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Last updated: 20.06.2023 |
Netherlands
Armed Forces
ORDER OF BATTLE
1985
"Never,
perhaps, in the postwar decades has the situation in the world been as
explosive and, hence, more difficult and unfavourable as in the first
half of the 1980s. The right-wing group which has come to power in the
United States and its fellow travelers in NATO have turned away from
detente to a military policy of force."
1
|
Mikhail Gorbachev,
25 February 1986 |
"By
1986 the Cold War had been going on for as long as most of us in that
room had been alive, and there was no likelihood that we would ever see
any significant changes during the remainder of our lives."
2
"Our country had established armed forces in accordance
with its economic, financial and demographic weight:
a
complete nation state." 3
Preface
Through a Glass, Darkly (1)
Not all that long ago two
major world powers were locked in a standoff that lasted more
than forty years: both armed to the
teeth,
capable of wiping each other off the face of the
earth — and it did not happen.
In the end the
United States of
America and the Soviet Union did not unleash their vast arsenals on
each other, and suddenly, in a few months' time, it was all
over. After the relief and euphoria we quickly forgot about the
pressure we had
lived under, how it had pervaded and shaped our society, and
moved on.4
The
Cold War is a
unique period in world history because of what did not happen. A
paradox,
a World War that was no war —
but there were casualties nonetheless: in proxy
wars, in
military exercises that followed the "train as you fight" principle, in
intelligence operations that damaged the lives of many.
A war of shadows with in the background, barely
visible but ever present, the abyss of an
actual Third World
War: a dark promise of death and destruction on an
unimaginable
scale.5
1985:
The Beginning of the End
The
period of 1979 to 1985 is sometimes called the Second or New
Cold War,
starting with the breakdown of détente after the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan and ending with the
ascension of the reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In
retrospect the
latter event may
be seen as the beginning of the end of the Cold War: from 1985 his
overtures to the West led to a gradual easing of
tensions, tensions
which had peaked only two years
earlier
when the atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union had
become particularly hostile. As we know now, in
1983 the world
actually did come close to
the fulfillment of that dark promise, perhaps closer
than ever
before — or since.6
The
Past is a Different Country 7
Today
very little of this website's subject
remains. The armed
forces of
the Netherlands, first sized down and converted into an
all-professional expeditionary force in the 1990s, are now
effectively
fading away under
the
steady erosion of nearly thirty years worth of budget cuts
and misgovernment. For the foreseeable future it is
unlikely that the
Netherlands will
reattain anything resembling its Cold War military posture, and in this
light a survey of
what was built up and broken down seems to be
of historical relevance.8
Near the end of the Cold War about 45,000
young Dutch men were conscripted for military service
each
year. Olive-drab convoys
were a regular sight on the roads in the
eastern and
southern parts of the country and if one took a stroll through the
woods it was not uncommon to hear the sound of gunfire coming
from some training ground in the distance.
Periodically
large-scale exercises were held, sometimes involving tens of
thousands of men. Every year there was a mobilisation exercise
in which hundreds of reservists were called away from their homes
and jobs to test the nation's readiness for war.
Far from making a
militarised society, these things had nonetheless become a more or less
normal part of life.9
The
Netherlands of the 1980s saw a continued and moderately
increased defence
effort, the further continuation of which was laid
out in the 1984
Defence White Paper. By 1985 the results of earlier investments were
becoming visible as new
materiel was gradually introduced. The Royal Army in particular was a
force
in transition, with large-scale materiel modernisation programmes
underway and new tactical, operational and
logistical concepts being introduced. Of political
importance was the
fact that
the government, after much manoeuvring in the previous years, finally
allowed the United States to station
forty-eight nuclear-armed cruise missiles on
Netherlands territory as part of NATO's response to the
Soviet SS-20 programme.10
Afterimage
How
did the country I grew up in prepare for the war that never was?
What did its military forces amount to? These are the
questions that lie behind this study. The answers are sought
not
through historical overview or analysis but
through the collection, combination
and presentation of data — military
data,
much of which was highly
classified at the time. Rather than
providing a narrative account this website
projects an afterimage of the
Netherlands armed forces near the end of the Cold
War by showing, dissecting, describing and explaining
their organisation and, to an extent, listing their equipment. An afterimage that is both
comprehensive and detailed: most units and
formations are shown here in their entirety for the first time, or in
unprecedented detail.11
Sources
This
website is the handiwork of an amateur. I am not a
professional
historian and I have no military experience. There is however a
difference between amateur
and amateurish
and I do my best to avoid being the latter. Most information
is derived from primary sources, all information is
presented
after careful study and richly annotated and referenced in order to
make
it verifiable, to provide context and to facilitate further study.
The
main primary source for this website are the two official
Royal Army orders of battle for 1985 kept at the Netherlands Institute
of Military History (NIMH) in Den
Haag, one per 1 July
and one per 23 December 1985. Unless stated otherwise all
information
regarding the Royal Army comes from the
July document. Significant changes that took place between
July and December
are reported
in notes or footnotes.12
An
important complement to the Royal Army orders of battle are the 1980,
1983 and 1985 unit
filling schemes also residing with the NIMH,
which
show in detail where the reservists of the
Royal Army's
many mobilisable units and subunits came from. This
information has
been integrated with the order of battle data, making
visible
something
of the Royal
Army's intricate and rather ingenious unit filling and reserve
system.13
The
extensive planning and realisation memoranda
of Army Plan 149 kept by the Semi-Static Archive Services of
the Ministry of Defence (SSA-MvD) in
Rijswijk made it possible to ascertain which main battle
tank types equipped which tank and reconnaissance units during
1985. Army Plan 149 comprised a vast re-equipping and
reorganisation
programme for the Royal Army's cavalry units which was
realised between 1983 and 1988, during which
period most
battalions had a mixed tank inventory for some time. This information
is
also published here for the first time.14
These main primary sources
are supplemented by many official documents residing in
the National Archives in Den Haag (NL-HaNA), many
military field
manuals either consulted in the library of the Army Museum in
Delft (now National Military
Museum in Soesterberg) or obtained through local internet
auction sites; by other official publications such as parliamentary
papers (HTK), and finally by many
secondary sources: books, articles and other publications.15
Through a Glass, Darkly (2)
No
matter how trustworthy our data, it is useful to keep in mind that
knowledge, in this case historical knowledge, is limited by what we are
able to observe: we can, in principle, never be certain that we are in
possession of all the relevant facts.16
Like everyone else the historian, professional or amateur, tries
to construct a reality by peering through a darkened glass. But the historian is, or should
be, more
aware of his limited view and thus of the inherent uncertainty
of his reconstruction. When it comes to matters of state security this
uncertainty is especially inherent. In the opening chapter of The Hidden Hand. Britain,
America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence the author
Richard J. Aldrich issues
"a
salutary warning to scholars working in the immediate wake of any major
conflict who feed only upon material available in official archives.
Government files that are allowed into the public domain are placed
there by the authorities as the result of deliberate decisions. [...]
There is a potential cost involved in researching in government-managed
archives where the collection of primary material is quick and
convenient. [...] Most historians are remarkably
untroubled by this and
some have come to think of the selected materials in the Public Record
Office as an analogue of reality."
17
The subject of this study is not nearly as sensitive and indeed we may
safely
assume that the Netherlands had no secret armoured divisions, aircraft
carriers or intercontinental ballistic missiles. Nonetheless this
website firmly
falls in the category Aldrich intends and it is good to
be aware of this. Although the Cold War may seem long ago we are
still in its
wake and, as Aldrich notes, its full story has not yet
been told, and may indeed never be told — and there is no
reason to
assume that this notion excludes the Netherlands or its military.
Recent publications
revealing
the secret intelligence operations of Netherlands submarines against
the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet, the Netherlands secret stay-behind
network and East German operational war plans against
the Netherlands army corps underline this.18
Acknowledgments
My
interest in this
subject was generated years ago by playing and modding
the
computer wargame North German Plain '85 and later
revising the Dutch part of the order of battle for the sequel
title Danube Front '85. It made
me
conscious not only of the fact that an entire era had passed into
history but also that it had already passed out
of public memory. After giving up wargaming the work of O.W.
Dragoner, Alan Young, Rogier
Peeters and Leo Niehorster
stimulated me to take up the lingering idea to turn the material I had
collected over the
years into a
comprehensive order of battle website.19
Over
the past years several people have been helpful with this
project,
sometimes by providing additional data and sometimes by pointing out
errors, which is always most welcome. They are thanked in the relevant
places throughout this website. Here I would like to thank the
following people by name: Willem Smit of the NIMH for opening
the
Royal Army orders of battle to me, without which this project would not
exist; Rokus
van den Bout of the SSA-MvD for pointing me to Army Plan 179, which
enabled me to incorporate accurate data on the Royal Army's large tank
force in 1985; Lieutenant-Colonel Henk Molman (Rtd.) for
patiently explaining to me the operational organisation of the nuclear
artillery; Brigadier-General J.R. Mulder (Rtd.) for drawing my
attention to the stay-behind role of the General Affairs Section of the
Army Staff and providing additional information;
and Lieutenant-Colonel R. Dorenbos (Rtd.) for providing valuable
information on the Royal Air Force's ground-based air defence units and
air bases.20
Any mistakes, of course, remain my own.
Hans
Boersma
September 2011, April 2018, December 2020, June 2023
_________________________________________________
1. |
|
Gorbachev at the 27th Communist
Party Congress, quoted in 'Defector
Told of Soviet Alert', The
Washington
Post, 8 August 1986.
The full text
of Gorbachev's speech is published in Gorbachev, Political
Report, with the quoted passage on page 81. |
2. |
|
Hoffenaar and Krüger (eds.),
Blueprints,
viii: the author of the Foreword reminiscing about a command
post exercise of NATO's
Central Army Group (CENTAG) in November 1986. |
3. |
|
De Geus, Staatsbelang, 214.
Pieter de Geus was Minister
of Defence from August 1980 to September 1981. Website
Parlement & Politiek, Drs. P.B.R. (Pieter) de Geus.
|
4. |
|
Ibid., 205.
Aldrich, The Hidden Hand,
5. More than forty years: there is some debate amongst historians about
when
exactly the Cold War started and when it ended. A common timeframe is
1947 (Truman Doctrine) to 1989 (Malta Summit), though this might
be extended to 1991 (Collapse of the Soviet Union). See
Van Rossem, Drie
oorlogen, 147. |
5. |
|
Unique in world history:
see Hoffenaar, De
logica,
67. Proxy wars: instigated or sustained by major
powers that do not (fully) participate themselves. Examples of Cold War
proxy wars: Korea (1950-1953), Vietnam (1955-1975), Lebanon
(1975-1990), Afghanistan (1979-1989). In The Cold War's Killing Fields
(New York: Harper Collins, 2018) the author P.T. Chamberlin argues that
outside Europe the Cold War was in fact a long and bloody affair in
which some fourteen million people died. "Train as
you fight": following wartime practices and tactics in peacetime
training and exercises. See for example Steve Netto (red.), Jachtvliegers in de Koude
Oorlog. Flirten met de dood? (Vlijmen: Martin Leeuwis
Publications, 2010). Also: Andere Tijden, Altijd paraat! (NTR/VPRO
television, 2010). Death and destruction on an
unimaginable scale: the greatest single threat of the Cold War was that
of nuclear war. See for example Miller, Cold War, chapter
35 and 37.
However, the consequences of an all-out conventional war in Europe are
not to be underestimated: in 1980
the US Army reckoned that modern non-nuclear conventional war had
become 400 to 700 percent more lethal and intense than it had
been in World War II. Gabriel and K.S.
Metz, Short
History, 100.
|
6. |
|
Second or New Cold War: see for
example Van Rossem, op. cit., 251. Détente: the
period of reduced tensions between East and West lasting from
the
late 1960s to the late 1970s. See for example ibid.,
228-238. Beginning of the end: Hoffenaar,
Van der Meulen en De Winter, Confrontatie
en ontspanning, 247-248. Van Rossem, op. cit., 272.
Gradual easing of tensions after 1985: Elands, Harderwijk, 176. De
Graaf, Over de Muur,
261. It is interesting to note that the East German army (Nationale
Volksarmee, NVA) began adopting a
new, defensive rather than offensive war planning as early as 1985.
Lautsch, Zur
Planung, 26. Tensions peaking in 1983: website
CIA, A
Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare by B.B.
Fischer. More in particular on the threat of nuclear war in 1983:
website National Security Archive, The Able Archer 83 Sourcebook.
In the margin of this it is interesting to note that the NATO nuclear
release exercise Able Archer 83 was part of the Autumn Forge 83 series
of NATO exercises, which also included a large-scale Netherlands
military
exercise: FTX Atlantic Lion (see footnote 9). Website Unredacted
(National Security Archive), New Evidence on Autumn Forge 83 from the
Netherlands. |
7. |
|
"The past is a foreign country:
they do things differently there." Opening sentence of L.P. Harley's
novel The
Go-Between (1953).
|
8. |
|
Budget cuts: see for
example website Marineschepen.nl, Bezuinigingen op Defensie en de Koninklijke
Marine. Misgovernment:
for example selling off newly acquired or recently modernised
materiel: Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled 155 mm howitzers,
CV-90 armoured infantry fighting vehicles, Leopard 2A6 main battle
tanks, modernised P-3C Orion long-range maritime patrol aircraft. 'Duitsland koopt Nederlandse Orion-vliegtuigen', Trouw, 21 juli
2004. 'Te koop: F-16's, mijnenjagers en houwitsers',
Volkskrant,
15 oktober 2011. 'Defensie verkoopt overtollig materieel',
Reformatorisch Dagblad, 24 april 2013. Today the Netherlands armed
forces are
no longer capable of performing their constitutionally mandated tasks
(Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Article
97). Advisory Council on
International Affairs, Advisory Letter No. 22, September
2012. W.M. Oppedijk van Veen, 'Defensiebegroting: waar is de urgentie en
het commitment?', Militaire
Spectator nr. 4, 2017. 'Defensie kan grondgebied niet meer verdedigen',
NRC
Handelsblad,
18 mei 2016. For the foreseeable future: the
recent "investments" are
merely repairs to retain what limited capacities the
Netherlands
armed forces have left. 'Er komt 1,5 miljard euro bij, maar de
inzetbaarheid van het Nederlandse leger wordt niet groter', Volkskrant, 26
maart 2018. In Dutch the
collective term for the armed forces
is 'krijgsmacht' (force of war), a term that ceased to be appropriate
years ago. |
9. |
|
Number of conscripts: Hoffenaar en
Schoenmaker, Met de blik,
432. Large-scale exercises: the largest were the Field
Training Exercises (FTX) of 1 (NL) Corps. Four of these were
held: FTX Big Ferro in 1973, for which the Royal
Army brought some 24,000 men in the field; FTX Saxon
Drive in 1978 with ± 26,000 men; FTX Atlantic Lion in
1983 with ± 24,000 men; and FTX Free Lion in 1988
with 33,146 men. Hoffenaar
en Schoenmaker, op. cit., 292. Website military-database.de, Saxon Drive Revue und Zeitungsartikel.
Royal Army information booklet on FTX
Atlantic Lion, 23. Legerkoerier
nr. 8/9, 1988, 11. These corps-level FTX were an integrated part
of the massive NATO Autumn Forge exercises. Yearly
mobilisation
exercises: these went by the name Donderslag (thunderstroke) and lasted
three days. The number of reservists called up appears to have varied
from ± 600 to ± 1,600 men. De Jong en Hoffenaar, Op herhaling, 92,
120-121. See the army information film on the 1989
mobilisation exercise: Donderslag 19. For an overview of
the vital role of reserve forces in the Royal Army during the Cold War
see Hoffenaar, Reservisten.
|
10. |
|
Moderately increased defence
effort: the three-percent real annual growth in defence
expenditure agreed in NATO in 1977 was unilaterally lowered to two
percent by the government in 1984. Hoffenaar en Schoenmaker, op. cit.,
377.
Defence White Paper: Defensienota 1984.
For a critical analysis see De Geus, op. cit., 196-201. Cruise
missiles against SS-20s: ibid., 171-172. Much manoeuvring: ibid.,
173-176, 186-190. Forty-eight cruise missiles: these were BGM-109G
Gryphon ground-launched cruise missiles, each armed with a W84 nuclear
warhead. The W84 had a variable yield of
0.2 to 150 kilotons. For
reference: the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had
a yield of 15 to 16 kilotons. Mechtersheimer und
Barth, Militarisierungsatlas,
339. Website The Nuclear Weapon Archive, Complete List of All U.S. Nuclear Weapons.
The decision to
begin deployment was taken on 1 November 1985. The
actual
deployment was however cancelled by the
1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United
States
and the Soviet Union. De Geus, op. cit., 190-191. |
11. |
|
The war that never was
is the title of a retrospective fictional World War III history by
Michael A. Palmer (Arlington: Vandamere, 1993). Another noteworthy
title in this 'dark mirror' genre is the contemporary and
influential The
Third Word War
by John Hackett (London: Sphere Books, 1978). The
heightened tensions of
the first half of the 1980s brought forth a number of speculative World
War III novels, of which Chieftains by Bob
Forrest-Webb (London: Futura, 1982), Red Army
by Ralph Peters (New York: Pocket Books, 1989) and Red Storm Rising by
Tom Clancy (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1986) should be
mentioned. Highly classified: see footnotes 12, 13, 14. Units and
formations shown here for the first time:
including more or less obscure mobilisable elements like 305 Commando Battalion, 3 Amphibious Combat Group, 901 Torpedo Company and 102 Medical Group.
With their shadowy state of existence/non-existence
mobilisable units like these were part of the
alternate reality that lay behind the Cold War.
|
12. |
|
NIMH
430, inv. nr. 54 (Slagorde KL stand 1 juli 1985). Ibid.,
inv. nr. 55 (Slagorde KL stand 23 december 1985). Classified
as "zeer geheim" (top secret), which was the highest classification. Ministerie
van
Defensie, Nederlands
Instituut voor Militaire Geschiedenis.
|
13. |
|
NIMH
205A/10,
Aflossing van mobilisabele eenheden en -aanvullingen d.d. 27 mei 1980.
Ibid., d.d. 11 november 1983. Ibid., d.d. 17 juni 1985. Classified as
"confidentieel" (confidential). Rather ingenious unit filling
and
reserve system: see
Gijsbers, Blik
in de smidse, 2222-2231;
Selles,
Personele
vulling;
Berghuijs, Opleiding,
14-23. In English: Isby and Kamps, Armies,
341-343; Sorrell, Je
Maintiendrai, 94-96; Van
Vuren, The
Royal Netherlands Army Today, Military Review April 1982,
23-28. |
14. |
|
SSA-MvD,
CLAS/BLS 7486 (Legerplan
149: Reorganisatie cavalerie-eenheden 1982-1988). Classified as
"geheim" (secret). Ministerie van
Defensie, Semi-Statische Archiefdiensten. Previously called Centraal
Archievendepot (CAD), apparently now known as Semi-Statisch
Informatiebeheer (SIB).
|
15. |
|
National
Archives: Nationaal Archief. Army Museum:
Legermuseum, now Nationaal Militair Museum.
Parliamentary papers: Proceedings of the Second Chamber of the
States-General, Handelingen
van de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal. All
sources are listed on the Sources page. How sources are
referenced is described in the Introduction, under Order of
Battle: Typical Page Structure. |
16. |
|
The perimeter of knowledge. Or, if you like, the perimeter of ignorance. See
for example astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at 92nd
Street Y, New York, 3 May 2017. I
thank my old friends Kees Torn and Matthias Giesen for the stimulating
correspondence we had about the nature of human knowledge.
|
17. |
|
Aldrich, loc. cit. "Deliberate
decisions": for example, the
NL-HaNA inventory of the archive of the Commander-in-Chief of the
Army/Chief of
Staff of the Army 1973-1979 shows that out of sixty-five metres of
classified documents, thirty-eight metres were
destroyed. NL-HaNA, archiefinventaris 2.13.110,
13. |
18. |
|
Recent publications: In
het diepste geheim. Spionage-operaties van Nederlandse onderzeeboten
van 1968 tot 1991 by Jaime Karremann (Amsterdam:
Marineschepen.nl, 2017. English edition: In Deepest Secrecy: Dutch
Submarine Espionage Operations from 1968 to 1991). Een
geheime organisatie in beeld. De Nederlandse stay-behind-organisatie,
geheim, onafhankelijk en zelfstandig?
by Herman Schoemaker (thesis, 2013). 'Zur
Planung realer Angriffs- und Verteidigungsoperationen im Warschauer
Pakt. Dargestellt am Beispiel der operativen Planung der 5. Armee der
Nationalen Volksarmee der DDR im Kalten Krieg (1983 bis 1986)’,
by Siegfried Lautsch,
Military
Power
Revue nr. 2,
2011. Remarkably, the operations and preparations that are the
subject of the first two publications were apparently independent
national undertakings, taking place outside the NATO
framework.
|
19. |
|
Computer
wargames: see website John Tiller Software, Modern Campaigns. For the work of
O.W. Dragoner, Alan Young, Rogier Peeters and Leo Niehorster,
see the Links
page.
|
20. |
|
The
Royal Army's large tank force: see the brigade pages under 1
(NL) Corps, Part II. In 1989 the Royal
Army had, in total, 913 main battle tanks: 445 x Leopard 2 and 468 x Leopard 1V. HTK
1989-1990, kamerstuknr. 21610 ondernr. 2 (Rapport Leopardtanks Algemene
Rekenkamer). Nuclear artillery: see 1 (NL) Corps Artillery, Dual Capable Artillery. Stay-behind role of the General Affairs Section of the Army Staff: see Royal Army, Part I, note g. Royal Air Force ground-based air defence units and air bases: see Royal Air Force, Air Force Tactical Command.
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