The Third World War: The Untold Story

All were aware, ground and air commanders alike, that the practical problems raised by the decision to use the B-52s would be difficult to resolve. Defending forces would have to break contact far enough and long enough to give the B-52s a bomb line that would permit the maximum impact on Warsaw Pact armour with minimum casualties in NATO forward positions. That, COMAAFCE must have reflected pragmatically on the morning of 14 August, was now the army’s problem; his was to get as many of the B-52s as possible over the Krefeld salient at 0400 hours local time the following day.

The targeting directive was received at Lajes at 1200 hours local time on the 14th. During the previous week the crews had increased the customary proportions of alert status, which ran from fifteen minutes to six hours. By 1500 hours that day the last batch of air tests was complete and thirty-nine of the B-52s were declared serviceable for the mission. It was now that the expertise built up by air crew and ground crew in several years of European exercises paid handsome dividends. One hundred MK-82 bombs were loaded into each bomb bay and, although the round trip of 4,000 miles would be well within B-52 range, a full fuel load was taken on board. By 2200 hours air crew briefings were completed. The target area was a strip of territory 10 kilometres from north to south by 2 kilometres east to west, due west of Neuss. It was believed that in that area at least three divisions of 20 Guards Army, with probably one or two of the leading regiments of the second echelon, would be concentrating for a final breakthrough. In practical terms the targets would include at least 20,000 troops, 1,000 tanks, 500 BTR and a further 1,500 soft-skinned vehicles essential to the forward momentum of the ground attack. The terrain was flat and offered little natural cover. The proximity of an Autobahnkreuz afforded a near-perfect identification point for either visual or radar bombing. Time on target would be 0400 hours and bombing height would be 40,000 feet.

The B-52s carried a wealth of defensive equipment but exercises during the previous five years had pointed the need for fighter escort. On this occasion that responsibility was to be shared amongst French Mirage F-1Cs, 2000s and USAF F-15s. The B-52s’ route would take them north-eastwards across the Pyrenees and up across France and Luxembourg towards Cologne, where they would begin their bombing run.

By 0300 hours the bombing stream was cruising at 525 miles per hour at 40,000 feet over France, still on a north-north-easterly heading. Above and to either side were loose gaggles of Mirage F-1Cs of the Commandement Air de Forces de Defense Aeriennes (CAFDA). The awacs screen, now pulled back over central France, detected no unusual enemy fighter movement either from the captured airfields in West Germany or across the inner German border.

From the Meuse valley area onwards, the B-52s entered theoretical intercept range of Flogger Gs and Foxbats. To reduce Allied difficulties of identification and airspace management COMAAFCE had stopped all deeper battlefield interdiction or counter-air attacks in the Central Region after 2300 hours, so that anything coming across the FEBA could be assumed to be hostile. COMAAFCE’s staff had calculated that some kind of warning would reach the Warsaw Pact from agents in Lisbon and that the remaining IL-76 C Cookers, although now held well back over central Poland, would probably pick up the high-flying B-52 formation over central France. Seeing the formation, however, was one thing; deciding where it was headed was quite different. The known combat radius of the B-52s was so great that they could at any moment change heading and threaten troop concentrations, logistic support, command centres or any other targets anywhere between the Baltic and Bulgaria. Moreover, while COMAAFCE knew that Flogger and Foxbat units had been moved forward behind the advancing Warsaw Pact armies during the previous ten days, he suspected that the Soviets, rather like the Nazis with the Luftwaffe in France in 1940, had found it quite easy to deploy the aircraft themselves but much more difficult to support them quickly with enough weapons, fuel and battle-damage repair facilities to allow them to maintain a high sortie rate. It would, therefore, have been fatal for the Warsaw Pact’s air defence units to be thrown into battle either too deep in NATO territory, where the French interceptors were still relatively unscathed, or before the final heading and destination of the bombers were more definitely known.