The Yak-3’s and La-7’s took on the low-level RAF fighter-bombers and harassed them enough to make their attacks on the Wasserfal missile systems a highly dangerous activity. The Soviet AAA shells tipped with US made Proximity fuses, made live short for many of the fighter-bombers who did what they could do in suppressing the missile threat. Despite the odds, many missile placements were hit and destroyed. Alas for the RAF, they were not operational sites for the most part but well-placed decoys. The sixty Wasserfal sites that contained live missiles were virtually untouched before launch, as the fighter-bombers went after the easier-to-see decoys. As the waves of bombers came into range the Wasserfals lifted off and twelve of them hit their targets, with eighteen planes falling, or crippled by their explosions including three fighters that were caught in the explosions and flying debris.
Almost simultaneously the first launch of X-4 missiles caught the attention of the bomber crews, who had been watching the Wasserfals rising from the ground. They had been briefed on the X-4 by the Americans but it was still a disconcerting sight to see the X-4, obviously being steered, as it got closer. They were targeting the lead bombers of each succeeding group. The planes following their leaders looked on in horror as the missiles slammed into their commanders’ planes disintegrating them one by one.
The bravery of those lead crews was beyond belief. No attempt was made to evade the guided missiles. The electronic geniuses in strategically-placed jamming aircraft desperately tried every technique they could to ward off the X-4, to no apparent effect. The missiles that missed did so at random as though some unseen mechanical failure was the cause and not their jamming efforts.
By now they could see that the X-4 was initially wire guided, but soon after launch, appeared to be self-guided as if it had to be pointed in the right direction but then was able to function on its own once it obtained visual sight of the target. The ones that failed for the most part never gained that cone of visual contact with the bomber stream. From inside the Pe-9 Beech formations there was a primitive radar signal but the radar-wizards of the RAF were positive that they were jamming them. The only problem was that the missiles kept hitting home at an unacceptable rate.
The first salvo had been launched by the missile gunners on the port-side and nose gunners of the Pe-9 Beeches as they approached the bomber stream at an ever-increasing angle. The first salvo of sixty-plus missiles was guided for the first four kilometers until the internal guidance system took over. As the Beeches, with their accompanying escorts, close the distance on the bomber stream the wire guidance was needed less and less and the X-4 became almost fire-and-forget.
After the nose and port-side gunners had fired their missiles the Beeches turned south, and the starboard-side and tail gunners got their chance to launch. With all this going on the RAF formations did remarkably well and stayed in formation to a great degree. The carpet-bombing pattern resembled a jigsaw puzzle with significant sections missing. Where the bomber stream managed to stay in formation, the effects were devastating, just as the Soviets knew it would be.
Il-4 medium bombers (NATO designation Bob) flew above the Pe-9’s and also launched missiles. These were not guided and were designed to provide a decoy for the true launching platforms of the X-4. A contingent of the RAF bomber escorts were detailed to drive off the Bobs and Beeches. They took heavy losses, as the fighter cover for the Soviet air-to-air missile launchers was immense.
The Soviet tactical strategy was twofold: to destroy enough bombers to make any future bombing effort unfeasible but more importantly, to shoot down as many fighters as possible. The theory was that the British loss of fighters was the key component in winning the greater battle for the skies above Great Britain. The attack on the bombers was more of a ruse to put the covering fighters in positions to be attacked.
As a result of the carpet-bombing effort the four airfields targeted were destroyed.
As a consequence of the Soviet espionage effort, they were devoid of personnel, equipment and supplies. The first wave of VVS attack pods took off that morning, knowing that they would not be returning to their former bases. The ground crews were evacuated with enough time to be clear of the pre-designated kill zones.
The RAF tactical bombers and fighter-bombers did remarkably well in destroying the surviving Soviet decoy missile sites. Thirty-seven of the one-hundred fifty-eight ground-attack aircraft did not return to Great Britain. The Soviet AAA batteries knew they were coming, yet the RAF pilots and crews still drove home their attacks. Eighty-three percent of the decoys were destroyed before they could theoretically have been launched. It was an incredible job that was all for naught.
Of the live missile sites, six were discovered and destroyed before launch and seventeen were attacked after launch. At low-level the Yak-3’s and La-7’s were in their element, and the RAF fighter-bombers and tactical bombers had their hands full. Getting down and dirty at 1,000 feet is not the way to defeat the VVS. The Soviet losses for the fight in the trenches stood at eleven fighters downed.
Up at higher levels the fight was more even. The RAF fighters flying high cover were practiced and experienced in fighting at above 20,000 feet. For the Soviet VVS, this was a relatively new experience and it showed. Without the Pe-9 Beeches and Wasserfal missiles, it might have been a major defeat. As it was the final tally for the fight for the high-ground stood at seventy-six RAF bombers, and thirty-one fighters downed, at a cost of sixty-three new Soviet Yak-3D’s and Yak-9D’s. In addition eleven Pe-9 Beeches suffered significant damage or were destroyed outright. Fully twenty-four Il-4’s were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
As in the Battle of Britain, the aggressor lost their downed pilots and crews to either POW camps or graveyards, while a fair number of the defeated defenders lived to fly again.
These numbers would make both sides pause and take stock, but the obvious fact was that the Soviets could absorb the losses, and the British could not.
Foreknowledge of the enemy’s plans is an almost assured victory, even for a mediocre leader and Novikov was not a mediocre leader.
For now, the era of the daylight bomber was at a halt. These kinds of losses were unsustainable and Harris knew it. It was time to go back to the drawing board. It appeared that World War Three would not be won in the air.
Once again a few brave men would be asked to do the impossible over the skies of Great Britain. This time the enemy was not lead by a buffoon in the form of Herman Goring but by a master of strategy in the form of one Alexander Alexandrovich Novikov, the man who ruled the skies over Mother Russia, Manchuria, East Germany and now most of Europe.[40]
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Harry Kellogg III
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1497358119
ISBN-10: 1497358116