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The Russians were taking a huge gamble—a risk justified by the potential reward. They were using nearly all the cargo aircraft in the Military Transport Aviation fleet to carry their airborne soldiers deep into Germany. Thirty-six thousand of the Soviet Union’s best and brightest, and the tons of equipment that supported them, were on a flight path fraught with danger. For thirty minutes, each Cub had been carrying its sixty soldiers deep inside the borders of the enemy country.
The Warsaw Pact’s air attack had opened a number of corridors into the heart of Germany. In addition, three hundred MiGs were escorting the transports. Even so, the slow-flying cargo planes were vulnerable. They were easy targets should they inadvertently stray into the path of the surviving Allied air defenses. And with the vast range of their missiles, the American F-35s, F-22s, and F-16s were quite capable of circumventing the protective cover provided by the MiGs to reach out and kill.
General Yovanovich had estimated that even with the earlier efforts of the Russian fighter aircraft to clear the way, there would be significant losses. His evaluation had been correct. One by one, the persistent Americans picked off over three hundred of the plodding planes. By the time the Russian transports reached their drop zones, 20 percent of the parachutists lay dead in fallow farmers’ fields throughout Germany. Twenty percent of their combat vehicles had also been destroyed. Shot down by NATO fighters or air-defense missiles, one out of five of the lumbering planes had plunged to the earth or exploded in the brilliant blue sky.
Unlike the Americans, whose last division-level combat jump had occurred during the Korean War, the Russians believed in a strong airborne presence. The parachute divisions were the pride of the Soviet military and the Soviet people. America had reduced her airborne units to one airborne division and one air-assault division used primarily as light, mobile fighting forces. But the Russians retained eight divisions of airborne soldiers. The Russian airborne divisions were self-contained. Their combat vehicles, and everything they needed for battle, parachuted in with the divisions’ soldiers.
Between the combatants, there were marked philosophical differences in the use of airborne forces. These were based primarily upon the attitudes the competing countries had toward the acceptable levels of losses of its military. The Americans couldn’t withstand the close scrutiny the exceptionally high casualties of an airborne campaign brought. They’d long ago given up such tactics. For the Russians, however, there was no press or active voice in the citizenry to question their military decisions. Eighty percent losses were regrettable. Nevertheless, if it took such casualties to accomplish the mission, so be it. The common good would always outshine the individual life.
Despite the stark contrast in the competing countries’ approaches to the use of their airborne forces, there was a single characteristic that tied the American and Soviet airborne soldiers together. Like the soldiers of the American 82nd Airborne Division, their Russian counterparts had a proud history of battle to uphold. The American airborne soldiers in their burgundy berets, and the Russian airborne soldiers in their berets of powder blue, correctly considered themselves to be some of the truly elite combat soldiers in the world.
• • •
Inside the lead Cub, the light turned from red to green. In a steady stream, sixty paratroopers plunged out the door and into a winter sky’s icy nothingness. Each hurtled toward the frozen ground below.
All around them, the lethal regiment’s soldiers did the same.
While Arturo Rios sat rejoicing at the coming of the sun, ten miles away, close to two thousand of Russia’s best soldiers rained down from the sky like a frightful summer storm.
All over western Germany, a rain of billowing white parachutes began to fall—a torrential rain of terror for those who dared to stand against it.
Even with the 3rd Regiment’s losses in the German skies, three hundred combat vehicles cascaded from the passing aircraft. The armored equipment dangled on the ends of huge triple parachutes. Along with the parachutists, the vehicles fell into the farm country northeast of Ramstein.
As with any combat jump, there are mistakes. The strong winds shift at a critical moment. A pilot miscalculates the jump point. Equipment and soldiers descend into wooded areas. Parachutes fail to open. While they drop into the mantle of solid white, many soldiers miscalculate their impact point with the frozen ground. An ankle is twisted, a leg is broken, a knee is smashed. A neck is snapped by a misdirected parachutist’s encounter with the highest reaches of a mighty evergreen. Two chutes become hopelessly entangled in the close quarters, and a hapless pair of soldiers plummet together to their death.
General Yovanovich understood that another 10 percent of the men and equipment would never rise from the drop zone to join in the battle.
As the 3rd Regiment’s parachutists rose from the snows, the unit was down to 70 percent of its original strength. Seventeen hundred highly skilled men and two hundred and fifty combat vehicles would soon be on their way to Ramstein. Their prize was the total destruction of the great American air base.
Waiting to contest them were four thousand lightly armed airmen. At stake were the Americans’ last hopes of ruling the skies.
• • •
Arturo Rios sat at the end of the runway with an amused grin on his face as his wandering daydreams took him to the warm winds of home. His reverie was shattered as two Humvees screeched to a stop behind him. The Humvees were filled with anxious airmen cradling M-4s.
“All right, everybody out,” the first Humvee’s air-police driver said.
The airmen climbed out of the vehicles.
“Wright, Goodman, Michaels, Wheatley, Wilson, and Velasquez. You’re to support this defensive position and everything for one hundred yards each way. Rios here . . . You are Rios, right?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Rios is the only one of you with combat training. So even though he’s the lowest-ranking airman out here, you’ll take your orders from him when it comes to defending this section of the fence. Does anyone have a problem with that?”
The fidgeting airmen knew they were out of their element. No one said a word.
“Good. Let’s hurry up and get the sandbags out of the Humvees,” the air policeman said. “We need to get some more bunkers set up right away. The Russians could be here any minute.”
With the air policeman’s fateful words, Rios’s daydreams became nothing more than distant memories. Unsure of what was happening, he gripped the machine gun even tighter. Along the lengthy fence line, other Humvees were disgorging men and sandbags to support the .50-caliber positions.
The Cuban-American airman watched the ominous woods for any sign of the enemy while his countrymen rushed to prepare the new positions. A small bunker was hastily thrown together fifty yards to the left. An identical one was quickly erected on the righ
t. When they were finished, the air policemen returned to their Humvees to grab some final items. They headed back to the main bunker.
“Here, you’re probably going to need these.” The air policeman put two additional ammunition containers on the ground next to the machine gun. His partner laid a dozen hand grenades on top of the sand.
Before Rios could respond, the duo rushed to their Humvees and sped away. The new arrivals crowded around the bunker, waiting for him to take charge.
Rios only knew one of the six airmen. He turned toward him. “Goodman, what the hell’s going on?”
“Man, haven’t you heard? The Russians just parachuted thousands of men in a few miles from here. The air police told us they’re certain they’re on their way to wipe out Ramstein.”
“Hey, does anyone remember which end of this thing I point at the Russians?” Wheatley said while fumbling with his M-4.
“Don’t you think we ought to get organized?” Goodman said.
“What do you want us to do?” another asked.
For Rios, his brief stint in the Air Force had involved only taking orders. He’d never before had to give one.
“Well, I guess the first thing we need to do is not all be standing in one place. Let’s put two of you guys in each of the new bunkers. And two of you stay with me.” Rios pointed at Wheatley and Velasquez. “You and you, take that bunker.”
Clutching their rifles, the airmen picked up a couple of hand grenades and ran over to the bunker on the left.
Rios pointed to Michaels and Wright. “You and you, take the other one.”
The pair also grabbed their rifles and some of the grenades. They ran off to the right.
“Goodman, that leaves you and . . .”
“Wilson,” the chubby-faced airman with the broad grin said.
“You and Wilson with me.”
