Prelude
Red Square, Moscow, USSR, 1109hrs Wednesday, 7 November 1990
The city is in festive mode. Today is the 73rd anniversary of the October Revolution which presaged the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The times are turbulent. The Berlin Wall has been down for almost a year. Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria and Rumania have all thrown out their Communist governments and Soviet forces have begun leaving.
Five weeks ago the reunification of West and East Germany occurred. President Gorbachev is fighting the increasing popular Boris Yeltsin for control of the Soviet Parliament and hardliners for control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Russian nationalism is on the rise and nationalists have pushed for Russian law to trump Soviet law.
Three months ago, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In response, the Soviets concentrated their military in the southern Soviet republics, especially those bordering Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan and concluded a 20-year alliance with India. Saddam Hussein was eventually persuaded to withdraw from Kuwait when the US President threatened war and the Soviets indicated they would not oppose the move in the United Nations Security Council.
Despite all the political troubles, Moscow is in a festive mode. Red Square is awash with Soviet green as military units and police parade in front of the senior leaders of the USSR stand, President Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, others, Yeltsin’s wife. It is a cold autumn day.
Two shots ring out, the loud cracks of a rifle. The sounds echo and rebound around Red Square. A scuffle breaks out, close to the viewing stand on the top of the Lenin Mausoleum where the Soviet Union’s leaders always stand. Officers and passersby wrestle with a man. There is shouting, but then gasps of horror as Gorbachev slumps and collapses. Yelstin, wearing a surprised expression, looks down at a red stain on his jacket and also collapses.
The two leading politicians in the Soviet Union are dead.
It is impossible to hide the shootings, which have occurred in front of banks of TV cameras, beamed live all over the Union and around the world by new Moscow Global satellites. A visibly shaken newsreader announces the deaths on Moscow TV within the hour. Chopin’s Marche Funebre replaces normal programming.
Alexander Shmonov is quickly identified as the culprit: an alleged accomplice is being hunted. In coming days the people of the USSR – and the world – learn that Gennady Yanayev, the Vice-President, has become acting President. Two days later a KGB investigator working on the case tells the liberal tabloid Moscow News that the gunman prepared to kill Gorbachev for more than two years, practising his shooting in woods. The KGB man, Pyotr A Sokolov, told the Communist Party Weekly Glasnost the imported gun cost 900 rubles, about $1,620 at the official exchange rate.
A Moscow police sergeant, Andrei Mylnikov, had attempted to foil the assassin but was an instant too late.
Moscow, USSR, Friday, 30 November 1990
Following a meeting of the Congress of People's Deputies, Acting President Yanayev was confirmed as President, with the support of the KGB and the Red Army. In his first speech to the nation as President, Yanayev pledges retribution. He accuses Shmonov of being an agent of the Iranian Revolutionary government. He announces that the Red Army is moving back into Afghanistan, effective immediately. In response to a request from the Iranian Tudeh communist party, Soviet ground and air forces will occupy Iran in their hunt for those who had ordered the slaying of Gorbachev. Yanayev says that “in the interests of national security” perestroika and glasnost will be temporarily suspended. Planned withdrawals of Soviet forces from Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia will continue but the troops will not be demobilised, as planned, but transhipped to Iran. Those in Bulgaria will remain, with the agreement of the Bulgarian government.
Moscow is placed under martial law, censorship partially restored. Reservists across the USSR are called up in accord with emergency war plans. Soviet and allied forces around the world are placed on the highest alert short of nuclear war. In private, Yanayev calls the Prime Minister of India and invokes the recently signed treaty. Under tight security, India begins a selective callup of reservists and the Indian government secretly begins censoring newspapers, TV and radio.
London, United Kingdom, Monday, 3 December 1990
Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, seeks leave to make a statement in the House of Commons. The Speaker immediately assents.
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President George Bush meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher during crisis talks |
“Mr Speaker, the shocking deaths of Mr Gorbachev and Mr Yeltsin constituted a dreadful assault on liberty. We in the West have lost a friend in Mikhail Gorbachev. I have today spoken with President Bush, the President of France, the Prime Minister of Italy, the King of Saudi Arabia, the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and the Prime Minister of Australia. Mr Gorbachev’s assassins should face the full brunt of the law. But the actions of the new Soviet Government in invading Iran, without any evidence whatsoever of Iranian complicity, cannot be allowed to stand," she said.“Accordingly, the Allied governments have pledged to repel the Soviet invasion with all their might short of nuclear weapons. A few minutes ago, I issued orders mobilising the entire armed forces of the United Kingdom to the end of removing Soviet forces from Iran. The Allies are moving at this moment to freeze Soviet assets and will impose a total trade embargo on the USSR,” Mrs Thatcher told a solemn House of Commons.
“This war may involve great sacrifice. But we cannot allow free nations to be subjugated by tyrants. Our war is not with the peoples of the USSR but with their government, which has launched a war of aggression using a terrible event as an excuse…,” she went on.
British ships, planes and troops elsewhere in the world had been instructed to not provoke Soviet action but to defend themselves if attacked.
Despite the best efforts of the Labor Whips, a small band of hard Left Labor members led by Jeremy Corbyn oppose the Cabinet’s decision.
New Delhi, India, Wednesday 26 December 1990
Following three weeks of tense negotiations in the UN an uneasy armistice has been maintained in Iran, with the Soviets occupying Teheran, Esfahan, Kerman, Shiraz and other cities in north and central Iran. The Soviets say this shows that their intentions had nothing to do with Iran's oilfields. Forces loyal to the Iranian government are still fighting and causing mayhem to Soviet supplylines, despite brutal responses by the Soviets. Winter weather had caused havoc, delaying trains and trucks. Shia people in Azerbaijan are undertaking a campaign of civil disobedience, disrupting the Soviets troop movements and resupply and supplying Iran and the Allies with precious intelligence.
The world situation took a sharp turn for the worse with a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in India, killing hundreds of people in Bombay, New Delhi and other cities. Two days later the Indian embassy in Sri Lanka was flattened by a truck bomb, again killing hundreds of people and wounding more than 700.
Three days later Indian military forces invaded Pakistan and Indian forces already in Sri Lanka seized the country. The Indian Prime Minister said:
“it is time to root out Pakistani terrorists once and for all. This is the only way. We have incontrovertible evidence that the attacks on India were planned and executed from Pakistan… The situation in Sri Lanka is unacceptable and it is necessary for India to maintain order in that country…”
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan vehemently denied Pakistan had any involvement with the outrages in India.
“I have tried to make peace with India, not war. The Government of Pakistan had no role in this attack. This invasion is illegal and completely unjustified. I appeal to the international community for assistance,” he said.
Minutes later air raid sirens went off in Karachi and other Pakistani cities as Indian bombs and missiles rained down on key installations, including the Pakistan Joint Headquarters and adjacent Army HQ in Rawalpindi, the HQ of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency in Islamabad, and other headquarters, air defence and communications nodes. Prime Minister Sharif survived but is in hiding, according to an Army spokesman. Poor weather inhibited follow-up attacks, which were mainly undertaken by ballistic missiles.
Prime Minister Dingiri Banda Wijetunga of Sri Lanka similarly sought international assistance.
“Sri Lanka is no threat to India. We have already launched an investigation into the terrible bombing of the Indian embassy, and I express my condolences to the Ambassador, his family and all the other people killed. Many of them were Sri Lankan employees. We are pawns in an international game. The so-called Indian Peacekeeping Force has become an army of occupation,", he said bitterly in a televised speech to the nation.
The IPF had been an idea implemented by former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi, sent to help suppress Tamil terrorism and help Sri Lanka in its civil war. Western Intelligence agencies believe India’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing, supported and incited the civil war, which then got out of hand and spilled over into India.
The Indian attacks were in accord with updated plans, but Indian troops struggled with the cold weather. To avoid the appearance of provocation, the Pakistan mobilisation had barely begun when India attacked and the country was soon in chaos as reservists tried to get to their depots and the Army tried to manoeuvre and the police to maintain order. Millions of refugees clogged roads and train lines, hindering Army movements. Although the Pakistan Army fought valiantly, it was ground back within days by the Indian advance and had to withdraw from Lahore in the north and Hyderabad in the south to avoid annihilation.
A neutral military attaché from Colombia talking to that country's largest newspaper, the El Tiempo, notes that, in the spirit of India's declaration that it was hunting terrorists, Indian forces had been careful to avoid attacking purely civilian targets but had heavily bombed some camps, which the Pakistanis claimed were refugee camps, when weather permitted. No attacks on Pakistan Navy ships had been reported and only airbases and key air defences in close proximity to the front have been attacked.
The Indian Navy implemented a blockade of Pakistani ports, as it had in 1971, to prevent replenishment of Pakistani military equipment. Food and medicines are exempt.
In accord with contingency plans originally drafted for war with the Soviets in the event that they invaded Iran, General Norman Scharzkopf, Jr, head of US Central Command, began to move the 200,000 strong Rapid Deployment Force towards Iran. Forward units, including the 82nd Airborne division, have already occupied the ports of Bandar-e Lengeh and Bandar Abbas in southern Iran. Local Iranian commanders are cooperating with the US-led forces. Tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines were recalled from Christmas/New Year celebrations. President George Bush declared that any Soviet attempt to interfere with international shipping in the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz would be considered an act of war.
Three US Navy carrier battle groups and a battleship surface action group based around the recommissioned battleship USS Wisconsin (shown) have been deployed to the Indian Ocean to protect the sea lanes and to secure the supply line between the US ground forces in southern Iran and their main base in Diego Garcia, more than 4,000 km away. As outlined by Mrs Thatcher in Parliament, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Australia have dispatched naval task forces and warplanes to assist.
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of State reportedly advised the President that a major Pakistani defeat would be catastrophic for American diplomacy and military strategy in the region. US and Western ships have been frequent visitors to Pakistani ports for years because of their convenient proximity to the Persian Gulf. The loss of these ports would significantly hamper naval operations in the Arabian Sea. Capture of Pakistani airfields and their use by Soviet forces could make the Allied position in the Gulf untenable. Pakistan had been a US ally for many years, the recipient of massive American aid: only Egypt had received more aid in the past 20 years.
Accordingly, the President ordered a massive sealift of military equipment and ammunition to Pakistan. The US began an airlift of high-priority military items, but the great distances involved and the heavy demands on US military transport meant supplies were only a fraction of what Pakistan wanted. The US Air Force mobilized the Civil Reserve Air Fleet to Stage II, allowing hundreds of civilian passenger jets and cargo planes to join the airlift.
In response, the Soviet leader claimed that America’s aid to Pakistan “amounted to an act of war against the Soviet Union’s firmest ally, India”. Accordingly, Soviet forces in Afghanistan have been ordered to assist in the occupation of Pakistan to prevent further Islamic terrorism and help the Indians. Land communications within Afghanistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan are poor and limited, thus the Soviets are using airmobile tactics to seize key objectives until motorised infantry can arrive. For many Soviet soldiers, it is a case of deja vu all over again. The War in Afghanistan caused enormous bitterness in the USSR, and had little popular support. The war helped to drain the USSR’s finances, especially after the tremendous cost of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and ongoing costs of maintaining one of the world’s largest militaries.
Gennady Yanayev was advised by Stavka, the Soviet High Command, to reinforce Soviet forces in the Indian Ocean. By chance, the new Soviet aircraft carrier Tbilisi and other powerful Soviet forces were already in the Gulf of Aden returning from a major exercise when ordered to escort Soviet convoys across the Indian Ocean to Iran. Other ships from the Pacific Fleet sailed to the Indian Ocean at best speed, probably accompanied by a number of nuclear submarines. Soviet forces occupied bases in Sri Lanka and some in India.
Washington, DC, USA, Tuesday, 22 January 1991
The US President, George Bush, called the Soviet invasion of Pakistan a “despicable stab in the back”.
“Using the death of Mikhail Gorbachev – who proved he was a man of peace and a man of honor – is outrageous,” he told reporters in the White House.
The President’s security advisers reportedly worried that helping Pakistan would most likely result in war between the superpowers and their mutual allies. But President Bush said, that while he hoped the war could be contained to the Indian Ocean,
“it is a just war, a righteous war. The free flow of oil from the Middle East to Europe, North America, China and Japan is necessary to world commerce”.
Vice-President Dan Quayle, speaking in the Senate in his most memorable speech to date, called on Congress to support the President, which it promptly did, with a significant number of Democrats supporting and a few Republicans opposing the joint resolutions.
Thailand and Malaysia had joined the Allies, as had all the Gulf Arab states and Somalia, following a UN brokered resolution of the Somali Civil War. The entry of the Malaysians and Thais had encouraged Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim state, to follow suit. Singapore made available its naval base to Allied ships and agreed to take responsibility for the naval security of the East Malaysian coast. The Indonesian naval and air bases in Aceh, on the northwest of Sumatra and islands nearby became an important staging point for ASEAN and Australian forces.
The First Day
Soviet and Allied aircraft had been probing for weaknesses at strategic points all over the Indian Ocean for days. Both sides had dozens of patrol aircraft up as far afield as the Gulf of Aden and the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. American P-3 Orions were joined by Australian ones, French and Pakistani Breguet Atlantics and US carriers had flown their Lockheed S-3 Vikings. Soviets flew their huge Tupolev Tu-142s, P-3-sized Ilyushin Il-38s and smaller Beriev Be-12 amphibians, joined by Indian Il-38s and even some elderly Indian English Electric Canberra PR.57 over a good portion of the Indian Ocean. The Canberras were based in the Maldives which India had occupied in 1988 in response to a coup and maintained small forces at the old RAF Gan airbase, following an agreement with the President, Muhammadu Ibrahim Lutfee.
Fighters from both sides had flown hundreds of missions in preceding days although it was impossible to guard all the precious patrol aircraft continuously. The Joint Allied Intelligence Centre at MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida had pieced together Soviet intentions. A large convoy had assembled in Massawa, Ethiopia, probably to reinforce Ras Karma (Socotra), Yemen, barely three days sail away down the Bab al Mandab and the Gulf of Aden. A second large convoy had assembled at Socotra to sail across the Arabian Sea to reinforce Soviet forces in northern Pakistan.
The Americans were ready to send the Maritime Pre-Positioning Force (MPF) from Diego Garcia to reinforce Pakistan, or if that proved impossible, to Iran. Other Allied ships were heading to Diego Garcia to reinforce that isolated island. Dozens of allied and neutral tankers were sailing to and from the Persian Gulf to supply the oil hungry Western Europe and Japan.
Hadibu (Ras Karma), Yemen, 0005hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January, 1991
Rear Admiral Admiral Stepan Lottkowitz was not a happy man. The wharf labourers in Hadibu were, in his opinion, the laziest in the world, a fact he attributed to the tropical climate and their previous modest existence.
Soviet forces in northern Pakistan desperately needed the supplies his ships were carrying but the restacking of the ships to facilitate sensible unloading had been so slow that the local KGB commander had threatened some of the labourers with his pistol at one stage during the night. The trouble was that Hadibu wasn’t a real port, it was a fishing village which Soviet engineers had rapidly built a pier for at the same time they constructed an airfield the other side of Hadibu for Soviet Naval Aviation.
The location, in the throat of the Gulf of Aden, was both ideal and idyllic – if you liked birds, plants or reptiles. The flora and fauna were spectacular: after a series of bird strikes on planes, the local commander had taken drastic measures to reduce the bird population near the airbase, with mixed success and sparking rage locally. Technically part of Africa, the island was a sleepy backwater until the Soviets had come. That was not through choice. For many years the Soviets had enjoyed the hospitality of Somalia at Berbera, on the East African coast. but Soviets were no longer welcomed in Somalia. Worse, the country had joined the Allies.
Things had not been going well nearby during the night. There were reports that Atlantic patrol aircraft had been detected, either French or Pakistani. A squadron of much vaunted, almost new Sukhoi Su-27K fighters from the likewise new aircraft carrier Tbilisi sailing east of the islands had been ambushed, probably by French fighters. They had run into a wall of air-to-air missiles fired from aircraft which could barely be detected. It appeared the French had rushed production of the new Rafale advanced combat aircraft and these had stealth features which even the big Phazotron N001 Myech coherent pulse-Doppler radar of the Sukhois struggled against. The newness of both types suggested French pilots were better trained and more experienced. "What else is news," Lottkowitz thought to himself. The USSR gave everyone the minimum training needed to perform their tasks. The average NATO pilot spent more than twice as much time in the air annually as their Soviet counterparts.
The Allied command had taken a significant risk sending the Atlantics into what should have been Soviet-dominated airspace. But the old patrol bombers had undoubtedly spotted his ships, and the risk had paid off.
“Адмирал, корабли готовы,” his aide reported. The ships are ready.
“Хорошо, пойдем.” Letʼs get going.
His sailors and the base troops were exhausted – they had shouldered much of the effort, given the lack of enthusiastic locals. Off at last, hours late.
The convoy which he was about to command comprised eight freighters, his flag, the replenishment ship, Berezina, three Project 1135 Burevestnik class frigates, three Project 1124 Albatros and two Project 159 class corvettes, known to NATO respectively as the Krivak, Grisha and Petya classes.
The Berezina was, frankly, a great ship, he had decided. It was the largest and fastest replenishment ship in the Soviet Navy. Its men were well-trained and, although many liked their vodka, serious derelictions due to alcoholic poisoning were rare and heavily punished. The Captain and senior officers were reasonable men and treated the crew respectfully, and they responded with respect and duty. Heavily loaded, as it was, with a great many missiles, bombs and ammunition, the Berezina displaced 25,000 tons. At over 200 metres it was a large but well-designed ship, with a pair of gas turbines. Although thirsty, the gas turbines gave it a speed of 22 knots and at cruising speed of 18 knots, a range of 8,000 nautical miles. Soviet designers did not believe in taking chances, so the Berezina was comparatively well-armed for a replenishment ship with short-range anti-aircraft missiles and guns and two sextuple launchers for anti-submarine rockets. “Only useful if we are in touching distance,” he thought to himself.
As he watched the ships gradually forming up into a rough hexagon, with the merchants in two lines of four, he was more concerned about the escorts. The Grishas and Petyas had no business here, sailing across an ocean. They were coastal corvettes, with a limited electronics outfit, and short-range anti-submarine weapons. They retained 533mm torpedo tubes, intended for hitting enemy ships. “If they get within torpedo range, we’ll be stuffed,” the Admiral thought to himself. They also had their own short-range SAMs. The Petyas had a reasonable sonar outfit but their weapons were similarly short-ranged. Neither class had an anti-submarine helicopter, which in the waters of the Northern Arabian Ocean would have been more useful than anti-submarine rockets which only had a range of 1,000 metres, he thought almost cheerfully.
The Krivaks were much better ships, three times the size. Bditel'nyy, Dzerzhinskiy and Menzhinskiy. The Watchful, the founder of the KGB, and his successor. How ironic, Lottkowitz mused. Would the Americans ever name a ship after the head of the CIA? Lottkowitz thought it unlikely, although George Bush the elder, now President, had been deputy head of the CIA in the 1970s and was to have an aircraft carrier named after him. The second pair of Krivaks each had a single chopper. He had ordered that one be in the air at all times, but the commander of the helicopter detachment let it be known that he could only guarantee this for a couple of days. The choppers needed frequent maintenance, like most Soviet aircraft.
Off Hadibu, Socotran Islands, Yemen, 0235 hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January 1991
There was an explosion. The Admiral had been asleep, weary after two days of chivvying laborers and his own men. He woke quickly and walked to the bridge. One of the merchants reported that it had been struck by an unknown explosive device. The Admiral turned to his aide.
“Были ли сообщения с гидролокатора о торпедах?” he asked.
“Nyet Admiral.”
Of course. Nothing, no sound, no racing torpedoes, nor any other unusual sounds. A mine, barring some kind of accident on the cargo ship, which seemed unlikely. Half a dozen minesweepers had been placed nearby, although not actually part of his command since they were to escort the convoy out to sea and then return to port. They were small, slow and short-ranged, but built of low-magnetic steel.
“Order the minesweepers and the Bditel'nyy to investigate. Let's see how watchful it is,” the Admiral said.
He almost smiled at his own joke, but that would be bad form. The bridge crew remained impassive. If they were in an enemy minefield, then any of the other ships could activate a mine at any time. If it was an enemy torpedo, they should have heard it as it approached, although the chances of hearing the submarine were slim, given his limited resources. They were due to rendezvous with the Tbilisi task force in a few hours – the pride of the Soviet Navy. The carrier and its escorts had more than a dozen anti-submarine choppers, long range missiles, the best air defence in the fleet.
Minesweeping was a tedious business. All the ships had to slow almost to a stop while one of the Berezina’s own utility choppers worked with the minesweepers to clear a path forward. It was extremely difficult in the darkness. There was little alternative. The cargo ships were too valuable to risk to a cheap mine, although it had been tempting to keep on going. The frigates and corvettes circled around like lionesses protecting their cubs. Stopping in hostile waters was a serious risk. The American mines had been laid on the bottom the night before, he was sure. The Americans had used the retreat of the Sukhoi fighters to lay some mines in the areas where the Soviet ships were likely to pass. In the event only a couple of mines were found. The modern technique was to use remote TV guided sweeps, which could be lowered from a stern hatch on the minesweepers.Socotran Islands, Yemen, 0245 hrs UTC Tuesday, 29 January 1991
Off Dante, Somalia, 0305hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January 1991
“Stations de combat, ce n'est pas un exercice” blared the PA systems across the French Task Force Clemenceau.
The carrier FNS Clemenceau, escorting frigates Jean Bart, Duquesne, and Duguay-Trouin had refuelled at the French port of La Reunion and were heading north-east along the African coast, well placed to intercept one of the Soviet convoys.
The Tu-160s each carried several Raduga KSR-5 anti-ship missiles. The dozen Tu-160s were flown by the 84th Guards Heavy Bomber Regiment normally located at Pryluky Air Base, Ukraine, the crack heavy bomber unit in Soviet Long-Range Aviation. The Tu-160s were big swing-wing strategic bombers, the most powerful in the Soviet arsenal and normally reserved for strategic nuclear and cruise missile strikes. But the French carrier group was deemed a worthy target because of its proximity to the two Soviet convoys. The Tu-16s were much older aircraft whose design dated back to the 1950s, whose weapons were still large, but subsonic. The Raduga K-10S missile they each carried was so large that they could only carry one.
The TF Clemenceau had been flying Combat Air Patrol for the previous 24 hours since the War Imminent signal had been sent to all Allied commands. Some of the first shots of the war had been fired when some new Dassault Rafale fighters and Omani Tornados had engaged Soviet fighters and other aircraft within the Clemenceau’s No-Fly zone the previous evening. The semi-stealthy Rafales had surprised and dispatched the big Sukhoi Su-27Ks (known as Flanker-K to NATO) from the Tbilisi much more easily than expected and the Soviets had withdrawn, but not before spotting the French ships. The Rafales had been secretly hurried into service on the Clemenceau just weeks earlier.
The French fleet’s position was dire and its commander, Vice-amiral d'escadre Pierre Bonnot knew it. His little fleet was in the most exposed position of any Allied naval force other than a few minesweepers and a replenishment ship in Djibouti. The French Navy did not have an equivalent of the US AEGIS fire control system which could control many missiles at once: their fire control systems could only handle a limited number of missiles. The Jean Bart and Duquesne had elderly American Standard SM-1 missiles and French Masurca missiles respectively. Their launchers were old-fashioned mechanical devices and the Masurca was notoriously slow to reload. He yearned to have a modern ship such as an American Ticonderoga class cruiser with its vertical launch system which allowed huge salvoes of missiles to be fired in circumstances like this. However, the threat of war had liberated many francs and his technicians had given him more capabilities than he expected.
The Soviets flew on. The mission commander had been given an estimated position for the French fleet which was now 10 hours old. Following standard doctrine, he ordered his electronic warfare aircraft forward, their powerful search radars on.
“Radar de recherche détecté” – search radar has been detected.
The information came from one of the orbiting Rafales, via a secure datalink and a Breguet Alize reconnaissance plane.
“Merde” said one officer in the Clemenceau’s combat information centre under his breath.
“Christ, they’ve found us,” thought the Australian liaison officer on the Admiral’s staff, Lieutenant-Commander Alistair McIntosh.
Bonnot looked at the plots. He was not surprised. He’d known the Soviets had bombers on Socotra-Ras Karma, only half an hour’s flying time away.
“Exécuter le plan deuxieme,” he ordered.
One of the reconaissance Tu-16s reported a few minutes later.
“Enemy surface ships detected bearing 323 degrees, range 250 kilometres, speed north-east at 30 knots.”
This was close to the maximum range of the radar, but well within the capabilities of the KSR-5 and the older missiles on the Tu-16s. The huge KSR-5 missiles were notoriously difficult to handle, their fuel including red fuming nitric acid. The stuff was so dangerous that the missiles were only fuelled 15 minutes before takeoff. But the dangerous fuel gave fantastic performance, Mach 3 at altitude, nearly four times the speed of any Allied missile. The missiles weighed nearly five tonnes each at launch. Even without the half-tonne warhead, the kinetic energy alone was greater than that of a shell from the WW2 Japanese battleship IJN Yamato. A single hit would probably blow most ships into pieces, and seriously damage even a ship as large as the French carrier. The missiles on the Tu-16s could fly at Mach 1.2 at high altitude, but were subsonic at low level.
The raid commander watched the plot for a few seconds as more data came in over a datalink from the search plane. The datalink was notoriously slow and unreliable, but appeared to be working fine. There, exactly as he expected. One large ship, three smaller ships in standard NATO formation. Probably one air defence frigate close to the carrier, an anti-submarine ship leading and another frigate on picket duty.
There was no need for subtlety. The Tu-160s had flown for nearly five hours. There was no sign of French fighters, although they had been reported the previous night in a sharp encounter.
“Send out the location and execute Plan-C in 60 seconds,” the raid commander ordered.
His navigator sent out the order using the plane's radio. Although encoded, the transmission was picked up by both the Rafale and the Alizé, which had been modified with an experimental air search radar and improved electronic warfare gadgetry.
The Tu-160s were at 11,000 metres, somewhat behind the much lower Tu-16s, which were flying from a relatively short, very warm airbase. At least the Tu-16s hadn’t needed much fuel, although it had taken almost an hour to get all the bombers and fighters launched as the crews worked frantically to get the temperamental aircraft readied according to the deadline. French naval intelligence was very good and news of the activity had rapidly found its way to Paris and thence to the Clemenceau.
Plan-C called for all aircraft to fire their missiles at cruise altitude with the Tu-16Ks firing their relatively slow missiles first, giving time for the extremely fast KSR-5s from the Tu-160s to catch up. Although this made them easy to spot and track, their speed meant the KSR-5 missiles travelling at 3,000 km/hr could cover 250 km in five minutes. The French Masurca surface-to-air missiles only had a range of 55km and the Standard SM-1s a range of 46 km, although both could be fired in anticipation of targets coming into range. The maths was immutable: the French might get off not more than five salvos of Masurcas and 15 SM-1s, perhaps 25 missiles in all, and a handful of short-range Crotale surface-to-air missiles, before the Soviet missiles reached their targets. Even if the SAMs were fired when the Soviet missiles were 100km distant, there would be barely 120 seconds in which to engage the missiles. The kill probability of each French missile was, on a good day, about 0.5 - they had been designed to deal with aicraft flying only a third the speed of the fastest Soviet missiles. Twenty-five missiles, perhaps 12 kills, possibly 15. The Soviets had at least three squadrons, possibly more, each of around 10 aircraft, the Tu-16s with one missile each, the Tu-160s with two, for a total of 40 missiles.
"Not great odds", thought McIntosh to himself.
Neither Soviet missile was stealthy. Even in the tropical darkness, the ignition of 40 large missiles, each the size of a small jet fighter, was spectacular and they had been designed before stealth was a consideration. The Rafale’s optoelectronic system quickly detected them and passed the information back.
Combien? thought the pilot. He waited a few seconds, knowing the plan depended on all the missiles being fired. Plus de 30.
“Mon Dieux,” he said to himself, activating the datalink which included the missiles’ altitude, course and speed.
The big Soviet bombers turned for home, their jobs done. The Tu-160 crews would have flown for 10 hours by the time they got home and would be exhausted. Soviet bombers were not notable for their comfort.
The missiles accelerated. Past the speed of sound, climbing, faster, faster. The KSR-5s were programmed to fly to more than 18,000 metres to get the best range. As they did so, the French ships also accelerated, turning south-west at flank speed of 30 knots, presenting their port quarters to the oncoming missiles in the hope that any missiles which hit might be deflected rather than pierce deep into the ship. Presenting the stern also optimized the reloading time for the Masurca missiles, whose launcher had to return to face directly aft to reload. Several helicopters flew from the decks of the various ships, headed north-east, accelerating rapidly.
When the missiles reached 130 km the French started lighting up radars of the Jean Bart and Duquesne. The Duguay-Trouin and Clemenceau did not need to switch on their radars as their short-ranged Crotale missiles could use infrared tracking. The radars from the French air defence ships were detected and reported to the Soviet raid commander.
“Покажи мне” [show me] he demanded.
“нет, это невозможно” [no, it is not possible] he shouted.
The radars were coming from a location which did not correlate with the targets. It was too late to order a mid-course correction. What had happened?
Meanwhile at sea level the dance began. The Masurca launcher on the quarterdeck of the Duquesne began to fire, then the Mk13 launcher on the Jean Bart. The latter only had a single rail launcher, but a faster fire and load sequence. The first pair of Masurcas flew off, in a huge cloud of smoke, guided by their DRBR-51 fire-control radars to the nearest missiles. The massive DRBI 23 search radar which was located in a radome behind the bridge detected all the missiles and the ship’s computers assigned SAMs from the two air defence ships to targets as efficiently as possible. The magazine in the Jean Bart was like a giant, two ring revolver arranged vertically. A missile fired, the drum rotated, loaded, fired again, every eight seconds.
On the Duquesne another pair of missiles were loaded through the magazine doors adjacent and slid along the launcher's arms. The most recent electronics upgrade meant the missiles could be shot off in the general direction of the attack and not have to be guided all the way by the ship’s fire control radars. The second pair fired, and the third pair reloaded, with the crew breaking all records for the reload. They too were fired, primarily at the KSR-5 missiles which the threat computer identified as the most serious threat. Multiple Crotale missiles on the Duguay-Trouin and the Clemenceau joined in the cacophony in the last few seconds as the Soviet missiles descended like kamikaze. The whole French fleet almost disappeared in smoke from the more than thirty missiles of three different types eventually fired.
“Cessez le feu” the air defence officer shouted in the combat information centre of the Jean Bart.
The other men in the room looked askance. What had happened, thought McIntosh? Multiple massive explosions were heard through the water, the ship shook violently. But they were alive. The Soviet missiles had missed. The helicopters launched a few minutes earlier had succeeded in their mission, carrying large blip-enhancers which had fooled the Soviet missiles’ radars. The search radar on the missiles only had a limited arc. By timing their turn an instant after all the missiles had been fired, and having the helicopters replicate the signals of the ships, the giant missiles had been fooled. Each chopper flew slowly, at the speed of a ship, just a few metres above the sea. Then as the missiles sped down, the choppers accelerated, turned the blip enhancers off and climbed. Confused, the Soviet missiles flew straight into the sea. Nearly 30 tonnes of explosive detonated only a few hundred metres from the helicopters, but all survived with no more than a drenching. The ships were several kilometres southwest. French defensive electronic warfare had also interfered with the Soviet missiles’ guidance and the datalink between the search aircraft and the launch aircraft all in an effort to throw them just a little off course.
The French admiral smiled. They had won two rounds. First his Rafales had beaten back the Soviets’ Sukhoi Su-27s, allegedly their best fighters. Now his electronics had beaten the Soviets best anti-ship missile and the crack crews from the best Soviet heavy bomber squadron. La victoire est douce, he thought to himself. But there would be more to come…
North Arabian Sea, 0533 hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January 1991
Indian patrol aircraft had reported a group of Pakistani frigates in the North Arabian Sea roughly halfway between Masirah, Oman and Karachi, Pakistan at midnight, UTC. They were on an anti-submarine sweep, following reports of submarines, presumed to be Soviet or Indian. Their leader was the PNS Tughril, with Commodore Shahid Karimullah commanding. All four were WW2-era US Gearing class destroyers that had been modernized in the 1960s to improve their sonar and anti-submarine capabilities and transferred to Pakistan in the early 1980s. The Indians spotted the ships just after midnight. The Pakistanis detected the radar of an Ilyushin Il-38 May and reported it to Pakistan Navy headquarters in Islamabad by flash messsage which, with commendable promptness, was passed on to Diego Garcia, Riyadh and Tampa via satellite.
Karimullah was ordered to abandon the search for submarines and to head home at best speed. But home was more than 300 nautical miles away. No Allied fighters were in range. Unfortunately for the Commodore and his men there was no escape. He gave it his best shot.
More Soviet Tu-16Ks armed with KSR-2 long range anti-shipping missiles had been stationed at Esfahan, central Iran, for just such an eventuality. The crews were quickly briefed, Knowing the Pakistanis had no medium or long-range air defence, the Soviets were able to fly the 1,200 nautical miles in two and half hours, skirting the US fighters they suspected were in the Gulf of Oman. Turning south west from occupied Pakistan they pressed on until the powerful Roobin-1K search radars in the Tu-16Ks found the ships at a range of more than 100 nautical miles. The air commander closed up until the little fleet was painted on every aircraft’s radar, less than 50 nautical miles away. The commander assigned three aircraft to each except the closest. Each missile was prepared for launch by the navigator in each aircraft. The missiles were the KSR-2M version, known to NATO as the AS-5a Kelt, which had a more powerful liquid-fueled twin-chamber rocket motor than the original. Once launched the missiles accelerated to 1,250 km/hr, covering the distance to the ships in less than four minutes.
The heavy missiles created an awesome display of fire, visible from many miles in the tropical morning. No midcourse correction was necessary. Three of the missiles failed to launch properly and flew off into the sea. The surviving missiles flew towards each ship as programmed, and once in range of their homing radars, homed in more or less as designated. The active radar homing failed on another and it flew until its fuel was exhausted.
The Pakistani ships had sailed as close together as they dared, hoping to confuse the active radars in the missiles. As the KSR-5s approached the ships fired a few volleys of five-inch guns, chaff and 40mm Bofors in the last few seconds of their existence, to little avail. A couple of missiles were confused and hit the sea nearby.
And then the Pakistani ships were obliterated. In 90 seconds, two ships were sunk and the remaining two lasted only a few minutes longer. The aft half of the Tughril simply ceased to exist but the front half paused, then slowly sank rearwards, giving time for some crew to escape. Each ship was hit by at least a pair of the missiles, which had weighed 4.35 tonnes at launch. Their 1,000 kg shaped charge warheads were so powerful – they were designed to sink an aircraft carrier, – that they created 12 metre holes right through two of the ships. As they were travelling at supersonic speed, there was no warning sound, although the missiles had been detected on search radars, switched on when electronic receivers picked up the distinctive radars of the Soviet Tu-16Ks.
Less a quarter of the more than 1,300 men aboard survived, many with serious burns. The unspent fuel of the missiles was spewed into the ships before igniting. Those crew members who were recovered by long-range US helicopters were suffering from severe shock. They spoke of the last few seconds of terror as their ships suddenly exploded. Commodore Karimullah was among the survivors and was able to relate the key events to a US Naval Intelligence officer who interviewed him, but he was in a bad way.
The blasts were so large that they were detected by an orbiting American satellite. NORAD was notified, according to protocol, but analysis of the blasts showed that they were non-nuclear and NORAD stood down.
450 nautical miles west of Bandar Aceh, Indonesia, 0535hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January, 1991
The reinforcement of Diego Garcia was a key Allied priority, so multiple task forces were headed there, mostly then to be transhipped to Iran or Pakistan. One such convoy, of eight merchants, was more than 1,350 nautical miles distant when the war began. The convoy was commanded by an Australian, Commodore Keith Smith, who had put his flag in HMAS Success, a French Durance class replenishment ship built in Sydney for the Royal Australian Navy. Success was accompanied by HMAS Adelaide (a modified US Perry class frigate), HMAS Hobart (a modified US Charles F Adams class), and HMAS Derwent, (a modified British Type 12 frigate). A pair of US Perry class frigates on a port visit to Perth had joined the convoy along with the USS Supply, a 49,000 ton fast replenishment ship capable of 26 knots. Together the ships formed Task Force 60 and they received the War Imminent order on the evening of the 28 January, as had all Allied commands.
Smith was a RAN veteran. He had served aboard HMAS Hobart during its frequent deployments to Vietnam in the 1960s as an ensign and then lieutenant and knew these waters well. The Hobart was an air defence ship and thus he kept it close to the centre of the convoy, with the Derwent in front and the Perrys spread in a rough triangle around the merchants, in a flexible formation which maximised the utility of their medium-range sonars and Standard SM-1 SAMs. Smith knew that a brand-new Collins class submarine was off his starboard beam, but this was useless in an air-sea battle. The three Perrys all had helicopters and at least one of these was airborne at all times, in an anti-submarine search role.
The air war had begun several hours earlier. As the Soviet Naval Air Force bombers tried to hit the French carrier and the Pakistani flotilla, Soviet MiG-29s flying from Cap Nicobar had shot down a couple of US P-3 Orions in one of the first attacks of the war. Radars from long-range Soviet patrol aircraft had been detected and passed on to Diego Garcia by flash satellite message. An Indonesian flotilla off Bandar Aceh had also detected some search radars and had to be regarded as vulnerable, since it lacked SAMs, but it had departed the port and was no longer under a protective fighter cover. Soviet bombers flying at long range attacked the Australian escorted convoy, but again by using aggressive anti-missile tactics, the Allied fleet survived unscathed.
In other opening moves, Allied forces had accurately located the Soviet convoys departing Massawa, Ethiopia and Ras Karmar, Yemen, and a big Soviet missile sub south of Yemen. They had also discovered the India carrier INS Vikrant 600 nautical miles north of the Maldives. Another Soviet sub had been discovered about 600 nm east of Diego Garcia, in an ideal position to intercept Allied merchants heading towards the island. Task Force 80, heading south east towards Diego Garcia, also reported radars from Soviet search aircraft. It was on its own for the time being.
As the French Rafales gained dominance over the Sukhois and MiGs around Socotra, a squadron of B-52s flying from Diego Garcia had laid dozens of mines in the waters around the harbor, forming a trap for the Soviet convoy which was expected to sortie east from that port.
Bandar Abbas, Iran, early hours, 0545 hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January 1991
Colonel Alison Corne had been working sixteen-hour days since her US Marines from the 7th Regiment had come ashore a few days earlier. There were not many senior female Marine officers, but the Colonel had made a good impression on the locals and her Staff Sergeant, a large and very strong African-American, had surprised the Iranian airbase commandant when he introduced himself in fluent Farsi.
Bandar Abbas was an Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force base but many changes were needed to bring it up to scratch. Colonel Corneʼs engineers had worked swiftly to improve it. But even with enthusiastic local assistance working two shifts it had been hard work, not yet complete. Three Marine squadrons, VMFA-314 with McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18C Hornet fighters and VMFA(AW)-121 with brand-new McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18D two seat fighter-bombers had flown in only a couple of days ago, joined yesterday by EA-6 Prowlers from VMAQ-2.
The USMC 3rd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion was in the process of deploying Stinger missiles but less than half of the 45 authorised had arrived; the balance were still at Diego Garcia. Colonel Corne was good at dealing with SNAFUs but even she couldn't make missiles cross the Arabian Sea by magic. Her staff had done well to get half of them here.
Most of the Marines’ aircraft were in protected revetments and hardened shelters immune to anything but a direct bomb but the IRIAF hadn't quite envisaged having to house nearly 60 aircraft and their crews without notice. Iran had endured an eight-year war with Iraq which had only concluded two years earlier; 10,000 towns and villages had been destroyed. There had been other priorities.
Some Iranian workers had just wandered on to the main runway, forcing the Combat Air Patrol to delay takeoff for several minutes, while those airborne had to be waved off, short of fuel.
She heard her Staff Sergeant yelling at an MP corporal. “Get those fuckers off my runway!”
“What is the problem,” she said to him. WTF, I am so tired..., she thought.
The base, 12 kilometres east of the city centre, was protected by Iranian HAWK SAMs dating from the 1970s. To the Colonel’s astonishment they started firing.
They never established whether the people wandering on the strip were Soviet agents, or just confused locals. An air raid siren sounded while most people were staring at the HAWKs. Hundreds of people rushed for the slit trenches which had mushroomed all over the base, including the Colonel and her staff.
Taking advantage of Mt Geno only 20km to the northwest, the Soviet cruise missiles arrived with less than two minutes warning. The radar near the mountain had been down with some gremlins, giving a vital break to the Soviets. One minute everyone was working and the next next... bedlam. The HAWKS launched, some Stingers too, but more than 40 missiles hit the base. The Colonel started to count them but lost track after 15, they were coming too fast. The runways, the fuel farm, the barracks were all hit. Within three minutes the base was a shambles. “Just like the Battle of Britain,” Corne thought grimly.
In the circumstances casualties were remarkably light. The initiative of the Iranian air traffic controller in the now shattered tower in punching the air raid button, and the prompt reactions of the Marines and many locals had helped, but more than 200 men and women had been killed or badly injured. The base was out of action for at least eight hours, grounding the three Marine squadrons until the runways and infrastructure could be repaired.
Djibouti, Republic of Djibouti, Horn of Africa, 0620hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January, 1991
It was almost always warm in Djibouti but it was mid-winter. Today it would be 35 Celsius but not yet. The men and women of the French Air Force's 3e Escadrille, 10e Escadre de Chasse had gotten used to it. However, hot air was bad for jet aircraft and the take-off performance of the French Dassault Mirage F.1C fighter bombers suffered. The SNECMA Atar 9K-50 turbojet which powered the Dassault was based on a WW2 German BMW design updated by a team led by former German engineers. The French plane was underpowered compared to American contemporaries but the commander harried his men to get them loaded and into the air as quickly as possible once the strike was authorised, taking advantage of the relatively cool morning air. Unlike the Mirage III with its delta wing, the F.1 had a cropped delta wing and a conventional tail, giving better low-speed handling.
Aden, Yemen, Tuesday, 0700hrs UTC, Tuesday 29 January 1991
The Tomahawk cruise missiles had been launched in a well-planned strike. Three submarines had launched their missiles while safely submerged: USS Key West, south west of Masirah, Oman; USS Miami, off the eastern tip of Somalia, the USS Baton Rouge, off the south-east point of Oman, firing more than 30 of the big missiles between them. Task Force 70, based on the battleship USS Wisconsin, had fired a total of two dozen more. The missiles were carefully routed to avoid known Soviet air defence radars, flying over south-west Oman and southern Yemen using their Digital Scene Matching Area Corellator (DSMAC) terrain matching gear to full effect.
The timing was perfect, the air defence commander thought. That is really hard to do in practice, he acknowledged ruefully to himself. The mission planning was excellent, he thought ruefully to himself. The Wisconsin group must have sailed at flank speed to get into range, overnight. That was not expected by the Intelligence Directorate of the Main Staff of the Soviet Navy, known except to their faces as The Geniuses. Aden International Airport, the former RAF Khormaksar, was not heavily defended. Most of the available SAMs were on the other side of the Arabian Sea.
Some of the Tomahawks had been modified to home onto air defence radars. The key air defence communications centre was pounded into rubble, killing more than 50 men. It was only random chance that the commander was elsewhere at the time, attending a staff meeting. He watched, horrified, while being driven back to base as some of the missiles came in low through the desert morning. He swore as one visibly turned while he watched.
Minutes later the French Mirages arrived. The Tomahawks had destroyed the air defence infrastructure. The French base was less than 250 kilometres away. Even the rather short-ranged Mirage could haul a full load that distance. The Mirages attacked the airbase itself. The French Durandal rocket-bombs shot downwards at high velocity, penetrated the concrete of the runways at critical points and then exploded, producing a Moonscape of shattered concrete.
A French Durandal rocket bomb explodes on Aden's runway
Beluga cluster bombs rained down on buildings, the fuel farm and the ammunition dump. The secondary explosions went on for hours, with cluster bombs exploding at irregular intervals to discourage repair.
While many Soviet air-defence missiles were fired, few were guided. Without either radar or communications, only short-range infrared guided missiles could be fired and they were not very effective against fast, low-flying jets flying away at high speed. The Soviet missiles created a extraordinary pyrotechnic display and a great deal of noise. While the French pilots steeled themselves and violently jinked as missiles flew nearby, none hit their targets and the French got home unscathed, thanks to good planning, high speed and luck. The numerous Soviet aircraft based at Aden which were in the air would have to find another base and would be out of action for several days.
Kerwan, occupied Iran, 0730 hrs UTC, 29 January 1991
A US spy satellite had observed large-scale movements of Soviet aircraft. Some Soviet fighters moved north away from the Pakistani theatre. Reconaissance aircraft flew to Indian bases. Schwarzkopfʼs air commander and his staff developed a response which had involved a risky aerial refuelling to give A-6E Intruders from the USS Lincoln the range to hit Kerwan while vulnerable. Escorting EA-6 Prowlers were able to provide electronic noise which confused the Soviet air defences. Kerwan, like Aden, and Bandar Abbas, was badly damaged. Maybe the US Marines are on to something with those AV-8 V/STOL planes thought the deputy base commander drily as he assessed priorities for repair. "Where are those Tudeh bastards when I need them," he thought angrily.
Addu Atoll, Maldives, 0757 hrs UTC, 29 January 1991
The US Task Force 40, based around the nuclear carrier USS Enterprise, sailed north-east from Diego Garcia in the early hours of the morning. By dawn it was less than 250 nautical miles from Addu Atoll, which the Indians had used to base Mirage 2000H strike fighters from No. 21 squadron, Jaguar strike bombers from No. 14 squadron and Canberra reconaissance aircraft from No. 6 squadron.
The Enterprise and her escorts the USS Arkansas, the USS Bainbridge - both nuclear-powered - and the USS O'Bannon and USS Barry, had steamed at more than 30 knots for nearly eight hours, putting its strike aircraft in range of the isolated base.
South of Raysut, Oman, 0805 hrs UTC, Tuesday, 15 January 1991
The Omani missile boats had sailed in the early hours, soon after the Soviet convoy had hit the minefield off Hadibu, to reduce the chance of being spotted by unfriendly eyes. While the Soviet convoy negotiated American mines, the Omanis had sped southwest. The Soviet ships had been travelling in electronic silence, screened by a variety of helicopters using Mk 1 eyeballs to scout. The Soviet air defence radars were in passive mode.
Lottkowitz’s original convoy was now escorted by the 65,000 ton carrier Tbilisi, the very modern 30,000 ton battlecruiser Kalinin, an elderly 15cm gun cruiser, two missile cruisers including the powerful Marshal Ustinov, and three missile destroyers, two of which were Sovrenmennyy class, among the most modern ships in the world. The admiral on the Kalinin thought escorting a convoy with the nuclear-powered battlecruiser was an incredible waste – his ship was designed to sink aircraft carriers, not escort humble cargo ships. But he obeyed, with bad grace: orrders were orders. Rear Admiral Lottkowitz was in command, since he was a few months senior to the Admiral on the Tbilisi, adding to the latter’s fury.
The Soviets’ intelligence analysts had assessed the risk from the Omanis as low. The era of short-ranged missile boats was over, their use under most conditions imaginable, suicidal. The Province class boats were designed and built by the British shipyard Vosper Thornycroft, based on Ramadan class boats built for Egypt. Their four powerful Paxman diesels gave them a 40 knot speed; each carried eight French Exocet MM40 missiles. Exocets had had an impressive operational career. Just a few years earlier Exocets had sunk the HMS Sheffield and SS Atlantic Conveyor during the Falklands War. More recently, two Iraqi Exocets had nearly sunk an American frigate, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf in during the Iran-Iraq War.
The Omanis skilfully used a fleet of commercial fishing trawlers to disguise their approach, closing to within 50 nautical miles. They had been provided with good intelligence, thanks to a US drone and were able to concentrate on the damaged freighter and a nearby frigate. A Soviet helicopter ordered to warn off the fishing trawlers detected the missiles on radar and radioed the fact back to the Tbilisi and Kalinin. In accord with doctrine, the air defence commander immediately ordered all air defence ships to activate their radars.
The MR-800 Voshkod 3D air search radar on board the Kalinin (pictured) and the Ustinov was one of the most powerful afloat, theoretically capable of detecting an Exocet-sized missile more than 100 nautical miles away. But the Omanis had one thing going for them: the Exocets were sea-skimmers, cruising only 2-3 metres above the waves. Not even the most powerful radar could see through water: the Soviet radars were limited by the radar horizon, which was only about 25 miles even at the height of the giant Kalinin’s mast. However, the S-300F missiles aboard the two Soviet missile cruisers had an unusual feature: secondary infrared homing, introduced precisely to deal with sea-skimming missiles, although nowhere near as reliable as radar.
The helicopter’s radioed warning gave some vital time, and air defence control began to fire some of the big missiles. Just over two minutes later, the Exocets were detected by Soviet radars. In accord with usual practice, the Soviets had a ring of air defence ships around the convoy, with anti-submarine ships out further. The Kalinin and the Ustinov were close to the carrier, together with a corvette, so the first ship to actually detect the Exocets was the Stoykiy, a missile destroyer. Its main armament, the 3S90 Uragan surface-to-air missile used the same 9K37 missile originally developed for the Soviet Army, which knew it as the Buk. It was not optimized for firing at sea-skimmers and it was fired from a mechanical launcher similar to the US Mk 13 launcher.
After a couple of Uragans missed, the air defence control officer ordered the Stoykiy to stop firing. Now more confident, the air defence officer allocated an S-300 missile from his big cruisers to each of the Exocets. Sixteen S-300s flew off from the Kalinin and another eight from the Ustinov. In both ships the missiles flew out of vertical launchers, the computers and fire-control radars able to control multiple missiles near-simultaneously. The Fleet was confident these missiles were the best in the world. One merchant captain said later the smoke coming from the Kalinin was so great he thought it had been hit.
The S-300s accelerated with fantastic speed, at roughly thirty times the force of gravity, going from zero to four times the speed of sound in less than fifteen seconds. While waiting for the results, the air defence officer, who had worked with the Serb air defence troops in the Balkan war, nervously chewed his nails. "The captain of the Kirov got a Stalin prize for mastering this system. I hope it works as advertised," he mused.
As the Omanis missile boats turned for home, they used jammers to try to divert the Soviet air defence missiles. The Israelis had been quite forthcoming when approached for assistance, having had as much experience as anyone with modern missile combat. Despite the Omanisʼ best efforts, about half of their missiles fell in the first volley, aided by the S-300s infrared homing. The balance disappeared with the second volley, only five nautical miles from the Stoykiy, which had begun to fire chaff as the missiles approached.
The Soviet convoy and Kalinin task force were also being escorted by the Rassokho, a Project-671 class (Victor-I class to the Allies) nuclear attack submarine. It was a 1960s design and far from new. Unfortunately for the Omanis, the Rassokho was stationed close to their launch position. Once they opened up their engines, they could be heard for miles. The submarine launched three of its type 53 anit-ship torpedoes. They were old but effective. The missile boats had no sonar and ran straight into the torpedoes. There were few survivors.
500 nautical miles west of Maldives, 0800-0900 hrs UTC, 29 January 1991
The patchy performance of the morning raids, particularly the failure against the French and Australian task forces, leads to a radical reappraisal and the Soviets change tactics.
The move by the USS Lincoln task force westwards from the Gulf of Oman exposed a gap in the Allies’ air defence between Pakistan and the Persian Gulf which the Soviets skilfully exploited, sending regiments of long-range missile bombers against isolated Allied convoys and ships discovered earlier. The Indian Canberras have done their job and located some merchant ships escorted by four frigates north-west of Diego Garcia heading for the islands. Soviet naval intelligence knew this was Task Force 80 which comprised eight cargo ships and four US Navy frigates.
The big Tupolev Tu-160s of 84th Guards Heavy Bomber Regiment from Teheran had
barely landed when a new mission came through from Moscow. Fortunately, the
Regiment had been expanded in anticipation of heavy use and only a few crews
flew both missions. Again using the KSR-5 missile they attacked Task Force 80 cruelly.
The commodore of the little fleet was an experienced US Navy Commander, Michael Noyer, a blond-haired tough guy from Wisconsin who had made his career on the basis of sheer competence and organisational adaptability. Since receiving the War Imminent flash message his three ships had adopted wartime levels of readiness and detected search radar emissions early in the morning. Noyer began zig-zagging and kept his only missile frigate, the Oliver Hazard Perry class USS Nicholas, close to the centre of the task force. His three older Knox class frigates were anti-submarine ships, the USS Meyerkord, USS Bowen and USS Ainsworth. Each had a helicopter and an ASROC anti-submarine missiles, even a few Harpoon missiles, but only a five inch gun and a 20mm Phalanx Close In Weapons System.
The Phalanx was a remarkable piece of kit, a Gatling type gun which fired 50 rounds a second of tungsten-cored ammunition totally automatically and had quickly been nick-named R2D2 in the fleet, due to its resemblance to the rotund robot in Star Wars. The computer on board the Phalanx fired sufficient rounds at each target to ensure a kill, switchly rapidly from target to target, but it only had an effective range of 1,500 metres.
USS Bowen had achieved brief fame in 1983 when she provided
fire support to US Marines in Beirut, Lebanon, the first ship to engage hostile
fire in the Mediterranean since WW2. The 46 strong Knox class were controversial ships, with a single engine, limited firepower, but excellent sonars and reloads for the ASROC anti-submarine rockets. Refits had added Harpoon capability and a Kaman SH-2 Seasprite helicopter.
Three Soviet bombers squadrons attack Task Force 80, over a period of more than an hour. Tu-16Ks from Ras Karma attacked from the north, the Tu-22Ms from Ashkabad flew at extreme range and attacked from the east as did the Tu-160s from Teheran Successively the Tu-160s sank the SS Cape Cod and another freighter, the Tu-16s from Socotra sank the Nicholas and Bowen and the Tu-22Ms sank the SS Lyra and another freighter. By late afternoon only the USS Ainsworth and two freighters remained, steaming towards Diego Garcia at maximum speed while Task Force 40, centred around the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise steamed at flank speed – almost 35 knots – towards them. Noyer had been rescued from USS Nicholas but had been badly shaken by the experience of losing two-thirds of his squadron.
The course of the carrier and its escorts were slightly slowed by the need for the USS Enterprise to turn into the wind to launch then successful strikes against Addu Atoll and then Male in the Maldives. The F/A-18Cs of squadrons VFA-82 and VFA-86 had destroyed the former and A-6E Intruders of VA-165 had badly damaged the latter, badly damaging runways, critical buildings, the air defence network and the fuel farm aided by intelligence from the RAF of the local geography and the layout.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1100 hrs UTC, Tuesday 29 January 1991
Schwarzkopf’s executive assistant, Colonel Andreas Hardegge, convened a meeting of senior commanders in the early afternoon, in the middle of the Soviet attacks on Bandar Abbas and TF80. It was not a happy meeting. The senior Navy representative squirmed as he explained that the sunk ships represented about 14 per cent of the planned lift, more than 60,000 tons of ammunition, other stores, a field hospital and a great deal of equipment. Schwarzkopf had a notorious temper but remained icily calm, even when news came that a fully loaded oil tanker called the Burmah Endeavour had been attacked by air to surface missiles, damaged and then torpedoed by an unknown, probably Indian submarine in the Eastern Arabian Sea, later identified as the Sindhuvaj, an almost-new Kilo class submarine.
The missiles had probably come from Tu-16Ks based in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam,
although Vietnam had not formally joined the Soviets, leading to a very angry and terse meeting between the Vietnamese ambassador in Washington and the US Secretary of State, James Baker, III. When it had been launched
in 1977 the Burmah Endeavour was the third largest oil tanker in the
world – more than 400,000 tons deadweight – but much larger tankers had been built since. The war had come so quickly that it
was sailing alone. The loss of so much oil threatened an environmental
catastrophe, but it was well out to sea.
The principal intelligence advisor, US Navy Captain Alan George, told the meeting the pattern of Soviet attacks has changed since the opening salvos.
“They’ve hammered Bandar Abbas but otherwise hit easy targets. We simply couldn’t do anything to save that task force, unfortunately,” he said.
“It is clear anything which can be spotted by the Soviets is at risk unless heavily escorted,” he added.
Task Force 70, based around the USS Abraham Lincoln, had already been ordered to return to its station,
its goal of helping to neutralise Aden achieved. Had it been worth the loss of the convoy? That was Schwarzkopfʼs decision ultimately. No wonder he was raging in his office, George thought to himself.
The F-15C Eagles of the USAF 25th Tactical Fighter Squadron based at Bandar Abbas on strategic missions will be able to rebase to Oman, but it will take a couple of days for them to be combat effective, thought the Generalʼs aide. You win some, you lose some.
More bad news came later in the afternoon. A Soviet submarine, believed to be
the brand-new Kilo class Treska, sank the French replenishment
ship Marne in the Gulf of Aden. The ship lasted long enough for most of
the crew to get off, but the French would feel the loss of the Durance
class ship acutely. A second Soviet submarine, believed to be another new Kilo
class boat, the Beluga, sank a small flotilla of French minesweepers
which had been in company of the Marne. Those Kilos are killing us, Colonel Hardegge thought. No wonder the Navy's been paranoid about them. We had become complacent about the older Soviet subs.
The Air Tasking Order for the day had already been prepared. The French Mirages from Djibouti attacked
Ethiopian missile boats in Gulf of Aden, sinking same in a brief action as
one-sided as the actions against TF80. With no air defences of any consequence,
the French pilots were able to send multiple Exocets against each of the
missile boats. The Soviet submarines in the area did not surface to rescue the
survivors, although there were many other boats in the area, mostly fishing
boats, which did.
As TF70 hurried eastwards, A-6E Intruders of VA-94 from USS Lincoln refuelled
in mid-air and then re-attacked Kerwan, in Soviet-occupied Iran, destroying it as
thoroughly as the Soviets had Bandar Abbas.
Kuwaiti F/A-18A Hornets flying from Kuwait City bombed Shiraz, in central Iran, suffering casualties from defensive fire but damaging the airfield, with Qatari Mirage F.1s joining in. Between them the two attacks heavily damaged the airfield, rendering the Soviet aircraft which had transferred there in the opening hours of the campaign useless. News of the successful attacks against the Soviet airfields in Iran was greeted
with cheers when reported to Diego Garcia.
Two F/A-18C squadrons from the USS Lincoln, VFA-22 and VFA-95, attacked Jihari in Soviet-occupied Pakistan, in conjunction with USMC F/A-18Ds from Muscat, Oman, causing significant damage and immobilising more Soviet aircraft.
Far to the east, Malaysian F-5Es and F-111Fs of the USAF's 79th Tactical Fighter Squadron. flying from Georgetown, Malaysia had planned to strike Cap Nicobar, in the Nicobar Islands, after an electrical storm caused multiple electronics failures.
In view of the loss of the Burmah Endeavour and two thirds of TF80,
Maritime Command ordered some tankers in the Gulf of Oman to reverse course, to
avoid the concentration of Indian and Soviet submarines nearby. Arab missile
boats moved out into the Persian Gulf, while much of the Pakistani fleet came
out into the North Arabian Sea.
Much further south-east the Australian-led convoy TF 60 and the USS Ranger-centred TF11 met up. The Indonesian flotilla which had sailed out of Banda Aceh
returned home, with Thai and Malaysian missile boats sailing at high speed
along the east coast of Sumatra to join the Allied ships and planes around
Banda Aceh.
The French TF Clemenceau moved deeper into the Gulf of Aden, towards
Djibouti, its officers and crew in a state of high alert, especially once the sinking of the Marne became known.
The Soviet convoy from Socotra continued to sail towards Iran, escorted by
the Tbilisi, but the second convoy, in the Bab-al-mandab was ordered to stay put,
despite the heavy escort of a powerful cruiser flotilla. Stavka was not in a mood to take unnecessary risks as news of successfully Allied air strikes started to arrive.
USS Narwhal, attack submarine, 700 nautical miles south-east of Sri Lanka. Indian Ocean, 1645 hrs UTC, Tuesday, 29 January 1991
The sonar technician in the USS Narwhal called his supervisor, who called the submarine's skipper over immediately.
"We've got company, Sir. It looks like an Indian Kilo class submarine. In the second convergence zone, south-south east. It is in a hurry, probably after Task Force 60 and less cautious than he should be, snorting at 15 knots. The computer is trying to localise him now. There are some whales out there, lots of biologics, but the computer is gradually processing them," he said.
The technician showed his skipper the display. Four vertical lines, unequally spaced. Although no two subs were identical the Kilo class signatures had been of keen interest to NATO submariners since they had started coming into service in the early 1980s. Twelve knots was a very fast average speed for a conventional submarine, out here in the open ocean.
"Steer course 170 degrees, speed 14 knots. After 15 minutes, steer 210 at five knots," the skipper ordered. Sprint and drift, position and reposition. Get multiple bearings.
"Aye, Aye sir, Course 170, speed 14 knots," the helmsan acknowledged.
The nuclear-powered Narwhal could travel much faster, but to a submarine stealth was everything and the Narwhal, built to a unique design, was the quietest submarine in the US fleet. The American submarine had superior sonar, including an excellent towed-array sonar which, depending on sonar conditions, had a detection range of more than 100 miles.
Arabian Sea, 350 nautical miles south of Oman, 1745 hrs UTC, Tuesday 29 January 1991
This story is based on The Indian Ocean War scenario in 5th Fleet, a simulation game published by Victory Games in 1989 designed by Joseph M Balkoski copyright Victory Games. Some of the above text is drawn from the scenario. The names of historical figures are used fictitiously. Some of what is described happened, but I have moved some events in time with generous artistic licence. The attempted assassination of Mr Gorbachev actually occurred but the policeman succeeded in grabbing the rifle and disturbing the gunman’s aim.
Players - Soviets – Denny M, Indians – Paul G, Allies – Nigel Brand
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