Air Vice-Marshal Bill Williams, the AOC, was a very experienced fighter pilot, but of course he was not old enough to have been in the 1939-45 war. He had a feeling, one way or the other, that this war was not going to last very long; as an airman to the core he had no wish to have to tell his children that he had spent all of it underground. So that morning he had handed over to the Group Captain Ops and flown one of the Tornados on the Baltic Exits combat air patrol. The very one, in fact, in face of which the raiders had turned back. Later he remembered his telephone conversation with the C-in-C because it seemed to mark a watershed in the relentless battle that he was running.
Understandably, he was keen to give his chief a first-hand account from the front line of battle. The C-in-C, who knew most things that were going on, forestalled him.
“Hello Bill — I see you had a good trip. What were they?”
“Backfires we think, sir, but we didn’t get a visual. They turned back as soon as they got us on their radar. We couldn’t close them — not this end of the Baltic anyway — and we thought they might be spoofing.”
“How are things in the Group?” asked the C-in-C.
“Well, you know our battle claims and our air and ground casualties. We’re still keeping a four to one kill ratio including aircraft losses on the ground and that seems to be good. Everyone’s tails would be right up now except that they’re so bloody tired. The aircrew are still all right — just — and we’re enforcing rest periods between sorties for them, but the ground crew have only been snatching sleep as and when they can since the first scramble. They’ve taken the casualties on the ground absolutely marvellously, especially in the runway repair teams. There have been plenty of medals earned by those chaps if we ever get round to that sort of thing. But they’re pretty well flaked out now. I hate having to say it but I can’t see how we can keep this pace up for more than a day or two. How do you think things are going, sir?” There was a pause before the C-in-C answered — he wanted to be encouraging.
“Several of their raids have turned back in the last eight hours and that must mean something. I think it’s just possible that they’re coming round to the idea that they probably can’t win this one.” He paused again. “I only hope they don’t twig that they probably could if they raised the tempo and kept at us for another week or so. Bill, you’ve got to keep your men going and it may be quite a time yet.”
As the C-in-C hung up, a Sergeant placed a folder of intelligence reports and photographs on his desk. He studied them very closely. Half an hour later he called the Air Defence Commander again:
“Bill, we’re getting some very good Int stuff by satellite now about our counter-air ops. The losses of 1 Group, and of the Germans and USAF, in Tornados and F-111s, have been pretty heavy but COMAAFCE reckons the exchange rate is a very good one and I agree. With what they’re doing, together with the cruise missiles, it looks as if we’re fairly ripping those airfields to bits.”
“Can I pass that round the Group?” asked the AOC, hoping for anything that would help hold back their battle-weariness.
“Of course,” said the C-in-C, “but, Bill — for your ears only in case I’m being too optimistic — if these reports are as good as they look your chaps should be getting a little more rest before long.” “
CHAPTER 20: The Air War Over the Central Region
Since the earliest days of the Alliance, ideas about the use of air power had centred, non-contentiously, on the ability of air forces to bring rapid concentrations of power to bear to redress the imbalance between Allied and Warsaw Pact numbers. Over the years, ways of achieving this had changed with the shifting balance in numbers and quality and with the continually evolving political appreciations of the times. In the late fifties the strong Allied tactical air forces were cut back as the emphasis swung to massive nuclear retaliation and the ‘trip-wire’. In the late sixties, with the change to the ‘flexible response’ strategy, defence efforts were directed to the development of aircraft capable of undertaking both nuclear and conventional operations. As time went on, a numerical Warsaw Pact superiority in the air, as well as on the ground, looked as if it was to be a permanent feature in the balance of power. This placed a high premium on maintaining the Allied technological lead. It also demanded attention to methods of improving the effectiveness of the amalgam of national air forces through better standardization of their weapons and tactics and of their engineering and logistic support. These were not easy aims to achieve, for a variety of national reasons, and progress — though happily considerable by 1985 — had been slow and painful.
The NATO air forces in the Central Region were made up of two tactical air forces, 2 ATAF associated with the Northern Army Group and 4 ATAF with the Central Army Group. This structure was a hangover from the occupation of Germany after the Second World War. Its appropriateness came into question in the late sixties and early seventies. The problem was resolved in 1974, when an overall United States Air Commander (COMAAFCE) was established, with his own headquarters, to exercise central control of Allied air power at the highest level of air command in order to exploit the flexibility and concentration of the numerically inferior Allied air forces. COMAAFCE was responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, Central Region (CINCENT), and his two immediate subordinates were the commanders of 2 and 4 ATAF who retained, in peacetime at least, the same close contact with the army groups.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain we have seen how, during the 1970s, the Russians had developed a more sophisticated concept of air power. What had once been an air arm with very narrow aims, and an almost exclusively battlefield role, had evolved into an air force as the West understood the term. COMAAFCE saw the need to organize his air forces so as to counter this increased threat, while still being able to support the defensive land battle in the critical phase before full reinforcements arrived. He also saw the difficulties. Land and air commanders were agreed on the immediate, full-blooded use of air power in the first hours of an offensive. They saw it as a strategic task of the first importance to identify and slow the enemy’s main thrusts on the ground. At the same time, COMAAFCE realized better than anyone that the success or failure of this plan would depend on the security of his air bases. In particular, his mind often dwelt on the fact that the bases from which 2 ATAF operated were uncomfortably far forward.
On the other hand, he felt confident about his assessment of the enemy’s air objective. In a surge offensive with the initiative, and with an overall advantage in numbers of more than two to one, it was dangerous and misleading to think much in terms of what the enemy’s priorities might be — the Warsaw Pact would probably do everything they could do in the air, and would do it all at once. They would want to neutralize the Allied nuclear strike capability in the theatre; they would aim to ward off interference with the land battle and to establish a tolerable, and if possible favourable, air situation; they would need to protect their own air bases; and they would want to put all the weight of air power they could behind their forces on the ground. The prospect was one of air effort, at every level, of an intensity hitherto never experienced.
In the last fifteen years the development of the Soviet Air Forces had stimulated hard thinking and debate among the Allied air commanders and their staffs. This thinking had reinforced the three classic counters to the threat: offensive counter-air operations against the enemy’s bases; engagement in the air; point and area defence.
There had been general agreement among Allied airmen for many years that the most effective way of countering the Soviet air threat lay in ‘taking it out’ at its point of origin — but this, never an easy task, had become steadily more formidable as Soviet defences had advanced. The airfields would be hardened and very well defended. But major developments in fire-suppression missiles, in precision-guided stand-off munitions, and in airfield-cratering and area-denial weapons gave COMAAFCE cause for sober confidence, though he knew that losses would be high. Great improvements had been made in air-to-air capability since the late seventies. Ground-controlled long-range interceptions would still be possible and necessary, especially in the air defence of the United Kingdom and adjacent areas of sea, but the pressure of geography in Central Europe and the short warning time that this would allow, together with the confusion of electronic counter-measures that would reign in the battle zone, pointed to the need for a less rigid and more general air combat capability. COMAAFCE was well satisfied that the introduction of the F-15s and F-16s to supplement the F-4 Phantoms had gone a long way to meet the requirement. These were not only very potent aircraft, but had once more the agility and manoeuvrability that had marked the earlier generations of fighters. In addition, attention had been focussed on the need for far more SAM and gun defences with a rapid rate of engagement around the air bases, while passive defence measures such as provision of concrete aircraft shelters, command bunkers, and hardened fuel and weapon storage were seen as essentials. Happily, a NATO-wide programme of such improvements had been brought to an advanced state by the spring of 1985.