The Third World War - The Untold Story (34 page)

By 0300 hours the bombing stream was cruising at 525 miles per hour at 40,000 feet over France, still on a north-north-easterly heading. Above and to either side were loose gaggles of
Mirage
F-1Cs of the Commandement Air de Forces de Defense Aeriennes (CAFDA). The awacs screen, now pulled back over central France, detected no unusual enemy fighter movement either from the captured airfields in West Germany or across the inner German border.

From the Meuse valley area onwards, the B-52s entered theoretical intercept range of
Flogger
Gs and
Foxbats.
To reduce Allied difficulties of identification and airspace management COMAAFCE had stopped all deeper battlefield interdiction or counter-air attacks in the Central Region after 2300 hours, so that anything coming across the FEBA could be assumed to be hostile. COMAAFCE’s staff had calculated that some kind of warning would reach the Warsaw Pact from agents in Lisbon and that the remaining IL-76 C
Cookers,
although now held well back over central Poland, would probably pick up the high-flying B-52 formation over central France. Seeing the formation, however, was one thing; deciding where it was headed was quite different. The known combat radius of the B-52s was so great that they could at any moment change heading and threaten troop concentrations, logistic support, command centres or any other targets anywhere between the Baltic and Bulgaria. Moreover, while COMAAFCE knew that
Flogger
and
Foxbat
units had been moved forward behind the advancing Warsaw Pact armies during the previous ten days, he suspected that the Soviets, rather like the Nazis with the
Luftwaffe
in France in 1940, had found it quite easy to deploy the aircraft themselves but much more difficult to support them quickly with enough weapons, fuel and battle-damage repair facilities to allow them to maintain a high sortie rate. It would, therefore, have been fatal for the Warsaw Pact’s air defence units to be thrown into battle either too deep in NATO territory, where the French interceptors were still relatively unscathed, or before the final heading and destination of the bombers were more definitely known.

COMAAFCE also knew that the Soviets were about to have their hands forced, because as the B-52s approached Luxembourg they were joined by four F-111EB ECM aircraft which effectively blinded all three
Cookers
and a large number of the enemy’s shorter-range surveillance radars. The
Floggers
and
Foxbats
had to be scrambled towards the last known B-52 heading from bases up to 400 miles away and, as the NATO planning staffs had hoped when they had first envisaged the use of the B-52, the fighters’ problems did not end there. Despite Soviet attempts to encourage pilot initiative, looser formations and reduced ground control, most air defence crews had been trained to fight in their own airspace against intruding bombers whose position and heading were precisely known. Not only were air crew conditioned to this; the aircraft were designed for little else.
Foxbat
was purely and simply a high-speed high-altitude interceptor with poor manoeuvrability, while
Flogger
G, although more flexible, was by no means an air-superiority fighter, though both would fare better at high level than at low against their NATO counterparts. A further complication was that Polish, East German and Czechoslovak pilots had expected to be defending their own homelands. Scrambling with little control from unfamiliar airfields against a vaguely defined target well away from their national airspace was not the best invitation to enthusiastic performance.

Such enthusiasm for combat as they did have would shortly be reduced still further. The formation of F-111EB ECM aircraft was soon to be joined behind their jamming screen by forty
Mirage
2000s and thirty of the remaining F-15s from 2 and 4 ATAF. As the bombers turned north-north-west over Cologne their crews could see outlined against the slightly lighter sky to the east the comforting silhouette of some of the most effective fighters in the world. Although the night was clouded, the city of Cologne and the river bend were crystal clear in the air-to-ground radar displays. Within a few seconds the offset aiming point, the
Autobahnkreuz
between Venlo and Duisburg, came up with equal clarity. Then, as the diary of 337 Squadron of the USAF records, ‘all shades of hell broke loose both in the air and on the ground’.

It was, and is, impossible to say how many Warsaw Pact fighters were scrambled against the B-52s. The early warning
Sentries
identified eighty-five blips initially but their ability to note every target was soon lost in the very large numbers of aircraft flying in less than 100 square miles of airspace. The situation was further confused by the attempts of three Soviet Air Force
Cubs
to jam both the bomber radars and the
Sentries’1
own surveillance beams. The balance of advantage, for the time being at least, remained with the NATO force. The Warsaw Pact ground controllers could do no more than direct their fighters to the approximate source of the F-111 jamming and leave them to it. But, for the first time in the war, F-15
Eagles
were able to engage to the full extent of their equipment. There was no need to close to identify: if it was heading west, hack it. At 50 miles the
Foxbat
and
Floggers
were clearly visible on the
Eagles’
radar, and head-on at Mach 2 the enemy aircraft were well within the attack envelope of the
Eagles’
radar-guided
Sparrow
missiles.

Each
Eagle
carried four
Sparrow
and four infra-red homing
Sidewinder
air-to-air missiles. So many
Sparrows
were fired in such short time that to the bomber crews they looked like salvoes. But by no means all found their targets. A small proportion failed to detonate, one or two exploded against each other in what is called fratricide, some targets were struck by more than one missile and a few Warsaw Pact pilots were quick enough to react to their
Sirena
radar warning receivers and break the beams of the incoming missiles. It is possible, however, that more than 100
Sparrow
missiles were fired in the first moments of contact and that some sixty attackers were hit.
Sentries
observed with interest that immediately after the opening contact, several hostile blips abruptly changed heading and set course eastwards.

Most of the fighters that had escaped the first impact, however, were not deterred and at 20 miles from the bomber stream the powerful
Fox Fire
AI (air-intercept) radar of the
Foxbats
began to burn through the F-111 jamming to disclose the B-52s. By now, however, it was 0400 hours and the first light of dawn was reaching the upper skies. Still the advantage lay with the Western allies. Now the F-15s and the
Mirages
could use their considerable advantage in agility to close, identify and kill the fast-tracking MiGs with the wide-aspect infra-red homing
Sidewinders
and
Magics.

Then, to everybody’s consternation, Soviet and Allied radar warning receivers (RWR) detected the launch of a real salvo of SAM from one of the forward Soviet battalions near Dortmund. Defection from the attackers’ ranks promptly occurred as several Warsaw Pact pilots realized the implications of Soviet SAM firing into the middle of the melee in the air. As the salvo of SA-4 missiles was not repeated it is not known whether a trigger-happy major had been demonstrating a rare flash of initiative or whether a decision at a higher level had been hastily countermanded as a result of angry protest from the Warsaw Pact fighter commander.

In the B-52s each electronic warfare officer (EWO) sat in his compartment oblivious to the crackle of sound in his headset, intent only on the 12-inch-square cathode-ray tube in front of him which displayed the information from a suite of ECM equipment on either side. The SA-4 launch was monitored and when warning of missile ‘lock on’ was received the automatic self-jamming screen immediately broke the link. SA-4 homing frequencies had long been known and, to the EWO’s relief, they had not been changed. None of the bombers fell to SAM attack.

Combatants elsewhere in the sky were not so fortunate. Subsequently, several pilots from both sides vehemently claimed that they had been shot down by SAM rather than by enemy fighters. Certainly they were not expecting such interference from the ground, but in fact very few of the pilots knew for certain exactly what had shot them down. The MiGs were intent on reaching the bomber stream but could not afford to ignore the
Mirages
and
Eagles.
Pre-battle tactical plans were rapidly forgotten in the confusion, RWR keys flashed continuously as aircraft illuminated each other with their AI radars. Infra-red missiles, and finally guns, were used by both sides and losses mounted, aggravated by air-to-air collisions and an unknown number of errors of identification. It was quickly obvious that while the
Floggers
were out-manoeuvred and out-gunned, if a
Foxbat
was not picked off on the first attack its ability to burst away at Mach 3 would make catching and hitting it from the rear impossible. The
Foxbats
speed advantage had serious implications for the B-52s.

The main air battle raged for little more than five minutes, but that was just long enough for almost all the bombers to complete their bombing runs. Below them, the units of the 20 Guards Army were completing their nightly replenishment before moving on to maintain the momentum of the advance against what must have seemed from its apparent attempt to disengage during the night a defeated II British Corps. The revving of tank and BTR engines, the rumble of fuel bowsers, engineer trucks and all the other noises of four divisions preparing to attack obscured completely the faint whine of jet engines 8 miles above. There was no warning as the first deluge of 500 lb bombs smashed down among them. In the next six minutes over 1,500 tons of high explosive thundered over an area of little more than 8 square miles. The T-72 and T-80 tanks that had survived frontal assaults from air-to-surface rockets were shattered by direct hits or had their tracks torn off by blast, while BTR and soft-skinned vehicles were destroyed in their hundreds. The impact on the Soviet ground troops was terrific. Many were killed outright or injured. Many more were stunned and paralysed. Tank and BTR crews were caught either on top of their vehicles or away from them on the ground. Most were reservists, having their first taste of battle, and many broke down under the surprise, ferocity and duration of this thunderous assault from an unseen enemy. Two forward divisional headquarters survived but 20 Guards Army in less than ten minutes of one-sided combat, had virtually ceased, for several vital hours, to exist as a fighting formation.

Inevitably, losses on the ground were not confined to 20 Guards Army. Although a bombing line 1,200 yards ahead of the defending British and Dutch troops had been defined, free-falling bombs from 40,000 feet are no respecters of bomb lines. And although the bombers’ approach on a track parallel to the bomb line had reduced the risk from shortfalls, the navigator bombardiers were not all equally adept at handling their almost fully-automated bombing systems. As a result, one British battalion and some companies of Dutch infantry suffered heavy losses.

Above the ground forces, the B-52 crews had no time either to exult in their success or worry about their bombing accuracy. One EWO after another picked up search illuminations from
Foxbat
radars, quickly followed by the continuous warning of AA-9 missile lock-on. Chaff dispensers were fired and many missiles exploded harmlessly in the clouds of drifting foil or veered away sharply as their guidance giros toppled. Occasionally the tail-gunners caught a glimpse of the fighters and blazed away optimistically with their four 0.5 inch guns, much as their B-17 forbears had done forty years previously. But the
Foxbat
pilots were brave and persistent. No. 337 Squadron was the last in the wave and bore the brunt of the fighters’ attack. Two aircraft were destroyed before they could release their bombs, and two more immediately afterwards. As the stream turned west towards the relative safety of North Sea airspace it suffered further losses: one B-52 was rammed from above by a
Foxbat,
while others fell to short-range AA-6 infra-red homing missiles. It was no consolation to the survivors that most of the MiGs were themselves about to be intercepted and destroyed by Dutch and Belgian F-16
Fighting Falcons,
which were now, at dawn, able to join the fray.