The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Second that, keep up the great work James G.

75 – Protective measures


Several flotillas of speedboats, dozens of high-speed small craft, converged upon the pair of offshore oil loading terminals which lay out in the Persian Gulf. Out of them came commandos who clambered all over the Mina al-Bakr & Mina Khawr al-Amiyah Oil Terminals. Shots were fired and there was some hand-to-hand fighting too. The landings had been carefully planned though weren’t executed perfectly. Many of the commandos entered up in the wrong places. The Iraqi defenders weren’t completely taken by surprise either. They fought back and came pretty close to repelling the assault at the second of the two sets of piers. However, the attackers had the numbers and they overcame resistance soon enough. Engineers among them ripped out emplaced sabotage charges and dropped them into the calm waters of the Gulf below while at the same time, many of the other commandos were busy cutting every wire connecting them that they could see. That the Iraqis would blow up what they’d failed to hold was a real concern for those men aboard. No explosions took place though. The oil terminals were several dozen miles away from land. There were pipelines which linked them to the distant Basra through the Al Faw Peninsula. Massive ocean-going tankers had used the terminals before to take aboard Iraqi oil out here rather than having to go up the Shatt al-Arab to Basra. None of those vessels had been here for a while. The facilities were still intact though and they were now captured when the last resisting Iraqis were either killed or threw up their arms. Should they had blown up either terminal, or both, the cost of replacing them would have been quite something. The demolitions never took place though and the victorious commandos congratulated themselves with the belief that they had stopped that happening: they weren’t aware that those manning the oil terminals only had orders to set off the explosives with direct orders to do so.

US Navy SEALs had for more than a month been preparing to conduct an operation to take the oil terminals. They planned to seize them intact and stop the Iraqis from blowing them up. Their assault, Operation Neptune Dagger, which would make use of helicopters along with speedboats too, was less than twelve hours away when other commandos took Basra’s offshore oil infrastructure. They’d been beaten to it by Iranian commandos with the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, the organisation responsible for setting up the killing of Saddam and a few years before that the bombs in Beirut which killed all of those US Marines & French paratroopers. This afternoon, in broad daylight and right under the noses of the Americans, they’d struck here and won a famous victory not just over the Iraqis but, ultimately, the United States too. When the Quds Force commandos went into action, they were watched in doing so by a surprised but still alert Coalition. The Americans had reconnaissance assets positioned forward ahead of Neptune Dagger. The Royal Navy had a warship closer to land, near to both Iraq and Iran. HMS Brazen was there for air defence missions to engage Iraqi aircraft which might come out over the open sea. Other speedboats, those mounting many weapons, came very close and engaged in threatening manoeuvres in the face of radio warnings to stay clear. The Royal Navy had no orders to engage them unless attacked first and if such a scenario had occurred, the Brazen – with many missiles though not so many guns – would have had a bad time. Like the Americans, the British were unaware of what the Iranians were doing until it happened and left in no position to interfere in what was done.

Tehran sent a message to Baghdad. The oil terminals had been taken over as a ‘protective measure’ to stop them falling into the hands of Western Imperialists. They were being held until an undetermined later time. Iran affirmed its neutrality in the conflict between Iraq and the Coalition and made no mention of the fighting that had taken place between Iranians and Iraqis on those offshore piers. No reply came from Rashid to this, not at this time anyway.


At CENTCOM, General Crist was left gobsmacked at the sudden Iranian move. It came out of nowhere. No intelligence summaries had uncovered any intention of them preparing to act and there was no reconnaissance which had showed them getting ready to do this. When it came to Iran, he had his command in a position to fight off any further attacks against American and Coalition forces in other areas. Iran seizing something that belonged to Iraq, important infrastructure which he had his own forces about to go and take, just hadn’t been considered anywhere. Crist sought instructions from above, the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon. He asked whether Neptune Dagger was to go ahead regardless in the change of opponent because everything was set up to make the assault and taking the oil terminals into American possession had already been signed off by the White House.

The reply which came was a negative on that note. There was to be no seizure made now that the Iranians held them instead of the Iraqis. Suspension of the operation was the order which came from the Joint Chiefs yet Crist considered it a cancellation rather than any form of delay. Once delayed, he couldn’t see Neptune Dagger being given the go-ahead once again unless it was all part of a bigger operation against Iranian forces. Those Iraqis there had been isolated and were left exposed but the Iranians would have to be forced into such a position if an assault like the SEAL raid was going to happen. That wouldn’t be the case soon enough because he expected them to reinforce their commandos. An attack by his own commandos could work if done really soon but everything would need to be changed for it to happen at a later date.

Receiving that reply from the Joint Chiefs, Crist soon enough sent off another request to the Pentagon. He asked for the deployment to the Gulf of significant reinforcements to allow him to counter the Iranians. This had been something discussed beforehand and Crist already knew what assets he required to allow him to combat Iranian combat power which was lined up on the northern side of the Gulf as the stand-off with them slid towards a coming conflict. The Joint Chiefs had told him that CENTCOM would gain additional assets should Iran ‘do something’ and he considered this action of theirs to have been them crossing that threshold. Christ wanted an extra carrier group, another marine brigade, two more wings of fighters and the US Army’s I Corps. He explained his reasoning in the request where he said that in his opinion, the Iranians would strike elsewhere following this success of theirs. There had been several near misses where Coalition and Iranian forces had come close to clashing once more in recent days: Tehran was stepping up the pressure. Crist considered those actions, which Iran had created elsewhere away from the northern end of the Gulf, as being distractions for their planned move there to take those oil terminals. Many protective measures had been taken against possible Iranian strikes elsewhere. With reinforcements, he could stop the Iranians from putting him in a position where he couldn’t cover everywhere at once and also allow for an immediate retaliation against them if ordered to do so.

Within a couple of hours, CENTCOM was informed that the request had been authorised. Reinforcements were on their way and those would be assigned to an anti-Iran task rather than finishing off the Iraqis. As to that latter matter, Crist began doing that the same evening. Coalition forces surrounding the trapped Iraqi Army inside Kuwait made their move.

Well that definitely complicates matters. Not too surprising a loose canon like Khomenini in charge. He's going to want to bugger things up for everybody.

76 – The big squeeze


Iraqi defences inside Kuwait had been positioned both facing south towards Saudi Arabia and eastwards facing the sea. Those Coalition forces which moved into liberate the small country struck from the west and the north.

In the short timeframe that they had to try to re-orientate themselves and try to establish new positions, the Iraqi Southern Army had come under fierce attack from above when moving out in the open. Iraqi fighters within Kuwait were out of action and their stocks of SAMs had been drawn right down with no resupply available due to the Coalition completely surrounding them. There was thus almost no air defence for this trapped force short of a few suicidal sorties flown from out over Iraq to try to interfere. The Americans brought in their B-52s again and while their bombing runs were quite dramatic, the majority of the air work was done by smaller aircraft of their own and their allies. Trapped and near defenceless targets were below them who ran out of ammunition to fire back. Bombs, rockets and missiles rained upon them. Long-ranged land-based artillery in Coalition hands and some of their naval shelling also struck at the Iraqis as they tried to move to be prepared for what they were sure was coming their way. The Third US Army – still controlling the activities of near all Coalition ground forces – moved against Kuwait after another short pause where once more time was needed to bring up ammunition over a long & difficult supply line as well as re-position themselves too. Once ready, they went forward.

Lighter American forces moved in from the west, crossing the border defences that the Kuwaitis had installed pre-invasion (to see them bypassed) and ones which the Iraqis tried to make use of themselves. Elements of the 82nd Airborne Division as well as most of the 101st Air Assault Division weren’t stopped by all the physical barriers nor the Iraqis hastily sent there. They practically leaped over the border and tore through the new defenders. Plenty of empty desert lay ahead of them after they won their battle but they had completely opened up the enemy flank ready to allow them to start sending forward recon & raiding parties after their engagements. Soon enough, they’d been right in the rear areas of those Iraqis fighting the armies of the Egyptians, the Saudis & the Gulf Arab Monarchies to the south of them as well as the joint American-French advance coming down from the north. The latter was the main effort into Kuwait. Here the Third Army had its heavy forces: the 3rd Cav’ Regiment, the 24th Infantry Division and France’s 6th Light Armored Division. Tanks and armoured infantry drove into the Iraqis while supported by plentiful artillery and air support. Those in their way didn’t stand a chance.

The Iraqis, setting aside the overwhelming odds arrayed against them, fought terribly. They hadn’t been witnessed holding back in their rates of fire nor willing to give up so easily for some time now. This time, they put on a poor show in trying to stop the Coalition from striking across the northern half of Kuwait and heading towards the road junction around the town of Jahrah. Near to this crossroads, the location of where the Kuwaitis had put up their best resistance in the ultimately doomed effort to save their country from occupation back in June, the waters of the Persian Gulf jutted forward where they formed the Kuwaiti Bay. Control of Jahrah due to this geography with water to the east, desert to the west and highways which ran north & south meant that whomever did controlled Kuwait. Kuwait City was to the southeast too, linked to Jahrah by an excellent highway. The overnight advance by the Americans and the French brought them to the town and the Iraqis around it. There was a pre-dawn engagement near there were first the 24th Infantry and then the French got involved. The Iraqis could have held for quite some time dug-in where they were and with plenty of weapons at hand. They would have been defeated in time but not before extracting quite the toll against their attackers. After two hours, just as it was getting light, the Iraqis gave in though. Their morale was gone and they no longer wanted to fight for this apparent historic province of Iraqi. They wanted to go home now. Surrendering meant just doing that. It was an organised surrender with officers arranging it and keeping control of most of their men. The Coalition suddenly had themselves thousands of POWs to handle and a lot of weapons to take under control. They’d be busy but then they’d be busy the coming night too when they planned to strike again, this time going towards Kuwait City and also into the south of the country. Link-up was made with the 101st Air Assault for now – American soldiers glad to be meeting their own though feeling robbed of a further successful engagement – and it would be the Egyptians soon enough who they’d meet with. The Iraqi Southern Army had been prised right open.


The big squeeze put on Iraqi forces inside Kuwait had caused the defeat of some and the surrender of others. They were cut off and they knew it. Nothing could stop the barrage of firepower unleashed against them. There was no way out either. Almost two months of war, starting out with fantastic victories, had brought about this final series of defeats.

There were still many more armed Iraqis inside Kuwait though, all under orders and in defensive positions. As the Coalition came in from behind, they were still fighting at the front. Third Army and CENTCOM both had matching intelligence summaries putting their number at anywhere between eighty to ninety thousand. How these men would fight, whether they would, was still something to be seen. One of the Iraqi generals who gave up at Jahrah, a three-star who commanded a corps, volunteered to aid in helping convincing his countrymen to give up. He asked to go forward and talk to them about the folly of fighting to keep Kuwait until the death when they could go home alive. The idea was still being discussed when news came in of just what was happening in the rest of Kuwait, those large areas still under enemy control. The oil fields in the north had been gobbled up by the French as they’d moved towards Jahrah but there was more of the country’s black gold wealth in the southeast.

It was now on fire.

Iraqi troops there, under orders to do so, set off a mass of demolition charges. Coalition special forces had been preparing to go in like they had elsewhere and stop the mass act of sabotage but the Iraqis were far ahead of them this time. Rashid done what he had done down in Saudi Arabia and burnt what he couldn’t keep.

Thanks.
Yep, that was it, though there is controversy over Louisiana's 256th and Georgia's 48th Brigades getting unnecessary criticism by the regular army. The whole situation might have had some merit but there does seem to have been a determination by the Pentagon not to send the National Guard and they found excuses to do that.
The 157th is in the Gulf already, a separate brigade. My thinking would be to attach them to the 5th Division.
There are no major combat units of the National Guard - breaking the Total Army doctrine - and that here is a political decision. The Reserve has sent some, including that 157th Brigade which will soon be seeming action not against the Iraqis.
I'm thinking that non-combat units will be there from the ARNG and Reserve as the US Army would need them.
There has been much mobilisation of them though. REFORGER 87 will include many and others have bene stood up 'just in case' there is a bigger conflict.

The next four coming updates are all big armed clashes as the Second Gulf War now really spirals out of control as neutrals enter it and cause all sorts of chaos.

I sent them because they had no CAPSTONE role with NATO.
That was my thinking, that they had done that with at least two NG divisions. I haven't really worked that idea yet but will do soon enough.
It is no problem at all. I wouldn't have thought of the 9th Marine Brigade if you hadn't have said it!
I can reel most of the late 80s era NATO (down to brigade level) and Soviet (down to divisions, all ind. regs/brigades) standard peacetime ORBATS off the top of my head without difficulty. Many, many years of looking at them!

Well that probably sealed Rashid's fate. After this last round of destruction he's going to be seen as even more of a rogue element and the Gulf Arabs will want to have him removed. The US will feel more likely to go in for the kill as well although there will probably be some doubts about a march to Baghdad.

Impressive performance from the US forces especially although the isolated Iraqis didn't really stand any chance and the lack of discipline with fire control means their burned through a lot of their munitions too quickly.