David Miller - The Cold War - A Military History

Details of sea mines laid in the Second World War and the damage they caused are given in Appendix 23.

Details of the MCM programme and specifications of the ships involved are given in Appendix 24.

WIG craft fly at a height of between 5 and 15 m, taking advantage of the increased aerodynamic lift that occurs when a wing operating near the ground experiences a reduction in induced drag.

This equipment was known as ‘POMCUS’ – Pre-positioned Materiel Configured to Unit Sets.

This idea was adopted by the British army (at considerable expense) in the late 1970s and discarded (at further expense) after six years.

GSFG was redesignated Western Group of Forces on 1 July 1989, at the very end of the Cold War, but as the term GSFG was used for the greater part of the Cold War, it will continue to be used here.

‘Guards’ and ‘Shock’ were honorifics awarded for exceptionally distinguished service during the Second World War.

An eighth division was responsible in peacetime for training.

In the 1960s, by the then British secretary of state for defence, Denis Healey.

The minimum-range requirement arose from experiences of massed attacks by Chinese infantry in the Korean War and was met by canister shot, consisting of several hundred steel slugs.

For example, NATO’s STANAG 2805E laid down that, for unrestricted travel by train in continental Europe, a tank must not exceed 3.050 m in width.

Specifications of NATO and Warsaw Pact main battle tanks are given in Appendix 25.

The use of a projectile with a smaller calibre than that of the barrel enabled higher velocities to be obtained. The sabot was a segmented jacket which held the projectile in place as it travelled up the jacket but then fell away immediately after leaving the muzzle.

Also known as high-explosive squash head (HESH) in the British army.

The technical term is ‘trunnion tilt’, the trunnion being the bearings upon which the barrel is mounted.

The principal British armoured-vehicle research centre was located at Chobham in Berkshire.

It should not be assumed, however, that logistical problems did not exist. Warsaw Pact tanks, for example, used four different calibres of ammunition: T-34 – 85 mm; T-54 and T-55 – 100 mm, T-62 – 115 mm; T-64, T-72 and T-80 – 125 mm.

Italy also had a design capability, but no tanks were sold to NATO armies. Other countries had a capability to construct tanks under licence, but did not undertake design work.

Italy joined the project in 1958, but did not attempt to enter the design competition. It eventually selected the West German Leopard.

A version of the West German Leopard 2 was developed specifically to meet the US staff requirement. Designated Leopard 2(AV) (AV = Austere Version), this was tested by the US army but was rejected in favour of the Chrysler version of the M1.

It was also exported to a number of non-NATO countries, including Australia.

The AMX-30 was also bought by Spain, but well before that country joined NATO.

‘6 × 6’ indicates that it was a six-wheeled vehicle with all six wheels powered. A 4 × 2 vehicle has four wheels with only two powered (as in a standard civil automobile).

Specifications of the principal artillery pieces are given in Appendix 26. To the purist, there is a difference between a gun and a howitzer: the gun can be elevated between zero and 45 degrees and the latter up to about 70–80 degrees. Most self-propelled weapons (SPs) are therefore strictly speaking howitzers, but, for ease of reference, this book uses the generic term ‘SP gun’.

The experience of the Coalition air forces in the Gulf War is relevant: they found Iraqi air defences very powerful, especially at very low levels.

ZSU = Zenitnaia Samokhodnaia Ustanovka (self-propelled, anti-aircraft gun); ‘23’ denotes the calibre in millimetres; ‘4’ indicates the number of barrels.

Before condemning NATO for a lack of equipment standardization, it should be pointed out that many nations failed to achieve internal standardization. To give just two examples in the US forces: the navy and the Marine Corps used one type of ejector seat, the air force another, while in air-to-air refuelling the navy and the Marine Corps used probe-and-drogue and the air force the ‘flying-boom’ method.

One of these squadrons was based in the Netherlands and was under the operational control of the Dutch air force.

Based in southern England.

The four E-3 As did not arrive until after the end of the Cold War.

Such collaborative projects included the SEPECAT Jaguar strike aircraft with the UK, and the Alphajet trainer and Transall transport with the FRG.

These firms were the forerunners of the contemporary British Aerospace (BAe), Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Alenia, respectively. Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands also took part in the initial feasibility study. The first two did not join the consortium set up in March 1969, while the Dutch did, but then withdrew in July 1969.

Western pilots flew many Soviet aircraft following the end of the Cold War. In general, their comments were that reliability and serviceability were poorer than had been thought in the West, but performance and capability were much better. The German Luftwaffe , for example, initially decided to sell the MiG-29s it inherited from the East German air force, but once it had taken full measure of their capabilities (and had solved the maintenance problems) it decided to retain them.

Not all Warsaw Pact aircraft were of Soviet design. All Pact air forces used the Czech L-29 Delfin trainer, for example.

FALLEX = Fall [i.e. Autumn] Exercise; CIMEX = Civil/Military Exercise. Both were normally suffixed by the year – e.g. FALLEX84.

Reserved circuits were those which had been identified for NATO use and pre-booked with national telecommunications authorities (e.g. Deutsches Bundespost (the German Federal Telecommunications Authority)) for activation in a crisis.

These contingency plans are fully described in Chapter 32 32 Berlin: Front-Line City of the Cold War THROUGHOUT THE COLD War there was no other place or group of people that epitomized the issues at stake as clearly as Berlin and the Berliners; indeed, on more than one occasion, events in and around Berlin dragged Europe – and the world – to the brink of war. The city’s curious status stemmed in part from its role as the traditional capital first of Prussia and then of united Germany (from 1871), but mainly from its political and emotional significance as the capital city of, first, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Imperial Germany and subsequently of Hitler’s Third Reich. Thus the very name ‘Berlin’ struck a chill into the hearts of its enemies, and reaching and controlling it became the symbolic military goal of all four Allies during the Second World War. .