The Third World War: The Untold Story

On the morning of 5 August the Orion and two ANG were allotted tasks that took them far out into the Atlantic. Amidst the excitement of that day’s news this did not attract much attention. But what did cause a loud buzz of rumour and speculation in the Shannon communications centre and control tower was when, at 1722 hours, a distinctly French voice came over the loudspeakers monitoring the international distress frequency: ‘MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY’ it called, ‘THIS IS SIERRA QUEBEC BRAVO CHARLIE WE ARE BEING ATTACKED BY FIGHTERS LATITUDE 52.12 NORTH LONGITUDE…’

Here, as in many places all over Europe, the outbreak of war was signified not by any dramatic public announcement like Chamberlain’s address to the British people forty-six years earlier, but by a series of swift and violent encounters.

In this instance, the response was immediate and well orchestrated for the Mayday signal could mean only one thing: a Kiev — class carrier was out to the west and it must be found and sunk before it did any more damage. The two remaining ANG at Shannon and two Nimrods from an RAF base in Cornwall were launched on a search within half an hour. As the ANG climbed out on their search tracks the crews could see smoke rising from the refinery and the main hangars at Shannon and guessed correctly that a salvo of air-launched missiles, probably from a Backfire, had found their mark.

The search area was very large because of the missing and all-important longitude figure, but a fast westbound merchant ship broke wireless silence to report sighting a Forger aircraft on the horizon and this clue shrank the area of probability dramatically. With a new datum to work from, dawn was breaking when a Nimrod picked up the Kiev and its escorts on its radar.

At JACWA headquarters the operations staff were looking disconsolately at their meagre forces for attacking the enemy group. The specialized anti-shipping Buccaneers that had survived a raid on Murmansk the day before were being held at Bodo, Norway, to guard against Soviet naval incursions along that coast and they could muster only two or three aircraft from the UK. These would need in-flight fuelling and a fighter escort against the carrier. It could hardly be called a balanced force. But help came unexpectedly in the shape of fourteen Marineflieger (Federal German Naval Air Force) Tornados which arrived at Kinloss air base in Scotland as the planners were puzzling over the problem. This force, thanks to the decisiveness of its commander, Captain Manfred Steinhof, had got away from Nordholz in Schleswig-Holstein under the very noses of the advancing Soviets.

By 0900 hours, and after the French Ministry of Defence had got Irish agreement for the Marineflieger aircraft to refuel at Shannon despite the previous day’s damage, eight of the Tornados landed and refuelled. They were in the air again in half an hour to join their fighter escort of RAF Tornados backed up by a VC-10 tanker. A United States Navy Orion had by then taken over the shadowing of the Kiev force on its radar and it homed the Tornados in for the attack. The carrier was holed with her steering disabled and one of her escorts badly damaged as the force withdrew and the submarine Splendid arrived on the scene to despatch the stricken ships. Three Tornados were lost, one to a Forger and the others to missiles from the escorts. Manfred Steinhof’s aircraft ran out of fuel short of the Irish coast but he and his navigator were picked up by a fishing boat. The Third World War had broken out thirty-seven hours earlier, and this was just one action in the great tide of war that was engulfing Europe.

WAR

Chapter 11: The Central Front

The contingency plan formulated by the Defence Council of the Politburo for the defence of the Soviet Union and its socialist allies against the aggressive designs of Western capitalism had two supreme aims: to cause the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance and to bring about the neutralization of neo-Nazi Germany. The second would lead to the first. The dismantling of the Federal Republic must, therefore, receive primary and very close attention.