Both in the urban development of the North German plain and, with appropriate adjustment, in the hill country of the Harz, these tactics began to show promise, even on the first day, of a significant capacity for the absorption of armoured impetus. The depth of the enemy’s penetration by nightfall on the 4th had certainly not been as great in the
NORTHAG
sector as he must have hoped. It was still great enough, nonetheless, to put the army group’s ability to retain its balance in some doubt.
In the
NORTHAG
sector, as elsewhere in the Central Region, another serious problem was emerging. An immense, sprawling swarm of civilian refugees from the towns and villages of Niedersachsen was already begin— ning to cause the difficulties that had long been foreseenand feared. It was greatly to the Soviet advantage to increase disorder wherever possible, while trying to keep clear the main axes of their advance. Ground-attack aircraft maintained a ceaseless rain of machine-gun fire along these axes, with small anti-personnel fragmentation bombs, the Soviet intention clearly being not so much to cause casualties (though they minded little about these) as to drive refugee traffic off any roads they intended to use. Armoured engineer equipment moving with leading tanks swept derelict civilian vehicles to one side without noticeable loss of momentum to the advancing columns. The tanks themselves were driven without hesitation through groups of people vainly struggling to get clear, charging on at high speeds over human wreckage already pulped by vehicles ahead of them. Some side roads soon became jammed, and Allied troops were being seriously impeded by a chaotic mass of pedestrians and vehicles which it was nearly impossible, in spite of heroic and efficient work by German police and Home Defence units, to control.
In the
CENTAG
sector, with ,111 German Corps on the left under pressure and pinned down, it had become clear by early afternoon on the 4th that a major thrust directed towards Hersfeld was developing on the left of V US Corps, with a secondary effort through Fulda towards Hanau, along the Kinzig river valley and the ridges running south-west to the Rhine-Main plain. The covering force of reinforced US armoured cavalry had used its anti-tank weapons and artillery admirably from first light onwards, makinggood use of favourable terrain to slow the enemy’s advance. It had even been found possible to turn the great numbers oftheenemy’svehiclcs to his disadvantage by blocking defiles which it then took time to clear. In this the F-15 aircraft of the U S Air Force, having already established a clear superiority in air-to-air action, were particularly effective, operating in a secondary ground-attack role.
In the
CENTAG
sector, too, very good use was being made of German Jagd Kommandos, deployed far forward in well-sited localities. In
CENTAG
, however, the emphasis was laid more on the actual stoppingor at least delayingpower of the armoured covering force. The terrain, for one thing, was in general closer, more thickly wooded and more up-and-down than in the north, and thus more favourable to the defence. For another thing, it was dangerously short of depth. There was no ground here to be traded for time.
Time-consuming actions had been fought, with very considerable loss to the enemy, before Fuida at Hunfeld, in front of Schlitz, and southeast of Hersfeld. Fortunately for the defence the weather was clear and the maximum range of
ATGW
could be exploited. The covering force on this part of the
CENTAG
front exchanged losses with the attackers at a rate in their own favour of nearly five to one, but they were obliged in the process to yield some fifteen to twenty kilometres.
With
III
German Corps on their left fighting hard and giving very little away, the brunt of the attack on 4 August in the
CENTAG
area was met at about 1600 hours by the armoured division on the left of V US Corps. Four Soviet tank regiments ploughed into the two brigades on the left of the division, the motorized infantry companies, mounted in their
BMP
, coming along close behind the leading tanks. Another tank regiment and a motorized infantry regiment followed up. With nearly 100 T-72s leading, the Soviet attack ran into a network of anti-tank fire which the enemy’s heavy artillery preparation for nearly an hour before, and the best efforts of his tactical air support, had been unable entirely to suppress. The leading US battalions were forced back several kilometres through their own anti-tank defences, but as these reduced the impetus of the assault it was possible to regain some. at least, of the ground lost. By nightfall the two leading Soviet divisions had gained, in the event, a few kilometres, but with very high losses. Pressure continued through the night. When the attack was resumed with a new ferocity at first light on the 5th, by two fresh Soviet divisions which had passed through the first in the hours of darkness, it was met by the combined strength of two US divisions, of which one was from those most newly arrived, and brought to a halt, at least for the time being, after relatively shallow penetration, just forward of Alsfeld. The V US Corps front now extended from Alsfeld in the north to Schluchtern in the south.
On its right, further south,
VII
US Corps had faced a major attack on the opening day, following exactly the same pattern, on the Meiningen-Schweinfurt axis along the River Main near Wurzburg. Again, ground had been lost, but the effectiveness of the anti-tank defences had prevented a decisive breakthrough.
Further south still, 11 German Corps was fighting a stubborn rearguard action in the area of Nurnberg,giving away no more ground than was absolutely necessary in the expectation of the early arrival of the French. There was little enough they could do. The action of covering forces in the Bayrischer Wald had gained too little time to prevent the Russians from bouncing a crossing over the Danube. As night fell powerful armoured columns of the Soviet I Guards Tank Army were bypassing Munchen to the north. The next hope of stopping them, at this southern end of the Central Region would be along the River Lech.
In spite of the splendid news from France, with the First French Army moving eastwards to strengthen the southern flank and the French Tactical Air Force already in action ahead of it, the day, 5 August 1985, ended in uncertainty and gloom.
It was by now clear that at any one of half a dozen points at once, on either army group front in the Central Region, the Russians could develop a high degree of local superiority in armoured and armoured infantry attacks, under massive artillery and air-to-ground support, and would press any advantage wilh the utmost vigour and complete disregard of casualties. Soviet momentum was maintained by heavy concentrations of armour and firepower on narrow fronts; flanks were largely ignored. With the weight of the attack and the determination-even the recklessnesswith which it was pressed wherever it took place, penetration at one or more points was inevitable. Swift exploitation by troops of the second echelon would then follow hard on the heels of the first. Immediate counter-attack from the Allied side was in the early stages rarely possible. The Russians made no attempt to consolidate ground. It was hard to find a moment, however fleeting, when they could be caught off-balance. Counter-attack often simply ran head-on into the armour of the next wave and was smothered almost before it had got under way. Even the concentrated fire of Allied divisional and corps artillery could for the most part only attenuate somewhat the force of attacks pressed with such violence and in such numbers, with so high a disregard for loss. Air-to-ground attack, in this first forty-eight hours, was nothing like as plentiful as the corps and subordinate commanders would have wished, but the Allied air forces were, on CINCENTs express order, being used to counter the enemy’s air forces both in the air and on the ground in an endeavour to establish a tolerable air situation in addition to their continuous pounding of’choke points* now in rear of the main battle.
It was only rarely that the attacks of Soviet tanks and armoured infantry could be stopped. Tanks would almost always get through, and fresh waves of attacking armour would move in behind them. Equipment for equipment, sub-unit for sub-unit, man for man, the
NATO
defence was by no means inferior to the attacking forces. In one important respect at least, that is in almost every aspect of the whole field of electronic technology.
NATO
was already showing up better. On the first day, however, the defending formations were simply being swamped by numbers, dominated and driven on by blind faith in the doctrine of total offensive.
But even on the first day weaknesses began to appear in the way the Russians fought their battle. The handling of armoured infantry provides an example which deserves attention, for it was to be of critical importance.
The
BMP
, improved but still essentially the same machine, had originally been evolved as an armoured infantry combat vehicle for use in exploitation of nuclear action. Its chief purpose was to move in swiftly to overwhelm, by mainly mounted attack, whatever
NATO
defences still survived the nuclear attack, travelling in close company with the tanks whose further action would resolve the battle. To maintain the impetus of the armoured advance some protection of the tanks by infantry was indispensable. But the
BMP
was itself highly vulnerable to anti-tank attack. The precision-guided missiles now deployed by
NATO
in very considerable numbers showed that mounted attack was often suicidal. The toll of
BMP
on the first day was heavy.
The Red Army had long recognized that in the non-nuclear battle mounted action for motor infantry was not always feasible, though it was certainly worth trying, particularly in the first assault. The alternative was to dismount the infantry for an attack on foot against such
NATO
anti-tank defences as survived the suppressive fire of artillery and air forces. In the event, well-located Allied missile launchers survived, even on that first day, in considerable numbers. Dismounted infantry had no hope of keeping up with tanks moving at their best speed. When motor-rifle infantry were prevented by anti-tank fire from going in mounted, therefore, the whole attack slowed down.
We have seen how Soviet tactics for the penetration of hostile defences in the non-nuclear variant of the land battle had latterly come to depend upon manoeuvre at least as much as on massed frontal attack. Manoeuvre by mounted infantry demanded both tactical surprise and effective suppression of anti-tank defensive fire. In the battle of the Central Region neither, for the Warsaw Pact. was complete, even on the first day.
Professor J-Enckson, one of the best informed and soundest observers of the Soviet military scene, had said in 1977: ‘Above all the Soviet command will pay the closest attention to the loss-rate in the first 10-15 km of the advance…’ These were prophetic words.
A battle drill to deal with the differing requirements of each combined arms tactical engagement had proved, for the Red Army, impossible to find. When should the infantry dismount? How were the varying speeds of tank,
BMP
, SP gun and foot soldier to be related? How was the fire of tank,
BMP
, SP gun, divisional artillery and helicopter gunship, with tactical air support thrown in, to be co-ordinated? The command responsibilities formerly held in the Red Army at division now devolved in greater measure than before on the regiment, which was akin to the Allied brigade, but the heaviest load of all lay on the battalion commander. In a reinforced motor-rifle battalion with a minute staff of four officers, one
NCO
and eight men. he would be attempting to control a force some 700 strong, with a company of thirteen tanks, a battery of six guns (or even a battalion of eighteen), a mortar battery, anti-air weapons, an
ATGW
platoon, reconnaissance and engineer elements, thirty
BMP
, sixty light machine guns and 356 assault riflemen. It was a tall order.
The Allied maxim was a simple one, even if to follow it demanded fortitude: stay put, keep your head down, and go for the commander. He was not all that difficult to locate. The information coming in from many sources, processed in JT1DS and almost instantaneously disseminated, could often pinpoint centres of command of divisional and regimental level. They had then to be attacked, which was rather less easy.
At lower levels the problem was simple. Junior commanders on the
NATO
side had been taught to look for the command tank. Its behaviour pattern at company level, for instance, gave it a quite unmistakable signature. The temptation to take the easiest shot first was one to be resisted. Take out the command tank; this would not stop the attack but it would at least blunt the fellow-through. Battalion command wa’s harder to break, but to take that out was even more rewarding.
Fewjuniorcommanders, in the heat and confusion, the clamour and horror, the fear and growing weariness of those battles on the first days, would perhaps have thought of putting it quite that way, but what they were trying to do was to uncouple the parts of an interdependent whole. This would not stop the onrush. To do that in the case of 3 Shock Army would have meant the elimination (or at least the neutralization) of some 120 artillery batteries and 2,800 armoured fighting vehicles (
AFV
). To hold a single breakthrough on one axis would have meant accounting for some thirty batteries and 800
AFV
. What was already just beginning to happen, however, if not on the first day at least towards the end of the second, was the emergence of a hope in those Allied commanders whose nerves were strongest that, if wedges could be driven between the main elements of the Soviet combined arms operation, the enemy might just be prevented from breaking all the way through to the Rhine. There was also now a growing awareness on the other side that to reach it in nine days might not be easy.