a tremor in the voice of the Strike Command Controller when he overheard him say, after his acknowledgement, ‘Oh my God!’ At High Wycombe only his squadron leader assistant knew that when mobilization was ordered the Wing Commander had sent his wife and their three children to stay with her family on the outskirts of that now hapless city.

The time-counter showed 114 seconds to go as the Fylingdales assistant controller exchanged and cross-checked data on the line to his opposite number in the Detection and Tracking Center at Colorado Springs. A US Air Force major was repeating back the facts and factors as he verified them with the information at the master control centre. All the space satellite and ground radar information was now integrated in the main computer at Colorado Springs, and as he logged the details from Fylingdales he said,
Yeah—yeah, that all checks with our data here’—and then, with more than a touch of melancholy in his voice, as the counter slid down to sixty-three seconds, ‘It sure is going to be hot in Birmingham, England.’
The SS-17 missile detonated its nuclear warhead 3,500 metres above Winson Green prison at 1030 hours on the morning of 20 August. Within a fraction of a second the resulting fireball, with temperatures approaching those of the sun, was over 2,000 metres in diameter and reached down towards the centre of Birmingham. The incredibly brilliant flash which accompanied the detonation was visible in London. Even at that range, individuals looking at the fireball suffered temporary blindness and felt a faint flush of heat on their faces.

The tremendous heat given off by the fireball had a more significant effect upon people and materials within a range of twenty kilometres. Lightly clad yachtsmen on Chasewater about nineteen kilometres from Winson Green felt their skin begin to burn as the lasting pulse of heat from the fireball hit them. The thoughtful ones dived into the water to escape the burning heat. Those who did not suffered blistering burns on all exposed skin. The varnish on their boats bubbled, nylon sails melted and newspapers lying in the boats burst into flames. Only those who were protected from the pulse of heat by their clothing, or were shielded in some way, escaped severe” burns.

Closer in towards Winson Green the effects of the heat from the fireball were more pronounced. The foliage in the countryside had crisped as if autumn had arrived. Smaller brushwood was smouldering. Haystacks were burning and paintwork on buildings and vehicles in the path of the heat-wave blistered. At Aldridge, and at other places within about twelve kilometres of the fireball, people caught in the open received burns which needed immediate hospital treatment. At this range curtains and other materials inside rooms that were exposed to the heat pulse began to smoulder and in some cases burst into flames. Any lightweight objects such as newspapers, canvas and empty packaging in the open soon caught fire.

Closer to the fireball heat levels became more intense, so that almost any lightwieght material subject to the heat-wave burst into flame while metals and other objects were scorched and distorted. At these ranges the clothing worn by individuals no longer gave effective protection against the heat. Clothes burned off, and people in the open received such extensive burns that their prospects of recovery, even with first-class medical assistance, were negligible. Fires were started inside and outside buildings to an increasing extent as the epicentre was approached, with apparently almost total conflagration occurring within three to four kilometres of Winson Green.

The enormous blast pressures released by the nuclear device followed the heat-wave withina matter of seconds. Those in the open who had suffered severe burns had no more than a few seconds in which to register shock before the blast-wave hit them. Those inside buildings who had already experienced the overpowering flash of light were now subject to the effects of blast. Within a second or so of the detonation the blast-wave hit the city centre beneath the fireball. The enormous pressures had the effect of instantly crushing-all buildings below it so that what remained was only a levelled mountain of rubble. The blast-wave then roared and crushed its way outwards from the centre utterly destroying everything in its path. No structures above ground level were able to withstand the tremendous pressures and the coincident wind speeds resulting from the blast. Within three kilometres of Winson Green nothing survived, every building and structure being reduced to rubble and strewn across the roads so that the entire area looked like a gigantic rubbish heap. The effects of the blast-wave began to decline as it travelled outwards, so that between three and six kilometres from the centre a few of the smaller and more strongly constructed buildings remained standing, some at crazy angles and missing many portions of softer construction around reinforced concrete or steel skele-tons. Even these few remaining buildings were in such a twisted and derelict condition that they were hardly recognizable as the original structures. They were surrounded by the gutted remains of lighter buildings of modern construction such as hospitals and schools, demolished beyond recognition. All domestic structures within this area suffered similarly, with most brick houses collapsing under the effects of the blast-wave.

Those who had suffered the most agonizing effects of the heat-wave were mercifully killed by the blast-wave that followed. People who had been indoors were now buried beneath mountains of rubble and suffered a similar fate. Within three or four kilometres of Winson Green very few people survived the immediate effects of the detonation. Outside this range, and up to about seven or eight kilometres away, the collapse and destruction of most buildings trapped people in hundreds under fallen masonry. There were many deaths and severe injuries beyond counting. The airwas full of flying objects, picked up by winds moving outwards from Winson Green at speeds which, even at ranges of four or five kilometres, approached 500 kilometres per hour. The wind drove along objects standing in its path like confetti. Motorcars and other vehicles were bowled over and over, carried tens and even hundreds of metres from where they were. People caught in the open were picked up, flung through the air and dashed against any solid object in their path. Roof tiles, pieces of masonry and any loose objects were’ projected through the air like missiles, smashing their way through obstructions and causing injury to many. At distances greater than seven or eight kilometres from the centre damage levels began to fall off, but even so all lightweight structures were blown over, roofs were blown off and higher masonry buildings suffered extensive damage. Large amounts of rubble and masonry fell into the streets and all windows were blown out, much of the glass being converted into missiles with much injury to people in the way.