Outside the European theatre, but of crucial importance to it, a new air factor was manifested in the transatlantic air bridge. Despite the early lessons from the Berlin airlift back in the late forties, Western European strategists had been slow to see air transport except in terms of an extension of existing logistic support. Not so with the Americans, or for that matter the Russians, who in 1977-8 set up an air bridge to the Horn of Africa that even in those days moved tanks to Ethiopia in large Antonov transports. The reality was that air transport had now become one of the major strategic manifestations of air power. It was therefore particularly ironic that the British, in their defence economies of the seventies, should have so drastically cut back their air transport force — a cut which forced their planners to rely on the use of car ferries and steamers to and from the Hook of Holland in their efforts to find ways of getting British reinforcements to the Northern Army Group. Such measures were more reminiscent of the Paris taxis used to move troops up to the Marne in 1914 than appropriate to the development of air power in the second half of the twentieth century.
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.
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.
