Combatants elsewhere in the sky were not so fortunate. Subsequently, several pilots from both sides vehemently claimed that they had been shot down by SAM rather than by enemy fighters. Certainly they were not expecting such interference from the ground, but in fact very few of the pilots knew for certain exactly what had shot them down. The MiGs were intent on reaching the bomber stream but could not afford to ignore the Mirages and Eagles. Pre-battle tactical plans were rapidly forgotten in the confusion, RWR keys flashed continuously as aircraft illuminated each other with their AI radars. Infra-red missiles, and finally guns, were used by both sides and losses mounted, aggravated by air-to-air collisions and an unknown number of errors of identification. It was quickly obvious that while the Floggers were out-manoeuvred and out-gunned, if a Foxbat was not picked off on the first attack its ability to burst away at Mach 3 would make catching and hitting it from the rear impossible. The Foxbats speed advantage had serious implications for the B-52s.
The main air battle raged for little more than five minutes, but that was just long enough for almost all the bombers to complete their bombing runs. Below them, the units of the 20 Guards Army were completing their nightly replenishment before moving on to maintain the momentum of the advance against what must have seemed from its apparent attempt to disengage during the night a defeated II British Corps. The revving of tank and BTR engines, the rumble of fuel bowsers, engineer trucks and all the other noises of four divisions preparing to attack obscured completely the faint whine of jet engines 8 miles above. There was no warning as the first deluge of 500 lb bombs smashed down among them. In the next six minutes over 1,500 tons of high explosive thundered over an area of little more than 8 square miles. The T-72 and T-80 tanks that had survived frontal assaults from air-to-surface rockets were shattered by direct hits or had their tracks torn off by blast, while BTR and soft-skinned vehicles were destroyed in their hundreds. The impact on the Soviet ground troops was terrific. Many were killed outright or injured. Many more were stunned and paralysed. Tank and BTR crews were caught either on top of their vehicles or away from them on the ground. Most were reservists, having their first taste of battle, and many broke down under the surprise, ferocity and duration of this thunderous assault from an unseen enemy. Two forward divisional headquarters survived but 20 Guards Army in less than ten minutes of one-sided combat, had virtually ceased, for several vital hours, to exist as a fighting formation.
Inevitably, losses on the ground were not confined to 20 Guards Army. Although a bombing line 1,200 yards ahead of the defending British and Dutch troops had been defined, free-falling bombs from 40,000 feet are no respecters of bomb lines. And although the bombers’ approach on a track parallel to the bomb line had reduced the risk from shortfalls, the navigator bombardiers were not all equally adept at handling their almost fully-automated bombing systems. As a result, one British battalion and some companies of Dutch infantry suffered heavy losses.
Above the ground forces, the B-52 crews had no time either to exult in their success or worry about their bombing accuracy. One EWO after another picked up search illuminations from Foxbat radars, quickly followed by the continuous warning of AA-9 missile lock-on. Chaff dispensers were fired and many missiles exploded harmlessly in the clouds of drifting foil or veered away sharply as their guidance giros toppled. Occasionally the tail-gunners caught a glimpse of the fighters and blazed away optimistically with their four 0.5 inch guns, much as their B-17 forbears had done forty years previously. But the Foxbat pilots were brave and persistent. No. 337 Squadron was the last in the wave and bore the brunt of the fighters’ attack. Two aircraft were destroyed before they could release their bombs, and two more immediately afterwards. As the stream turned west towards the relative safety of North Sea airspace it suffered further losses: one B-52 was rammed from above by a Foxbat, while others fell to short-range AA-6 infra-red homing missiles. It was no consolation to the survivors that most of the MiGs were themselves about to be intercepted and destroyed by Dutch and Belgian F-16 Fighting Falcons, which were now, at dawn, able to join the fray.
Altogether, only seventeen B-52s got back to Lajes and several of those had suffered battle damage and casualties. Four more force-landed safely at bases in France or Belgium, but of the original thirty-nine, eighteen were lost, an attrition rate of over 45 per cent. Military historians will discuss that figure with interest. They will perhaps agree that no commander in history could accept such loss rates for any length of time. But as in the October War of 1973 in the Middle East, any evaluation of attrition rates must take into account the importance of the overall objectives. The alternatives to the B-52 attack had been probable failure to prevent 20 Guards Army from rolling up CENTAG from the rear, or well-nigh intolerable pressure from NATO field commanders to release nuclear weapons to relieve pressure, with all the dreadful consequences of the escalation that would almost certainly follow. In exchange for the loss of less than fifty fighter and bomber air crew and some 270 soldiers, the critical Warsaw Pact thrust had been checked, while the NORTHAG counter-offensive towards Bremen was far from being stillborn.
It had all been a very near thing. So much could have gone wrong. The actual launching of the NORTHAG counter-offensive, for example, had depended on the possession of the area around Minister, south of the River Lippe, during the day of 14 August and the following night. Without that it was hard to see how the counter-offensive could have got under way at all. Soviet pressure from the north was heavy and continuous. The Battle of the Lippe, which has been written up elsewhere,[8] was another very important blow in the preservation of the Federal Republic from destruction.
By 16 August the newly arrived US corps, fighting in a flank position near Aachen, was threatening any further forward movement southwards along the Rhine. The Soviet armour never got further south than Julich.
The Warsaw Pact timetable had now been seriously upset and regrouping was necessary, involving not a retreat but certainly some rearward movement, beginning with the withdrawal of forward divisions in the Krefeld salient now threatened with encirclement. This was not, it must be clearly understood, a decisive military defeat for the Red Army. There were still huge forces at hand which could be brought to bear before the full potential of the United States could become effective. But it was a setback, a failure to achieve the early swift success which was rightly seen to be of such critical importance. It was a demonstration that the USSR, however powerful, was neither omnipotent nor invulnerable, and this offered encouragement to any in the Soviet Union or its satellite states who hoped at some time for a lifting of the dead hand of a communist regime.
“On 14 August a Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat B landed at an aerodrome near Dijon. The pilot, one Captain Belov, requested political asylum. Captain Belov reported that he had been flying an intelligence mission prior to a fresh major offensive in the central sector ordered for the next day. The attack of which Belov had given warning, but of which there were also plenty of other indicators, started at dawn on 15 August, with simultaneous thrusts at the boundaries of four NATO corps. In each case a single Soviet motor rifle division was used, followed as usual by the KGB barrage battalions and with normal artillery support. The intention was to force wide dispersal of the enemy’s reserves. The 4 Guards Tank Army now formed in Poland would move in to exploit success.