SOUTHAG Southern Army Group
SP self-propelled
SRF Strategic Rocket Forces (Soviet)
SSBN submarine(s), strategic ballistic nuclear
SSGN submarine(s), guided missile nuclear
SSM surface-to-surface missile(s)
SSN submarine(s), nuclear
START Strategic Arms Reduction Talks
SURTASS surface-towed array sensor system
SWAPO South-west Africa People’s Organization
TACEVAL tactical evaluation
TACFIRE tactical fire direction
TACTASS tactical towed array sonar system
TAWDS target acquisition and weapon delivery system
TERCOM terrain contour matching (guidance system)
TNF theatre nuclear force(s)
TOW tube launched optically tracked wire guided (ATGW)
UKAD United Kingdom Air Defence
UNIFIL United Nations Force in Lebanon
UNFISMATRECO United Nations Fissile Materials Recovery Organization
UNITA National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
USAF United States Air Force
USAFE United States Air Force Europe
USAREUR United States Army in Europe
VELA velocity and angle of attack
V/STOL vertical/short take-off and landing
WESTLANT Western Atlantic
ZANLA Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army
ZIPRA Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army
Foreword
Earlier this year, at Eastertide in 1987, we, a group of Britons deeply aware of how narrowly such freedoms as the Western world enjoys had been able to survive the onslaught upon them of the enemies of freedom in August 1985, completed a book about the causes, course and outcome of the Third World War. In the prologue to that book (a short piece of writing of which every word stands as firmly today, six months later, as it did then, and perhaps deserves re-reading) we wrote: ‘Much will be said and written about these events in years to come, as further sources come to light and further thought is given to this momentous passage in the history of our world.’[1] A good deal more information has indeed become available since then.
The belligerent involvement of Sweden and Ireland, for example, was passed over in our first book, not through unawareness of its importance but through uncertainty about the political implications of some aspects of it which suggested an approach like that of Agag, who trod delicately. The same was true of the neutrality of Israel, under joint guarantees from the USSR and the USA. We could do little more than state this at that time as an end-product, since here too there were uncertainties in issues where precipitate judgment could have been prejudicial. We are now able to go more fully into the process which led to the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian state and the stabilization of Israeli frontiers under guarantee, though the reader will note that the great powers came very near to such conflict over this issue as could have caused the Third World War to break out at least a year before it did.
In Central America and the Caribbean there was also danger of a premature explosion. There has now been developing a Latin-American community (in which a non-communist Cuba plays a critically important role), with the interest and support of the United States but with no intent on its part of total dominance. These matters were at a delicate stage when we last wrote. We can now report more freely on the development of this regional entity as it grows in robustness. It emerged in circumstances so dangerous that the USSR was almost able to secure the defeat of NATO before a shot was fired on the Central Front. We can now examine why.
In the Middle East, in North Africa (where the extinction of over-ambition in Libya was received with almost worldwide acclamation), in southern Africa, and in the Far East we are also now able to take the story further.
In the strictly military sphere, we have been able, with more information, to make some adjustment to the record. This is particularly important where the course of events is considered from the Soviet side. There is now quite an abundance of additional source material available — political, social and military — and we have made use of this as far as we could. The Scandinavian situation has already been mentioned. Operations in northern Europe have been looked at again in the light of it and operations at sea, much influenced by the participation of a belligerent Ireland. On the Central Front we have been able to give more attention to air operations. Those in the Krefeld salient in the critical battle of Venlo on 15 August, the relatively small but vitally important air attack on Polish rail communications to impede the advance just then of a tank army group from Belorussia in the western Soviet Union, the importance of equipment which, however costly, could not safely be foregone — these and other aspects of war in the air receive more attention.
As we said in the Prologue to the first book, ‘The narrative now set out in only the broadest outline and, of our deliberate choice, in popular form, will be greatly amplified and here and there, no doubt, corrected.’ To contribute to this process is our present purpose.
We are still very far from attempting any final comment on the war that shook the world but did not quite destroy it. The intention is largely to fill in some gaps and amplify various aspects of the tale. The lesson, which is a simple one, remains the same. It is worth restating.
We had to avoid the extinction of our open society and the subjugation of its members to the grim totalitarian system whose extension worldwide was the openly avowed intention of its creators. We had at the same time to avoid nuclear war if we possibly could. We could best do so by being fully prepared for a conventional one. We were not willing, in the seventies and early eighties, to meet the full cost of building up an adequate level of non-nuclear defence and cut it fine. In the event, we just got by. Some would say this was more by good luck than good management, that we did too little too late and hardly deserved to survive at all. Those who say this could well be right.
London, 5 November 1987
THE WORLD IN FLAMES
Chapter 1: Dies Irae
There could not have been many people in Western Europe or the United States who were greatly surprised when they learned from early TV and radio broadcasts on the morning of 4 August 1985 that the armed forces of the two great power blocs, the United States and her allies on the one hand and Soviet Russia and hers on the other, were at each other’s throats in full and violent conflict. Preparation for war, including the mobilization of national armed forces, had already been proceeding for some two weeks in the West (and for certainly twice as long in the countries of the Warsaw Pact) before the final outbreak. Yet the magnitude of the assault when it was first felt in its full flood and fury was none the less astounding, particularly to those in the Western world (and these were the majority) who had paid little attention in the past to portents for the future. Bombs were bringing death and devastation on the ground, aircraft exploding into fiery fragments in the sky. Ships were being sunk at sea and the men in them hammered into pulp, electrocuted, burned to death, or drowned. Other men, and many of them, were dying dreadfully in the flaming clamour and confusion of the land battle. Yet another world war had burst upon mankind. While the course of life in the short three weeks of the Third World War had no time to be as radically affected as in the five or six years of each of the first two, the consequences of this war were likely to be more far reaching than any before it.
1
The Third World War: August 1985 (Sidgwick and Jackson, London, and Macmillan, New York, 1978)