The Third World War: The Untold Story

The first flight was made on 2 August at dawn and repeated on the 3rd. Each time, the battle flight of two Viggen JA-37s swept up the ramp from their mountain hangar at Vasteraas air base and within twenty-five seconds were climbing with full power. But even with their high performance there was much to do and little time to do it. The Viggens could not, in fact, reach 25,000 metres but with the ‘snap-up’ capability of their missiles there was a good chance of at least threatening the Foxbat if they could only get into a favourable tactical relationship with it. With so short a warning time that would be difficult, but less so on the return flight when the limits of the Foxbats, timing could be broadly calculated. That, at least, was how the Swedish Air Staff saw it.

When lodging his vehement protests in Moscow the Swedish Ambassador stressed that the Soviet Air Force was giving the Viggens little option but to engage if these violations continued. In response he was treated to an intimidating tirade about Sweden’s position as a neutral country. The next day was the fateful 4 August. Sweden’s armed forces, now mobilizing, had their hands full absorbing reservists. The Swedish Air Force, the Flygvapnet, was waiting on a Government decision to deploy some of its elements to dispersed road sites, which would of course to some extent disrupt civilian life and movement and might perhaps cause alarm. The Cabinet took the decisive step of ordering maximum air defence readiness, with the battle flights fully armed and cleared to engage any identified non-Swedish intruders without further reference to higher authority. A statement to that effect was made public to the world, but in the main the world had other things on its mind that day. In Sweden an emergency Cabinet of seven ministers was formed and far reaching powers were taken by unanimous agreement. The Flygvapnet, the spearhead of Sweden’s defence, was as ready as it could be by noon of that day although it had to be recognized that its degree of readiness would decline for a while if full dispersal were ordered.

The emergency Cabinet decided that the Flygvapnet should stay as it was for the time being. There was growing relief as the day wore on, with nothing untoward happening in Swedish skies. The wishful thinking of the doves that perhaps the USSR had, after all, heeded the Swedish protests was, however, to be shattered the next morning.

This time the Foxbat approached low over the sea before zooming in a near vertical climb to high altitude, to evade detection by the radar system until it was too late for the fighters to react. But the Flygvapnet Air Defence Command was really on its mettle and, with full authority to engage, was determined somehow or other to destroy the intruder on its way back. Two pairs of Viggens were launched from Uppsala air base to patrol a north/south line centred on Stockholm, athwart the return track to Leningrad from where they knew the Foxbat had come. One pair would be at high altitude and one at medium to low, although it was unlikely that the Foxbat would have enough fuel to pull the low-level trick a second time. Similar blocking patrols were set up with four more Viggen pairs on lines centred on Sundsvall and Umeaa to the north. But the Foxbat pilot had his own good reasons for choosing a southerly track which headed him, with seeming carelessness, near to Stockholm at high altitude and speed.

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.