At RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, the Red Arrows display teams aircraft were no longer wearing their red livery, and they along with No. 100 Squadron from RAF Leeming, near Northallerton in North Yorkshire received orders to fly to Andøya and Banak in Norway within two hours. With all RAF front line units fully engaged with events in Germany, the Hawks would provide local air defence to the Royal Norwegian Air Force’s maritime and anti-submarine bases, their ground crews and logistic support would follow soon after. 100 Squadron found themselves sharing space with Flyvevabnet airframes and crews; the Royal Danish Air force F-16’s of 727 Eskadrille had arrived from Skrydstrup an hour before they had.
The Charles De Gaulle was warned to expect an attack anytime soon and Spain’s VTOL carrier Principe de Asturias steaming off central Norway turned about and put the pedal to the metal, heading north to add her twelve AV-8B Harriers to the Task Force. The deck of the helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc was going to be very crowded, HMS Illustrious was too far away to be of any help but her Sea Harriers weren’t. The Fleet Air Arm pilots got to sample the not unpleasant aromatic mix of garlic and Gauloises cigarettes in her wardrooms.
Ordnance was going to be complicated for the Sea Harriers; they were going to be reliant on the Spanish carrier for reloads.
HMS Temeraire had been lurking in the seas northwest of Murmansk to provide early warning for the North Cape Task Force since the day after the war broke out. She had accompanied Britain’s sole remaining diesel powered submarine, HMS Ulysses, standing off to seaward whilst the last of the Upholder class boats carried swimmers to within a mile of the coast, before moving further east, closer to the approaches of the Russian port. She now reported upwards of twenty fast attack craft, ten frigates and eight destroyers grouped off the coast.
Canada’s Victoria class SSK’s, HMCS Chicoutimi and HMCS Windsor along with the USS Twin Towers were released from convoy escort duty and headed north.
The sound of jet engines rolled across the sleeping countryside, six regiments of fighters, seven Regiments of fighter-bombers, four of bombers and the S37 Golden Eagles lined the taxiways of the airfields, weighed down with ordnance. The A-50 tankers and AWACs were already aloft, east of Murmansk but not yet radiating.
Off the coast, twenty-four Tarantula class missile boats in two ranks, five miles apart, had set off at midnight, making low turns in order not to broadcast their presence but they now opened their throttles. The twenty-three destroyers and frigates increased speed to twenty-four knots, their job was to act as a third wave if required and to occupy waters off the North Cape once the NATO ships had been sunk or driven off. Far behind them, emerging from the safety of the port came the submarines; they would not be taking part in the fight if all went according to plan.
The S37s headed east to top off their tanks before turning northeast, as they left the tankers the Backfires and three regiments of Flogger Js moved in to top off their own fuel tanks.
An A-50 had been on station at the Backfire and Golden Eagle holding area since midnight, trying to burn through the task force jamming whilst producing its own. Ideally there would have been more than one aircraft performing this task, but losses in the A-50 fleet meant that until the older Mainstays could be brought out of mothballs, they had to make do.
The remaining regiments that lifted off from the fields headed west with the fighters taking the high ground, and the fighter-bombers hugging the earth.
Back at Pechenga, airbase security had detected a burst transmission whilst the crews were still heading out toward the dispersal area and their aircraft two hours before. It had been only of one hundredth of a second duration but had given them a bearing of 312’, but nothing to indicate how far away. At the very least they needed another cross bearing to narrow down the location of the transmitter, so they drove out of the base to the northwest in a BTR-80 festooned with antennae. Logic dictated that if the transmission were anything to do with the base then it had to be within optical range, so out of sight of the perimeter a company of troops mounted APCs of their own and waited.
Sergeant Ramsey, and three marines from the SBS, Special Boat Squadron, had dug their hide into a steep section of hillside just thirty hours before. They had reached the site two miles from the airbase after a forced march, having been diverted from their task of watching for sign of an overland invasion of Norway.
Whilst submerged, HMS Ulysses had brought them in several days before, creeping slowly past the Russian coastal patrols with the RM commandos on its outer casing. They had then swum for the cliff face a mile off the submarine’s starboard side and scaled it before moving inland.
Digging the hide near the airbase had taken seven hours, carefully removing heather and turf before cutting into the hillside. The spoil was carried down to a nearby stream where the waters carried away the evidence, until they had just enough space for the four of them. A camouflage net was pegged firmly into place, braced with branches sawn off by folding saw, and the turf and heather replaced over it
Sgt Ramsey finished typing into a palmtop and pressed send when the wheels of the first aircraft left the tarmac, they had already sounded the alarm when the base had come to life and it had been obvious something major was afoot. With that out of the way the marines settled back to await the aircraft returning, when they would then send a damage assessment.
To the east of the marines’ OP a BTR-80 turned north, placing itself between the hill and the Norwegian border. They now knew to within a half-mile from where the transmission had originated, it was time to call in the beaters to flush the spy or spies into the open.
Heading west, nine regiments of Su-34s and Mig-31 Foxhounds headed for the northernmost Norwegian airbases at Bodø, Bardufoss, Banak and Andøya, the CAPs comprising of four F-16s turned in to intercept them.
From Banak and Andøya, two squadrons of RAF Hawks rose to meet them, with the Danes F-16s and the Norwegians out of Bodø.
The Russian fighter-bombers, three regiments each of Su-25 Frogfoot and Mig-27 Flogger Js made for Banak, Bodø and Andøya, with the intention of rendering the maritime, ASW and fighter bases un-operational. The mission of the Russian fighters was principally to prevent the NATO fighters from intervening in the attack on the Task Force, protecting their own fighter-bombers was secondary.
One hundred miles south of the Task Force, NATO JSTARS and AWAC had been orbiting for over a day with radars at standby, now they fired up those radars. French AE-6B Prowlers with the task force had begun active jamming two days before over a wider area than normal, denying the enemy a fix on the ships. Norwegian ground stations already had the inbound fighters and with their data link to the AWAC and JSTARS they also had the fighter-bombers winding their way through mountain valleys toward the targets, well inside Norwegian airspace.
The Su-25 Frogfoot fighter-bombers bound for Banak skimmed the Norway/Finland border, turning southwest with the intention of coming in on the RNAF Sea King helicopter base from the south. The Flogger Js on the mission headed northwest, dropping down to wave top level to cross Laksefjorden. On the western side of the fjord they turned southwest, over-flying the town of Veidnes as they flew down the valley that linked the fjords of Laksefjorden and the long Porsangen fjord which led to Banak at its southern end. As they emerged from the valley three of the Royal Norwegian Navy’s surface-to-air missiles, launched from fast missile patrol boats, brought two Flogger-Js down in the frigid waters.