Guided by ground control initially, the high-level fighters in the southern sector cut in their after-burners to gain the last few thousand feet to their maximum altitude on an easterly interception course which would bring them below and behind the Foxbat. In the underground operations centre all eyes were riveted on this highspeed drama in the stratosphere. The control staffs and senior officers could sense the nervous excitement of the pilots as they eavesdropped on the clipped dialogue with the interception controllers and watched the mesmerizing green strobes of the radar displays in the eerie half-light of the control rooms.
The Foxbat pilot was by now well aware of the Viggens’ presence from his tail-warning radar. What was not overheard in the control room was the dialogue that he was having with someone else. In the unusual circumstances of that day it was not altogether surprising that two radar contacts moving very fast indeed from east to west along latitude 60N were not registered as quickly as they might otherwise have been. The battle flight leader was alerted from the ground but that was all that could be done. A trap had been set to teach the Swedes a lesson and they had flown right into it.
The two incoming Foxbat fighters, among the fastest aircraft in the world, had a height and speed advantage over the Viggens. Even more important, their snap-down Acrid missiles could engage from 45 kilometres’ distance. And they were well informed about the task by their comrade in the west-bound reconnaissance aircraft. Their missiles found their mark just to seaward of the Swedish coast and sent the two JA-37s spiralling towards the sea. Captain Lars Ericsson, the pilot of No. 2 of the pair, fired his ejection seat and blasted his way through the jammed canopy of his disintegrating aircraft. As the seat separated and the main canopy deployed, he saw he was over the sea with a strong easterly wind blowing him back towards the land. There was no sign of his flight leader as he took a quick look round, but the earth was rushing up and although dazed and confused he knew he must get ready for a difficult arrival in a strong wind. He hit hard and was dragged painfully along the ground before coming to rest in a field not far from Uppsala University and his own air base.
The Soviet intention had been to shoot both aircraft into the sea so that the Swedish Government would get the message plainly without having to share it immediately with the public. But that was carrying refinement a bit too far for such blunt methods and with Ericsson under intensive care with a broken back in Uppsala hospital the cat was well and truly out of the bag. The message was all too clear: ‘Be co-operative in your neutrality or take the consequences.’
In the fury and confusion of the assault in the Central Region the importance of the Bodo landing in the Soviet plan, in securing the north of Norway and denying its fiords and airfields to the Western allies, was not immediately clear to the Swedes or anyone else. The pilot of the Foxbat had reported, confirmed with photographic detail, the presence there of eleven RAF Buccaneers, four Norwegian Orion maritime aircraft and sixteen F-16 Fighting Falcons. It was correctly guessed that Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (JACWA) would decide to leave the Buccaneers there for future anti-shipping activity, to which the Soviet amphibious group was very likely to fall prey. With the implementation of their northern plans already under way, and such hard intelligence to hand, the conclusion was obvious — that the elimination of those forces and the denial of the airfield to the enemy was of overriding importance.
The Soviet decision to mount a sizeable attack with high-speed SU-24 Fencers against these valuable Allied assets was inevitable. For reasons of aircraft range (with the added bonus of surprise from a backdoor attack) it would have been operationally simpler to have mounted this across Sweden, but Moscow decided instead that it was better to let the Swedes lick their wounds for a while and take counsel of their fears. Accordingly, the attack was mounted from Murmansk with TU-16 Blinder and Fencer aircraft moved there from the Leningrad area. They were routed clear of Swedish airspace but if in difficulty could cross the tip of it, where it was in any case very lightly defended.
For the next few days the pressure was kept on Bodo, to neutralize it until the Soviet amphibious force made its landing there on 15 August. Reconnaissance flights continued to be made over Sweden, whose neutrality, now under some strain, nonetheless persisted. But the problem of what the country should do was debated intensely by Swedes everywhere, bitter, angry and frustrated by the shooting down of the Viggens that were doing no more than protecting national airspace. This last incident would undoubtedly have had its effect on the decision, strongly recommended by the Flygvapnet staff, to allow a force of thirty NATO fighters to refuel secretly at two Swedish airfields on the night of 13/14 August. These aircraft were engaged on an operation, described in Chapter 11, to attack key bridges in Poland at a critical juncture of the battle on the Central Front. If the operation was to succeed, the attacking aircraft had to approach their targets from the north, rather than fly over a heavily defended area, and for this purpose their routing over Sweden was ideal. Permission was accordingly sought via the recently installed Swedish liaison officer at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) not only to overfly but to take on fuel as well. The Swedish Cabinet — the decision was taken at that level — were divided about it but eventually agreed provided that the landing was at night and the turn-round fast. No Swedish protection would be given, nor could aircraft recover via Swedish airfields unless in distress. Some damaged aircraft did put down in the event, with Soviet aircraft pursuing them. Two of the four Soviet Foxbats that attempted to enter Swedish airspace were in fact shot down by Viggens that were watching for them. Only this part of the incident reached the press; the use of the airfields by the NATO force did not.
While the war thus developed around them, the Swedish Government debated daily the range of options over which they had some control and some over which they could see plainly they were powerless. The left-wing opposition made it clear that they would oppose any policy that took Sweden into the war; and whilst some on the extreme left let it be known privately that they would gladly give assistance to the Soviet Union short of military force, the majority were dedicated to ‘maintaining neutrality in all foreseeable circumstances’ — a phrase used often by their speakers in the debates in the Riksdag — ‘which leaves the left ready to sell out to the Soviets if the going gets too rough’, as a cynic on the Government side is said to have remarked quietly to a neighbour when he first heard the words.
The arguments went on. The news of the American landing in Norway had been coming in on the morning of 15 August and was clutched at with relief as the first sign of a Soviet setback there. It was then that the Soviet Ambassador asked urgently for a meeting with the Swedish Prime Minister, Bjorn Osvald, at 12.15 that day. What happened at the meeting has long since been made public. This is the Prime Minister’s account of it.