Blue Dawn - 1985

Blue Dawn – May, 1985

It began with a nuclear attack though the war was supposed to remain conventional afterwards.

Launching from the Baltic Sea to the west and from the north out of the Kara Sea, American submarines fired cruise missiles into the Soviet Union. These were nuclear-tipped. Moscow went up in a fireball which broke through the clouds high above the country’s capital above when a pair of detonations occurred over Red Square and also the Arbat. Mayday celebrations were taking place in Moscow and the entire Soviet leadership was present for the ‘show’. More cruise missiles went elsewhere across the western half of the country. They crashed into buried command posts for the Soviet’s own nuclear arsenal in the form of its silo-based ICBMs. This attack left a huge chuck of weapons available for any retaliatory strike still in play, but command and control for a massive portion of it was suddenly gone.

The nuclear strike undertaken by the Americans was just meant to be that one attack. They believed they had wiped out the entire leadership – and were correct in that assessment – and that the sudden, overwhelming attack would make any general officers who survived with access to launch codes reconsider any foolish ideas of hitting back. In Washington, their president and his advisers were dead wrong on this. Many of their allies, who had signed up to this despite fearing it would all end in nuclear fire, had cautioned that someone would hit back. That occurred. Within the hour, orders came from a surviving marshal with Long Range Aviation: the Soviet’s version of America’s Strategic Air Command. He had seen airbases where his bombers called home hit with commando attacks from Green Berets this morning causing untold amounts of damage with two their two dozen armed raids, but there were some aircraft left which could fly. The Strategic Rocket Forces were unable to give the Americans a taste of their own medicine, but Long Range Aviation would. Missile-carrying bombers got airborne from three airbases, went over the Pole and fired down into North America. Two American cities – Detroit and Milwaukee – were bathed in thermonuclear fire along with the Canadian capital Ottawa as well. NORAD-assigned interceptors took down other bombers before they could fire on further targets (Washington chief among those) yet millions of Americans and Canadians were killed.

European allies of America paid for this attack like the Canadians did too. Krakow and Prague, in Poland and Czechoslovakia, were also hit with nuclear attacks. It could have been far, far worse but other bombers were shot down by forward positioned Allied fighters before they could not only attack the cities of the Allies but both of the neutral Germanies – each devoid of Allied and Soviet troops – as well. In a counter-counterstrike, the Americans would attack Sverdlovsk and the French (giving vengeance for the Poles and the Czechoslovaks) would hit Rostov with unanswered further nuclear strikes.


The war was a conventional one afterwards. Operation Phoenix commenced straight after the opening nuclear attacks were made. It was a Barbarossa #2… but bigger!

From out of Poland, both the Northern & Central Army Groups invaded the Soviet Union. The British-led NORTHAG had two main thrusts along with supporting coastal flank attack and forward air drop. From northeastern Poland, the British I Corps went into the Lithuanian SSR and also the Kaliningrad Oblast. They tore forwards and started marching on Leningrad. British and Dutch marines landed in Riga Bay, making a strong amphibious landing in the Latvian SSR: behind them the British II Corps (with a strong Belgian and Canadian element) would follow them in the coming days. On the right, the French II Corps went through the northern reaches of the Belorussian SSR on a north-eastern axis of advance. The Polish II Corps was on their flank but out ahead of both, paratroopers with the French III Corps made a huge airborne drop near to Minsk. The rest of the corps was to be airlifted in soon enough. In addition, the Belgian and Dutch had their BENELUX Corps behind to act as an army group reserve. Six corps strong, a total of twenty Allied divisions, NORTHAG made a fantastic start as they raced over the border and into the Soviet Union this May morning. Soviet forces were in their barracks and attacked there while Allied forces were in the field and on the move.

CENTAG was in the main an American army though there were strong Italian, Portuguese and Spanish attachments along with what the Soviet leadership would have deem “treacherous” Czechoslovaks and Poles… if they hadn’t all been atomised in Moscow. Twenty-two divisions attacked with this command on an extensive frontage. The US III Corps went through the central part of the Belorussian SSR from their Polish staging bases and avoided the Pripet Marshes while also right up against the Poles with NORTHAG on their left. Far beyond, there would be room to spread out by for now they were bunched up. Into the Ukrainian SSR, the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, went three more American corps (US V, VII & XI Corps) along with the Polish I Corps and the Italian 5th Corps. Czechoslovakian territory was used too as a launch pad though both Hungary and Romania, erstwhile allies of the Soviet Union yet who suddenly – or not so suddenly it must be said – declared their neutrality were left well alone. CENTAG marched on Kiev yet also the industrial Eastern Ukraine beyond.

Turkey invaded Bulgaria and also launched a major naval and air attack against the Crimea. Soviet forces were caught unawares on the Crimea with their Black Sea Fleet massacred in port. They waited for a follow-up amphibious assault but would have a long wait… the Turks would find that they had bitten off more than they could chew inside Bulgaria. Moreover, Turkish forces also crossed the border into the Soviet Caucasus. They were joined there by Imperial Iranian forces who would get as far as Baku yet find, like the Turks would, that the Caucasus would be a graveyard for so many of these Allied forces. Turkish behaviour in Armenia would lead to credible allegations of war crimes fast commencing.

Other Iranian forces, these with their First Army, were joined by the US XVIII Corps in attacking Soviet Central Asia. Through the Turkmen SSR they went first with a big airborne operation made around Turkmenabat by American paratroopers. This allowed quick access to the Uzbek SSR and the edges of the huge insurgency against Soviet rule which was taking place there and also through the Kyrgyz & Tajik SSRs. Soviet central forces were already in disarray faced with a rebellion on an unprecedented scale and now the Allies were here. The distant Kazakh Steppe was where they intended to get to, though that remained very far away.

US Marines spearheaded the assault into the Soviet Union from the northwest. The II Marine Amphibious Force had Norwegian staging bases though in the main it was a series of amphibious landings which they undertook. The British and Norwegians went over the short land border but into the Kola US Marines went via landing ships and helicopters to take Severomorsk before marching on Murmansk. They made a flanking attack to secure Archangelsk as well with Marine Reservists arriving there after a dangerous passage through the White Sea. Leningrad, which NORTHAG was going for from the front, was not somewhere that the II MAF was aiming to beat them to by coming from the rear due to the distances involved but it would be fun if the Soviets believed that and reacted accordingly, wouldn’t it?

Like Bulgaria, North Korea was one of the very few reliable Soviet allies left worldwide. The Americans joined with the South Koreans in crossing over the DMZ and heading north. The main element of Operation Phoenix in Asia were the landings into Soviet territory there. The US Marines’ I MAF assaulted Vladivostok while the III MAF undertook opposed assaults into the Kurile Islands & Kamchatka. Australian and Filipino troops joined with the I MAF (New Zealand would have none of this “madness”) while the Japanese were part of the III MAF attack. The US Army assisted the US Marines when they committed their IX Corps to the Vladivostok mission once it expanded though still left men with their I Corps on the Korean Peninsula. As was seen off the Kola, American carriers were present in abundance. Soviet naval forces were attacked in port. As their army, air force and strategic forces were, the Soviet’s navy was at peacetime readiness and massacred.


Operation Phoenix, the destruction of the Soviet Union, was underway. Abandoned by supposed friends and with a leadership decapitated in a surprise nuclear attack, the Allies had the Soviets right on the ropes from the get go. Their secret mobilisation came with a forward deployment that Soviet intelligence missed wholeheartedly. They were beset by internal strife and exposed to an attack on an unimaginable scale.

In the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Far East, the Allied objectives were to strangle the Soviet Union from the south and east. They aimed to take important territory and restrict the ability of the Soviets to lash out abroad. Conquering huge areas of territory here – such as the Kazakh SSR or Siberia – were out of the question. However, things were different in the western regions of the Soviet Union. The aim for Phoenix was for the Allies to take the Baltic SSRs, both the Belorussian & Ukrainian SSRs and most of the western parts of the Russian SSR. The Volga River, far beyond the ruins of what once was Moscow, was to be reached before winter. The Allies would gobble up Soviet territory and rid it of their rule from Gorky to Kazan to Kuybyshev to Volgograd as they brought down communist rule when going for the Volga but also occupy Leningrad as well. If needed, if the Soviets didn’t give in, the Urals were for next year. Phoenix was ‘limited’ in this fantastic goal.

Following that opening attacks on the war’s first day which saw Blue Dawn occur, the Allies marched onwards. Could they win this war before the first snows fell? Or would they still be here inside the world’s biggest country, with the world’s most-populous nation sitting neutral on its frontiers too, next year and maybe in years to come?

Only time would tell.

Oh, yes, for certain. It would mean the USSR retreating inside its borders, doing nothing as its enemies surround it and getting down on its knees once attacked to play dead.
The Allies would all need to be united yet also allowing the Americans to lead them into a war against a nuclear-armed nation fighting to defend its soil. Secrecy ahead of the attack would need to be maintained to quite the degree.
That was the point with the end: it is a Barbarossa #2.

Been to both of them, like Ottawa a little better, its smaller compared to Toronto.