The Third World War: The Untold Story

In reflecting upon the outcome of the fighting at sea, it can be said that the greatest Allied shortcoming was the lack of sufficient antimissile missiles, as well as counter-measures to the various types of guidance and homing used in the missiles of the enemy. It was quite obvious, as early as the 1950s, that the age of the guided missile in fighting at sea was upon us. This knowledge was not sufficiently exploited. The weak point in any electronic guidance system is that it can be interfered with by electronic means. Any missile with a generally usable homing system can, by definition, be decoyed and made to home on something other than the intended target. Ultimately, of course, hostile ships, submarines and aircraft must be destroyed or neutralized. In the first instance what matters most is to cope with the missiles, wherever they come from.

By the end of the second week of the Third World War, over 90 per cent of Soviet and Warsaw Pact commercial shipping, including the fishing fleets, which had been operating outside the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Japan, had been sunk or captured, or had taken refuge in a neutral port. That was the end of Soviet sea power.

Chapter 14: War in the Air

We have already described in detail some of the air battles that raged over the Central Front, for many of these had a crucial effect on what was happening in the land battle. But air power was more important in this war than in any other major conflict; its impact deserves a wider assessment.

Air forces were everywhere involved where fighting took place. Over the oceans and their littoral states the aircraft came mainly from carriers and helicopter ships. The greater proportions were mounted from the US Navy’s big carriers, but the French Foch and Clemenceau and the British Ark Royal and Illustrious were also in the thick of the battles in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The United States Navy had nearly 1,500 top-class aircraft and in addition to that global force the USAF’s Pacific Air Force (PACAF), with its headquarters in Japan and wings based in adjacent friendly countries in South-East Asia, as well as a wing of Strategic Air Command’s B-52 heavy bombers on the Pacific island of Guam, all played their part in the peripheral battles.

Over the Atlantic the continuous action of the US Strike Fleet carriers has rightly been well publicized; what is less well known perhaps is that on the submarine front Allied maritime patrol aircraft, operating independently or in conjunction with ships and submarines, took a very heavy toll of Soviet submarines. These aircraft, packed with electronic and sonic detection equipment and ingenious underwater weapons, exceeded even their high peacetime promise. But being large and ‘soft’ they were vulnerable on the ground, and on the eastern side of the Atlantic several were lost early on in the war to missile attacks on airfields from distant Soviet aircraft and submarines. Thereafter these aircraft were dispersed in ones and twos along the European Atlantic seaboard to fight a rather lonely war. With ample facilities for rest and eating on board, and a disregard for peacetime maintenance requirements, the astonishing fact is that many of these aircraft and crews spent more than three-quarters of the whole war in the air, landing only for fuel and food.

Soviet Naval Air Force action to interrupt the all-important Atlantic air bridge sent a number of large US troop transports plummeting into the sea with air-to-air missiles from modified Backfires, Bears and Badgers. But despite losses and damage the NATO early warning system held up well and USAF F-15 Eagles from Iceland and RAF Tornados from Scotland were a good match for them. Similarly, when the rather inadequate Soviet Forger V/STOL aircraft tried to intervene from their.Kiev-class carriers, RAF Tornados and US carrier-borne interceptors kept them at bay until the offending mother ships were sunk. Radar and infra-red reconnaissance from high-flying aircraft and satellites in space meant that surprise at sea rested principally with aircraft and submarines.

The United Kingdom and France came under Soviet air attack from the first few hours of the war. Initially it was confined to missiles from Backfire, Bear and Badger aircraft directed at port installations, airfields, and radar and communications centres, as well as government and military headquarters. Although in no way decisive, these attacks sometimes hit the soft centres of important targets such as the hotel-like building housing the British air traffic control centre at West Drayton on the outskirts of London.