The Cold War: A MILITARY History (61 page)

Where individuals broke the recognized rules, however, action could be swift and direct, and there were numerous instances of Western officers or soldiers being shot, although, so far as is known, there were never any cases of Soviet or East German soldiers being shot by Western troops.

The vulnerability of West Berlin was palpable. The Western garrisons totalled some 10,000 troops, but these were predominantly infantry. There was a small number of tanks, but only the US had artillery – a token force consisting of just one battery of six 155 mm guns. There were airfields in
West
Berlin, but modern fighters or bombers were never stationed there; they would have been far too vulnerable, and would have been eliminated within minutes in a pre-emptive strike, if conflict had broken out. Thus the Western garrisons were unable to conduct aggressive action, and their weapons and equipment were demonstrably intended only for defensive purposes.

The officers and troops of the three Western garrisons were accompanied by their wives and families, and there were plans to evacuate these dependants in time of crisis, although it was highly unlikely that there would have been an opportunity to do so. In war, all that could have been done was to concentrate the three Western garrisons quickly, probably centred on the Olympic complex in the British zone, and struggle to survive until the outcome of the war had been decided elsewhere.

The Western outpost in Berlin was surrounded and greatly outnumbered by the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG), supported by the large East German army (NVA). As was discovered after the end of the Cold War, the plan had been for the Soviets to ignore West Berlin, leaving its fate to the NVA, which had detailed plans to take West Berlin by storm.

The low-level contingency plans for Berlin designed to ascertain Soviet intentions – the land and air probes – proved their worth on several occasions, if only because the Soviets chose to let them do so. The larger plans, however, which involved forces of battlegroup, brigade and divisional strength, were of dubious utility. They were predicated on the force following the authorized route (i.e. the autobahn), which would have meant that the battlegroup would have been spread out over a distance of several miles, but with a frontage only one or possibly two vehicles wide. Despite the inclusion of engineer equipment such as bridgelayers in the convoys, all that the Soviets would have needed to do to bring the whole force to a standstill would have been to put a barrier across the autobahn or demolish one of several bridges, leaving the force commander with an agonizing choice of what to do next: go on and run the risk of starting a major war, or turn back in a massive and humiliating retreat. It was perhaps as well that nobody was ever confronted by that dilemma.

fn1
The EAC was formed by order of the Conference of Allied Foreign Ministers (Moscow, November 1943) and consisted of representatives from the UK, the USSR, the USA and (from November 1944) France.

fn2
‘Berlin’ was defined as ‘Greater Berlin’ as delineated in the German Law of 27 April 1920.

fn3
The shortest distance was 177 km, between Helmstedt and West Berlin, for the British, and much further for the Americans and French.

fn4
A problem arose somewhat later when the US and the British wished to operate helicopters in Berlin. Helicopters had been in their infancy in 1945 so they were not mentioned in the 1945, agreement, as a result of which the Russians refused to allow them to be flown into or out of the city. Thus they had to be dismantled and moved into the city either in a transport aircraft or by road.

fn5
A West German
Land
is a constituent state of the Federal Republic, with its own parliament, government and local administration. It is approximately equivalent to a US state.

fn6
The Berlin City Assembly sent eight representatives to the Bundestag and four to the Bundesrat.

fn7
These are estimated to have been six months’ supply of coal and gas and one year’s supply of food.

fn8
Before this the currency throughout Berlin had been the Allied Military Mark, which was printed by the Soviet authorities in East Berlin.

fn9
Originally Comets, later Centurions, and finally Chieftains.

fn10
The same man served as a NATO commander (SACEUR) served by NATO staffs, as a US national commander (CINCEUR) served by an exclusively US staff, and as a tripartite (French–UK–US) commander for Berlin, in which he was served by a tripartite staff with its own headquarters. Such ‘double [or triple] hatting’ was quite usual in NATO.

fn11
Despite being placed within a NATO compound, Live Oak was never a NATO unit and access to its building was restricted to British, French and US people with business there.

fn12
Contingency planning frequently gives rise to misunderstandings among those not familiar with the way the military operate. Headquarters exist in peacetime to plan and train for war, so that, should war break out, they are familiar with their roles, their missions and the units under their command. A certain amount of their time is spent in peacetime administration, but the bulk is devoted to planning. The existence of a plan does not mean that an HQ wishes to carry it out, or even that it is considered likely that it will have to, but simply that there is a remote possibility. Thus, if an HQ has a contingency plan for a nuclear attack, that does not mean that it wants to carry it out, but simply that it
might
have to and so the plan considers what factors might be involved in doing so.

fn13
The Douglas RB-66 was a highly specialized photographic- and electronic-surveillance version of the B-66 twin-jet bomber. It carried a crew of three.

fn14
The T-39 was an air-force version of the North American Sabreliner executive aircraft. It was powered by two turbojets and carried a crew of two. Military transport versions carried up to nine passengers, but the type was also used as a radar trainer and may also have been used for electronic surveillance.

fn15
The Bundesversammlung was a special body which was convened only to elect a new president.

fn16
This covered formal meetings of the Bundesversammlung, the Bundesrat and the Bundestag, although committees could continue to meet in West Berlin.

fn17
One senior Western officer went to sleep in his staff car on the autobahn between Helmstedt and Berlin. He awoke to discover that he was deep in the GDR, his driver having taken a wrong turning, and that his car had been stopped by a Soviet patrol. An English-speaking Russian officer was sent for, who, with only the slightest hint of a smile, politely enquired whether the Western officer was trying to defect. On being assured that this was not the case, he personally escorted the chastened Westerner back to the autobahn and sent him on his way to Berlin with a salute.

33

Battlefield Nuclear Weapons

TACTICAL-NUCLEAR-WEAPON
development originated not with a statement of operational requirement from the military, but with US scientists in the late 1940s, who realized that it had become technically feasible to develop nuclear warheads which could fit into both small missiles and artillery shells. The first fruit of this was a massive 280 mm cannon, which was fielded by the US artillery in 1952 – the same year that NATO set itself a goal of ninety-six divisions. By 1954, however, it had become clear that this NATO goal was unattainable, and it was proposed that fielding tactical-nuclear-weapons systems would offer a method of substituting artillery for infantry and tanks. This was seized upon by the military in general, not least because at that time the Soviet Union did not possess any tactical nuclear weapons, thus giving NATO an absolute superiority. The proposal was also particularly popular with the artillery arms of the NATO armies, who saw themselves promoted to become the major arm on a nuclear battlefield. The Soviet army was not far behind, however, and it too began fielding tactical nuclear missiles in the late 1950s.

Once the first tactical nuclear weapons – both guns and missiles – were in service they increased rapidly in both type and quantity, although their roles differed significantly between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. For the Soviet army, battlefield nuclear weapons were simply an extension of the Warsaw Pact’s offensive doctrine and were primarily intended to eliminate NATO’s tactical nuclear forces. NATO, on the other hand, saw these weapons as a new type of defensive weapon, whose power very conveniently made up for a lack of manpower. So long as NATO possessed a monopoly in such weapons this theory had a certain validity, but once the Soviet Union possessed them too the theory was seriously weakened, although the fielding of such weapons continued unabated until almost the end of the Cold War. The situation was further complicated by the French, who, as will be seen, had a fundamentally different rationale for the use of such weapons.

GUNS

There were two types of battlefield nuclear weapon: guns/howitzers and missiles.
^fn1
First in the field in 1952 was the US army’s massive 280 mm atomic cannon (officially the ‘Gun, Heavy, Motorized, 280 mm, M65), although this was regarded as something of a military curiosity, even at the time. The original projectile was the W19, with a yield of 15 kT, but this was later replaced by the W23, with a variable 10–15 kT yield. These projectiles had a range of 30,300 m, but each gun required a crew of several hundred and some twenty vehicles, and a deployed gun detachment was reputed to resemble a small village. Despite its disadvantages, the system remained in service for eleven years.

Advancing technology then enabled the USA not only to develop smaller-calibre atomic projectiles, but also to make the guns dual-capable, so that they could fire conventional high-explosive rounds as well. The most widely used of these weapons were the M109 and M110. The first of these to enter service, in 1961, was the M110 203 mm cannon, firing the W33 atomic round, which had a maximum yield of 12 kT; in 1963 this was followed by the M109 155 mm howitzer, firing the W48 round with a yield of 0.1 kT. Both of these weapons were always used for airbursts.

Both the M109 and the M110 were mounted on tracked chassis, which gave them a high degree of battlefield mobility. Both proved to be excellent systems, and their barrels, chassis and rounds were developed throughout their long periods of service, particularly to enhance the range, which in the case of the M109 increased from 18,100 m (M109A1) to 30,000 m (M109A3). These weapons were widely exported, although only NATO countries (West Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK) received the nuclear rounds. As of 1983, 1,000 W33 and 3,000 W48 rounds were held in western Europe, but the United States alone possessed the 203 mm W79 enhanced-radiation (ER) round with a yield of 10 kT (W79—0) and 1–2 kT (W79—1), although this was never deployed to units.

The artillery has always been of great importance in Soviet military doctrine, and it must have seemed natural for the USSR to follow the Western lead and develop atomic rounds. The first of these to appear were fielded in the late 1960s, when a 0.2 kT atomic round for the S-23 180 mm towed cannon was introduced. The next nuclear artillery piece was the 2S3 152 mm M-1973, which fired a 2 kT round over a range of 24,000 m, followed by the 2S7 203 mm gun in 1975. As far as is known, the Soviet Union never supplied nuclear shells to any of its Warsaw Pact allies.

MISSILES

In the late 1940s both the USA and the USSR not only owned and tested samples of the German A-4 (V-2), but also had teams of German scientists from Peenemünde to help them with further developments. Although this eventually led to missiles with intercontinental ranges, the original missiles were for battlefield use, and a series of such missiles was developed throughout the Cold War.

US Missiles

Between 1945 and 1950 the US army built a number of virtual copies of the A-4 under the name Hermes, one model of which carried a 454 kg high-explosive warhead over a range of 242 km. Although the German army had operated the A-4, it had employed it as a strategic rather than a tactical weapon, but when, in the early 1950s, atomic warheads became sufficiently small to enable them to be mounted on missiles, the US army saw them as battlefield weapons. These US missiles can be considered in three groups, according to their range.

The first long-range army missile (and the third missile system to enter service) was developed by the original V-1 team, headed by Werner von Braun. The Redstone entered service in 1958, and was essentially an enlarged and much improved V-1 with a range of 400 km, though its payload of either a 1 MT or a 2 MT atomic weapon gave a totally new dimension of firepower to a battlefield commander. The liquid-fuelled Redstone needed many men and vehicles, one particular requirement being a special plant capable of producing 20 tonnes of liquid oxygen per day.

Next was the Pershing, which entered service in 1962 and rapidly replaced the Redstone. This was a two-stage, solid-fuelled missile, which was launched vertically from a ground-mounted base-plate, with four tracked vehicles forming a fire unit. This was subsequently replaced by the Pershing IA system, which used the same missile but with wheeled trucks, including a trailer-mounted launch platform, making the whole system air-portable. The Pershing I/IA missile delivered 60 kT, 200 kT or 400 kT warheads over a 740 km range with an accuracy of 400 m. Pershing I and IA all served in West Germany, with the US army and the German
Luftwaffe
.

Development of the Pershing II system, a modification of the Pershing IA, began in 1976, with the intention of producing a system with greater accuracy and reliability, but with the same range as the Pershing IA. A requirement for much greater range was added during the development process, which involved the new system in a major political controversy, since the new 1,800 km range enabled it to reach targets in the western USSR. Despite this, 120 Pershing IIs were eventually fielded (by the US army only) in 1983 as part of NATO’s twin-track strategy. The warhead was
a
W-85 nuclear weapon, with a yield, selectable according to the desired terminal effects, of between 5 and 50 kT, and a CEP of 45 m. A proposed earth-penetrator warhead was cancelled in 1982.
^fn2
All Pershing systems were directly affected by the terms of the 1987 INF Treaty, which banned missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,600 km, and by May 1991 all Pershings had been withdrawn and destroyed.