WW3 1985

[Stendec5]

I have just finished reading two books by the late General Sir John Hackett;
"The Third World War" and "The Third World War--The Untold Story."
Interesting stuff to be sure.
The air war (Central Region) includes a massive B-52 strike on massed WP forces at a crucial moment in the conflict at which the Buffs take heavy losses but make a big contribution to the successful allied counter-attack.
The land war is also covered in detail with accompanying maps as the WP sythe
into West Germany, Holland etc.
Most poignant of all is a single (nuclear) missile strike on Birmingham UK described in chilling detail (followed by an even bigger US/UK counter-strike on Minsk).
All pure fiction of course yet disturbingly believable even though the books were written over thirty years ago now.
Has anyone else read these fascinating books?

[Wander00]

A copy was always on the desk during station exercises and Tacevals. I still have a copy somewhere

[teeteringhead]

ISTR Ground Zero for the Brum Bomb was Winson Green Prison, but can't remember why:confused:

[ExAscoteer]

Presumably it's a good aiming point. :E

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Pretty much all the RAF aircrew I knew had read it.

'Chieftains' is a good read from a BAOR tank crew's perspective (and on kindle now), and of course 'Red Storm Rising'

I recall a briefing in 1989 when we were given a secondary role of Central Front AD. The briefer was keen to point out that things had improved greatly since the days of the WW1 'twenty-minuters', and that we now had a life expectancy of twenty four minutes. We were mightily relieved when the Berlin Wall came down a month later - well, relieved and edgy. I don't think the risk of some kind of Soviet coup/war passed till around 1991.

Winson Green Prison is approximately in the centre of the population of Greater Birmingham. If they had wanted to hit the centre of evil in Birmingham, they would have aimed at Chelmsley Wood not Winson Green, according to my sister who used to live (or rather, exist) in CW.

[Roadster280]

Could they not have been invited to drop a few more, just to make sure? Tipton, Handsworth etc.

[Stendec5]

I share the opinions re' Birmingham. Got semi-lost there couple of years ago. A
quote of Churchill's kept jumping into my head as I floundered around (having double-checked the central locking) "If you're going through Hell. Keep going."

I wonder what the parallels are for today. Obviously the starting-point has been pushed back from the IGB to the borders of the Motherland itself so they would have further to come. However, NATO is comparably weaker that it ever was in the mid-80s.
We also have Obama and "Dave" in place of Ronnie and Maggie.
God help us.

[air pig]

Interesting couple of books available about BRIXMIS and their activities inside East Germany during the cold war. Never realised what the RAF got up to along with their army colleagues, watching the Warsaw Pact in particular GSFG.

[Cows getting bigger]

Those of us at Gutersloh were pretty sure that we wouldn't see the end of the first day unless we managed to disperse. I often wondered how long the Harrier force could continue from their field sites, probably one or two moves at the most. Regardless, the 'threat' didn't really spoil the party atmosphere. :)

Quite some time later I was also part of that gentlemen's drinking club otherwise known as AMF(L); another sacrificial lamb.

[Wokkafans]

There was an interesting BBC R4 programme on BRIXMIS quite a while back. While it's no longer available via the BBC, a MP3 download (3.27 MB), which will play in Windows Media Player, is available here:

http://hfsurfing.googlepages.com/BRIXMIS.mp3

WF :ok:

[Evalu8ter]

Harold Coyles' book "Team Yankee" was a company size account of the same fictional war. Hackett's book remains an excellent tale - though often ignored next to Clancy's magnum opus...

[Wander00]

ISTR the RAF Historical Society published a good record of a day conference on BRIXMIS

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

On the NATO Intelligence Officer course, part of TLP, we had an excellent talk from a guy who had just finished running an IGB listening post, and a talk from someone who took the photos of the Sov ship-launched missiles as they launched them :eek::eek: Easily the most barking mad individual I have ever met. no-one will ever make a movie of his aircrew career as no-one would ever believe it.

[John Farley]

Cows getting bigger.

The field sites were strictly peactime training sites aimed at making the training case harder than the operational case. The war sites were supermarket car parks and other urban areas. (less mud and some general IR all round. The IR signiture of a field site was silly!)

Interestingly if the whole thing went really wrong the Harriers were the only aeroplanes that you could take to where the fuel and/or weapons were stuck behind the lines.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

and, IIRC, you could run the Pegasus on supermarket diesel for 10 hours or so. Trashed after that, but as Cows said, any Harrier pilot would have counted himself lucky to survive that long.

[jayteeto]

Joking apart, we knew the score on the squadrons. We were not there to come back for tea and medals. It was crystal clear that we were there to slow them down and to die in the process. It wasn't talked about very much, but you always had the option to PVR if you didn't like it.

[Pontius Navigator]

Harold Coyles' book "Team Yankee" was a company size account of the same fictional war. Hackett's book remains an excellent tale - though often ignored next to Clancy's magnum opus...
I never met Harry but I did meet his neighbour. Coyle was a tank major and wrote Team Yankee from the perspective of the Team. Coyle attributed the major premise of his book to Hackett.

For an airman, the most impressive aspect of Team Yankee is the almost complete lack of Air, either friendly or hostile. The reason is not that his book is army centric but that the battle field for Team Yankee is vanishingly small compared with the high speed theatre-wide aspects of the air war.

On Hackett's use of Birmingham and the counter blow on Minsk, in an earlier Wintex when nuclear exchange was opened, SACEUR elected to make a token demonstration. Now I can't remember if it was in response to a Soviet strike on Birmingham or pre-emption, but the demonstration involved nuclear release on 50 WP targets - Endex followed a few minutes later :)

[Pontius Navigator]

A copy was always on the desk during station exercises and Tacevals. I still have a copy somewhere
In Tacevals a major weakness was the totality of peace outside.

In one Taceval, I can't remember where, but it was made particularly realistic as the BBC (IIRC) broadcast a similar exercise at one of the Clutch stations. Sitting in Fortress UK watching the 'live' action in RAFG was really spooky.

[Courtney Mil]

You cab by it on Amazon for just £3,806,28 here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Third-World-General-John-Hackett/dp/0722141858/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406983815&sr=8-1&keywords=Third+World+War

[Stendec5]

Nearly 4K for a paperback??? Yet next to it you can (as I did) get a perfectly acceptable copy for a penny + postage???

How do you think UK air defences would have held up 8/85. This being pre-ADV Tornado so we're talking Lightnings/Phantoms/Hawk plus whatever US assets could be spared to beef things up.
Also, no HASs at Binbrook.

[NutLoose]

Those of us at Gutersloh were pretty sure that we wouldn't see the end of the first day unless we managed to disperse. I often wondered how long the Harrier force could continue from their field sites, probably one or two moves at the most. Regardless, the 'threat' didn't really spoil the party atmosphere.



Similar at Bruggen, we often thought the exercise decontam phase of returning jets was a pointless exercise as nothing wouid be left. The Station would have been gone, or there would be nothing to return.

[Pontius Navigator]

In the early '60s we were given the telephone numbers of the Air Attaches so we could get further orders - a new bomb and new target perhaps.

Post-strike we had to broadcast our strikerep and log all those we received. 543 had the job of overflying the targets. Who were they kidding?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

On a similar thread a few years ago, several owned up to having a 'bolthole' earmarked in case on RTB all main bases were radioactive smoking holes - an 'On the Beach' location. Mine was Akureyri in Iceland.

[Pontius Navigator]

I used to order stacks of approach plates, not for the procedures I hasten to add. Some were disinformation to hide the real ones. AIDU duly produced plates for northern Sweden. Years later they did a trawl to find out who wanted them. Production was cut to save money.

Later some of our boltholes were sunny or sh1te, if you get my meaning. We had goolie chits bug no gold sovereigns.

[Chris_H81]

Re. the near-4K paperback - the hefty price tag is a common error due to the seller using some sort of automatic listing software rather than having input the individual price themselves, some of them generate prices automatically using 'metrics' (bah, business speak) which occasionally go awry.