The Tu-2’s, NATO codenamed ‘Bat,’ Pe-2’s, NATO codenamed ‘Buck,’ Il-4’s, NATO codenamed ‘Bob,’ and what seemed to be their mothership, the B-25J, NATO codenamed ‘Bank,’ took off and all formed as usual in pods around the Banks. There was no indication of what the purposes of the B-25 Banks were. There were plenty of local spies and such that reported on the unusual formation being practiced incessantly by the VVS. At least five attempts had been made at measuring for any kind of electronic, radioactive or biological activity. They all had come back negative except for a brief interlude of five seconds recorded when some kind of electronic activity came from one Bank. This seemed more like a fluke, than a planned event which in reality, it was. One of the operators on a Jammer Bank accidentally hit the switch but immediately turned it off. Thereafter all critical switches had safety guards installed by welding two nails over the offending switch. Crude, but effective as the Soviets are wont to do.
The pods dutifully navigated their way inland after forming up, to various target areas, set up around France. The VVS seemed to have figured out a way to navigate rather well in the early morning hours and arrived at their intended targets just as the visual conditions were right for ground attack.
It is believed that they were using celestial navigation and that’s why no amount of jamming done to their radio compasses would be of use. The British themselves had become very adept at this method of navigation before they moved on to the radio compass. The Soviets were attempting to take it even further.
Today was the day for Bomber Command’s first thousand-plane raid of the Third World War. It would be in daylight, at high altitude, counting on surprise, and the suppression of the Wasserfal missile systems by fighter-bombers and the tactical bombers. Only time would tell if all the resources spent on creating and then resurrecting the heavy bomber fleet of Bomber Command was worth the effort and considerable expense. A number of leading officers and tacticians advocated strongly for an increase in fighters at the expense of resurrecting the bomber fleet but much like Hitler, “Bomber” Harris and his cabal advocated offensive action over defensive reaction.
In normal times it might have worked. Unfortunately, The Cambridge Five and others in the service of Lavrentyi Beria had changed the rules of the game, much like the British Ultra program had changed it in their favor during the Second World War. This time the shoe was on the other foot and it was going to pinch quite a bit before it had run its course.
By 0513 hours, the first wave of the Soviets’ bombers and escorts were on their way to their mock bomb-runs on French targets designed to mimic their intended British targets. Another wave usually followed within hours and should be on the tarmac waiting to take off. They should be fully-loaded, with bombs and fuel. This was the time that Bomber Harris chose to strike: while the VVS was fueling and arming out in the open.
As usual the chaff-spewing RAF planes were drawing a curtain over the English Channel that effectively blinded the primitive Soviet radar. It was even designed to work on the new American, and best German equipment that the Soviets could have confiscated for their own use. The British electronics experts were confident that their curtain of tin-foil could not be penetrated and they were correct. The Soviet radar was useless.
Unfortunately for the British, Beria’s stable of secret agents were deadly-accurate on the details that they conveyed to the VVS. The British plan was to catch the Soviets landing and preparing for their next wave. They fully intended to catch the Soviets with their airfields crowded with fuel, bombs, personnel and low-and-slow fighters and bombers. They came in formed perfectly in their best carpet-bombing formations, packed in like sardines into an airspace that was almost too small for their numbers.
The thunderous sound of thousands of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines flying in concert, makes the heart of every mechanical enthusiast a virtual worshiper of the combination of propeller and internal-combustion engine. On the Russian radar they appear out of nowhere from behind their aluminum-foil curtain of chaff. Every day for at least a week, nothing has emerged from that curtain except for today. Today they blow through it like the avenging angel Bomber Harris has dreamed of for months.
Unnoticed and hidden in the swarm of radar blips generated by the first wave of VVS bombers and fighters heading east, sixty-two Pe-9’s armed with eight X-4 air-to-air missiles each, were screaming at top speed directly for the curtain of tin foil. Thanks to Beria’s spies they were fully aware that a thousand planes were about to explode from the airspace over the English Channel.
The massive RAF formation turned and flew from south to north, once it hit landfall and proceeded to start their bomb-runs. With ten kilometers to go before the lead planes were to drop their bomb-loads over the airfields identified in their flight plan, the missiles from the Pe-9’s started to hit home.
The Pe-9’s would eventually be designated with the NATO reporting name of ‘Beech.’ This naturally became ‘Bitch,’ ‘Son-of-a-Bitch’ and ‘SOB,’ as time progressed, and with good reason.
As the lead RAF bombers started dropping from the sky another kind of battle took place below a thousand feet. The fighter-bombers were in search of the Wasserfal surface-to-air missiles. Their mission was to suppress the missiles and they were low-and-slow in search of their prey. The Soviet fighters coming from the east were not low and slow and dove on the Hornets, Tempests, Mosquitoes and Typhoons, in an attempt to knock them out of the sky.
Without the Soviet X-4 missiles, and the Pe-9’s guidance of them it might have been an even fight. The top cover of Spitfires over the bombers and ground-attack aircraft should have been enough to deal with the expected threat. Under normal circumstances, it would have been. Except for the fact that the Soviet fighters had been timed to arrive from the east in numbers that were intended to be overwhelming.
Without the enemy having advanced information on exactly where and when the raid was going to occur the plan by Bomber Harris was brilliant. As the Allies found out with their Ultra operation, it is much easier to defeat an enemy attack, when you know its time and location. The first thousand-plane raid of World War Three took weeks to organize and during those weeks Stalin’s NKVD was watching every move, and in some cases, actually creating the plans.
The only thing that kept it from being a massacre was another Bomber Harris contingency plan. This one involved the Royal Navy. Beria’s NKVD did not have an operative high up in the Royal Navy and was therefore blind to the additional 256 Seafires and some of the first Sea Furies, coming in from the northeast. These additional fighters did not win the battle but kept it from being a major defeat by distracting the hordes of Soviet fighters from their intended targets.