The Third World War: August 1985 полностью

Western Approaches naval and air combat forces vigorously opposed this threat to vital cross-Channel communications. German and Dutch frigates, and a few Danish fast patrol boats (FPB), transferred by SACEUR to JACWA’s operational control, made many successful attacks. The handful of FRG Naval Air Force Tornados which had been evacuated to the UK bolstered those few RAF Tornados and Buccaneers that could be spared by JACWA from operations in the Norwegian Sea. At this point the RAF Hawks, now liberated from their training tasks and armed with guns and rockets, came into their own and were launched into the war. Over this mixed force presided one squadron of Vulcan MR (maritime reconnaissance) aircraft, withdrawn, after long debate, from the Norwegian Sea, to feed the vital target information to the attackers, seaborne and airborne. The Soviet forces suffered heavy damage in the intense struggle, but again their numerical advantage was taking its toll: as far west as Boulogne the Grishas, Nanutchkas and Osas of the Soviet Baltic Fleet were joined on the bottom by more and more NATO ships.

On land the NATO forces were fighting back desperately, and the decision of France to play her part in the Alliance had given rise to some hope in the councils of NATO that the Soviet intentions might, at the eleventh hour, be frustrated. The anguished debate over the use of nuclear weapons and the decisions taken have been recounted elsewhere. Recent improvements in NATO’s defences had allowed S ACEUR to stem the flood. But if the tide was to be turned, all would depend on the safe and timely arrival of the seaborne reinforcements. The prospect of successful ocean transit could to some extent be assessed in the light of certain naval and air operations which had been taking place in the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea simultaneously with the debacle in the southern North Sea and the English Channel.

The First Support Group had, since the 5th, been supporting the attempt to reinforce northern Norway, where the airlifted ACE Mobile Force had been engaged since late on the 4th in resisting the powerful Soviet invasion through Finmark. Bodo had been rendered unusable, first by Soviet attack and then by the Norwegian response to the invaders, and the Allied forces were struggling to hold the line at Trondheim.

The Soviet amphibious group detected on the evening of the 4th had since been subjected to a vigorous assault by Norwegian naval and air forces and JACWA Tornados from the UK. By the 7th it was a much depleted Soviet support group that moved on south to reinforce their paratroop comrades.

But the fortunes of war turned again to the Russians that morning when their fighters, now operating from Norwegian airfields in the far north, destroyed first one, then in swift succession two more, of the Vulcan MR aircraft providing the vital surveillance of the Norwegian Sea. The Russians were quick to exploit the confusion which gripped, albeit temporarily, JACWA’s coverage of the surface scene.

On the night of 7 August a NATO submarine reported that, in about the latitude of Trondheim and near the meridian of Greenwich, it had attacked with Harpoon missiles a Soviet force of fast transports escorted by surface ships, on a course which would take it to the Faroe Islands. A V/STOL Harrier III aircraft, one of four carried by the new escort carrier Argus, which had recently joined the First Support Group, had been flown off for a search to the north and west and the Soviet force had been relocated. The NATO submarine, having used up all its missiles, had been unable to destroy more than three of the Soviet ships, one of which was a troop transport. JACWA therefore ordered a strike, with six Tornados, the most that could be mustered, against the Soviet force. This succeeded in damaging another transport and an escort ship. The Soviet force then turned back towards Norway. The battle for the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap had been joined, and NATO had won the first round.

One feature of the action was the interruption of ship-to-shore, aircraft-to-ship and aircraft-to-shore communications, both Soviet and NATO, resulting from interference with communication satellites. Secondary channels had been used, but a certain amount of luck, on both sides, had proved effective. There might well have been complete loss of control by the respective shore-based HQs.