The Third World War: The Untold Story

COMAAFCE also knew that the Soviets were about to have their hands forced, because as the B-52s approached Luxembourg they were joined by four F-111EB ECM aircraft which effectively blinded all three Cookers and a large number of the enemy’s shorter-range surveillance radars. The Floggers and Foxbats had to be scrambled towards the last known B-52 heading from bases up to 400 miles away and, as the NATO planning staffs had hoped when they had first envisaged the use of the B-52, the fighters’ problems did not end there. Despite Soviet attempts to encourage pilot initiative, looser formations and reduced ground control, most air defence crews had been trained to fight in their own airspace against intruding bombers whose position and heading were precisely known. Not only were air crew conditioned to this; the aircraft were designed for little else. Foxbat was purely and simply a high-speed high-altitude interceptor with poor manoeuvrability, while Flogger G, although more flexible, was by no means an air-superiority fighter, though both would fare better at high level than at low against their NATO counterparts. A further complication was that Polish, East German and Czechoslovak pilots had expected to be defending their own homelands. Scrambling with little control from unfamiliar airfields against a vaguely defined target well away from their national airspace was not the best invitation to enthusiastic performance.

Such enthusiasm for combat as they did have would shortly be reduced still further. The formation of F-111EB ECM aircraft was soon to be joined behind their jamming screen by forty Mirage 2000s and thirty of the remaining F-15s from 2 and 4 ATAF. As the bombers turned north-north-west over Cologne their crews could see outlined against the slightly lighter sky to the east the comforting silhouette of some of the most effective fighters in the world. Although the night was clouded, the city of Cologne and the river bend were crystal clear in the air-to-ground radar displays. Within a few seconds the offset aiming point, the Autobahnkreuz between Venlo and Duisburg, came up with equal clarity. Then, as the diary of 337 Squadron of the USAF records, ‘all shades of hell broke loose both in the air and on the ground’.

It was, and is, impossible to say how many Warsaw Pact fighters were scrambled against the B-52s. The early warning Sentries identified eighty-five blips initially but their ability to note every target was soon lost in the very large numbers of aircraft flying in less than 100 square miles of airspace. The situation was further confused by the attempts of three Soviet Air Force Cubs to jam both the bomber radars and the Sentries’1 own surveillance beams. The balance of advantage, for the time being at least, remained with the NATO force. The Warsaw Pact ground controllers could do no more than direct their fighters to the approximate source of the F-111 jamming and leave them to it. But, for the first time in the war, F-15 Eagles were able to engage to the full extent of their equipment. There was no need to close to identify: if it was heading west, hack it. At 50 miles the Foxbat and Floggers were clearly visible on the Eagles’ radar, and head-on at Mach 2 the enemy aircraft were well within the attack envelope of the Eagles’ radar-guided Sparrow missiles.

Each Eagle carried four Sparrow and four infra-red homing Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. So many Sparrows were fired in such short time that to the bomber crews they looked like salvoes. But by no means all found their targets. A small proportion failed to detonate, one or two exploded against each other in what is called fratricide, some targets were struck by more than one missile and a few Warsaw Pact pilots were quick enough to react to their Sirena radar warning receivers and break the beams of the incoming missiles. It is possible, however, that more than 100 Sparrow missiles were fired in the first moments of contact and that some sixty attackers were hit. Sentries observed with interest that immediately after the opening contact, several hostile blips abruptly changed heading and set course eastwards.

Most of the fighters that had escaped the first impact, however, were not deterred and at 20 miles from the bomber stream the powerful Fox Fire AI (air-intercept) radar of the Foxbats began to burn through the F-111 jamming to disclose the B-52s. By now, however, it was 0400 hours and the first light of dawn was reaching the upper skies. Still the advantage lay with the Western allies. Now the F-15s and the Mirages could use their considerable advantage in agility to close, identify and kill the fast-tracking MiGs with the wide-aspect infra-red homing Sidewinders and Magics.