“If only they were not tied to those damned runways,” he said to himself. Being a good airman the inflexibility and vulnerability that went with long runway airfields had always affronted his professional conscience.
Talking to the Tornado crews in their hardened operations room he was, as always, exhilarated by their professional competence and dedication. This squadron had less than a year’s experience with the Tornado but they were clearly delighted with it.
“The radar is absolutely superb, sir,” one enthusiastic crew member told him. “We can track them right down in the weeds if we have to.”
Talking to the Squadron Commander, Hazel was reassured by the thoroughness with which the training programme had been conducted; co-operation with tankers and with AEW was obviously first class, and full advantage had been taken of the Tornado’s electronic navigation and weapons system to develop methods for concerted, and if need be autonomous, interception techniques between groups of fighters.
Flying on to Bentwaters, he had a talk with the USAF Base Commander who was grappling with the problems of absorbing some fifty F-15s that had just landed from the States. Overcrowding was his problem; the pre-stocking of spares and munitions seemed all right, and he was deploying the aircraft to pre-planned dispersal airfields as rapidly as he could. One thing was certain: he was not going to get caught with his birds on the ground if the balloon went up.
“They’ll be up there,” he said, “fighting — and shooting the hell out of the Russians.”
Dropping in at Stanmore on the way back, Sir John talked at length with AOC No. 11 Group, his Air Defence Commander, and they reviewed the state of preparation together. They did not expect heavy losses in the air; after all, they had superb aircraft, and there was no reason why they should lose many in combat against intruding attackers. Losses on the ground were another matter. But the AOC’s real concern lay in the limits of his human resources.
“We can’t know,” he said, “whether this is going to be short and decisive or drawn out by reluctance to go nuclear. My chief worry is that in any action beyond a week or two my air and ground crew will be stretched beyond the limits of exhaustion.”
This was not news to the C-in-C; he shared his AOC’s reservations, but there was little that could be done about it. Together they looked into the Command bunker which would serve as first alternative operations centre, with all the information available to the Command and Group operations centres duplicated there. This would be a vital facility if battle damage put out the main centres at any time — which was something that a resolute enemy was bound to try to do.
It was a thoughtful and reflective Air Marshal who flew the remaining few kilometres back to his headquarters that afternoon. Much had been done to gear up defences since the penny had dropped with the Western governments. The crucial question was whether there had been time to do enough. On the answer to that question might well depend not only the continued existence of an independent United Kingdom but the survival of Western democracy.
Five days later, as we know, the Soviet offensive opened in the Central Region. Sir John Hazel did not take much waking in the early hours of 4 August. He was not greatly surprised to learn that heavy Soviet pressure was already being exerted along the whole length of the Central Region. He knew that many of his strike-attack forces would be committed immediately to interdiction and counter-air operations, for which they were ready, in an effort to slow down the momentum of the Soviet advance. He also knew that such of his aircraft as were assigned to SACLANT would be required for a pre-emptive attack on the main Soviet Backfire base in the Kola Peninsula up in the Arctic Circle. This would be carried out by Tornados and Buccaneers from the UK, supported by tanker aircraft for refuelling during the mission.
Hazel thoroughly approved of this objective. Maritime air defence philosophy had long been a lively subject for debate between differing schools of thought, but he saw this attack on the source of the threat as entirely consistent with his own strongly held view that the best form of maritime air defence was to prevent as many of the enemy aircraft as possible from reaching the sea area where the targets were. In the EASTLANT area this meant an emphasis on a barrier defence across the routes that geography forced on the Soviet long-range bombers. This philosophy, which was not shared by all, did not rule out air defence forces being dedicated to the needs of a specific surface group, but resources were sparse and point defence was an extravagant way of using aircraft. He certainly would need strong arguments before he would divert significant effort from the more cost-effective tactic of hitting the enemy at or near his point of origin.
In less than an hour the radar plot started to show intruders approaching the UK Air Defence Region from the far north. In the next few days the defences were to be very hard pressed indeed as wave after wave of attacks were launched against the UK mainland. The pattern suggested that the Soviet long-range and naval air forces hoped to achieve four main objectives: the neutralization of the air defences; the elimination of nuclear-capable forces on the ground; the disruption of command and control; and the impeding of the transatlantic flow of reinforcements by sea and by air.
No one as yet knew an effective way of hiding a radar aerial, but mobile equipments complicated the attacker’s job and made gap-filling feasible — with the underlying strength resting in the flexibility and resilience of the new command-and-control data system which could accept and process information from any source. Radars were knocked out, AEW aircraft were shot down, and air defence ships were sunk; continental early warning was nullified quite early on by the speed of the Soviet advance on land. At no time, however, was the air defence system so bereft of data as to prevent it from reacting. In some of the worst periods the Tornados, supported by tankers, ran autonomous combat air patrols, providing their own raid information and directing their own interceptions until replacement AEW aircraft could come back on station or a mobile radar could be brought on line.
Airfields presented a less tractable problem. If only there had been time and money to prepare more satellite airfields and dispersals — better still, if the fighters had been less dependent on those wretched concrete surfaces. Dispersal to reduce losses on the ground increased the operating problems on bases already short of manpower and the time needed to get aircraft into the air. Cratering and mining were among the most disabling forms of attack: an airfield with its runway out meant that all the aircraft on the ground were neutralized until repairs could be effected. Rapid runway repair units had been a key feature in the improvement programme, and now paid off well. They took many casualties, especially from delayed action mines, as they courageously pressed on with their vital repair work. In one way, things turned out rather better than Hazel’s men had expected. Low-level attacks did not seem to be the Soviet Air Forces’ strong point. After 1,500 kilometres or more of transit flying, and of fighting their way through the defences, many of them failed to locate their targets with sufficient precision. Those who climbed to 500 metres or so for a quick verification of their navigation were almost always picked off by the Rapiers positioned around the airfields.
As was expected, not all the attacks were at low level. Some came in at medium levels with a massive shield of electronic counter-measures and a high-speed dash to the point of release for their stand-off weapons. Against these tactics the Tornados, pushed well forward on combat air patrol and supported by tankers, proved the only effective counter. From the outset it was clear that the electronic war was going to be as closely and tenaciously fought as any other aspect of the air defence battle. The Soviet command of the art was clearly high, but air force thinking within the Alliance had foreseen this and the in-built counter-measures proved equal to the task when the test came. The revived emphasis that the RAF placed on tactics after the sterile years of the trip-wire strategy also paid off handsomely.