They may be TA, but they are verging on being reserve special forces. To get in there is more of a selection process than a sign on the dotted lines policy from what I have heard. Not much of a sign of how good they are I know, but I believe they did win this years Courage Trophy competition, beating the parachute regiment.

They may be TA, but they are verging on being reserve special forces. To get in there is more of a selection process than a sign on the dotted lines policy from what I have heard. Not much of a sign of how good they are I know, but I believe they did win this years Courage Trophy competition, beating the parachute regiment.

Rest assured that nuclear targetting did not involve any such thing. It was intelligence led meaning systematic exploitation of all source information to select the targets that would be the most advantageous for the Commanders' (Div or Corps) operations. HAC and their regular army equivalents (formed c.1983) are paid at SF rates. Their original role was to engage targets in depth using conventional artillery, with priority on enemy artillery.

http://www.army.mod.uk/hac/index.html Their official internet site, which is fairly informative. I'm going down to Central London for university soon, and am rather tempted to try for them.

Its not about the fact that they are TA, as if this might be "second class" or something. Its just that if a unit was earmarked for this important role they would have to spend a lot of time in Germany, already pre-deployed there for anything that might happen. And I dont see how that could work with a reserve unit.

The assumption in the statement about pre-deployment might be valid if the only option for the cold war turning hot was a 'no notice cold start attack' by WP. The alternative was an identifiably build-up/preparation over a longer period. These two possibilities are why NATO had 2 completely different deployment systems. In the event of a surprise attack then virtually no rfts would have arrived from UK before fighting started, even deploying to battle positions by in country units and formations would have been extremely difficult. However, the int assessments were that total surprise of this sort would be unachievable by WP, the issue would have been whether indicators would have been strong enough to convince the political leaders of the alliance to issue the key orders. However, there were quite a lot of things that could be done without these orders.

If the Cold War suddenly went hot with little prior notice, many TA would see action before the regulars. The TA were to be used basically as cannon fodda, to make time for the regulars to get their act together and deployed.

Just reflecting on my time at 1 (British) Corps Headquarters, Hildesheim, Germany in 1979 and 1980. 1. Yes, a small elite group within HAC had PRIMARY tasking for targetting Tactical Nuke Srikes by the Corps arty brigade assets (175mm, 8.2" howitzer and Honest John/Lance rockets) once the Corps Commander received Theater Nuclear Release (TNR) from C-in-C NORTHAG (also GOC BAOR) and from SACEUR. This group in HAC used to take the NATO LRRP course in Bavaria and did very well, not surprising since they did and do include many ex-regular officers who are pursuing other careers in London. Together with 21 & 23 SAS, HAC formed the SAVR (Special Army Volunteer Reserve or the "Ever Readies"), the elite 2,500 of the "Tier 1 Troops" within the 4 Tier 74,000 man TAVR, now the TA. TNR was always unlikely before reaching the final killing zones east of the Rhine estimated as X+5 (or X+2 if they crossed on a holiday weekend!). Most SF roles were as classic "stay behind" parties - there was never really a question of "infiltrating" HAC (or SAS for that matter) - it was a case of "get as far forward as possible as soon as possible, usually by the exotic means of a Land Rover with a trailer, burn Land Rover, march 1 mile, excavate pre-positioned radio equipment, get under ground and allow yourselves to be overrun, report what you see". Ths simply involved getting to the 5 (UK) Division LOC or whichever was acting as ADF (Aggressive Delaying Force) for 1 (Br) Corps while the other three divisions deployed. As ADF withdrew, they just left the HAC and SAS behind; by X+5, simply by sitting still, HAC/SAS would be deep behind WP lines. If NORTHAG could hold the WP conventionally (ha! ha! ha! hardy haaaaargh! oh hah!, [wipes tear from eye] excuse me....) then HAC wouldnt be deep enough to use and NORTHAG wouldnt need to use them; if NORTHAG couldnt hold them until the Rhine killing zones, then they would and could. It was that simple. The TacNuc targets? The big threat was the masses of WP artillery which they use to line up WW2 style, but this was a double-edged sword since we knew they had trouble coordinating it with their maneuver units and the potential weight of fire was so massive it would simply make the going more difficult. They "solved" this with the massed rocket batteries which really had one purpose - "stonking" a complete grid square with with "Bom Z" (hydrogen cyanide) a non-persistent, lethal blood agent; 15 minutes later you can walk over the bodies without a mask. The worry was: do we go nuclear because they use gas? The answer, of course is: it depends what the effect of the gas is. That was part of my job. 2. Intelligence. I adore all the quaint "retro" writings nowadays about how intel would give warning; you want the truth? We had NO warning; zero, nada, niente, zilch, big fat zero. And we planned for no warning; any reinforcement was a luxury. Why? Because in 1956 and 1968 (and 1973 in Egypt vs Israel) and 1980 the Red Army proved its expert mastery of the art of moving massive formations of troops hundreds (even thousands) of miles without our intel knowing a damn thing about it. I mean ZERO; absolutely nothing. Not for days afterwards. In 1956 when the Red Army moved into Hungary, we got our first reports from the journalists 36 hours after the Red Army moved in. In 1968 the Red Army mobilized 5 entire tank divisions deep inside Russia and the Ukraine, moved them 400 miles through Russia into Czechoslovakia (overunning Prague) to within 1/4 MILE (that's 400 yards!) of the East/West border and we knew nothing about it until they arrived; even 48 hours later we still believed they were a collection from different WP countries rather than the 5 Red Guards Tank Divisions which they really were. The Director of Central Intelligence was nearly fired; the Director General of the UK DIS (3 Star) WAS fired. In 1973 the Soviet advisors helped Egypt launch a complete surprise attack on Israel. We told the Israelis that the signals traffic was rising and believed units were moving from barracks into the field, but the Israelis had zero warning themselves; worse, their much vaunted Mossad had ALL their agents rolled up by the Soviet GRU and were being played back to them with false intel. In 1980, they invaded Afghanistan; and we knew nothing. Np warning and, once again, days later we learned something of their composition (Guards Airborne with KGB Spetsnatz and marine Reydoviki) from the journalists. Once again, the Soviet operational security and deception planning was masterful. Which is WHY NATO Corps commanders became very keen on SF "stay behind" parties; we could turn an overrun to our advantage by having stay behind teams reporting into all the Corps HQs. In your case, HAC did the TacNuc; 21 SAS did the "roadwatch" (ident of WP formations, especially headquarters and, critically nationality - the Poles were a key target); 23 SAS did the aircrew escape routes.

1. HQ 1(BR) Corps was never based in Hildesheim, its base was Bielefeld just W of the Teutoburgerwald. CPXs, on an annual cycle (2 yrs if you include WINTEX) moved around the UK area but Corps HQ never went as far East as Hildesheim, however, an annual corps arty FTX series did start in 1981 (notable for the abject failure of SF to locate the nuc delivery units, although SOXMIS did rather better but had the advantage of being mobile) and in 1980 there was a corps FTX when EXCON was a Hildesheim. Unlike CPXs this did not exercise operational plans. 2. 175mm never had a nuc capability in any NATO army. 3. HJ went out of service in AFCENT in the early 70's, no trace in 1979. 4. There was no arty bde at this time. Corps HQ included HQ Arty Div that included all the corps arty, both field and AD, but without any intermediate HQs between it and regts. The Dep Comd acted as the Corps AD Comd. 5. HAC never had a primary role of nuc tgt acq, although nuc fireplanning did accomodate HAC (and other SF) locations. I'll merely say that I was exceptionally placed to know exactly what their role was. If any single source had anything close to a nuc tgting role it was probably the drones, they were reasonably responsive basically providing an answer within the hour (and despite many myths armoured forces spend more time stopping than moving). As I previously said HAC primary role was CB using conventional fire and for this reason they could have direct comms to the 175mm btys, or by the late 70s, the DFDCs in each fwd div. In the 80s they were joined by regular RA teams with the same role (a result of the Phoenix study (a response to the cancellation of MRUASTAS) that also gave its name to a UAV). Of course if a div HQ parked in front of them they wouldn't ignore it! 6. There has never been a 5 Div involved in Germany, at least since the late 1950s (I believe they renumbered divs in the 50s). The covering force/screen was basically a cavalry bde commanded by an ad hoc HQ formed out of HQ Armd in Corps HQ. 7. There was no such thing as 'Theatre Nuc Rel' (at least by 79/80), there were 2 types of nuc rel at this time, neither called that. 8. There have never been any such things as '8.2 inch how', 8 inch was 203mm, 8.2 would be 210 mm, a calibre used by FR and GE in WW1 and in prototype form by Iraq in the 80s. 9. The 'Ever-readies' were a creation of the time of the conversion of TA to T&AVR in 1967. 21 and 23 SAS formed the CPU. 10. While a rapid WP advance to the Rhine may have been accepted in the 1950s, by the 70-80s this was definitely not the case, not least because NATO had adopted the 'forward defence' doctrine. 11. WP chem wpns were a concern but for the Brits at least not an overwhelming one relatively speaking. The reason was that in the early 1970s that had introduced effective NBC protective clothing - S6 respirator and 'noddy suits', what's more due to hydrogen cyanide everyone carried a spare respirator cannister. Further more at that time the WP did not have massive numbers of MRLs, basically just a bn per div, and BM21 has a relatively slow rate of fire and did not 'shoot and scoot'. BM27 were starting to appear as front level troops. 12. NATO did plan on the basis of indicators of attack. That's why there were 2 threads of escalating alert measures. Normal (3 stages possibly over weeks) and emergency (2 stages over hours). The chances of the WP being able to launch a standing start attack by their 1st Tac Ech (never mind the others) directly out of their barracks in E Germany without preparations being detected by an array of intelligence sources and agencies was exceedingly remote, it may have been a bit different in 1968 (at that time Penkovsky was about the only source of good info about Sov forces, by 1980 there was a number of defectors and things were far better understood so the indicators were refined, what's more guys like BRIXMIS were on the ball in E Germany). Moving a few tank divs from the Western MDs of the USSR is nothing like moving armies.

All that was extremely enlightening... pray, tell us more cold war strategies! NATO actually assessed that the WP could be at the Rhine by D+5 or 2? And one division was actually planned to be sacrificed to give the others time to deploy? Couldnt air power and missile artillery be used to harrass the Russians, in this way you could hope to have an added division in the line. Why not build the barracks as close as possible to the units actual wartime sectors, with some distance to keep them guessing? What was GSFG? And why the emphasis on nationality? Why was it only Poles who could land on the Baltic shore? Could you not expect Russian amphibious landings? Could you also not rely on NATO naval forces or air power to mess up the amphibious shipping before the landings could take place? That way you could find yourselves with additional units in the line. Or would naval/air forces be busy duelling with their opposite numbers, and essentially it was land forces against land forces? I know that the WP had vastly numerically superior forces arrayed against us, but was I corp HQ really treating the concept of holding the line with such disbelief and black humour? Was it envisaged that superiority in armament, equipment, tactics and training would count for nothing? Why were the killing zones on the Rhineland? Was it foreseen that anywhere east of there would be overrun almost instantly, before there was proper time to react? Or is this something to do with the Rhine/Ruhr being the irreplacable heartland of German industry, and also with the British nuclear mines deployed there? And was NATO so rigid as to insist on a last stand in the Rhineland, no flexible defence? Or even a slow delaying action to the English channel to at least buy the diplomats some time to thrash out a solution? As to the subject of going nuclear if they use gas, well I think we would have found ourselves going nuclear even if they strictly did not use NBC weapons. With the difference in numbers wouldnt we have found ourselves bled dry far before they did and be forced to go nuclear as these would be the only assets available to equal the odds? I assume you are talking tactical nuclear, not strategic nuclear, although with the expected WP response to our use of battlefield nukes, they would use strategic nukes on us and so we should probably use strategics as well as tacs at the same time...? And that would be the end of it all I imagine. Did they REALLY ban SF from raiding so they could provide int? But raiding is the classic SF operation! Int is valuable but just imagine the disruption to frontline operations caused by raiding a divisional or corps HQ! Perhaps a different path would be keeping the SAS and other SF units for their classic roles, to include raiding, whilst creating new LRRP units (a la HAC), or even pre-deploying a Humint/espionage network within WP territories to provide information. That way you get your int and SF ops still happen. And the int gatherers wouldnt even need to go through all the SF training. Could you not rely on other int assets as well as stay-behind? Or was it envisaged that recce aircraft, satellites etc would be targeted by WP in the opening stages of the conflict? Could stay behind teams also be used as cable tappers should they be able to penetrate past WP initial line of departure in the confusion, or if dedicated comms was brought that far forward, say a div HQ being established on their OP? Or was it just, stay underground? Was there any plan for action in Europe if they hit us with nukes (strategic or tac) first? Or would use of such assets make all conventional forces academic as the real fight would be between the strategic nuclear forces? Was I corp expected to be able to operate after a significant nuclear strike either in Europe or in UK for example? Could you tell me what your role was in I corp HQ, apart from identifying nationalities? The appointment for example? It is very interesting having such information on how the cold war would have been fought! Thanks Ian