Perhaps the most vivid vindication of classical air thinking was the organization of the command system of the Allied Air Forces in Europe in the early 1970s. It had long been the claim of the airmen that if the flexibility and capacity for concentration of air power was to be exploited then the air must be centrally organized. This was indeed what happened, very much under US influence and pressure, when a single air command was set up under COMAAFCE in Europe. When the lock was forced at the northern end of the region and the entire Northern Army Group was swung back like a huge door hinged on Kassel, it was this organization which enabled COMAAFCE to swing his air forces through ninety degrees to an east-west north-facing axis in a matter of hours. By the same token he was able to accept the suddenly released reserves and apply them promptly to the battle to which air power made such a decisive contribution.
CHAPTER 21: The Centre Holds
Early on 13 August it was confirmed to SACEUR that the transatlantic convoys proceeding from the United States were at last within the UK Air Defence Region, under air cover operating from bases in France and the United Kingdom. Losses to personnel brought across by air (which included most of the units in reinforcing formations, together with the greater part of their light and some heavy equipment), had been high. Losses at sea to the ships bringing the balance of the heavy equipment, with considerable numbers of men and invaluable munitions, had also been heavy. Nevertheless there was now an early prospect of augmentation of the forces available to Allied Command Europe by some four divisions, together with a corps headquarters and corps and army troops. The massive build-up which Soviet action had been planned to forestall was already under way.
With a heavy concentration of air defence and, of no less importance, elaborate precautions on the part of French police and troops to avoid civil disturbance and disruption (see Chapter 22), the ships of the CAVALRY convoy could be expected to begin discharging into French ports, where US troops were waiting to take over their equipment, early on the morning of the 14th. Fully equipped units would then move by road and rail at best speed through France and Belgium into the area round Aachen.
At noon on that day, 13 August 1985, the Supreme Commander ordered the release of four divisions from the theatre reserve. They were to come under command to NORTHAG from 0001 hours, 14 August, for the purpose of opening an offensive from present forward locations in the direction of Bremen. This was to start not later than at first light the following day, 15 August. The operation, codenamed ‘Culloden’, was already far advanced in contingency planning.
It was known for certain, from high-level surveillance, SIGINT and deep agency reports on troop movements, that the enemy divisions now in action were from 7 Guards Army, brought up (as was also the case with 5 Guards Army) out of the Byelorussian Military District in the USSR. Behind the leading motor-rifle divisions in the first echelon of the assault force were two tank divisions. In greater depth still, but with their leading units still only some thirty kilometres in rear, were three more divisions, believed to be from the Twenty-Eighth Army out of the same military district. It was now known that the unsuccessful airborne assault, by 103 Guards Airborne Division, had also been mounted from there.
Of the Red Army formations met in action up to a week ago there was now little sign in the forward areas, though some were known to be dispersed well in the rear. Of those which had taken part in the initial assault on 4 August, no unit at all, on the unquestionable evidence of reliable local sources, now remained on Federal German soil. The Soviet practice of using divisions for three to five days in all-out assault, to very near the point of total exhaustion, and then extracting them for replacement by completely new formations, was clearly to be seen in action. On the Allied side most formations had already been in action more than once.
At 0400 hours on 14 August Warsaw Pact forces, after very heavy air and artillery preparation, but no chemical attack, opened the expected assault on the Venlo position. Airborne attack in battalion strength on the flanks fifteen kilometres in rear, on Neuss and Roermond, proved fortunately to be of little more than nuisance value. Two German Home Defence Groups, one on each flank, each of nearly a brigade in strength, gave an excellent account of themselves in a role for which they had done much training: after some very tough opposition the German reservist and civilian soldiers triumphed over both attacks. Allied air defence entirely prevented any heliborne follow-up. The crossings over the Rivers Rhine and Maas remained in Allied hands, under the control of severely harassed engineers, open at least by night and even sporadically by day. The enemy’s attempt to isolate by airborne action the forward edge of the Allied battle area was thus a total failure.
In the attack on the Venlo position the forward concentration of Allied forces, four divisions deployed between two rivers on a front of thirty kilometres, with anti-tank defences that were strong and well disposed in depth, put any use of the enemy’s light lead forces on the usual pattern out of the question. The attack came surging in, at first shooting light, after thirty minutes’ intense artillery fire aimed at suppressing anti-tank defences, with three motor-rifle divisions up, each led by its tank regiment, the tank companies coming in first and the motor-rifle companies following, mounted in their BMP, some 200 metres behind. Direct ATGW hits on leading BMP soon indicated that a mounted attack could only bog down. A dismounted infantry attack in great strength followed, under fire support from tanks, SP guns and BMP, with heavy concentrations from the tube artillery and rocket launchers of the enemy’s divisional artillery, and air-to-ground attack pressed hard in spite of considerable losses in aircraft. The very heavy weight of the assault, with unit after unit piled on regardless of casualties, began to tell before long. Here and there NATO defences, swamped by numbers, began to crumble. The enemy, within an hour or two, was seen to be gaining a clear advantage.
At the same time as the main assault on the Venlo position, another attack was being made by one Soviet motorized division west of the Maas, southwards towards Roermond. Heavy Allied missile concentrations on crossings over the Maas and Lower Rhine, which were being kept open with great difficulty by Soviet engineers, took sufficient of the edge off this attack to enable one US brigade, operating with two Dutch regiments under command and anti-tank defences disposed in depth, which the enemy had found it impossible entirely to suppress, just to hold its own. Ground was given, but sufficient of the network of ATGW remained in action to foil the enemy’s first attempt at doing to the Venlo position on the west bank of the Maas, on a smaller scale, what the general Soviet offensive had been trying to do to AFCENT as a whole, that is, to roll it up from the rear by attack from north to south along the west bank of the Rhine.
An even stronger enemy attack than that west of the Maas developed at the same time east of the Rhine, where units of II British Corps, with a Dutch brigade and a strong and very recently regrouped German division, together with three German Home Defence Groups, the whole force under a German general-lieutenant, had up to now succeeded in preventing the movement of any but light forces across the hardly formidable water obstacle of the River Lippe. Three things had here contributed to an extremely important delay in the enemy’s advance: flooding, which had done something to canalize movement from the north-east; the extensive use of mines; and close air support, exploiting the slight but growing advantage in the air the Allies now enjoyed and the evident superiority in electronic warfare which was contributing so largely to it.