People's War

[lordroel]

Oct 13, 2021 17:39:15 GMT James G said:

Thirty-nine – Betrayal


The East Germans had a total of nineteen Coalition aircrew in custody. They were hunting for more known to have been downed over the DDR and on the run, but bagging almost twenty of them was considered by the regime to have been quite a success. The country was full of uniformed military personnel, so many of those reservists, and on a couple of occasions, it had been they who had been instrumental in seeing the aircrew captured. State propaganda played up their role in that: ordinary East Germans, patriots to a man & woman, doing their bit in the people’s war. All of those captives had been offered up to be released as part of an end to the Coalition’s air campaign. The goodwill that setting them free – not from hostile governments, but from the people within them – was regarded as far more important than holding them. The injured ones especially would play a role in what was seen as a savvy political move. Of the nineteen, seven were Americans. There were additionally four Britons, three Frenchmen, two Belgians and one each from Denmark, Italy & the Netherlands. All had been spread out across the country, held at various sites less the Americans make one of their own propaganda moves with a big rescue effort to get them all at once. They’d been taken to East Berlin though and the DDR regime was ready to hand them over to the Russians so Moscow could arrange for them to be gotten out and gain its own goodwill in that. However, the Coalition launched that extensive set of follow-up air attacks across East Germany. There was nothing physically stopping the hand-over but, in response, the regime led by Margot Honecker halted the transfer of those nineteen to the Russians. For their own safety, so said an official statement that came out of East Berlin, there could be no hand over of those aircrew.

Cross-German rail traffic relied extensively on East German participation. Not just through the Inner-German Border but also inside West Berlin too there were rail workers for the DDR regime who kept the trains running. Those links had been shut ahead of Operation Allied Sword getting underway when East Germany fully sealed its borders. Waiting over in West Germany, near to Brunswick and close to Checkpoint Alpha, were several freight trains laden with essential food and medical supplies destined for West Berlin. The government in Bonn had put together the relief convoy and had planned to send the trains direct to that isolated city with a joint West German-DDR cooperation undertaken. The skies were closed, so too the roads, but the East Germans were prepared to see a rail convoy (something which they could fully control) make that journey. Just like the prisoner transfer, the passage of those freight trains was cancelled pretty much at the last minute. It was too dangerous for that convoy of relief supplies to make the trip with the DDR not willing to put its rail workers at risk: such was the reasoning made in another official announcement.

East Germany shut down those two avenues of seeing a return to pre-conflict normality not just because the country was heavily bombed overnight when the widespread belief had been that that had come to an end. Honecker and the Politburo did so also because the United States quite deliberately, openly too, scuppered the peace deal being worked upon in an effort made by both Bonn and Moscow working in unison. When he was running for election the next year, seeking a second term, it would be said during that campaign that President Cuomo acted out of a personal motive against the involvement of Chernomyrdin. The conflict in 1995 with East Germany figured heavily in that presidential race and the revelations which were backed up by leaked internal documents didn’t come as much of a surprise at that stage. Yet, in early July ‘95, when it did happen, there was a significant shock at what was done. Cuomo had his secretary of state go up to New York where the UN was. Chancellor Schäuble and Chernomyrdin had both sent their foreign ministers to there where they were going to use that international body to provide the framework for what they had set up. Those foreign ministers were seeking to bring neutral countries onboard. When the US SecState arrived though, she let it be known that her country was fully opposed to that, would take measures against others who supported it and also veto any UN action. The East Germans couldn’t be trusted, so was the reasoning, and they were trying to take the West German and the Russians, and thus anyone else who they could bring with them, for fools.

Chernomyrdin had agreed to work with Schäuble only through the UN. The latter had wanted for Russia to make use of its victor rights from WW2 where those related to East Germany but his counterpart in Moscow had preferred to see things done under a UN mandate. Nuclear inspections, the sending of peacekeepers into the Czech Republic and the DDR getting rid of its ballistic missile force were considered by Chernomyrdin to be more that Russia alone could handle. Schäuble had gone along with that though not with wholescale naivety. He had known that the Americans would do something… just not do what they did so effectively, so fast and also without care as to who knew that they were prepared to kill all talk of peace. Once the SecState did what she did, following presidential instructions to the letter, that was the end of that. The Russians pulled out of the diplomacy that the West Germans had brought them in to see done. It was pointless to try and carry on. Chernomyrdin himself would later make a statement from Moscow bemoaning the American position where they wanted to continue to see peace in Europe destabilised, but Schäuble was quicker off the mark. He spoke to the media early in the morning after the night of air attacks across in the DDR and linked the two events – what happened in New York and the further bombing – together. Diplomacy had failed once more, he said, as the American-led Coalition was determined to do everything to carry on with its war.


News camera crews based in West Berlin had on the first night of the air campaign shot some excellent footage from vantage points of explosions on the other side of the Berlin Wall when the DDR capital was bombed. There had been no repeat of those images on subsequent nights due to the Coalition not striking in East Berlin again. On the third night though, a CNN team in the American sector of West Berlin had gone to the southwestern corner and recorded footage of what happened outside in the direction of Potsdam. They didn’t get anything of good quality and viewers weren’t really able to see what they were looking at either. Yet there were big fireballs recorded once again. With night #4, Western media teams got nothing from inside West Berlin looking out when seeking to broadcast images of air attacks. The few others inside the DDR itself also weren’t able to gain live footage either that night too. Only the following morning were they escorted out of the ‘protected accommodation’ that they were in and taken by their handlers to various locations across the country did they see the aftermath. Images from bombed-out sites was recorded but it had none of the sex appeal that huge explosions broadcast live did. However, where there were more camera crews outside of airbases being used by the Coalition in West Germany and other European countries, there was footage during the night taken of aircraft lifting off and more of that of them returning too including some daylight images. News that jets were flying and presumably heading eastwards was broadcast in real time. The general public were made aware of what was going on via that medium long ahead of that being confirmed.

It wasn’t until the next morning that official statements were made from Coalition governments. There was confirmation made of what was already known: there had been further air strikes made against East Germany. From out of the MOD in London, a spokesman highlighted the activity on the ground around the nuclear sites and thus explained the reasoning for the heavy targeting of them. It was a concise and accurate statement with solid justification provided for those air attacks and what was deemed the supporting ones to make sure that the mission there wasn’t something that the DDR could defend against. Supporters of Operation Allied Sword were convinced by that, and too by additional remarks made by other spokespeople, ministers and leaders in further countries. As to the opponents of the ongoing military action, they really couldn’t have given a damn about what was said. There was no justification in their eyes, none at all. They only saw betrayal.

In West Germany, the subsequent outpouring of anger that was seen in public followed that belief. There had been a chance for peace, with East Germany willing to go the extra mile, and in reply came first the egregious actions taken at the UN and then those bombs dropped once more upon their fellow Germans. A statement out of East Berlin said that more civilian casualties had been caused – no details given – during the renewed air strikes. That inflamed things more. Protests and demonstrations took place in West Germany with a lot of that directed towards the big Coalition military bases on their soil. The sense of betrayal was wider than just within that one country. The anti-war movement in Coalition countries was just as outraged by what happened. The numbers of people who agreed with them, who had previously been supportive of the air campaign, increased due to defections from that camp too when the loudest voices against the conflict again and again made that claim of betrayal.

In the end demonstrations are not going to help East Germany.

[stevep]

Oct 13, 2021 18:33:16 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 13, 2021 17:39:15 GMT James G said:

Thirty-nine – Betrayal


The East Germans had a total of nineteen Coalition aircrew in custody. They were hunting for more known to have been downed over the DDR and on the run, but bagging almost twenty of them was considered by the regime to have been quite a success. The country was full of uniformed military personnel, so many of those reservists, and on a couple of occasions, it had been they who had been instrumental in seeing the aircrew captured. State propaganda played up their role in that: ordinary East Germans, patriots to a man & woman, doing their bit in the people’s war. All of those captives had been offered up to be released as part of an end to the Coalition’s air campaign. The goodwill that setting them free – not from hostile governments, but from the people within them – was regarded as far more important than holding them. The injured ones especially would play a role in what was seen as a savvy political move. Of the nineteen, seven were Americans. There were additionally four Britons, three Frenchmen, two Belgians and one each from Denmark, Italy & the Netherlands. All had been spread out across the country, held at various sites less the Americans make one of their own propaganda moves with a big rescue effort to get them all at once. They’d been taken to East Berlin though and the DDR regime was ready to hand them over to the Russians so Moscow could arrange for them to be gotten out and gain its own goodwill in that. However, the Coalition launched that extensive set of follow-up air attacks across East Germany. There was nothing physically stopping the hand-over but, in response, the regime led by Margot Honecker halted the transfer of those nineteen to the Russians. For their own safety, so said an official statement that came out of East Berlin, there could be no hand over of those aircrew.

Cross-German rail traffic relied extensively on East German participation. Not just through the Inner-German Border but also inside West Berlin too there were rail workers for the DDR regime who kept the trains running. Those links had been shut ahead of Operation Allied Sword getting underway when East Germany fully sealed its borders. Waiting over in West Germany, near to Brunswick and close to Checkpoint Alpha, were several freight trains laden with essential food and medical supplies destined for West Berlin. The government in Bonn had put together the relief convoy and had planned to send the trains direct to that isolated city with a joint West German-DDR cooperation undertaken. The skies were closed, so too the roads, but the East Germans were prepared to see a rail convoy (something which they could fully control) make that journey. Just like the prisoner transfer, the passage of those freight trains was cancelled pretty much at the last minute. It was too dangerous for that convoy of relief supplies to make the trip with the DDR not willing to put its rail workers at risk: such was the reasoning made in another official announcement.

East Germany shut down those two avenues of seeing a return to pre-conflict normality not just because the country was heavily bombed overnight when the widespread belief had been that that had come to an end. Honecker and the Politburo did so also because the United States quite deliberately, openly too, scuppered the peace deal being worked upon in an effort made by both Bonn and Moscow working in unison. When he was running for election the next year, seeking a second term, it would be said during that campaign that President Cuomo acted out of a personal motive against the involvement of Chernomyrdin. The conflict in 1995 with East Germany figured heavily in that presidential race and the revelations which were backed up by leaked internal documents didn’t come as much of a surprise at that stage. Yet, in early July ‘95, when it did happen, there was a significant shock at what was done. Cuomo had his secretary of state go up to New York where the UN was. Chancellor Schäuble and Chernomyrdin had both sent their foreign ministers to there where they were going to use that international body to provide the framework for what they had set up. Those foreign ministers were seeking to bring neutral countries onboard. When the US SecState arrived though, she let it be known that her country was fully opposed to that, would take measures against others who supported it and also veto any UN action. The East Germans couldn’t be trusted, so was the reasoning, and they were trying to take the West German and the Russians, and thus anyone else who they could bring with them, for fools.

Chernomyrdin had agreed to work with Schäuble only through the UN. The latter had wanted for Russia to make use of its victor rights from WW2 where those related to East Germany but his counterpart in Moscow had preferred to see things done under a UN mandate. Nuclear inspections, the sending of peacekeepers into the Czech Republic and the DDR getting rid of its ballistic missile force were considered by Chernomyrdin to be more that Russia alone could handle. Schäuble had gone along with that though not with wholescale naivety. He had known that the Americans would do something… just not do what they did so effectively, so fast and also without care as to who knew that they were prepared to kill all talk of peace. Once the SecState did what she did, following presidential instructions to the letter, that was the end of that. The Russians pulled out of the diplomacy that the West Germans had brought them in to see done. It was pointless to try and carry on. Chernomyrdin himself would later make a statement from Moscow bemoaning the American position where they wanted to continue to see peace in Europe destabilised, but Schäuble was quicker off the mark. He spoke to the media early in the morning after the night of air attacks across in the DDR and linked the two events – what happened in New York and the further bombing – together. Diplomacy had failed once more, he said, as the American-led Coalition was determined to do everything to carry on with its war.


News camera crews based in West Berlin had on the first night of the air campaign shot some excellent footage from vantage points of explosions on the other side of the Berlin Wall when the DDR capital was bombed. There had been no repeat of those images on subsequent nights due to the Coalition not striking in East Berlin again. On the third night though, a CNN team in the American sector of West Berlin had gone to the southwestern corner and recorded footage of what happened outside in the direction of Potsdam. They didn’t get anything of good quality and viewers weren’t really able to see what they were looking at either. Yet there were big fireballs recorded once again. With night #4, Western media teams got nothing from inside West Berlin looking out when seeking to broadcast images of air attacks. The few others inside the DDR itself also weren’t able to gain live footage either that night too. Only the following morning were they escorted out of the ‘protected accommodation’ that they were in and taken by their handlers to various locations across the country did they see the aftermath. Images from bombed-out sites was recorded but it had none of the sex appeal that huge explosions broadcast live did. However, where there were more camera crews outside of airbases being used by the Coalition in West Germany and other European countries, there was footage during the night taken of aircraft lifting off and more of that of them returning too including some daylight images. News that jets were flying and presumably heading eastwards was broadcast in real time. The general public were made aware of what was going on via that medium long ahead of that being confirmed.

It wasn’t until the next morning that official statements were made from Coalition governments. There was confirmation made of what was already known: there had been further air strikes made against East Germany. From out of the MOD in London, a spokesman highlighted the activity on the ground around the nuclear sites and thus explained the reasoning for the heavy targeting of them. It was a concise and accurate statement with solid justification provided for those air attacks and what was deemed the supporting ones to make sure that the mission there wasn’t something that the DDR could defend against. Supporters of Operation Allied Sword were convinced by that, and too by additional remarks made by other spokespeople, ministers and leaders in further countries. As to the opponents of the ongoing military action, they really couldn’t have given a damn about what was said. There was no justification in their eyes, none at all. They only saw betrayal.

In West Germany, the subsequent outpouring of anger that was seen in public followed that belief. There had been a chance for peace, with East Germany willing to go the extra mile, and in reply came first the egregious actions taken at the UN and then those bombs dropped once more upon their fellow Germans. A statement out of East Berlin said that more civilian casualties had been caused – no details given – during the renewed air strikes. That inflamed things more. Protests and demonstrations took place in West Germany with a lot of that directed towards the big Coalition military bases on their soil. The sense of betrayal was wider than just within that one country. The anti-war movement in Coalition countries was just as outraged by what happened. The numbers of people who agreed with them, who had previously been supportive of the air campaign, increased due to defections from that camp too when the loudest voices against the conflict again and again made that claim of betrayal.

In the end demonstrations are not going to help East Germany.

  I can't see it saving the regime but if things get more heated it could cause lasting problems in NATO.

[James G]

Oct 13, 2021 18:33:16 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 13, 2021 17:39:15 GMT James G said:

Thirty-nine – Betrayal


The East Germans had a total of nineteen Coalition aircrew in custody. They were hunting for more known to have been downed over the DDR and on the run, but bagging almost twenty of them was considered by the regime to have been quite a success. The country was full of uniformed military personnel, so many of those reservists, and on a couple of occasions, it had been they who had been instrumental in seeing the aircrew captured. State propaganda played up their role in that: ordinary East Germans, patriots to a man & woman, doing their bit in the people’s war. All of those captives had been offered up to be released as part of an end to the Coalition’s air campaign. The goodwill that setting them free – not from hostile governments, but from the people within them – was regarded as far more important than holding them. The injured ones especially would play a role in what was seen as a savvy political move. Of the nineteen, seven were Americans. There were additionally four Britons, three Frenchmen, two Belgians and one each from Denmark, Italy & the Netherlands. All had been spread out across the country, held at various sites less the Americans make one of their own propaganda moves with a big rescue effort to get them all at once. They’d been taken to East Berlin though and the DDR regime was ready to hand them over to the Russians so Moscow could arrange for them to be gotten out and gain its own goodwill in that. However, the Coalition launched that extensive set of follow-up air attacks across East Germany. There was nothing physically stopping the hand-over but, in response, the regime led by Margot Honecker halted the transfer of those nineteen to the Russians. For their own safety, so said an official statement that came out of East Berlin, there could be no hand over of those aircrew.

Cross-German rail traffic relied extensively on East German participation. Not just through the Inner-German Border but also inside West Berlin too there were rail workers for the DDR regime who kept the trains running. Those links had been shut ahead of Operation Allied Sword getting underway when East Germany fully sealed its borders. Waiting over in West Germany, near to Brunswick and close to Checkpoint Alpha, were several freight trains laden with essential food and medical supplies destined for West Berlin. The government in Bonn had put together the relief convoy and had planned to send the trains direct to that isolated city with a joint West German-DDR cooperation undertaken. The skies were closed, so too the roads, but the East Germans were prepared to see a rail convoy (something which they could fully control) make that journey. Just like the prisoner transfer, the passage of those freight trains was cancelled pretty much at the last minute. It was too dangerous for that convoy of relief supplies to make the trip with the DDR not willing to put its rail workers at risk: such was the reasoning made in another official announcement.

East Germany shut down those two avenues of seeing a return to pre-conflict normality not just because the country was heavily bombed overnight when the widespread belief had been that that had come to an end. Honecker and the Politburo did so also because the United States quite deliberately, openly too, scuppered the peace deal being worked upon in an effort made by both Bonn and Moscow working in unison. When he was running for election the next year, seeking a second term, it would be said during that campaign that President Cuomo acted out of a personal motive against the involvement of Chernomyrdin. The conflict in 1995 with East Germany figured heavily in that presidential race and the revelations which were backed up by leaked internal documents didn’t come as much of a surprise at that stage. Yet, in early July ‘95, when it did happen, there was a significant shock at what was done. Cuomo had his secretary of state go up to New York where the UN was. Chancellor Schäuble and Chernomyrdin had both sent their foreign ministers to there where they were going to use that international body to provide the framework for what they had set up. Those foreign ministers were seeking to bring neutral countries onboard. When the US SecState arrived though, she let it be known that her country was fully opposed to that, would take measures against others who supported it and also veto any UN action. The East Germans couldn’t be trusted, so was the reasoning, and they were trying to take the West German and the Russians, and thus anyone else who they could bring with them, for fools.

Chernomyrdin had agreed to work with Schäuble only through the UN. The latter had wanted for Russia to make use of its victor rights from WW2 where those related to East Germany but his counterpart in Moscow had preferred to see things done under a UN mandate. Nuclear inspections, the sending of peacekeepers into the Czech Republic and the DDR getting rid of its ballistic missile force were considered by Chernomyrdin to be more that Russia alone could handle. Schäuble had gone along with that though not with wholescale naivety. He had known that the Americans would do something… just not do what they did so effectively, so fast and also without care as to who knew that they were prepared to kill all talk of peace. Once the SecState did what she did, following presidential instructions to the letter, that was the end of that. The Russians pulled out of the diplomacy that the West Germans had brought them in to see done. It was pointless to try and carry on. Chernomyrdin himself would later make a statement from Moscow bemoaning the American position where they wanted to continue to see peace in Europe destabilised, but Schäuble was quicker off the mark. He spoke to the media early in the morning after the night of air attacks across in the DDR and linked the two events – what happened in New York and the further bombing – together. Diplomacy had failed once more, he said, as the American-led Coalition was determined to do everything to carry on with its war.


News camera crews based in West Berlin had on the first night of the air campaign shot some excellent footage from vantage points of explosions on the other side of the Berlin Wall when the DDR capital was bombed. There had been no repeat of those images on subsequent nights due to the Coalition not striking in East Berlin again. On the third night though, a CNN team in the American sector of West Berlin had gone to the southwestern corner and recorded footage of what happened outside in the direction of Potsdam. They didn’t get anything of good quality and viewers weren’t really able to see what they were looking at either. Yet there were big fireballs recorded once again. With night #4, Western media teams got nothing from inside West Berlin looking out when seeking to broadcast images of air attacks. The few others inside the DDR itself also weren’t able to gain live footage either that night too. Only the following morning were they escorted out of the ‘protected accommodation’ that they were in and taken by their handlers to various locations across the country did they see the aftermath. Images from bombed-out sites was recorded but it had none of the sex appeal that huge explosions broadcast live did. However, where there were more camera crews outside of airbases being used by the Coalition in West Germany and other European countries, there was footage during the night taken of aircraft lifting off and more of that of them returning too including some daylight images. News that jets were flying and presumably heading eastwards was broadcast in real time. The general public were made aware of what was going on via that medium long ahead of that being confirmed.

It wasn’t until the next morning that official statements were made from Coalition governments. There was confirmation made of what was already known: there had been further air strikes made against East Germany. From out of the MOD in London, a spokesman highlighted the activity on the ground around the nuclear sites and thus explained the reasoning for the heavy targeting of them. It was a concise and accurate statement with solid justification provided for those air attacks and what was deemed the supporting ones to make sure that the mission there wasn’t something that the DDR could defend against. Supporters of Operation Allied Sword were convinced by that, and too by additional remarks made by other spokespeople, ministers and leaders in further countries. As to the opponents of the ongoing military action, they really couldn’t have given a damn about what was said. There was no justification in their eyes, none at all. They only saw betrayal.

In West Germany, the subsequent outpouring of anger that was seen in public followed that belief. There had been a chance for peace, with East Germany willing to go the extra mile, and in reply came first the egregious actions taken at the UN and then those bombs dropped once more upon their fellow Germans. A statement out of East Berlin said that more civilian casualties had been caused – no details given – during the renewed air strikes. That inflamed things more. Protests and demonstrations took place in West Germany with a lot of that directed towards the big Coalition military bases on their soil. The sense of betrayal was wider than just within that one country. The anti-war movement in Coalition countries was just as outraged by what happened. The numbers of people who agreed with them, who had previously been supportive of the air campaign, increased due to defections from that camp too when the loudest voices against the conflict again and again made that claim of betrayal.

In the end demonstrations are not going to help East Germany.

Not directly, no. There will be ripple effects though.

Oct 14, 2021 19:15:35 GMT stevep said:

  I can't see it saving the regime but if things get more heated it could cause lasting problems in NATO.

That's where the issues will start: in multi-nation alliances of which Coalition countries and their neutral allies are within.

[James G]

Forty – Threats


After another night of Coalition air attacks upon East Germany, a return strike using ballistic missiles to strike targets westwards was something anticipated. Just because the DDR had ‘skipped’ a day of doing so, that didn’t mean that the Coalition, plus the West Germans too, could expect that they would continue to hold their fire. Peace talks had been rejected and there remained a potent arsenal in the hands of the Margot Honecker regime. However, for the second day in a row, there was no attack made with the mobile missile force that the East Germans had. Radar operators, Patriot missile teams and urban search-&-rescue crews waited but weren’t called upon. A lot of West Germans, in addition to civilians in parts of Belgium, Denmark & the Netherlands too, steeled themselves to take shelter yet there was no wail of air raid sirens which had previously given some measure of warning about inbound missiles. Businesses and other aspects of society suffered gravely due to the disruption of so many waiting in fear under the threat of an attack with far more damage done by that than any missile strike could ever cause.

In the skies above West Germany – with the Bonn government unable to do anything to stop them – multiple strike packages of Coalition aircraft spent the day up there. They carried weaponry ready to use against East German missile-launchers with the intention being that when launches were made, the aircraft would race into the DDR and at once undertake a major strike upon the detected launch area. Previous ballistic missile strikes had been made close to the Inner-German Border. The East Germans had their missiles that far forward – increasing the range of distant targets which they would hit – and so that meant that the attacking aircraft wouldn’t have to go so deep inside the dense enemy air defence network. Using tankers for mid-air refuelling as well as the return to base every few hours of tired aircrews to be replaced by fresh ones, the Coalition spent the day maintaining that huge air presence. A wave of destruction was planned for East German missile batteries from the moment which they fired. They would be attacked before they could flee into hiding places. In addition to the aircraft airborne, there were more waiting at various facilities where those missiles might fly towards. At airbases across West Germany and in neighbouring countries, Coalition aircraft sat inside protected HASs. On cue, the doors would open and they would make a rapid take-off to join strikes which would already be taking place. The RAF had a good number of its Harrier GR7 strike aircraft dispersed at sites on the Luneburg Heath where their flight time would be shorter; jets from the USS Enterprise sat up on deck of their carrier in the southern reaches of the North Sea also ready to race off. If thrown into the attack, those aircraft held ready to make an instant response to an East German ballistic missile attack would all face grave danger. They would be entering the snake pit where the aircrews would be sent to strike un-scouted targets where there was likely to be significant mobile SAM systems at-hand. That risk was known about all the way up and down the command chain too.

No missiles lanced out of the DDR. They didn’t use neither their Spider nor Scud short-range ballistic missiles, nor none of the more tactical Scarab missiles & FROG-7 rockets. Coalition intelligence reports painted a confusing picture for political leaders upon the state of the remaining missile threat. There were two conflicting notions upon how much capability that there remained for further mass attacks. Optimists in uniform, supported by a good number of political advisers, informed ministers & leaders that large numbers of launch vehicles (and also reload missiles too) had been destroyed in previous Coalition air attacks. What the East Germans had left, they were hanging on to. Their pause in not firing once again was not about halting that so as to give diplomacy a chance, but instead to preserve the remainder of the force held. Strong disagreement to that thinking came from large portions of national intelligence services, at times supported by dissenting portions of several armed forces’ individual military intelligence assets. They believed that Coalition strikes had taken out plentiful dummies in their attacks. The East Germans had flooded their country with false targets and only lost a very few real ones. Meanwhile, they were keeping the majority of their untouched force back. Evidence was presented to show how air strikes had blown up rather convincing dummy targets everywhere while there was little real evidence too that the real targets hit had ben struck in anything approaching significant number. Such a dispute, which politicians were forced to try and chose between to know the truth of the matter, wasn’t resolved by the DDR keeping unused its missile force for a second day after previously firing off so many of them ahead of that self-imposed pause on their use.


Chancellor Schäuble managed to speak directly with Honecker during the day. It wasn’t a matter of communication difficulties effected by Coalition air strikes – such links hadn’t been attacked across East Germany, like a lot else which hadn’t been struck – but instead by staff of Schäuble facing issues in trying to locate where Honecker actually was. No one picked up the phone in East Berlin. Government offices there hadn’t been flattened by American smart bombs yet they were empty due to the threat of an attack that the East Germans considered likely. Even the Stasi had moved out of the city and done as instructed by the Politburo is dispersing activities away from a centralised location. Should the Coalition wish to blow up empty structures in the heart of East Berlin, it might give them great propaganda videos, but the DDR regime was determined to see that attacks like that wouldn’t do any real damage to their system of government.

A connection was finally made. Honecker picked up the phone at a governmental regional office in Bernau, just outside of East Berlin. The exclusive, gated and guarded residential complex of Waldsiedlung was near to Bernau though that facility wasn’t where Honecker nor her ministers had retreated to ahead of conflict with the Coalition. Honecker taking the call near to there was part of a deceptive move to suggest that maybe that was where she was staying. Security figures within her regime, the powerful securocrats, knew full well that the Americans would be interested and so tried to feed them some false information. They weren’t wrong in that. From bases on West German soil in addition to Menwith Hill Station within the UK, the US Intelligence Community listened-in on what was said when the two leaders of the divided Germanies spoke directly to one another for the first time in a long while.

Their conversation was one of further efforts to see the conflict between the DDR and the Coalition come to an end. Honecker reaffirmed the position presented at Geneva in previous days that East Germany was willing to accept the demands imposed upon it by the United States and its allies. Those were a grievous violation of its sovereignty, yet she was committed to seeing them accepted so that peace would be restored to Europe. Schäuble brought up the nuclear issue with Honecker: the Coalition didn’t believe that the secret nuclear energy programme was that and continued to believe that it was a nuclear weapons effort instead. As tactfully as possible, he said that the DDR needed to admit what it was doing at Trebbin and the other bombed research facilities, admit that openly too, before there would be any progress made. Honecker denied that claim again. East Germany had made a mistake in not telling the world what it was doing but it had every right to develop peaceful sources of nuclear energy: it was all a lie that that was weapons related. How would her country admit to something that it hadn’t done!? Stunned that his counterpart was willing to perpetuate such a lie, even in a private conversation, Schäuble had little to reply to that. All he could say was that West Germany wanted the conflict to end. Honecker wanted that too, she assured him, yet was left in an impossible position by what was going on. The DDR had tried everything that it could do to see the illegal military action – it had no United Nations backing – come to a halt, including willing to lay down and accept those in Washington, London & Paris imposing their will upon the people of East Germany. That situation couldn’t continue for much longer. The DDR would have to take further action to force a cessation to the massive bombing attacks made. Schäuble asked what that would be.

Further ballistic missile strikes came the reply. East Germany had held off sending more missiles towards Coalition military targets to give peace a chance but that effort had seen only a slap in the face in reply. Schäuble asked that Honecker not do that again. Earlier strikes had seen so many civilian deaths across his nation, a neutral country trying to act as a peacemaker. The reply from Honecker was that should the DDR return to using ballistic missile strikes, those would be targeted outside of West Germany: her missile force was be used elsewhere. Once more, Schäuble was left unable to give a meaningful response to that. It wasn’t the usual Honecker who he was dealing with. Her candour in her threats was surprising. All he could say was that he wanted to see no missile firings, no air attacks and no more deaths. Honecker urged him to keep working towards that before she terminated the call.

The Americans quickly let their allies know of what they had overheard. The direct source wasn’t mentioned yet other Coalition leaders knew full well without having to be told that the NSA was tapping the phones. Schäuble hadn’t moved to the stage of double-dealing, working against his country’s erstwhile allies, and that was something that brought about relief. As to what Honecker said that she would do with her missiles, it wasn’t something that anyone liked when they heard it. Nonetheless, it wasn’t anything new. Denmark and the Low Countries had been hit previously by Spiders & Scuds. Norway, Britain and Italy were out of range… naturally, so too was the United States and Canada an ocean away. As to France, no ballistic missile attacks upon its territory had taken place. After hearing what Honecker said to Schäuble, President Fabius moved to at once see to it that his country be as best prepared as possible for renewed missile strikes with the next ones having France on the target list. Honecker hadn’t said directly she would hit France but Fabius anticipated that she would move to doing that.

In multiple conversations between the various Coalition leaders, bilateral and multi-member calls, including a later mass conference call, there was agreement to weather the storm and carry on with what they were doing. The military threat of East Germany was still there and the Coalition would keep on bombing until that was judged to have been sufficiently destroyed. West Germany could try all the diplomacy it wanted but there remained a determination to continue with Operation Allied Sword.

[lordroel]

Oct 17, 2021 17:50:14 GMT James G said:

Forty – Threats


After another night of Coalition air attacks upon East Germany, a return strike using ballistic missiles to strike targets westwards was something anticipated. Just because the DDR had ‘skipped’ a day of doing so, that didn’t mean that the Coalition, plus the West Germans too, could expect that they would continue to hold their fire. Peace talks had been rejected and there remained a potent arsenal in the hands of the Margot Honecker regime. However, for the second day in a row, there was no attack made with the mobile missile force that the East Germans had. Radar operators, Patriot missile teams and urban search-&-rescue crews waited but weren’t called upon. A lot of West Germans, in addition to civilians in parts of Belgium, Denmark & the Netherlands too, steeled themselves to take shelter yet there was no wail of air raid sirens which had previously given some measure of warning about inbound missiles. Businesses and other aspects of society suffered gravely due to the disruption of so many waiting in fear under the threat of an attack with far more damage done by that than any missile strike could ever cause.

In the skies above West Germany – with the Bonn government unable to do anything to stop them – multiple strike packages of Coalition aircraft spent the day up there. They carried weaponry ready to use against East German missile-launchers with the intention being that when launches were made, the aircraft would race into the DDR and at once undertake a major strike upon the detected launch area. Previous ballistic missile strikes had been made close to the Inner-German Border. The East Germans had their missiles that far forward – increasing the range of distant targets which they would hit – and so that meant that the attacking aircraft wouldn’t have to go so deep inside the dense enemy air defence network. Using tankers for mid-air refuelling as well as the return to base every few hours of tired aircrews to be replaced by fresh ones, the Coalition spent the day maintaining that huge air presence. A wave of destruction was planned for East German missile batteries from the moment which they fired. They would be attacked before they could flee into hiding places. In addition to the aircraft airborne, there were more waiting at various facilities where those missiles might fly towards. At airbases across West Germany and in neighbouring countries, Coalition aircraft sat inside protected HASs. On cue, the doors would open and they would make a rapid take-off to join strikes which would already be taking place. The RAF had a good number of its Harrier GR7 strike aircraft dispersed at sites on the Luneburg Heath where their flight time would be shorter; jets from the USS Enterprise sat up on deck of their carrier in the southern reaches of the North Sea also ready to race off. If thrown into the attack, those aircraft held ready to make an instant response to an East German ballistic missile attack would all face grave danger. They would be entering the snake pit where the aircrews would be sent to strike un-scouted targets where there was likely to be significant mobile SAM systems at-hand. That risk was known about all the way up and down the command chain too.

No missiles lanced out of the DDR. They didn’t use neither their Spider nor Scud short-range ballistic missiles, nor none of the more tactical Scarab missiles & FROG-7 rockets. Coalition intelligence reports painted a confusing picture for political leaders upon the state of the remaining missile threat. There were two conflicting notions upon how much capability that there remained for further mass attacks. Optimists in uniform, supported by a good number of political advisers, informed ministers & leaders that large numbers of launch vehicles (and also reload missiles too) had been destroyed in previous Coalition air attacks. What the East Germans had left, they were hanging on to. Their pause in not firing once again was not about halting that so as to give diplomacy a chance, but instead to preserve the remainder of the force held. Strong disagreement to that thinking came from large portions of national intelligence services, at times supported by dissenting portions of several armed forces’ individual military intelligence assets. They believed that Coalition strikes had taken out plentiful dummies in their attacks. The East Germans had flooded their country with false targets and only lost a very few real ones. Meanwhile, they were keeping the majority of their untouched force back. Evidence was presented to show how air strikes had blown up rather convincing dummy targets everywhere while there was little real evidence too that the real targets hit had ben struck in anything approaching significant number. Such a dispute, which politicians were forced to try and chose between to know the truth of the matter, wasn’t resolved by the DDR keeping unused its missile force for a second day after previously firing off so many of them ahead of that self-imposed pause on their use.


Chancellor Schäuble managed to speak directly with Honecker during the day. It wasn’t a matter of communication difficulties effected by Coalition air strikes – such links hadn’t been attacked across East Germany, like a lot else which hadn’t been struck – but instead by staff of Schäuble facing issues in trying to locate where Honecker actually was. No one picked up the phone in East Berlin. Government offices there hadn’t been flattened by American smart bombs yet they were empty due to the threat of an attack that the East Germans considered likely. Even the Stasi had moved out of the city and done as instructed by the Politburo is dispersing activities away from a centralised location. Should the Coalition wish to blow up empty structures in the heart of East Berlin, it might give them great propaganda videos, but the DDR regime was determined to see that attacks like that wouldn’t do any real damage to their system of government.

A connection was finally made. Honecker picked up the phone at a governmental regional office in Bernau, just outside of East Berlin. The exclusive, gated and guarded residential complex of Waldsiedlung was near to Bernau though that facility wasn’t where Honecker nor her ministers had retreated to ahead of conflict with the Coalition. Honecker taking the call near to there was part of a deceptive move to suggest that maybe that was where she was staying. Security figures within her regime, the powerful securocrats, knew full well that the Americans would be interested and so tried to feed them some false information. They weren’t wrong in that. From bases on West German soil in addition to Menwith Hill Station within the UK, the US Intelligence Community listened-in on what was said when the two leaders of the divided Germanies spoke directly to one another for the first time in a long while.

Their conversation was one of further efforts to see the conflict between the DDR and the Coalition come to an end. Honecker reaffirmed the position presented at Geneva in previous days that East Germany was willing to accept the demands imposed upon it by the United States and its allies. Those were a grievous violation of its sovereignty, yet she was committed to seeing them accepted so that peace would be restored to Europe. Schäuble brought up the nuclear issue with Honecker: the Coalition didn’t believe that the secret nuclear energy programme was that and continued to believe that it was a nuclear weapons effort instead. As tactfully as possible, he said that the DDR needed to admit what it was doing at Trebbin and the other bombed research facilities, admit that openly too, before there would be any progress made. Honecker denied that claim again. East Germany had made a mistake in not telling the world what it was doing but it had every right to develop peaceful sources of nuclear energy: it was all a lie that that was weapons related. How would her country admit to something that it hadn’t done!? Stunned that his counterpart was willing to perpetuate such a lie, even in a private conversation, Schäuble had little to reply to that. All he could say was that West Germany wanted the conflict to end. Honecker wanted that too, she assured him, yet was left in an impossible position by what was going on. The DDR had tried everything that it could do to see the illegal military action – it had no United Nations backing – come to a halt, including willing to lay down and accept those in Washington, London & Paris imposing their will upon the people of East Germany. That situation couldn’t continue for much longer. The DDR would have to take further action to force a cessation to the massive bombing attacks made. Schäuble asked what that would be.

Further ballistic missile strikes came the reply. East Germany had held off sending more missiles towards Coalition military targets to give peace a chance but that effort had seen only a slap in the face in reply. Schäuble asked that Honecker not do that again. Earlier strikes had seen so many civilian deaths across his nation, a neutral country trying to act as a peacemaker. The reply from Honecker was that should the DDR return to using ballistic missile strikes, those would be targeted outside of West Germany: her missile force was be used elsewhere. Once more, Schäuble was left unable to give a meaningful response to that. It wasn’t the usual Honecker who he was dealing with. Her candour in her threats was surprising. All he could say was that he wanted to see no missile firings, no air attacks and no more deaths. Honecker urged him to keep working towards that before she terminated the call.

The Americans quickly let their allies know of what they had overheard. The direct source wasn’t mentioned yet other Coalition leaders knew full well without having to be told that the NSA was tapping the phones. Schäuble hadn’t moved to the stage of double-dealing, working against his country’s erstwhile allies, and that was something that brought about relief. As to what Honecker said that she would do with her missiles, it wasn’t something that anyone liked when they heard it. Nonetheless, it wasn’t anything new. Denmark and the Low Countries had been hit previously by Spiders & Scuds. Norway, Britain and Italy were out of range… naturally, so too was the United States and Canada an ocean away. As to France, no ballistic missile attacks upon its territory had taken place. After hearing what Honecker said to Schäuble, President Fabius moved to at once see to it that his country be as best prepared as possible for renewed missile strikes with the next ones having France on the target list. Honecker hadn’t said directly she would hit France but Fabius anticipated that she would move to doing that.

In multiple conversations between the various Coalition leaders, bilateral and multi-member calls, including a later mass conference call, there was agreement to weather the storm and carry on with what they were doing. The military threat of East Germany was still there and the Coalition would keep on bombing until that was judged to have been sufficiently destroyed. West Germany could try all the diplomacy it wanted but there remained a determination to continue with Operation Allied Sword.

And so the war goes on with West Germany on the sideline, i wonder if they had join the coalition the war would be over sooner.

[James G]

Oct 17, 2021 18:34:01 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 17, 2021 17:50:14 GMT James G said:

Forty – Threats


After another night of Coalition air attacks upon East Germany, a return strike using ballistic missiles to strike targets westwards was something anticipated. Just because the DDR had ‘skipped’ a day of doing so, that didn’t mean that the Coalition, plus the West Germans too, could expect that they would continue to hold their fire. Peace talks had been rejected and there remained a potent arsenal in the hands of the Margot Honecker regime. However, for the second day in a row, there was no attack made with the mobile missile force that the East Germans had. Radar operators, Patriot missile teams and urban search-&-rescue crews waited but weren’t called upon. A lot of West Germans, in addition to civilians in parts of Belgium, Denmark & the Netherlands too, steeled themselves to take shelter yet there was no wail of air raid sirens which had previously given some measure of warning about inbound missiles. Businesses and other aspects of society suffered gravely due to the disruption of so many waiting in fear under the threat of an attack with far more damage done by that than any missile strike could ever cause.

In the skies above West Germany – with the Bonn government unable to do anything to stop them – multiple strike packages of Coalition aircraft spent the day up there. They carried weaponry ready to use against East German missile-launchers with the intention being that when launches were made, the aircraft would race into the DDR and at once undertake a major strike upon the detected launch area. Previous ballistic missile strikes had been made close to the Inner-German Border. The East Germans had their missiles that far forward – increasing the range of distant targets which they would hit – and so that meant that the attacking aircraft wouldn’t have to go so deep inside the dense enemy air defence network. Using tankers for mid-air refuelling as well as the return to base every few hours of tired aircrews to be replaced by fresh ones, the Coalition spent the day maintaining that huge air presence. A wave of destruction was planned for East German missile batteries from the moment which they fired. They would be attacked before they could flee into hiding places. In addition to the aircraft airborne, there were more waiting at various facilities where those missiles might fly towards. At airbases across West Germany and in neighbouring countries, Coalition aircraft sat inside protected HASs. On cue, the doors would open and they would make a rapid take-off to join strikes which would already be taking place. The RAF had a good number of its Harrier GR7 strike aircraft dispersed at sites on the Luneburg Heath where their flight time would be shorter; jets from the USS Enterprise sat up on deck of their carrier in the southern reaches of the North Sea also ready to race off. If thrown into the attack, those aircraft held ready to make an instant response to an East German ballistic missile attack would all face grave danger. They would be entering the snake pit where the aircrews would be sent to strike un-scouted targets where there was likely to be significant mobile SAM systems at-hand. That risk was known about all the way up and down the command chain too.

No missiles lanced out of the DDR. They didn’t use neither their Spider nor Scud short-range ballistic missiles, nor none of the more tactical Scarab missiles & FROG-7 rockets. Coalition intelligence reports painted a confusing picture for political leaders upon the state of the remaining missile threat. There were two conflicting notions upon how much capability that there remained for further mass attacks. Optimists in uniform, supported by a good number of political advisers, informed ministers & leaders that large numbers of launch vehicles (and also reload missiles too) had been destroyed in previous Coalition air attacks. What the East Germans had left, they were hanging on to. Their pause in not firing once again was not about halting that so as to give diplomacy a chance, but instead to preserve the remainder of the force held. Strong disagreement to that thinking came from large portions of national intelligence services, at times supported by dissenting portions of several armed forces’ individual military intelligence assets. They believed that Coalition strikes had taken out plentiful dummies in their attacks. The East Germans had flooded their country with false targets and only lost a very few real ones. Meanwhile, they were keeping the majority of their untouched force back. Evidence was presented to show how air strikes had blown up rather convincing dummy targets everywhere while there was little real evidence too that the real targets hit had ben struck in anything approaching significant number. Such a dispute, which politicians were forced to try and chose between to know the truth of the matter, wasn’t resolved by the DDR keeping unused its missile force for a second day after previously firing off so many of them ahead of that self-imposed pause on their use.


Chancellor Schäuble managed to speak directly with Honecker during the day. It wasn’t a matter of communication difficulties effected by Coalition air strikes – such links hadn’t been attacked across East Germany, like a lot else which hadn’t been struck – but instead by staff of Schäuble facing issues in trying to locate where Honecker actually was. No one picked up the phone in East Berlin. Government offices there hadn’t been flattened by American smart bombs yet they were empty due to the threat of an attack that the East Germans considered likely. Even the Stasi had moved out of the city and done as instructed by the Politburo is dispersing activities away from a centralised location. Should the Coalition wish to blow up empty structures in the heart of East Berlin, it might give them great propaganda videos, but the DDR regime was determined to see that attacks like that wouldn’t do any real damage to their system of government.

A connection was finally made. Honecker picked up the phone at a governmental regional office in Bernau, just outside of East Berlin. The exclusive, gated and guarded residential complex of Waldsiedlung was near to Bernau though that facility wasn’t where Honecker nor her ministers had retreated to ahead of conflict with the Coalition. Honecker taking the call near to there was part of a deceptive move to suggest that maybe that was where she was staying. Security figures within her regime, the powerful securocrats, knew full well that the Americans would be interested and so tried to feed them some false information. They weren’t wrong in that. From bases on West German soil in addition to Menwith Hill Station within the UK, the US Intelligence Community listened-in on what was said when the two leaders of the divided Germanies spoke directly to one another for the first time in a long while.

Their conversation was one of further efforts to see the conflict between the DDR and the Coalition come to an end. Honecker reaffirmed the position presented at Geneva in previous days that East Germany was willing to accept the demands imposed upon it by the United States and its allies. Those were a grievous violation of its sovereignty, yet she was committed to seeing them accepted so that peace would be restored to Europe. Schäuble brought up the nuclear issue with Honecker: the Coalition didn’t believe that the secret nuclear energy programme was that and continued to believe that it was a nuclear weapons effort instead. As tactfully as possible, he said that the DDR needed to admit what it was doing at Trebbin and the other bombed research facilities, admit that openly too, before there would be any progress made. Honecker denied that claim again. East Germany had made a mistake in not telling the world what it was doing but it had every right to develop peaceful sources of nuclear energy: it was all a lie that that was weapons related. How would her country admit to something that it hadn’t done!? Stunned that his counterpart was willing to perpetuate such a lie, even in a private conversation, Schäuble had little to reply to that. All he could say was that West Germany wanted the conflict to end. Honecker wanted that too, she assured him, yet was left in an impossible position by what was going on. The DDR had tried everything that it could do to see the illegal military action – it had no United Nations backing – come to a halt, including willing to lay down and accept those in Washington, London & Paris imposing their will upon the people of East Germany. That situation couldn’t continue for much longer. The DDR would have to take further action to force a cessation to the massive bombing attacks made. Schäuble asked what that would be.

Further ballistic missile strikes came the reply. East Germany had held off sending more missiles towards Coalition military targets to give peace a chance but that effort had seen only a slap in the face in reply. Schäuble asked that Honecker not do that again. Earlier strikes had seen so many civilian deaths across his nation, a neutral country trying to act as a peacemaker. The reply from Honecker was that should the DDR return to using ballistic missile strikes, those would be targeted outside of West Germany: her missile force was be used elsewhere. Once more, Schäuble was left unable to give a meaningful response to that. It wasn’t the usual Honecker who he was dealing with. Her candour in her threats was surprising. All he could say was that he wanted to see no missile firings, no air attacks and no more deaths. Honecker urged him to keep working towards that before she terminated the call.

The Americans quickly let their allies know of what they had overheard. The direct source wasn’t mentioned yet other Coalition leaders knew full well without having to be told that the NSA was tapping the phones. Schäuble hadn’t moved to the stage of double-dealing, working against his country’s erstwhile allies, and that was something that brought about relief. As to what Honecker said that she would do with her missiles, it wasn’t something that anyone liked when they heard it. Nonetheless, it wasn’t anything new. Denmark and the Low Countries had been hit previously by Spiders & Scuds. Norway, Britain and Italy were out of range… naturally, so too was the United States and Canada an ocean away. As to France, no ballistic missile attacks upon its territory had taken place. After hearing what Honecker said to Schäuble, President Fabius moved to at once see to it that his country be as best prepared as possible for renewed missile strikes with the next ones having France on the target list. Honecker hadn’t said directly she would hit France but Fabius anticipated that she would move to doing that.

In multiple conversations between the various Coalition leaders, bilateral and multi-member calls, including a later mass conference call, there was agreement to weather the storm and carry on with what they were doing. The military threat of East Germany was still there and the Coalition would keep on bombing until that was judged to have been sufficiently destroyed. West Germany could try all the diplomacy it wanted but there remained a determination to continue with Operation Allied Sword.

And so the war goes on with West Germany on the sideline, i wonder if they had join the coalition the war would be over sooner.

Not so sure what real impact they would make. Plenty of Tornado strike aircraft but the RAF and AIM have them. More airbases opened up but even then the Coalition still has plenty.
Politically, it will never happen though: Bonn just won't join in, not for the reasons the others are doing it.

[James G]

Forty-one – Back at it


The Coalition went back at it again with a fifth night of air strikes directed against East Germany as well as its forces & those of its allies down in the Czech Republic too. Throughout the hours of darkness, cruise missiles, manned aircraft and armed helicopters were active. East German defences were limited to SAMs and anti-aircraft fire rather than putting their fighters up. The Coalition wanted them to do the latter, seeking to once more blast a load of MiGs out of the sky – and hopefully not get caught in a clever trap like before by them – rather than just face missile defences. The LSK stayed on the ground and stayed hidden too. The latest round of air strikes sought to make sure that East German’s air arm wouldn’t be able to fly again though. Airbases and main dispersal centres had been emptied ahead of Operation Allied Sword getting underway yet had been primary targets for when the Americans and their allies began their air campaign. There was a return to hitting them despite LSK combat aircraft staying away from such places. Throughout several days, recovery work had been done at various locations which the MiGs had once called home with DDR military personnel tasked to remove rubble, salvage what would be in terms of equipment and also begin the process of addressing unexploded munitions (delayed-action fused cluster munitions littered multiple airfields). Part of the massive mobilisation undertaken by the East Germans included that of putting tens of thousands of schoolchildren in uniform. Classes had been cancelled and fourteen-to-sixteen year olds, boys and girls alike, who were members of the Free German Youth were added to the ranks of adult reservists nationwide. The FDJ was significantly militarised and those teenagers on a path to join ‘the party’ with a stable career ahead of them. When called up, only a very few didn’t show their faces: for those absent, their future would be ruined after they’d previously been accepted into the FDJ yet disappeared when the need was greatest. Many of those children had been at the airbases helping with recovery efforts. Coalition reconnaissance aircraft had seen them active during the daylight hours but it was known that they weren’t present at night. President Cuomo in Washington and Prime Minister Heseltine in London had each previously been told that FDJ members had been killed and wounded when accidently coming across cluster bomb munitions. Bombing those airbases when they were full of those kids wasn’t something either approved of and they made sure that the information was firm that the FDJ wasn’t out in force at such places during the night.

The British, the Danes, the Dutch and the Italians joined with the Americans in hitting airbases across East Germany. The actual runways, taxiways and base facilities were hit once more with plentiful high explosives but so too was the general area within the perimeter fencing at each. Coalition strikes sought to hit what might be hidden too. Unbeknown to the aircrews, nor the planners of the attacks either, many FDJ members were caught up in those bombings. Few were working at night but those who were – on punishment duty – found themselves on the wrong end of all of that firepower unleashed. East German mobile SAMs were active. SA-11 and SA-15 missiles claimed multiple kills of Coalition aircraft whereas older, less advanced weapons had little luck. No matter what they tried, specialist Wild Weasel aircrews with several US Air Force units deployed against them couldn’t get a real line on them. They were given the run around and lured into traps with that. Hit especially hard on the fifth night by SAMs were the Canadians who lost three of their CF-18s up along the Baltic shoreline and also the RAF where they used Jaguars GR3s to raid the former Soviet airbase at Mahlwinkel that the LSK was making use of. Using camouflage (physical and electronic), the East Germans kept their SAM units on the move and ambushed Coalition aircraft at every given opportunity. However, while they had much success once again – adding to their already impressive tally – there was a noticeable lowering of the numbers of launches: fewer SAMs were fired off. Coalition military analysts noted that after the night was done with. As was the case with the DDR’s ballistic missile force, there would be vigorous debates within the Coalition as to whether the East Germans were running out of SAMs, that they had lost so many to attacks or were marshalling what was left for later use.

None of those SAMs, not even the SA-10s which had been used rather sparingly, targeted the stealth F-117s when they went back into action after a stand down following the effective loss of two of them to SA-11 hits. Flying from bases in Britain as well as Norway, the F-117s hit several important communications relay stations in both the eastern half of the DDR (their flight came down over the Baltic and through Polish skies) and also down in the Czech Republic too. A couple of important road bridges over rivers within the Czech Republic were also struck by the invisible bombers sending smart bombs towards them to isolated frontline units of the Czech rebel’s army from the rear. Black-&-white footage of the Paveways used in those attacks, where the target was highlighted then blown apart in fantastic images, would later be released to the American news media with mention being made that the F-117s were back in action. Elsewhere across the Czech Republic, the Americans joined the French in increasing the scale of the air strikes against the Czech rebels there. Government forces, pushed into that one corner of the overrun nation, were preparing a counter offensive alongside the Poles to assist them. Air strikes such as those bridges being downed moved to strikes against airfields, headquarters units, massed artillery and such like. The front-lines themselves continued to be off-limits to Coalition air power due to the situation with everyone down below operating almost identical equipment. Moreover, while Coalition-Polish ties had improved significantly, there was still no formal alliance with them nor the legitimate Czech government. That meant that only a few unofficial liaison people were on the ground and therefore the risk of ‘friendly fire’ was a near certainty. That friendly fire did happen though, just in a different manner. A Czech government SA-6 missile system preformed a ‘pop-up’ attack and successfully hit a Mirage-IVP. That Armée de l'Air reconnaissance aircraft was undertaking a low-level high speed run against Czech rebel forces and turning away from where the government forces had their SAM battery. The unit commander would afterwards claim that he though the aircraft was East German and on an attack mission: due to to shortages in qualified personnel, plus his loyalty to the government when so many else had shown no such thing, he’d keep his job despite the massive c*ck-up there. As to the French jet, it was hit hard and the two men aboard couldn’t nurse it back towards friendly lines… they were flying from France direct and while a landing at an American base in West Germany was available, that was still a long way off. Neither wanted to see their aircraft lost and so they put it down in Poland. Polish MiGs ‘escorted’ in the Mirage trailing smoke behind it. That wasn’t the first Coalition aircraft to make an emergency landing in Poland, the RAF and the Americans had also done so, though it was the first to do so after taking friendly fire from below.

Across border regions of the DDR, just across from where the Inner-German Border ran, there was another night of significant air activity. That was where the helicopter operations undertaken by the Coalition – the US Army’s Task Force Phoenix in particular – occurred. More hunting was done for the East German’s hidden ballistic missile force through the Harz Mountains, down in the Thuringwald and as well as up along the northern coastal areas too. Short-range SAMs, radar-guided anti-aircraft guns and East German armed helicopters themselves were encountered. A few targets were hit with claims made by attacking aircrew that they’d taken out Scud and Scarab weapons though there was a lot of doubt about the validity of those. The Americans pulled out of the border areas a couple of their aircrew, plus a Dutch aviator as well, but also inserted personnel into the DDR. They sent in more Green Berets to join those already on East German soil. Missile hunting was the purpose for their insertion where they joined more special forces teams from Britain, France, Denmark and the Netherlands (who also had commandos on the ground in hostile territory) not just observing and designating targets from afar for incoming attacks, but confirming that those weren’t dummies. Hands would have to be placed on missile launch vehicles, the orders ran, and even better would be to have people climb inside the vehicles of the mobile batteries to see if they were real before the bombs came in. Most of the night-time rescues and insertions went according to plan, or if they failed there were no casualties following a wave-off due to danger, yet a drop off of a Green Beret team into Saxony went wrong. Apache gunships escorting a single Pave Low assault transport helicopter, the US Army and the US Air Force flying their helicopters in support of each other, were taken under fire when flying above a salient of Czech territory formed around the little town of As in the Cheb region. The three helicopters were on a nap-of-the-earth mission with complete EMCON in the darkness – the pilots used night-vision goggles, nothing else – but Czech rebel forces in that area, close to the village of Hranice, spotted them. Hundreds of shells from a trio of ZU-23-2 toward anti-aircraft guns flew skywards. Both Apaches were badly hit but would survive: the Pave Low wouldn’t. The anti-aircraft guns were followed up by the launch of several shoulder-mounted SAMs too and they did what the 23mm shells couldn’t in bringing down that big helicopter. When the MH-53J crashed into the ground, it burnt and so too did the twenty-four crew & passengers aboard it.

[lordroel]

Oct 18, 2021 18:01:38 GMT James G said:

Forty-one – Back at it


The Coalition went back at it again with a fifth night of air strikes directed against East Germany as well as its forces & those of its allies down in the Czech Republic too. Throughout the hours of darkness, cruise missiles, manned aircraft and armed helicopters were active. East German defences were limited to SAMs and anti-aircraft fire rather than putting their fighters up. The Coalition wanted them to do the latter, seeking to once more blast a load of MiGs out of the sky – and hopefully not get caught in a clever trap like before by them – rather than just face missile defences. The LSK stayed on the ground and stayed hidden too. The latest round of air strikes sought to make sure that East German’s air arm wouldn’t be able to fly again though. Airbases and main dispersal centres had been emptied ahead of Operation Allied Sword getting underway yet had been primary targets for when the Americans and their allies began their air campaign. There was a return to hitting them despite LSK combat aircraft staying away from such places. Throughout several days, recovery work had been done at various locations which the MiGs had once called home with DDR military personnel tasked to remove rubble, salvage what would be in terms of equipment and also begin the process of addressing unexploded munitions (delayed-action fused cluster munitions littered multiple airfields). Part of the massive mobilisation undertaken by the East Germans included that of putting tens of thousands of schoolchildren in uniform. Classes had been cancelled and fourteen-to-sixteen year olds, boys and girls alike, who were members of the Free German Youth were added to the ranks of adult reservists nationwide. The FDJ was significantly militarised and those teenagers on a path to join ‘the party’ with a stable career ahead of them. When called up, only a very few didn’t show their faces: for those absent, their future would be ruined after they’d previously been accepted into the FDJ yet disappeared when the need was greatest. Many of those children had been at the airbases helping with recovery efforts. Coalition reconnaissance aircraft had seen them active during the daylight hours but it was known that they weren’t present at night. President Cuomo in Washington and Prime Minister Heseltine in London had each previously been told that FDJ members had been killed and wounded when accidently coming across cluster bomb munitions. Bombing those airbases when they were full of those kids wasn’t something either approved of and they made sure that the information was firm that the FDJ wasn’t out in force at such places during the night.

The British, the Danes, the Dutch and the Italians joined with the Americans in hitting airbases across East Germany. The actual runways, taxiways and base facilities were hit once more with plentiful high explosives but so too was the general area within the perimeter fencing at each. Coalition strikes sought to hit what might be hidden too. Unbeknown to the aircrews, nor the planners of the attacks either, many FDJ members were caught up in those bombings. Few were working at night but those who were – on punishment duty – found themselves on the wrong end of all of that firepower unleashed. East German mobile SAMs were active. SA-11 and SA-15 missiles claimed multiple kills of Coalition aircraft whereas older, less advanced weapons had little luck. No matter what they tried, specialist Wild Weasel aircrews with several US Air Force units deployed against them couldn’t get a real line on them. They were given the run around and lured into traps with that. Hit especially hard on the fifth night by SAMs were the Canadians who lost three of their CF-18s up along the Baltic shoreline and also the RAF where they used Jaguars GR3s to raid the former Soviet airbase at Mahlwinkel that the LSK was making use of. Using camouflage (physical and electronic), the East Germans kept their SAM units on the move and ambushed Coalition aircraft at every given opportunity. However, while they had much success once again – adding to their already impressive tally – there was a noticeable lowering of the numbers of launches: fewer SAMs were fired off. Coalition military analysts noted that after the night was done with. As was the case with the DDR’s ballistic missile force, there would be vigorous debates within the Coalition as to whether the East Germans were running out of SAMs, that they had lost so many to attacks or were marshalling what was left for later use.

None of those SAMs, not even the SA-10s which had been used rather sparingly, targeted the stealth F-117s when they went back into action after a stand down following the effective loss of two of them to SA-11 hits. Flying from bases in Britain as well as Norway, the F-117s hit several important communications relay stations in both the eastern half of the DDR (their flight came down over the Baltic and through Polish skies) and also down in the Czech Republic too. A couple of important road bridges over rivers within the Czech Republic were also struck by the invisible bombers sending smart bombs towards them to isolated frontline units of the Czech rebel’s army from the rear. Black-&-white footage of the Paveways used in those attacks, where the target was highlighted then blown apart in fantastic images, would later be released to the American news media with mention being made that the F-117s were back in action. Elsewhere across the Czech Republic, the Americans joined the French in increasing the scale of the air strikes against the Czech rebels there. Government forces, pushed into that one corner of the overrun nation, were preparing a counter offensive alongside the Poles to assist them. Air strikes such as those bridges being downed moved to strikes against airfields, headquarters units, massed artillery and such like. The front-lines themselves continued to be off-limits to Coalition air power due to the situation with everyone down below operating almost identical equipment. Moreover, while Coalition-Polish ties had improved significantly, there was still no formal alliance with them nor the legitimate Czech government. That meant that only a few unofficial liaison people were on the ground and therefore the risk of ‘friendly fire’ was a near certainty. That friendly fire did happen though, just in a different manner. A Czech government SA-6 missile system preformed a ‘pop-up’ attack and successfully hit a Mirage-IVP. That Armée de l'Air reconnaissance aircraft was undertaking a low-level high speed run against Czech rebel forces and turning away from where the government forces had their SAM battery. The unit commander would afterwards claim that he though the aircraft was East German and on an attack mission: due to to shortages in qualified personnel, plus his loyalty to the government when so many else had shown no such thing, he’d keep his job despite the massive c*ck-up there. As to the French jet, it was hit hard and the two men aboard couldn’t nurse it back towards friendly lines… they were flying from France direct and while a landing at an American base in West Germany was available, that was still a long way off. Neither wanted to see their aircraft lost and so they put it down in Poland. Polish MiGs ‘escorted’ in the Mirage trailing smoke behind it. That wasn’t the first Coalition aircraft to make an emergency landing in Poland, the RAF and the Americans had also done so, though it was the first to do so after taking friendly fire from below.

Across border regions of the DDR, just across from where the Inner-German Border ran, there was another night of significant air activity. That was where the helicopter operations undertaken by the Coalition – the US Army’s Task Force Phoenix in particular – occurred. More hunting was done for the East German’s hidden ballistic missile force through the Harz Mountains, down in the Thuringwald and as well as up along the northern coastal areas too. Short-range SAMs, radar-guided anti-aircraft guns and East German armed helicopters themselves were encountered. A few targets were hit with claims made by attacking aircrew that they’d taken out Scud and Scarab weapons though there was a lot of doubt about the validity of those. The Americans pulled out of the border areas a couple of their aircrew, plus a Dutch aviator as well, but also inserted personnel into the DDR. They sent in more Green Berets to join those already on East German soil. Missile hunting was the purpose for their insertion where they joined more special forces teams from Britain, France, Denmark and the Netherlands (who also had commandos on the ground in hostile territory) not just observing and designating targets from afar for incoming attacks, but confirming that those weren’t dummies. Hands would have to be placed on missile launch vehicles, the orders ran, and even better would be to have people climb inside the vehicles of the mobile batteries to see if they were real before the bombs came in. Most of the night-time rescues and insertions went according to plan, or if they failed there were no casualties following a wave-off due to danger, yet a drop off of a Green Beret team into Saxony went wrong. Apache gunships escorting a single Pave Low assault transport helicopter, the US Army and the US Air Force flying their helicopters in support of each other, were taken under fire when flying above a salient of Czech territory formed around the little town of As in the Cheb region. The three helicopters were on a nap-of-the-earth mission with complete EMCON in the darkness – the pilots used night-vision goggles, nothing else – but Czech rebel forces in that area, close to the village of Hranice, spotted them. Hundreds of shells from a trio of ZU-23-2 toward anti-aircraft guns flew skywards. Both Apaches were badly hit but would survive: the Pave Low wouldn’t. The anti-aircraft guns were followed up by the launch of several shoulder-mounted SAMs too and they did what the 23mm shells couldn’t in bringing down that big helicopter. When the MH-53J crashed into the ground, it burnt and so too did the twenty-four crew & passengers aboard it.

Another good update James G.

[James G]

Oct 18, 2021 18:08:37 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 18, 2021 18:01:38 GMT James G said:

Forty-one – Back at it


The Coalition went back at it again with a fifth night of air strikes directed against East Germany as well as its forces & those of its allies down in the Czech Republic too. Throughout the hours of darkness, cruise missiles, manned aircraft and armed helicopters were active. East German defences were limited to SAMs and anti-aircraft fire rather than putting their fighters up. The Coalition wanted them to do the latter, seeking to once more blast a load of MiGs out of the sky – and hopefully not get caught in a clever trap like before by them – rather than just face missile defences. The LSK stayed on the ground and stayed hidden too. The latest round of air strikes sought to make sure that East German’s air arm wouldn’t be able to fly again though. Airbases and main dispersal centres had been emptied ahead of Operation Allied Sword getting underway yet had been primary targets for when the Americans and their allies began their air campaign. There was a return to hitting them despite LSK combat aircraft staying away from such places. Throughout several days, recovery work had been done at various locations which the MiGs had once called home with DDR military personnel tasked to remove rubble, salvage what would be in terms of equipment and also begin the process of addressing unexploded munitions (delayed-action fused cluster munitions littered multiple airfields). Part of the massive mobilisation undertaken by the East Germans included that of putting tens of thousands of schoolchildren in uniform. Classes had been cancelled and fourteen-to-sixteen year olds, boys and girls alike, who were members of the Free German Youth were added to the ranks of adult reservists nationwide. The FDJ was significantly militarised and those teenagers on a path to join ‘the party’ with a stable career ahead of them. When called up, only a very few didn’t show their faces: for those absent, their future would be ruined after they’d previously been accepted into the FDJ yet disappeared when the need was greatest. Many of those children had been at the airbases helping with recovery efforts. Coalition reconnaissance aircraft had seen them active during the daylight hours but it was known that they weren’t present at night. President Cuomo in Washington and Prime Minister Heseltine in London had each previously been told that FDJ members had been killed and wounded when accidently coming across cluster bomb munitions. Bombing those airbases when they were full of those kids wasn’t something either approved of and they made sure that the information was firm that the FDJ wasn’t out in force at such places during the night.

The British, the Danes, the Dutch and the Italians joined with the Americans in hitting airbases across East Germany. The actual runways, taxiways and base facilities were hit once more with plentiful high explosives but so too was the general area within the perimeter fencing at each. Coalition strikes sought to hit what might be hidden too. Unbeknown to the aircrews, nor the planners of the attacks either, many FDJ members were caught up in those bombings. Few were working at night but those who were – on punishment duty – found themselves on the wrong end of all of that firepower unleashed. East German mobile SAMs were active. SA-11 and SA-15 missiles claimed multiple kills of Coalition aircraft whereas older, less advanced weapons had little luck. No matter what they tried, specialist Wild Weasel aircrews with several US Air Force units deployed against them couldn’t get a real line on them. They were given the run around and lured into traps with that. Hit especially hard on the fifth night by SAMs were the Canadians who lost three of their CF-18s up along the Baltic shoreline and also the RAF where they used Jaguars GR3s to raid the former Soviet airbase at Mahlwinkel that the LSK was making use of. Using camouflage (physical and electronic), the East Germans kept their SAM units on the move and ambushed Coalition aircraft at every given opportunity. However, while they had much success once again – adding to their already impressive tally – there was a noticeable lowering of the numbers of launches: fewer SAMs were fired off. Coalition military analysts noted that after the night was done with. As was the case with the DDR’s ballistic missile force, there would be vigorous debates within the Coalition as to whether the East Germans were running out of SAMs, that they had lost so many to attacks or were marshalling what was left for later use.

None of those SAMs, not even the SA-10s which had been used rather sparingly, targeted the stealth F-117s when they went back into action after a stand down following the effective loss of two of them to SA-11 hits. Flying from bases in Britain as well as Norway, the F-117s hit several important communications relay stations in both the eastern half of the DDR (their flight came down over the Baltic and through Polish skies) and also down in the Czech Republic too. A couple of important road bridges over rivers within the Czech Republic were also struck by the invisible bombers sending smart bombs towards them to isolated frontline units of the Czech rebel’s army from the rear. Black-&-white footage of the Paveways used in those attacks, where the target was highlighted then blown apart in fantastic images, would later be released to the American news media with mention being made that the F-117s were back in action. Elsewhere across the Czech Republic, the Americans joined the French in increasing the scale of the air strikes against the Czech rebels there. Government forces, pushed into that one corner of the overrun nation, were preparing a counter offensive alongside the Poles to assist them. Air strikes such as those bridges being downed moved to strikes against airfields, headquarters units, massed artillery and such like. The front-lines themselves continued to be off-limits to Coalition air power due to the situation with everyone down below operating almost identical equipment. Moreover, while Coalition-Polish ties had improved significantly, there was still no formal alliance with them nor the legitimate Czech government. That meant that only a few unofficial liaison people were on the ground and therefore the risk of ‘friendly fire’ was a near certainty. That friendly fire did happen though, just in a different manner. A Czech government SA-6 missile system preformed a ‘pop-up’ attack and successfully hit a Mirage-IVP. That Armée de l'Air reconnaissance aircraft was undertaking a low-level high speed run against Czech rebel forces and turning away from where the government forces had their SAM battery. The unit commander would afterwards claim that he though the aircraft was East German and on an attack mission: due to to shortages in qualified personnel, plus his loyalty to the government when so many else had shown no such thing, he’d keep his job despite the massive c*ck-up there. As to the French jet, it was hit hard and the two men aboard couldn’t nurse it back towards friendly lines… they were flying from France direct and while a landing at an American base in West Germany was available, that was still a long way off. Neither wanted to see their aircraft lost and so they put it down in Poland. Polish MiGs ‘escorted’ in the Mirage trailing smoke behind it. That wasn’t the first Coalition aircraft to make an emergency landing in Poland, the RAF and the Americans had also done so, though it was the first to do so after taking friendly fire from below.

Across border regions of the DDR, just across from where the Inner-German Border ran, there was another night of significant air activity. That was where the helicopter operations undertaken by the Coalition – the US Army’s Task Force Phoenix in particular – occurred. More hunting was done for the East German’s hidden ballistic missile force through the Harz Mountains, down in the Thuringwald and as well as up along the northern coastal areas too. Short-range SAMs, radar-guided anti-aircraft guns and East German armed helicopters themselves were encountered. A few targets were hit with claims made by attacking aircrew that they’d taken out Scud and Scarab weapons though there was a lot of doubt about the validity of those. The Americans pulled out of the border areas a couple of their aircrew, plus a Dutch aviator as well, but also inserted personnel into the DDR. They sent in more Green Berets to join those already on East German soil. Missile hunting was the purpose for their insertion where they joined more special forces teams from Britain, France, Denmark and the Netherlands (who also had commandos on the ground in hostile territory) not just observing and designating targets from afar for incoming attacks, but confirming that those weren’t dummies. Hands would have to be placed on missile launch vehicles, the orders ran, and even better would be to have people climb inside the vehicles of the mobile batteries to see if they were real before the bombs came in. Most of the night-time rescues and insertions went according to plan, or if they failed there were no casualties following a wave-off due to danger, yet a drop off of a Green Beret team into Saxony went wrong. Apache gunships escorting a single Pave Low assault transport helicopter, the US Army and the US Air Force flying their helicopters in support of each other, were taken under fire when flying above a salient of Czech territory formed around the little town of As in the Cheb region. The three helicopters were on a nap-of-the-earth mission with complete EMCON in the darkness – the pilots used night-vision goggles, nothing else – but Czech rebel forces in that area, close to the village of Hranice, spotted them. Hundreds of shells from a trio of ZU-23-2 toward anti-aircraft guns flew skywards. Both Apaches were badly hit but would survive: the Pave Low wouldn’t. The anti-aircraft guns were followed up by the launch of several shoulder-mounted SAMs too and they did what the 23mm shells couldn’t in bringing down that big helicopter. When the MH-53J crashed into the ground, it burnt and so too did the twenty-four crew & passengers aboard it.

Another good update James G .

Thank you.

[James G]

Forty-two – His bite is worse than his bark


Outside of RAF Marham in Norfolk, the temporary home of Tornado GR1B strike-bombers flying combat missions with 617 Squadron (the Dambusters), a stolen civilian car was set alight alongside of the perimeter fence. The fire was petrol driven and went with quite some gusto. It drew the attention of those inside of the busy RAF airbase to which returning Tornados were on their way to after a night out over East Germany. Security units moved towards the fire though, under command of their commander, spread out further too when the reaction force was brought out. Wisely, the officer suspected that that burning car was meant to be a distraction so as to keep the men and women under his command looking towards it rather than elsewhere. He had RAF regiment troopers, RAF Police personnel and regular RAF ground-crews doubling up duties on patrol. The primary threat towards Marham was considered to be East German commandos – though that was considered a lesser risk than elsewhere due to the distances involved – so the security personnel who investigated the fire and redeployed elsewhere inside the airbase were fully armed. Those who had set that fire and then went through a cut hole in the fence several hundred yards off were in the end lucky not to get shot. Three women and two men, all civilian peace protesters, were those who broke into Marham. They’d come to occupy a portion of the flight ramp and make a nuisance of themselves using whistles, flares and superglue. A Land Rover with a heavy machine gun fitted to the top of it almost ran them over and then there were a dozen fully-equipped combat troops all over them. Detained then arrested, the protesters escaped their run-in with the security force at Marham without coming to any harm. They’d be ejected and turned over to the Norfolk Constabulary though manage to leave alive.

That wasn’t the case at RAF Fairford down in Gloucestershire of all of those who broke in there. That was an American-operated stand-by airbase out in the West of England and had been filled with aircraft starting ahead of the shooting starting with the DDR. B-1 and B-52 bombers had arrived to call Fairford their wartime home along with plenty of air-to-air refuelling tankers too. Many of the latter were from Air Reserve units joining the full-time US Air Force bomber crews. Fairford was a large facility out in the middle of the countryside. It was the centre of a yearly major international air show due to how much room there was to operate there. The Americans had spread themselves out and also brought along their own security people. Security Police from both the regular US Air Force as well as a New York Air National Guard unit (which had been preparing to go to Kuwait before it was retasked to travel to Britain) were on patrol at Fairford. So too were Britons though. It was still a British base after all and unlike some of the other American facilities in-country, British security personnel patrolled Fairford. An overnight protest near to the main gate had been attended by people who’d travelled from across the UK to demonstrate outside of there. There were close to fifteen hundred of them who’d been awake all night and making sure that they had everyone else’s attention. Their presence hadn’t stopped air operations at all though. The bombers had flown off on their missions with many of the KC-135s up as well. Hearing them fly away had infuriated many of the demonstrators. They’d increased their noise and a couple of them had let off fireworks. Military personnel stayed within the grounds of Fairford itself – despite having enforcement powers beyond the perimeter – and witnessed police officers address that issue. Both Gloucestershire Constabulary and Avon & Somerset Constabulary had public order officers on deployment. They managed to rein in the worst aspects of crowd behaviour during the night. In a worst case scenario, troopers from inside the airbase were prepared to go outside and enforce order if the police couldn’t maintain it.

Fairford had several entry/exit points beyond the main gate. During the night, a small convoy of trucks departed from one of the smaller access-ways and then set off under escort (with armed police officers) for the distant RAF Welford. That was down the M-4 motorway which was reached when the trucks went past the sleeping town of Swindon. Welford was a non-flying station and instead a massive weapons depot. Immense quantities of munitions were stored in bunkers there. The trucks were loaded up with what they were tasked to then drove back to Fairford. Another convoy went out of Welford after them with that one going to the British-operated RAF Lyneham also along the M-4 corridor through Southern England. Several US Air Force air-freighters would fly what was trucked to Lyneham onto American airbases in West Germany due to protesters blocking roads in that country: those angry Germans couldn’t stop incoming aircraft. The convoy from Fairford returned there and avoided the attention of the anti-war demonstrators elsewhere outside of the base. A lot of them were getting tired but were waiting for dawn to come up before they would leave. They had vowed to spend the night protesting outside of the British airbase from where the Americans were flying their bombers against East German targets – nuclear-capable bombers against civilian targets, such was their argument when faced with journalists – and would do so. There were others who had come all the way to Fairford to do more than just protest outside though. They’d been inspired by what had happened in West Germany when Geilenkirchen AB had been overrun by Dutch & German protesters who’d commenced a massive sit-in and wouldn’t be moved. Two dozen anti-war demonstrators, hardcore veterans of many protests concerning various causes, had spent most of the night on the fringes of the protest outside the airbase’s main gate before slipping away in the early hours. They crossed through some woodland and even went over a stream – all in the darkness without the use of torches – to reach two separate stretches of the perimeter fencing. On cue, they started cutting the fencing. Experienced activists went through first, leading others behind them. They carried rucksacks full of more equipment (superglue, bike-locks, blow horns etc.) for their ‘mission’ once they got deep within Fairford and over in the section where those American aircraft could be found.

The air national guardsmen from New York state opened fire on one of the groups of protesters. Ten figures dressed all in black, including balaclavas, carrying backpacks ran through the early morning shadows. They looked like commandos, possibly carrying satchel charges. A demand to halt was shouted by a corporal commanding a trio of other armed soldiers though at that time there was one of those huge tankers on final approach above which made a lot of noise. Those coming towards the four armed Americans refused to stop. Shots rang out in reply to make them. Three-round bursts were fired from M-16s. Down went those men and women. Six of them would eventually die and the four others would have life-changing lasting injuries from their gunshot wounds. The air national guardsmen would be investigated but cleared of acting outside of their rules of engagement. Family members of those killed would in the coming years make legal efforts to try and bring those Americans involved – those who fired the shots and their superiors officers too – ‘to justice’ but to no avail. The British legal system would find, just as the US Armed Forces’ own inquiry did, that the shooting incident was tragic yet had justification: they could have been East German commandos.

As to the second, larger group of fourteen protesters, they were engaged not by gunshots but by dogs instead. The RAF Police had German Shepherds with them and sent those highly-effective working dogs to run free when those breaking into Fairford were spotted. The dogs started knocking down those they charged against. Using their body strength, the dogs were trained to put on the ground anyone up and running. Half of the protesters hit the ground hard. Others froze in fear of the barking and then the many lights which were switched on leaving them to see clearly all the men with guns trained upon them. A handful of the protesters ran from the dogs and towards back where they had come. They weren’t quick enough. All were bundled to the ground, again very roughly, by the German Shepherds used in a non-lethal yet effective manner. Their handlers came forward alongside RAF Regiment soldiers and found that one of the fourteen protesters had made it to within only a few yards of a hole cut in the fence. The Americans already had people who’d gone around and were outside already yet that protester had believed he would have found safety had he made it back out. SA-80 rifles were pushed in his face while he was roughly searched and asked whether he was East German. The dog who’d knocked him down had stayed with him too while waiting on his handler. It was right up in the prone man’s face, barking furiously at him… covering the foolish chap who’d chosen to break into RAF Fairford with its spittle too. When the handler got there, he rubbed the dog – Buster was his name – on the back of the head and leant down to the man on the ground below who didn’t know how lucky he’d been.

“His bite is worse than his bark.” That was all that was said. Buster the German Shepherd was led away like the other dogs employed had been. As to that last protester, plus the others as well, the barking of those dogs was heard for some time afterwards but he was left with the words of that handler. An image of what the bite from Buster could do had been burnt into the mind of the man it had knocked down and then so thoroughly frightened.

[lordroel]

Oct 19, 2021 17:38:18 GMT James G said:

“His bite is worse than his bark.” That was all that was said. Buster the German Shepherd was led away like the other dogs employed had been. As to that last protester, plus the others as well, the barking of those dogs was heard for some time afterwards but he was left with the words of that handler. An image of what the bite from Buster could do had been burnt into the mind of the man it had knocked down and then so thoroughly frightened.

Well not a good thing to be a protester these days.

Reminds me of a story i once had of several local boys going into a airbase in the Netherlands, they climbed up one fence as a dare but became afraid that they might be caught by the military and so they climbed back up again, little did they know that the fence was patrolled by Sherman Shepherd who are let loose between two fences.

[James G]

Oct 19, 2021 17:48:56 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 19, 2021 17:38:18 GMT James G said:

“His bite is worse than his bark.” That was all that was said. Buster the German Shepherd was led away like the other dogs employed had been. As to that last protester, plus the others as well, the barking of those dogs was heard for some time afterwards but he was left with the words of that handler. An image of what the bite from Buster could do had been burnt into the mind of the man it had knocked down and then so thoroughly frightened.

Well not a good thing to be a protester these days.

Reminds me of a story i once had of several local boys going into a airbase in the Netherlands, they climbed up one fence as a dare but became afraid that they might be caught by the military and so they climbed back up again, little did they know that the fence was patrolled by Sherman Shepherd who are let loose between two fences.

That's a good story. I like it. Gotta be careful.
When I was a kid, I went onto a military training area near where I lived. There was no fence nor was there any live firing going on. Just the RAF Regiment driving around their light armoured vehicles. One 'tank' came out of the trees at me. I know now it was likely a CVRT Spartan, so not really a tank by any stretch of the imagination. Scared the life out of me though. 

[James G]

Forty-three – Lone sniper


Foreign journalists within East Berlin had remained under guard – for their own security – since the beginning of the Coalition’s air campaign. Many others had left before the conflict started yet for those who opted to stay in the East German capital, they understood that they would have minders from the Stasi covering their every move. Claiming to be either military or from the ruling SED political party, the Stasi people refused to admit what they were. That didn’t really matter because those journalists knew the truth. Several of those ‘guests of the regime’ who had been put up at a hotel together where they were centralised in the middle of East Berlin were called upon to leave that hotel on the morning of July 6th to cover a walkabout in the city being made by Margot Honecker. DDR news media crews were already in the process of setting up before the chosen foreign counterparts of theirs were brought up to speed on what was going on. After five nights of the Coalition bombing East Germany, the nation’s leader was to be seen out in public. She would be touring hospitals, making public appearances and generally showing a defiant face against danger. The trio of Westerners pulled from that hotel were from US news channel CNN (the correspondent only, not her camera-crew & wider team), the British newspaper the Guardian and the West German weekly political/news magazine der Spiegel. They were taken to where Honecker was at one of the hospitals and were playing catch-up at the start. It was a while before it was explained all that was happening. The patients which the woman oft known in the West as the Purple Witch saw were children who’d been transferred from hospitals elsewhere in the country to East Berlin after being caught up in Coalition bomb attacks. They were the collateral damage that the SecDef at the Pentagon had spoken about. It was considered safer for them in the DDR capital rather than elsewhere: East Berlin had only been bombed on the opening night and left un-attacked since.

After meeting the injured children, Honecker met with several doctors, nurses & ambulance drivers before leaving the hospital. There was a short car drive to a local community centre where, surrounded by SED emblems there for the cameras, she then spoke with party members who were involved in working with the vulnerable caught up in war. There were pensioners and disabled people, the senior-most official explained, who needed the services of the state at a time when their younger relatives were in uniform and protecting the nation from an invasion. SED volunteers were helping them with collecting medicines, checking up on them when left alone and doing their food shopping for them too. Honecker thanked those volunteers for doing what they did and gave a short speech about the merits of the one big community that East Germany was where everyone was always willing to look out for one another. The show got back on the road after that. There was a drive to another part of the city with the Berlin Wall nearly within touching distance of where Honecker spoke again. She addressed border guards with the Grenztruppen, those whose duty was to help defend the state like so many others were. Reservists had joined up with regular guards where they surrounded West Berlin yet the claim was made by Honecker that they were there to protect the citizens of the DDR from threats emanating from within there. A ‘den of spies’, she called it, where ‘illegal actions’ undertaken by Americans, Britons, Frenchmen and Israelis were mounted from to threaten East Germany. Honecker finished up her speech there and moved to speak to the senior Grenztruppen officer on duty before she left. In full view of the East German cameras, and with hundreds of people about in close proximity, she was assassinated.

A lone sniper took a shot from distance. People saw her fall, her head seemingly exploding in a red mist too, before they they heard the crack of a rifle. Eyes swung towards the Berlin Wall and that den of spies beyond yet those in the crowd with military experience heard the shot come from another direction: back further inside East Germany rather than over in that foreign exclave. Margot Honecker, leader of East Germany for just over eleventh months following her husband’s demise, was dead before she hit the ground.


There was chaos aplenty. Those Stasi security agents disguised as Volksarmee public affairs staff pulled hidden weapons and kept the three Westerners covered. They were told that they were to be escorted back to that hotel. SED party loyalists within the crowd, who had been directed to boost the number of attendees at Honecker’s speeches for the benefit of the cameras, took note of the foreigners. Shouts of abuse were made with accusations made that the journalists were somehow responsible. Back to their hotel unharmed the journalists made it though they had to be removed fast from the murder scene due to some real anger there. That anger wasn’t just directed against those few foreigners. For a long time, citizens of the DDR, especially the most politically involved ones, had been whipped up into a nationalistic frenzy. Honecker had led that effort where she had wanted to see her fellow citizens angry at all outsiders and thus focused there rather than inwards. Seeing her murdered before them made many actually furious. Not long ago, the death of her, or especially her husband when he was alive, would have brought about a different reaction. Instead, there was an eruption of hatred from people normally so calm and restrained. Improvised missiles were thrown towards the nearby stretch of the Berlin Wall: Grenztruppen personnel ducked out of the way of the thrown rubbish while well aware that no one over on the other side had any idea about that. Shouts of denouncements against the United States, Western European countries, their brethren in West Germany, the Jews of Israel and of Russia too were made. Without anyone making a move to stop them, where that usually would have been the case, both interviewees and interviewers said some remarkable things to be later broadcast on state media. The DDR journalists spoke to those party loyalists where there were raw emotions on display. Instructions were delivered to the broadcast chiefs that all of the footage was to go out soon enough too. A different version of East Germany than was usually seen was soon to be on display for the world.

It was the Stasi chief Wolfgang Schwanitz behind those calls made to state television and radio. He had his people contact them to make sure that no news went out that Honecker had been murdered before there was an official announcement. Naturally, there were no questions asked about that. He also made sure that those Western journalists who had witnessed the assassination were isolated too away from the satellite phones that he knew were in the hotel where they were staying. They were left waiting in the car park there while he made further calls from his office (Schwanitz wasn’t at the Stasi HQ but rather using a base of operations elsewhere in the city for fear that the HQ complex would be targeted by American bombs) to talk with Politburo members at the Prenden bunker. Schwanitz informed them of the demise of Honecker within less than fifteen minutes of it occurring. There was shock there, grief too. In addition, even though he was on the end of the telephone line, Schwanitz could smell the opportunity in them as well. Alas, they were there, in an underground guarded facility – for their own safety – while he was the one with his hands on the reins of power. More news was soon delivered to them in a further call that Schwanitz made within the hour, right before the state media was to make the announcement on what had happened to the DDR’s leader. Stasi paramilitary soldiers had made an arrest already. They’d managed to capture alive a gunman complete with a rifle in a tall building within sight of the murder scene. He was an American too! The Politburo were left stunned at that revelation. Schwanitz promised them more answers to be forthcoming when he knew it but ‘suggested’ that they stay where they were in safety for the time being. If the CIA had used an assassin to get Honecker, there would be others waiting above ground for them. The fools in that bunker fell for such baloney and didn’t object to remaining the prisoners that they had unwittingly allowed Schwanitz to make them.

After a delay due to that arrest of the suspected sniper, Schwanitz was the one who spoke to the East German people that afternoon. He was the one who told them, and whom the wider world would see & hear too, of the demise of Margot Honecker. Murdered she had been, murdered by a foreign gunman within East Berlin. While he wasn’t presented directly for the cameras, Schwanitz made mention of that American national in custody. Later that day, more information would come out about the alleged CIA assassin that the East German regime had caught along with the story of him managing to enter the city by crossing under the Berlin Wall, but when Schwanitz made his statement where he revealed the news about Honecker’s death, he kept things simple. The DDR’s leader had been killed but, with haste, her killer sent by those bombing East Germany had been caught. State television had images of the scene of the assassination to show straight afterwards while Radio Berlin International would broadcast audio of some of those first on-scene reactions from ‘ordinary’ East Germans there.

There was no declaration from Schwanitz that he was taking charge when he spoke to the public. At Prenden, the Politburo quickly understood that he was though. There was an attempt to put an end to that. Ministers there in the belowground shelter that was meant to keep them safe from even a nuclear attack on their country sought to leave and return to East Berlin to take charge themselves. Schwanitz had no authority and there was even some expressed concern that maybe he had something to do with the assassination… Alas, there was no way out for those in the bunker. The exits were sealed. Security people who’d been inside were absent. They’d locked up behind them. Ministers, officials and aides were left all by their lonesome. Calls were made to Schwanitz and also the Volksarmee too. None went through though and then the phone lines went dead. Within another hours, both the lights went out and the air supply was shut off. The Prenden bunker would become a tomb for those trapped in there where their absence away from East Berlin had allowed the man behind the killing of Honecker to consolidate the power he’d grabbed for himself. The story would be spun about an American assassin but he was just a dumb patsy ripe for manipulation. Schwanitz had killed his leader and would see to it that his incoming rule was to be wholly unchallenged. The war with the Coalition would be fought vastly differently under his leadership.

[lordroel]

Oct 20, 2021 17:41:48 GMT James G said:

Forty-three – Lone sniper


Foreign journalists within East Berlin had remained under guard – for their own security – since the beginning of the Coalition’s air campaign. Many others had left before the conflict started yet for those who opted to stay in the East German capital, they understood that they would have minders from the Stasi covering their every move. Claiming to be either military or from the ruling SED political party, the Stasi people refused to admit what they were. That didn’t really matter because those journalists knew the truth. Several of those ‘guests of the regime’ who had been put up at a hotel together where they were centralised in the middle of East Berlin were called upon to leave that hotel on the morning of July 6th to cover a walkabout in the city being made by Margot Honecker. DDR news media crews were already in the process of setting up before the chosen foreign counterparts of theirs were brought up to speed on what was going on. After five nights of the Coalition bombing East Germany, the nation’s leader was to be seen out in public. She would be touring hospitals, making public appearances and generally showing a defiant face against danger. The trio of Westerners pulled from that hotel were from US news channel CNN (the correspondent only, not her camera-crew & wider team), the British newspaper the Guardian and the West German weekly political/news magazine der Spiegel. They were taken to where Honecker was at one of the hospitals and were playing catch-up at the start. It was a while before it was explained all that was happening. The patients which the woman oft known in the West as the Purple Witch saw were children who’d been transferred from hospitals elsewhere in the country to East Berlin after being caught up in Coalition bomb attacks. They were the collateral damage that the SecDef at the Pentagon had spoken about. It was considered safer for them in the DDR capital rather than elsewhere: East Berlin had only been bombed on the opening night and left un-attacked since.

After meeting the injured children, Honecker met with several doctors, nurses & ambulance drivers before leaving the hospital. There was a short car drive to a local community centre where, surrounded by SED emblems there for the cameras, she then spoke with party members who were involved in working with the vulnerable caught up in war. There were pensioners and disabled people, the senior-most official explained, who needed the services of the state at a time when their younger relatives were in uniform and protecting the nation from an invasion. SED volunteers were helping them with collecting medicines, checking up on them when left alone and doing their food shopping for them too. Honecker thanked those volunteers for doing what they did and gave a short speech about the merits of the one big community that East Germany was where everyone was always willing to look out for one another. The show got back on the road after that. There was a drive to another part of the city with the Berlin Wall nearly within touching distance of where Honecker spoke again. She addressed border guards with the Grenztruppen, those whose duty was to help defend the state like so many others were. Reservists had joined up with regular guards where they surrounded West Berlin yet the claim was made by Honecker that they were there to protect the citizens of the DDR from threats emanating from within there. A ‘den of spies’, she called it, where ‘illegal actions’ undertaken by Americans, Britons, Frenchmen and Israelis were mounted from to threaten East Germany. Honecker finished up her speech there and moved to speak to the senior Grenztruppen officer on duty before she left. In full view of the East German cameras, and with hundreds of people about in close proximity, she was assassinated.

A lone sniper took a shot from distance. People saw her fall, her head seemingly exploding in a red mist too, before they they heard the crack of a rifle. Eyes swung towards the Berlin Wall and that den of spies beyond yet those in the crowd with military experience heard the shot come from another direction: back further inside East Germany rather than over in that foreign exclave. Margot Honecker, leader of East Germany for just over eleventh months following her husband’s demise, was dead before she hit the ground.


There was chaos aplenty. Those Stasi security agents disguised as Volksarmee public affairs staff pulled hidden weapons and kept the three Westerners covered. They were told that they were to be escorted back to that hotel. SED party loyalists within the crowd, who had been directed to boost the number of attendees at Honecker’s speeches for the benefit of the cameras, took note of the foreigners. Shouts of abuse were made with accusations made that the journalists were somehow responsible. Back to their hotel unharmed the journalists made it though they had to be removed fast from the murder scene due to some real anger there. That anger wasn’t just directed against those few foreigners. For a long time, citizens of the DDR, especially the most politically involved ones, had been whipped up into a nationalistic frenzy. Honecker had led that effort where she had wanted to see her fellow citizens angry at all outsiders and thus focused there rather than inwards. Seeing her murdered before them made many actually furious. Not long ago, the death of her, or especially her husband when he was alive, would have brought about a different reaction. Instead, there was an eruption of hatred from people normally so calm and restrained. Improvised missiles were thrown towards the nearby stretch of the Berlin Wall: Grenztruppen personnel ducked out of the way of the thrown rubbish while well aware that no one over on the other side had any idea about that. Shouts of denouncements against the United States, Western European countries, their brethren in West Germany, the Jews of Israel and of Russia too were made. Without anyone making a move to stop them, where that usually would have been the case, both interviewees and interviewers said some remarkable things to be later broadcast on state media. The DDR journalists spoke to those party loyalists where there were raw emotions on display. Instructions were delivered to the broadcast chiefs that all of the footage was to go out soon enough too. A different version of East Germany than was usually seen was soon to be on display for the world.

It was the Stasi chief Wolfgang Schwanitz behind those calls made to state television and radio. He had his people contact them to make sure that no news went out that Honecker had been murdered before there was an official announcement. Naturally, there were no questions asked about that. He also made sure that those Western journalists who had witnessed the assassination were isolated too away from the satellite phones that he knew were in the hotel where they were staying. They were left waiting in the car park there while he made further calls from his office (Schwanitz wasn’t at the Stasi HQ but rather using a base of operations elsewhere in the city for fear that the HQ complex would be targeted by American bombs) to talk with Politburo members at the Prenden bunker. Schwanitz informed them of the demise of Honecker within less than fifteen minutes of it occurring. There was shock there, grief too. In addition, even though he was on the end of the telephone line, Schwanitz could smell the opportunity in them as well. Alas, they were there, in an underground guarded facility – for their own safety – while he was the one with his hands on the reins of power. More news was soon delivered to them in a further call that Schwanitz made within the hour, right before the state media was to make the announcement on what had happened to the DDR’s leader. Stasi paramilitary soldiers had made an arrest already. They’d managed to capture alive a gunman complete with a rifle in a tall building within sight of the murder scene. He was an American too! The Politburo were left stunned at that revelation. Schwanitz promised them more answers to be forthcoming when he knew it but ‘suggested’ that they stay where they were in safety for the time being. If the CIA had used an assassin to get Honecker, there would be others waiting above ground for them. The fools in that bunker fell for such baloney and didn’t object to remaining the prisoners that they had unwittingly allowed Schwanitz to make them.

After a delay due to that arrest of the suspected sniper, Schwanitz was the one who spoke to the East German people that afternoon. He was the one who told them, and whom the wider world would see & hear too, of the demise of Margot Honecker. Murdered she had been, murdered by a foreign gunman within East Berlin. While he wasn’t presented directly for the cameras, Schwanitz made mention of that American national in custody. Later that day, more information would come out about the alleged CIA assassin that the East German regime had caught along with the story of him managing to enter the city by crossing under the Berlin Wall, but when Schwanitz made his statement where he revealed the news about Honecker’s death, he kept things simple. The DDR’s leader had been killed but, with haste, her killer sent by those bombing East Germany had been caught. State television had images of the scene of the assassination to show straight afterwards while Radio Berlin International would broadcast audio of some of those first on-scene reactions from ‘ordinary’ East Germans there.

There was no declaration from Schwanitz that he was taking charge when he spoke to the public. At Prenden, the Politburo quickly understood that he was though. There was an attempt to put an end to that. Ministers there in the belowground shelter that was meant to keep them safe from even a nuclear attack on their country sought to leave and return to East Berlin to take charge themselves. Schwanitz had no authority and there was even some expressed concern that maybe he had something to do with the assassination… Alas, there was no way out for those in the bunker. The exits were sealed. Security people who’d been inside were absent. They’d locked up behind them. Ministers, officials and aides were left all by their lonesome. Calls were made to Schwanitz and also the Volksarmee too. None went through though and then the phone lines went dead. Within another hours, both the lights went out and the air supply was shut off. The Prenden bunker would become a tomb for those trapped in there where their absence away from East Berlin had allowed the man behind the killing of Honecker to consolidate the power he’d grabbed for himself. The story would be spun about an American assassin but he was just a dumb patsy ripe for manipulation. Schwanitz had killed his leader and would see to it that his incoming rule was to be wholly unchallenged. The war with the Coalition would be fought vastly differently under his leadership.

It was not the war that East Germany started that was it end, it was a bullet that killed Honecker that was the end of East Germany.

Also seems East Germany need some new high ranking officials who are loyal to Schwanitz.

[stevep]

   Well that was an interesting twist. Do we now have a fanatical idealog rather than a manipulative crook intent on staying in power in charge?  Or just more of the same but bloodier.