In the CENTAG sector, too, very good use was being made of German Jagd Kommandos, deployed far forward in well-sited localities. In CENTAG, however, the emphasis was laid more on the actual stopping — or at least delaying — power of the armoured covering force. The terrain, for one thing, was in general closer, more thickly wooded and more up-and-down than in the north, and thus more favourable to the defence. For another thing, it was dangerously short of depth. There was no ground here to be traded for time.
Time-consuming actions had been fought, with very considerable loss to the enemy, before Fulda at Hunfeld, in front of Schlitz, and south-east of Hersfeld. Fortunately for the defence the weather was clear and the maximum range of ATGW could be exploited. The covering force on this part of the CENTAG front exchanged losses with the attackers at a rate in their own favour of nearly five to one, but they were obliged in the process to yield some fifteen to twenty kilometres.
With III German Corps on their left fighting hard and giving very little away, the brunt of the attack on 4 August in the CENTAG area was met at about 1600 hours by the armoured division on the left of V US Corps. Four Soviet tank regiments ploughed into the two brigades on the left of the division, the motorized infantry companies, mounted in their BMP, coming along close behind the leading tanks. Another tank regiment and a motorized infantry regiment followed up. With nearly 100 T-72s leading, the Soviet attack ran into a network of anti-tank fire which the enemy’s heavy artillery preparation for nearly an hour before, and the best efforts of his tactical air support, had been unable entirely to suppress. The leading US battalions were forced back several kilometres through their own anti-tank defences, but as these reduced the impetus of the assault it was possible to regain some, at least, of the ground lost. By nightfall the two leading Soviet divisions had gained, in the event, a few kilometres, but with very high losses. Pressure continued through the night. When the attack was resumed with a new ferocity at first light on the 5th, by two fresh Soviet divisions which had passed through the first in the hours of darkness, it was met by the combined strength of two US divisions, of which one was from those most newly arrived, and brought to a halt, at least for the time being, after relatively shallow penetration, just forward of Alsfeld. The V US Corps front now extended from Alsfeld in the north to Schluchtern in the south.
On its right, further south, VII US Corps had faced a major attack on the opening day, following exactly the same pattern, on the Meiningen-Schweinfurt axis along the River Main near Wurzburg. Again, ground had been lost, but the effectiveness of the anti-tank defences had prevented a decisive breakthrough.
Further south still, II German Corps was fighting a stubborn rearguard action in the area of Nurnberg, giving away no more ground than was absolutely necessary in the expectation of the early arrival of the French. There was little enough they could do. The action of covering forces in the Bayrischer Wald had gained too little time to prevent the Russians from bouncing a crossing over the Danube. As night fell powerful armoured columns of the Soviet 1 Guards Tank Army were bypassing Munchen to the north. The next hope of stopping them, at this southern end of the Central Region, would be along the River Lech.
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.