The Cold War: A MILITARY History (14 page)
The Romanian armaments programme was another curious affair. Parts of the army were well equipped, particularly the mountain troops, while others, such as the armoured corps, had much outdated equipment. Considerable national resources were devoted to building a Romanian-designed destroyer
fn8
and frigates, although in any conflict against their only possible enemy, the infinitely more powerful Soviet Black Sea Fleet, their operational careers would have been very brief. Indeed, there were indications that the megalomania which seems to have afflicted Ceau
ş
escu’s later career even prompted him to take an interest in the acquisition of nuclear weapons, although how far this developed has yet to be revealed.
4
FINIS
In the end, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact was not due to external interference, because, whatever they may have been doing clandestinely, the Western powers and NATO demonstrated time and again that they were not
prepared
to intervene openly. Thus the East Berlin and Pozna
ń
rioters and the street fighters in Budapest and Prague were never going to receive physical support from NATO, and they knew it. Instead, the Pact imploded, partly due to Gorbachev’s reluctance to maintain its hegemony by force when he became general secretary of the CPSU, although its own internal contradictions also played a role. Deep down, however, only a handful of people in each member country were actually devoted Communists, and even fewer looked to the Soviet Union as their natural ally against the West. Allied to this was the implacable opposition of the Roman Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, where being Christian really did matter and gave many of the anti-Communists the strength to hold on.
The major events affecting the end of the Cold War were:
• the dismantling of the Berlin Wall began (22 December 1989);
• the Romanian regime collapsed following Ceau
ş
escu’s flight, capture, trial and death (25 December 1989);
• Soviet troops began to withdraw from Czechoslovakia (February 1990) and Hungary (March 1990); both withdrawals were completed by 19 June 1991;
• West and East Germany were reunified (3 October 1990); East German armed forces were disbanded;
• Lech Wa
ł
esa was elected president of Poland (9 December 1990);
• the Baltic states declared their independence (Lithuania on 11 March 1990; Estonia on 20 August 1991; Latvia on 21 August 1991);
• the western republics of the Soviet Union declared their independence (Belorussia (now Belarus) on 24 August 1991; Moldova (formerly Moldavia) on 27 August 1991; Ukraine on 5 December 1991).
In the middle of all these momentous events, the quiet, almost furtive, dismantling of the Warsaw Pact’s military and political apparatus on 31 March 1991 passed unmourned and almost unnoticed.
fn1
The text of the Warsaw Treaty is given in
Appendix 3
.
fn2
A full list of both Warsaw Pact and NATO commanders-in-chief is given in
Appendix 5
.
fn3
Note that Soviet ‘armies’ were equivalent in size and combat power to a NATO ‘corps’.
fn4
All Warsaw Pact aircraft taking part in the operation had red stripes around their rear fuselage and on their wings, to differentiate them from Czech aircraft.
fn5
Rokossovsky had been imposed as minister of national defence by the USSR in 1949. Following his dismissal in 1958 he was replaced by a Polish general and then returned to Moscow and retirement.
fn6
In 1982 the Soviets and East Germans started work on a totally new port at Neu Mukran on Rügen island. This was intended as a safeguard against future disruption of the overland route through Poland; however, such a sea route would have been disrupted by ice in winter and would have been very vulnerable to hostile action in war.
fn7
There were occasional command-post exercises in the mid-1980s.
fn8
It was classified by the Romanian navy, with typical exaggeration, as a ‘battlecruiser’.
PART II
STRATEGIC ISSUES
7
The Nature of Nuclear War
HANGING OVER EVERY
political and military decision throughout the Cold War was the threat of atomic and, later, of thermonuclear attack. This dreadful prospect faced politicians, the military and civil populations alike, and as much in neutral countries as in those involved in any possible conflict. As with many such issues, however, the majority were aware only of an appalling, but vague, Doomsday threat; indeed, as will be shown, even the so-called ‘experts’ could make only imprecise forecasts of what it would involve. It is therefore necessary to identify the major characteristics of nuclear weapons and to highlight some of their possible effects, in order to place the subsequent chapters in perspective.
fn1
NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
A nuclear explosion releases energy on a scale vastly greater than that of conventional high explosives, its yield being expressed in terms of its equivalence to the detonation of TNT;
fn2
thus a 1 kiloton (1 kT) nuclear weapon is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT, a 1 megaton (1 MT) weapon is equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT, and so on. Some comparisons will place the figures in perspective:
• During its strategic bombing campaign in Europe between mid-1942 and May 1945, the United States’ Eighth Air Force dropped approximately 700 kT of bombs. In the 1970s a single USAF FB-111 fighter-bomber could carry six B61 bombs with a total yield of 3 MT.
• The largest known single detonation of high explosives occurred on 27 November 1944 at a British underground ammunition store at Hanbury, Staffordshire, when approximately 4 kT of aircraft bombs of
various
sizes exploded at a depth of some 27 m. The resulting crater was 274 m long, 244 m wide and approximately 24 m deep, and, although in a sparsely populated farming area, the explosion killed seventy people and wounded another twenty. In the 1960s a single W33 203 mm howitzer nuclear shell had a yield of 10 kT.
• The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 had a yield of about 15 kT, while that dropped on Nagasaki three days later had a yield of 22 kT.
• The largest known nuclear explosion was a Soviet 58 MT weapon, exploded in a 3,700 m airburst at the Novaya Zemlya test site on 30 October 1961.
• The most powerful US nuclear test took place on 28 February 1954. A surface test on Bikini Atoll, it was expected to produce a yield of 6 MT, but actually produced 15 MT, gouging a crater 1,830 m in diameter and 73 m deep.
1
Nuclear explosions release energy in five forms which affect humans: flash (light), blast (shock and sound), thermal radiation (heat), initial nuclear radiation and residual nuclear radiation (fallout). The proportions vary according to the height of the burst, but, in a typical airburst, blast and thermal radiation account for some 85 per cent of the energy output, initial radiation approximately 5 per cent and residual radiation some 10 per cent. Nuclear weapons also release two forms of energy which affect electronic equipments only: electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and transient radiation effects on electronics (TREE).
Types of Burst
The effects of a nuclear explosion depend to a large degree on the height of the burst.
An ‘airburst’ takes place where the fireball just fails to touch the surface of the earth.
fn3
In a 1 MT weapon, for example, the fireball is 1,700 m in diameter, meaning that an airburst for such a weapon would have to be at an altitude greater than 870 m. In an airburst nearly all the shock energy leaves the fireball as blast, while the thermal radiation travels long distances, but there is no ground crater. Initial radiation also travels long distances, although it decreases more rapidly with the distance from the explosion, but there is no residual radiation. Technically, there are two types of airburst: endo-atmospheric (i.e. within the atmosphere), which takes place at a height of less than 30 km, and exo-atmospheric (i.e. outside the atmosphere), which takes place at a height greater than 30 km. In practice, an exo-atmospheric burst has only one effect of any military significance – EMP – and ‘airburst’ is normally taken to mean an endo-atmospheric burst.
One aspect of airbursts is that, if it is decided to replace a single large warhead with a number of smaller warheads but with the same overall yield (e.g. replace a single 3 MT warhead by six, each with a yield of 500 kT, and provided they are detonated so that their blast patterns do not overlap), then the total damage inflicted will increase greatly. In general terms, therefore, airbursts would have been used where maximum blast effect and minimum fallout were required (e.g. to destroy cities, airfields, oil refineries), with the height of burst optimized to ensure that the desired blast effect covered the target.
Nuclear bursts which take place either on the surface or sufficiently low above it that the fireball will touch it are known as ‘groundbursts’ or ‘surface bursts’. Much of the energy appears as air blast and ground shock, but part is expended in creating a surface crater. Fallout from such a burst is much greater than immediate radiation. Thus a groundburst would have been used either to optimize blast against a pinpoint target such as a missile silo or a hardened building, or to generate fallout to attack rural populations.
A ‘subsurface burst’ is one in which the explosion occurs at some depth underground or underwater. Here most of the energy is dissipated in shock, although some may also be released as air blast. Due to the contamination of the surrounding earth or water with radioactive products, the residual radiation will be significant. ‘Subsurface’ bursts would be used for anti-submarine warfare at sea or to demolish buried headquarters on land.
Flash
The first evidence of a nuclear explosion is a very intense flash of light, which covers a large geographical area. It is of major significance to people in the open, and particularly to those who happen to be facing the explosion, in whom it will cause temporary flash blindness and eye damage, including retina burns. Its effect is enhanced at night, when those facing the explosion could be dazzled for up to ten minutes. The effects of flash are, however, reduced by cloudy weather and rain.
Blast
Most of the material damage caused by a nuclear explosion is due – directly or indirectly – to the pressure wave, which has two components: blast wave through the air and shock wave through the ground. The blast wave travels outwards from the centre of the explosion at a speed of some 305 m/s with both speed and intensity decreasing rapidly with distance. Blast is defined in terms of ‘overpressure’ – i.e. the pressure in excess of the ambient pressure.
fn4
An overpressure of 0.2 kilograms-force per square centimetre (0.2 kgf/cm
2
)
(equivalent
to a wind of 161 km/h) would collapse wooden houses, but brick-built houses would probably survive, although windows, doors, floors and ceilings would be seriously damaged; the remains of such houses might be used for survival, but not for ‘living’ as currently understood. Industrial premises would be damaged, but the stronger the structure, the less the damage. Within the 0.2 kgf/cm
2
area about 10 per cent of the population would die.
An overpressure of 0.4 kgf/cm
2
(equivalent to a wind speed of 322 km/h would cause both wooden-framed and conventional two-storey, brick-built houses to collapse, and would render most industrial premises unusable, destroy oil storage tanks, collapse steel-truss bridges, and uproot some 90 per cent of trees. Within this 0.4 kgf/cm
2
overpressure area, approximately 80 per cent of the population would die – some from direct exposure to the blast, but most from injuries resulting from collapsing buildings and flying debris. Fire would also be a major hazard, but would probably not be of great significance compared to the devastation and deaths already caused.
One strong possibility is the creation of a firestorm. In this, once the blast had spread outward, there would be a negative pressure at the centre, resulting in winds blowing inward towards ground zero,
fn5
fanning the fires and in turn increasing the wind, as happened in the Second World War in the conventional bombing raids on Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. This has a curious and contradictory effect, in that the wind towards the centre tends to limit the spread of the fire outward, but ensures that the fire destroys virtually everything at the centre.
Thermal Radiation (Heat
)
A nuclear explosion generates heat as intense as that at the centre of the sun. This heat travels outward at a speed of some 300 million metres per second, and in a groundburst it will vaporize most substances within the fireball and for distances up to 5 km from ground zero, while many substances will spontaneously ignite at greater distances. Fifty per cent of people caught in the open suffer will flash burns, the severity depending upon the distance from ground zero; a 1 MT airburst, for example, would cause third degree burns at 11,000 m and second degree burns at 13,000 m.
Anything which throws a shadow will provide protection, and a British study in the 1960s showed that in the UK in peacetime in daylight some 10 per cent of the population (approximately 5 million people) was in the open at any one time, but that 75 per cent (3.75 million) of these would always be offered at least some protection by buildings. If adequate warning of an impending nuclear strike had been given, however, it would have been reasonable to expect that the numbers in the open would be substantially reduced.
Initial Nuclear Radiation
A very powerful pulse of initial nuclear radiation (INR) is released within the first minute of an explosion. INR expands in a circular pattern and is relatively short-ranged: the lethal range for a 1 MT weapon, for example, is 2,600 m. INR consists, in the main, of neutrons and gamma rays which penetrate the body and react with bone marrow, but these are substantially attenuated by dense materials such as concrete, steel or earth, so that people inside a building, in a steel vehicle (such as a battle tank or an armoured personnel carrier) or in an underground bunker receive varying degrees of protection.