The Third World War: August 1985

At sea, the rundown of the Royal Navy had thrown a heavy additional load on the US Navy in maintaining the flow of fuel, food and raw materials into Western Europe, which would be vital in an emergency. Contraction of the RAF had gravely impaired Britain’s ability to give air support to BAOR ground troops and keep the air forces of the Warsaw Pact off their backs, and above all had removed the capacity to defend the UK base. The reduction of Britain by blockade at sea, the collapse of the Northern Army Group on land, the neutralization by air attack of Allied forward bases in the British Isles — together these would spell ruin for the¹ Alliance as a whole. This was in the event only prevented by the reversal of the rundown in Britain’s defences forced by public opinion on politicians from the end of the seventies. It was costly but the money had to be found, if necessary — if, that is, a growing GNP could not cover the increase — at the expense of other programmes. The reconstitution of UK air defences was at least labour-intensive and thus useful in the continuing fight against the obstinately high level of unemployment in Britain.

Important though the problems of the British contribution to NATO ground forces might be, the situation of the RAF and the needs of air defence could be said to be marginally even more critical. Britain could survive, in some form, if only for a while, the collapse on land of Allied Command Europe. It could probably get along somehow under severe blockade at sea. What it could hardly be expected to survive, given the state of technology today, was devastation from the air. To prevent this, then, was the task of highest priority. It was also the most costly. Because of its impact on so many different aspects of life in Britain, and its widespread requirement for the diversion of effort and resource from other uses, the re-creation of the air defences of Great Britain was also the most difficult part of the defence programme.

The programme got off to a relatively slow start in the financial year 1979-80 and gathered strength in the following years, as the percentage of the GNP devoted to defence moved upwards from 5 per cent and began to approach — though it never quite reached — the 11 per cent it had touched during the war in Korea at the turn of the fifties. It never, in fact, until the outbreak of war, exceeded 9 per cent, but since this was a percentage of a greatly increased GNP, the rise in expenditure in real terms was very considerable. Vulnerable points, such as main ports, airheads, defence and other key industrial installations and command and control centres, against any or all of which attack by precision-guided weapons could be expected, were furnished with point-defence surface-to-air missile systems supplied by the United States. Airfields were extended and hardened to 2 ATAF standards, like those in Germany, and light and easily concealed operational control centres were established. The lack of ordnance for operations sustained for any more than a very few days — one of the gravest weaknesses in all aspects of Britain’s defences — began to be made good by the reactivation of production lines allowed to lapse, and where this was not possible (as was sadly all too often the case) the setting up, at great expense, of new ones. The training machine began to be rescued from the poor condition to which successive defence cuts had reduced it and a vigorous recruiting drive opened in the schools and universities. The Auxiliary Air Force was expanded with a non-combat role of weekend instruction, thereby developing a nucleus capable at the appropriate time of taking on a full-time function and releasing flying instructors for combat duties. Even so, with the training time for pilots to front-line standards approaching three years and a grave shortage of instructors it was to be a long haul before the new cockpit seats arriving in the front line would be filled with competent combat pilots. As was also happening for the other two services, legislation was amended to permit the embodiment of volunteer reservists in advance of Royal Proclamation. At the same time provision was made for the utilization of reservist RAF general duties personnel without high specialization but with an invaluable initiation into service under arms. These were absorbed into Home Defence units of the land forces.