The Third World War: August 1985 Page 20
In spite of the splendid news from France, with the First French Army moving eastwards to strengthen the southern flank and the French Tactical Air Force already in action ahead of it, the day, 5 August 1985, ended in uncertainty and gloom.
It was by now clear that at any one of half a dozen points at once, on either army group front in the Central Region, the Russians could develop a high degree of local superiority in armoured and armoured infantry attacks, under massive artillery and air-to-ground support, and would press any advantage with the utmost vigour and complete disregard of casualties. Soviet momentum was maintained by heavy concentrations of armour and firepower on narrow fronts; flanks were largely ignored. With the weight of the attack and the determination — even the recklessness — with which it was pressed wherever it took place, penetration at one or more points was inevitable. Swift exploitation by troops of the second echelon would then follow hard on the heels of the first. Immediate counter-attack from the Allied side was in the early stages rarely possible. The Russians made no attempt to consolidate ground. It was hard to find a moment, however fleeting, when they could be caught off-balance. Counter-attack often simply ran head-on into the armour of the next wave and was smothered almost before it had got under way. Even the concentrated fire of Allied divisional and corps artillery could for the most part only attenuate somewhat the force of attacks pressed with such violence and in such numbers, with so high a disregard for loss. Air-to-ground attack, in this first forty-eight hours, was nothing like as plentiful as the corps and subordinate commanders would have wished, but the Allied air forces were, on CINCENT’s express order, being used to counter the enemy’s air forces both in the air and on the ground in an endeavour to establish a tolerable air situation in addition to their continuous pounding of ‘choke points’ now in rear of the main battle.
It was only rarely that the attacks of Soviet tanks and armoured infantry could be stopped. Tanks would almost always get through, and fresh waves of attacking armour would move in behind them. Equipment for equipment, sub-unit for sub-unit, man for man, the NATO defence was by no means inferior to the attacking forces. In one important respect at least, that is in almost every aspect of the whole field of electronic technology, NATO was already showing up better. On the first day, however, the defending formations were simply being swamped by numbers, dominated and driven on by blind faith in the doctrine of the total offensive.
But even on the first day weaknesses began to appear in the way the Russians fought their battle. The handling of armoured infantry provides an example which deserves attention, for it was to be of critical importance.
The BMP, improved but still essentially the same machine, had originally been evolved as an armoured infantry combat vehicle for use in exploitation of nuclear action. Its chief purpose was to move in swiftly to overwhelm, by mainly mounted attack, whatever NATO defences still survived the nuclear attack, travelling in close company with the tanks whose further action would resolve the battle. To maintain the impetus of the armoured advance some protection of the tanks by infantry was indispensable. But the BMP was itself highly vulnerable to anti-tank attack. The precision-guided missiles now deployed by NATO in very considerable numbers showed that mounted attack was often suicidal. The toll of BMP on the first day was heavy.
The Red Army had long recognized that in the non-nuclear battle mounted action for motor infantry was not always feasible, though it was certainly worth trying, particularly in the first assault. The alternative was to dismount the infantry for an attack on foot against such NATO anti-tank defences as survived the suppressive fire of artillery and air forces. In the event, well-located Allied missile launchers survived, even on that first day, in considerable numbers. Dismounted infantry had no hope of keeping up with tanks moving at their best speed. When motor-rifle infantry were prevented by anti-tank fire from going in mounted, therefore, the whole attack slowed down.
We have seen how Soviet tactics for the penetration of hostile defences in the non-nuclear variant of the land battle had latterly come to depend upon manoeuvre at least as much as on massed frontal attack. Manoeuvre by mounted infantry demanded both tactical surprise and effective suppression of anti-tank defensive fire. In the battle of the Central Region neither, for the Warsaw Pact, was complete, even on the first day.
Professor J. Erickson, one of the best informed and soundest observers of the Soviet military scene, had said in 1977: ‘Above all the Soviet command will pay the closest attention to the loss-rate in the first 10–15 km of the advance…’ These were prophetic words.
A battle drill to deal with the differing requirements of each combined arms tactical engagement had proved, for the Red Army, impossible to find. When should the infantry dismount? How were the varying speeds of tank, BMP, SP gun and foot soldier to be related? How was the fire of tank, BMP, SP gun, divisional artillery and helicopter gunship, with tactical air support thrown in, to be co-ordinated? The command responsibilities formerly held in the Red Army at division now devolved in greater measure than before on the regiment, which was akin to the Allied brigade, but the heaviest load of all lay on the battalion commander. In a reinforced motor-rifle battalion with a minute staff of four officers, one NCO and eight men, he would be attempting to control a force some 700 strong, with a company of thirteen tanks, a battery of six guns (or even a battalion of eighteen), a mortar battery, anti-air weapons, an ATGW platoon, reconnaissance and engineer elements, thirty BMP, sixty light machine guns and 356 assault riflemen. It was a tall order.
The Allied maxim was a simple one, even if to follow it demanded fortitude: stay put, keep your head down, and go for the commander. He was not all that difficult to locate. The information coming in from many sources, processed in JTIDS and almost instantaneously disseminated, could often pinpoint centres of command at divisional and regimental level. They had then to be attacked, which was rather less easy.
At lower levels the problem was simple. Junior commanders on the NATO side had been taught to look for the command tank. Its behaviour pattern at company level, for instance, gave it a quite unmistakable signature. The temptation to take the easiest shot first was one to be resisted. Take out the command tank; this would not stop the attack but it would at least blunt the follow-through. Battalion command was harder to break, but to take that out was even more rewarding.
Few junior commanders, in the heat and confusion, the clamour and horror, the fear and growing weariness of those battles on the first days, would perhaps have thought of putting it quite that way, but what they were trying to do was to uncouple the parts of an interdependent whole. This would not stop the onrush. To do that in the case of 3 Shock Army would have meant the elimination (or at least the neutralization) of some 120 artillery batteries and 2,800 armoured fighting vehicles (AFV). To hold a single breakthrough on one axis would have meant accounting for some thirty batteries and 800 AFV. What was already just beginning to happen, however, if not on the first day at least towards the end of the second, was the emergence of a hope in those Allied commanders whose nerves were strongest that, if wedges could be driven between the main elements of the Soviet combined arms operation, the enemy might just be prevented from breaking all the way through to the Rhine. There was also now a growing awareness on the other side that to reach it in nine days might not be easy.
What was also beginning to emerge was that a battle seen superficially at the outset as a mainly armoured offensive against an anti-tank defence was becoming more and more a contest between firepower and counter-measures. In an older terminology it would have been called an artillery battle between battery and counter-battery; in newer terms it was seen as a battle between rival arrays of electronics.
On the 5th, after a night in which the pressure had been hardly less than by day, the advance went on. In the north the enemy secured crossings over the Weser north of Minden and leading elements were reported moving west towards the Netherlands. I Belgian Corps had been pushed back west o
f Kassel; I British Corps was still fighting in the outskirts of Hannover and, in the built-up areas and the hill country of the Harz, exploiting with German reservist Jagd Kommandos the advantage of the ‘sponge’; I German Corps was established east and west along the Teutoburger Wald; II British Corps was extending its left westwards to the Dutch frontier, behind which reserve formations were hastily preparing defences in low-lying country now being flooded.
On the CENTAG front the first of the newly arrived US divisions, which had already fought such a valuable action, had been withdrawn from V US Corps to join the strong Canadian Brigade Group in army group reserve. The First French Army, taking II German Corps under command, had now assumed responsibility for that sector of the region which ran from Nurnberg south to the Austrian frontier, coming for the time being under command to CENTAG, with which French ties, as has been seen, were close.
By the evening of 5 August further enemy attacks had opened a salient on the left of III German Corps, in the extreme north of the CENTAG sector on the Corps boundary with the Belgians, and a Soviet thrust was developing towards Giessen. This was checked by flank action from the V US Corps between Alsfeld and Schluchtern. It was perhaps significant that the leading divisions in the enemy’s assault were now more often motor-rifle than tank divisions, and powerful probing for weak points was tending more and more to replace the massive armoured assault of tanks in the first wave. The Allied tactic, at unit level, which was essentially a matter of striving wherever possible to separate the tanks from their supporting infantry, was clearly paying off.
Further south the anti-tank defences of VII US Corps, with strong artillery and increasing tactical air support, had just been sufficient to contain a major attempt to break through south-east of Frankfurt where pressure was again building up. From Nurnberg southwards the situation was confused, but what information was available suggested that the First French Army with II German Corps was still more or less in control along the Lech.
Over the next five days of bright, clear weather, as growing French strength in the south did much to stabilize the right flank, it became increasingly clear that the main effort would continue to be made in the north. The boundary between the two army groups had been moved up to give the Kassel area, with command of the much weakened I Belgian Corps, to CENTAG. After very hard fighting had held up a determined attempt to push down to Frankfurt through Giessen, COMCENTAG now believed that he had a good chance of holding an area whose forward edge would run from Kassel down through Alsfeld to south of Wurzburg. If the Soviet 3 Shock Army had been put in behind 1 Guards Tank Army the outlook would have been different, but it had been committed to the attack in the north.
By 7 August the continued enforcement of chemical defensive measures upon NORTHAG was beginning to cause concern, and pressure from field commanders for some form of retaliation grew. In theory a nuclear response had always been considered a possibility, at least by the British, but at this stage SACEUR was in no doubt that such a response would be an irrational risk. He was, however, prepared to see chemicals used in retaliation; indeed, authority for their use had already been delegated to local US commanders. SACEUR thus felt able to offer some chemical support to NORTHAG. It presented no problem to COMAAFCE to allot a squadron of US Air Force F-4 Phantoms equipped with spray tanks to 2 ATAF, while a quantity of US 155 mm chemical ammunition was released to the gunners of the British and German divisions of NORTHAG. This capability was put to immediate use.
The Phantoms attacked second echelon and reserve Soviet divisions with extensive and heavy concentrations of persistent lethal agents. These attacks forced Soviet units into unplanned moves. The personal protective equipment used by Soviet soldiers was not suitable for prolonged wear and under continued attack by persistent gases grew almost intolerably irksome. It was less easy for NORTHAG formations to use the US 155 mm chemical ammunition. It only slowly became available, for the logistic problem in drawing the ammunition from US locations caused delay, while Allied forces were unskilled in its technical and tactical use. The overall effect of the use of chemical agents against the Soviet offensive was nonetheless welcome. Protective clothing and equipment taken with Soviet prisoners was found to be rougher, clumsier, worse-fitting and considerably less effective than that of the Allies — which was itself a great improvement on what had been available only two or three years before. Red Army troops suffered in consequence more serious casualties from the same weight of attack. Their less flexible command and control procedures were more easily impeded. On balance, Soviet commanders considered a chemical exchange to be to their disadvantage, and since the Allies adhered to the rule of only using chemical agents in retaliation their use on the battlefield, as distinct from the rear areas, soon declined.
Refugees were posing an acute and growing problem in the south, as in the north. Large numbers of people from Augsburg and Ulm had moved in the direction of Stuttgart, and a rapidly increasing mass of frightened people was building up in the vicinity of Karlsruhe. The same sort of thing was also happening where crowds fleeing from Nurnberg and Wurzburg, augmented by refugees from smaller places, were bearing down on Mannheim. From the Frankfurt area there was a good deal of movement in the direction of Wiesbaden and Mainz. The general picture was one of a widespread and virtually uncontrollable flow from east to west, much of it on foot with possessions piled on vehicles drawn by animals or pushed or dragged by hand, with a chaotic jumble of motor vehicles of every description, more and more of them abandoned as petrol supplies gave out. At the Rhine crossings the pressure was tremendous; to keep the bridges open was putting increasing strain on Federal German police and territorial troops. Disorder was increased by determined Soviet air attack, both at low and medium levels, of which some at least always got through the defences. The importance of maintaining freedom of movement across the Rhine for the Allies, and of blocking it for the Warsaw Pact, was fully realized on both sides. By the fourth day some success began to attend the strenuous efforts of Federal German police and territorial troops to establish control over refugee movements and divert them into areas of open country east of the river. This did much to relieve pressure on the Rhine crossings but could not prevent serious interference with the movement of troops and other essential military traffic.
To the north of the Central Region AFNORTH was proving a tougher proposition for the Warsaw Pact than many in the West had expected, perhaps because few had much experience of the very great difficulty of movement from north to south in Norway. By 4 August the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force of seven battalions with supporting troops had been put in by air and deployed north of Narvik. A Royal Marine Commando came in from Britain by sea and other Allied reinforcements arrived by sea and air to strengthen and support Norwegian national forces deployed in north Norway.
Advanced elements of a Soviet motor-rifle division crossed into Norway from the Kola peninsula on 4 August. A second was already moving westwards through Finnish Lapland, directed on Narvik. The fact that the Soviet and Finnish railway systems were integrated meant that no movement problem hampered the early follow-on of eight to ten more Soviet divisions. Soviet air superiority was complete.
The relative strengths of ground troops in AFNORTH did not, however, give a true measure of the Warsaw Pact advantage. It was less than it looked. The strength of the defence lay in the very great difficulty of deployment for offensive action, even with a favourable air situation. It was, in fact, only the action of a Soviet amphibious force in effecting a landing south of Bodo on 10 August that was to compel a southward redeployment of Allied forces to protect the land line of communication through north Trondelag and Nordland. By 15 August a firm Allied defence was based on Trondheim, which was unlikely to be seriously threatened so long as a delaying action continued to be successfully fought in the north.
To the south of the Central Region, HQ AFSOUTH, with a hastily put together Italian government in exile, had moved on 6 and 7 August to Spain. The Ita
lian peninsula was now entirely under Soviet control, though with no great strength in Red Army troops.
The Italian and US air elements based in Italy constituting 5 Allied Tactical Air Force, after their initial operations, found themselves overtaken by the virtual disintegration of the NATO Southern Region. The wings and squadrons were faced with a fleeting chance and those aircrew who had serviceable aircraft took it by flying to Spain and the south of France where they were subsequently used as a general reserve of tactical air power for the central battle, chiefly in the south of the Central Region.
Holland came under Soviet occupation as far south as the River Maas by 10 August, the seat of government having removed to Eindhoven. The last remnants of a Dutch defence of the frontier had been dispersed in an action near Lingen on the 8th, and thereafter only floods caused by the opening of the dykes and an active civilian resistance had stood in the invaders’ way.
On 10 August the right-hand corps of the Northern Army Group, I British, was still in being, though battered, in the area round Paderborn. Its anti-tank defences had been its salvation. The tactics of the ‘sponge’ had been highly successful. Small infantry detachments manning ATGW were still lying up in built-up or hilly country, waiting for the vulnerable flank, always trying to reduce the impetus of the enemy’s advance by hampering the follow-up and interfering with supply. The concentration of attack at all levels, by every means, on communications, command and control was paying off handsomely. One guided missile could destroy one tank. A single hit on a divisional command post could impose confusion and delay upon a hundred. Even where physical disruption was not possible (and, with the methods currently in use, nodal communication points could quite often be located and destroyed) interference with communication almost always was. It was remarkable how far such interference could reduce the effectiveness of an enemy accustomed to close control by superiors.