The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Yeah, all hell's breaking loose, as they say...

Oh, you're right. There is potential here for a different story. I have run away with things but my reasoning is to create a crazy situation where a clash leads to another clash, all in the midst of regional chaos.



Soon enough. With this many sides fighting each other, and the Soviets about refusing to budge and ready for a fight, all the ingredients are almost in place.

83 – Another barrage of Scuds


Across the desert in the western part of Iraq, near to the border with Jordan, trucks emerged from their daytime hiding spots once it got dark and drove to pre-scouted locations. At their destination, the crews from each stripped away the pre-fab plastic parts on the back of their vehicles. Switches were thrown and levers raised. The missiles which had been hidden were moved from the horizontal to the vertical position with the base resting over the back of the trucks. The noses were pointing skywards. Detachment commanders supervised the final preparations and intervened when necessary. They looked at their wristwatches and waited for the allotted time to come. Their subordinates, engineers and technicians, moved back inside the vehicle cabs where they would be safe. The time to fire came. Those senior men were too within the protective confines of the vehicle though at their launch stations. Along with an experienced sergeant, keys were turned on the missile panel in sync. There was a roar of an engine, flames and then the launch of a missile… hopefully anyway. Two missiles refused to leave their launchers and another exploded just as it did (killing six men). The other twenty-three lifted off successfully.

Rashid had just fired another barrage of Scuds at Israel, this one far bigger than the previous two occasions.

The Israelis and Americans each saw the launches on radar screens though the United States military also spotted the sudden heat sources from their satellites up in space. The Israelis had recently moved a large experimental radar to some high ground up in the Golan Heights, worrying about Syrian shelling of it too, and this gave early warning of what was coming. Across Israel, air raid sirens wailed. Civilians flocked to shelters and many donned gas masks as they did so. Shamir had authorised the provision of many of these for citizens across wide areas of the northern part of the country. This was causing a political uproar because the whole country wasn’t being given such protection and there were also claims that these would do nothing to protect anyone wearing them from nerve gas. People would probably put themselves more at risk from trying to wear them it was argued… and this was correct too. The Israeli government feared that Iraq might use chemical weapons though. They were responding to people’s fears and issued gas masks knowing the severe limitations of them. Israel’s best defence against any Iraq use of chemicals wasn’t passive though but rather offensive. Through an intermediary, there had been a firm warning sent to Baghdad that Iraq use of gas would see Israel ‘respond with a conflict ending weapon’. It was left unsaid what that was but it didn’t take much imagination. There were Jericho ballistic missiles sitting ready in silos in the south of Israel ready to fly while carrying a thermonuclear payload.

These Scuds, like those before, didn’t carry gas. There were high explosives and also incendiaries. Israeli military bases weren’t targeted as before though. Instead, Iraq fired on Israel towns. Nineteen of those missiles made it into Israel – the other four broke up in the sky or crashed into Syria – and they caused death and destruction on a wide scale. Only five of them actually hit where they were supposed to, the general area anyway, but combined with the ones off-target as well they did a lot. Again, Israel had been the victim of an unprovoked missile attack which killed many Israeli civilians.


Shamir ordered another pre-planned counterstrike. Operation Ribbon #2 was soon underway.

IDF/AF aircraft flew over Syria and came back over Jordan. They stayed out of Saudi skies on this occasion. This meant that they didn’t get into a fight with Coalition members as had happened before. However, they came into contact with the air forces of those two nations. The Israelis, Syrians and Jordanians all had aircraft shot out of the sky and there were also IDF/AF attacks on Syrian SAM sites as well. Opposition was expected to occur to the Ribbon #2 strikes on the way there and back but it was stronger than anticipated. The Jordanians especially surprised the Israelis with how much of a fight they put up. However, the Jordanians had taken losses the last time the IDF/AF had been attacking Iraq and coming back through their airspace: there was a desire to get payback for that. King Hussein didn’t want a war with Israel but like President Assad, he gave orders for his country’s sovereignty to be defended.

These air engagements were a distraction from what the Israelis were doing. Once more they hit military targets in the west of Iraq – much damage had been done in Ribbon #1 and the Americans had been busy here with bombing raids too – to protect their strike packages. F-4s and F-16s laden with bombs as well as external fuel tanks hunted for those launch vehicles. There had been a recent intelligence coup where Mossad had secured some information on what exactly they would look like from above visually and in infrared. Aircrew were given these details yet it still was no easy feat for them to first find then identify the trucks which they sought. Multiple claims were regardless made that valid hits were achieved on Scud launchers: most were innocent targets though the IDF/AF did get a total of three this time. Israeli commandos on the ground also directed them towards other trucks. Sayeret Matkal troopers had been in Iraq for some time and been involved in attacks of their own. With friendly aircraft above, they used hand-held designators to highlight trucks. In one unfortunate incident, a mix-up saw a F-4 bomb them instead. Up to a dozen kill claims would be made in these attacks yet it would be only one real launch vehicle that was blown up.

The IDF/AF dropped all of those bombs over Iraq and really got nothing for it.


What did Rashid get in return for his missile firings though? The Coalition had yet to be broken apart and it wasn’t something that he could be certain would be achieved. The Israelis had heeded the words of the Americans to not fly through Saudi airspace while attacking Iraq and to limit their activities to a certain area where there was little Coalition activity. Shamir had been effectively blackmailed into doing this. Israel wanted shipments of munitions to replace what was used up in Ribbon #1 and for future strikes such as #2 and more. Only the United States could provide them… and of course provide the funding for Israel to buy them from suppliers across America as well. There had been air battles between the IDF/AF and two of the neighbours of both Iraq and Israel, but this wasn’t about to bring down the coalition either. A real war involving Israel fighting Jordan and Syria, either one or both, could cause Arab governments in the Coalition to break away from the alliance but this wasn’t happening.

Rashid had been frustrated again.

The next morning, as IDF/AF jets were flying home with the Israelis licking their wounds, Rashid was urgently brought news of ongoing events elsewhere along the outlying regions of Iraq. The Israelis had just struck in the west and the Coalition had its armies in the south. Now the Iranians, who he had made peace with back in early 1986, were crossing the border with troops and tanks from the east. They were entering Iraq at its most dire moment.

I think it's an unspoken concession to the collation.

Israeli strikes deep into Iraq's population centers would be a surefire way to break the alliance.

84 – Basra


Iraqi troops on the border with Iran near to Basra fired off many shots against the approaching infantry. Even the Iranian armoured vehicles and tanks were engaged too. It wasn’t as if the Iraqis just ran from nothing serious. Yet run they did though soon enough. There were too few of them and too many Iranians. Those coming over the border also had what the Iraqis didn’t have: tanks, artillery and air support. The Iraq-Iran border had been stripped bare for the fight that Iraq was having with the Coalition. There were troops and man-portable weapons, as well as physical defences, but no real fire support for them. The thinking in Baghdad had been that a bluff would work to deter Iran from thinking of coming across. That bluff hadn’t been called. Iran didn’t need to gamble that Iraq couldn’t defend itself because it would clearly see the weakening of the defences. This stretch of the border near to Iraq’s second city was especially exposed following the removal of some of those troops from the frontier defences and back into the city. Iranian reconnaissance had watched them go and fight the Americans on the edge of Basra as well as engage in firefights with rebellious civilians in there too.

Once over the border, the Iranians closed in on Basra. They avoided the marshland on their flank and pushed for the waters of the Shatt al-Arab where they could find that city on the other side. Iraqi resistance continued though it was just a repeat of what was seen on the frontier with shots being fired off to try to cover themselves as they ran. Iraqi officers joined their men in fleeing. This meant that there was no disorganised retreat but just instead a complete collapse of what should have been a defendable position. It didn’t take long for the Iranians, using two heavy divisions of regular troops, all veterans from the previous war with Iraq, to get to the Shatt al-Arab. Bridging engineers were right behind the forwardmost troops. They were prepared to start assembling crossings, under fire if they had to. There was no need. The collapse of order among the Iraqis meant that pre-laid charges to destroy access over to where Basra sat on the southern & western side of the river weren’t set off. The Iranians took advantage. A column of British-built Chieftain tanks with Soviet-supplied BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers following right behind them were the first over the Shatt al-Arab. They came in from the north, soon looping around and coming into Basra from what was effectively the back door. More, many more, of their comrades followed them through that route and other ways in too. The Iranians came in strength with all of that armour. They used their self-propelled artillery, firing from on Iraqi soil, to blast any serious Iraqi resistance before they could provide a real obstacle to the ground offensive. Few fixed wing aircraft were in the sky and those that were stayed high as fighter cover. Below them, as on-call air support for the seizing of Basra, there were attack helicopters buzzing around. The AH-1Js had been manufactured in the United States for Imperial Iran; Revolutionary Iran was still using them now. Iraqi troops in Basra fired on these more than they did the advancing tanks and brought down two with missiles while another pair were damaged. This was one of the very few successes in the defence of Basra. There were Iraqis here who didn’t run but held their ground. They were surrounded though as well as outnumbered and outgunned. The Iranians smothered them. Other Iraqis who wanted to run were left to do so but those who fought got full attention until they were silenced under waves of bullets and barrages of high explosives.

Basra had fallen in a couple of hours. Iran took it with less than two hundred casualties. Tens of thousands of Iranians, many of them ill-trained & under-equipped volunteers, had died during Iranian offensives in Southern Iraq during the long years of the Iran-Iraq war. This time it was all very different. Iraqi prisoners were rounded up – those in uniform who hadn’t managed to get away from the city – and disarmed. The Iranians took control of the city and also got involved in ‘settling’ disputes between those Shia in rebellion and the Sunnis trying to keep them down. They killed those who had been in power before disarming those they said they were handing it over to. Iranian control of Basra, where they said they were liberating it, would be on their terms. Throughout the day this went on and it saw the Iranians move outwards. They came into sight of the Americans who were on the outskirts, those who’d also invaded Iraq.

Iranian forces were under orders not to open fire unless attacked; the Americans whose forward positions they stopped just short of had the same orders. A standoff commenced as the two sides stared each other down.


American soldiers near to Basra were US Army paratroopers from the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. They had a battalion of tanks, M-60s from an Army Reserve unit from Arizona, with them after the All America Division had learnt its lesson – the hard way – back in June at Dharan. That brigade was detached from its parent division (with the tankers with them) after being transferred from the US XVIII Airborne Corps to the US I Marine Amphibious Force. There had been exchanges of many units between the two corps-sized commands since the Third US Army had moved through Iraq to then break into Kuwait from behind. The mission for the I MAF had been to protect the rear areas as well as the looping supply line… as well as having a presence on some parts of the Iranian border. They had the 9th Motorised Division out in the desert along with one of the British brigades and the Army Reserve 157th Brigade as well. US Marines – the separate 1st Brigade and the 1st Marine Division – were on the Shatt al-Arab seaward of Basra and down on the Al Faw Peninsula. This left the 2nd/82nd Brigade in the middle of the I MAF’s lines, near to Basra.

Urgent messages had come to the brigade commander before the Iranians reached his outlying positions. Coalition aircraft had spotted the Iranians coming and there had been communications intercepts too, in the main from the Iraqi side as there was panic on the air waves. Permission was requested by the colonel commanding the 2nd/82nd Brigade to move forward ahead of that Iranian arrival, to take better positions. He’d been pushing to do the same since he and his men had arrived, fed up of taking Iraqi fire at random intervals. The orders then had been to maintain the perimeter established near to Basra and not go in there. Those orders stayed the same as the Iranians moved in. Further instructions were for the three airborne battalions – 1/325 Inf & 2/325 Inf & 4/325 Inf – and the tankers with 8/40 Arm to not open fire unless they were directly attacked first.

The Americans thus watched the Iranians seize Basra, kill whom they want to, and set up defensive positions of their own while being under firm orders not to intervene. It was frustrating for many of them to see those who they regarded as an enemy – hadn’t Iran recently attacked the Coalition? – do this unmolested. Protests were made up the command chain but the same orders came back down: hold fast for the time being. These were obeyed even if plenty of those on the ground didn’t think that was the best idea. They were waiting on politics and there was no indication how long that would be.


Khomeini was making his move on Iraq. The offshore oil terminals out in the Persian Gulf had been taken first and now there were two cross-border attacks. Basra was relatively easy. They city was wide open to being seized. A different outcome occurred further northwards along the border where an Iranian attempt to gobble up the western half of the Al-Fakkah oilfield – it was underneath both nations – was met with serious resistance and the Iranians had to expend a lot of effort, taking significant losses, before they could achieve their aim. At other points along the frontier which stretched all the way up to Turkey, there were more clashes though no major crossings. Iraqi strength was being tested. The Iranians were looking for weak spots so they could do elsewhere what they just done in Basra. Khomeini wanted to see how weak Iraq was too though in a different sense then his generals were. He was looking for Rashid’s reaction to see just how open the country was to having revolution violently exported into it.

The Americans and their Coalition partners watched what the Iranians did. For a long time now, the United States had been warning their partners that the Iranians might do this. The chances had increased dramatically after the start of the undeclared war between Iran and the Coalition. There had been multiple air and sea clashes in the preceding days, none near to Iraq. Yet, the eye hadn’t been taken off the ball by them: they left that mistake up to Baghdad to make. The question now became what to do. Iran had taken an Iraqi city and an oilfield. They had many more troops just over the border though, all heading towards that frontier. The Iraqis had been battered into submission by the Coalition and their country was exposed. What was the Coalition to do should the Iranians move on Baghdad? And when they started entering Southern Iraq? Coalition forces would defend themselves if attacked but what if the Iranians avoided them yet still took over as much of Iraq as they could?

All these questions needed answers and the Coalition needed a strategy.

Awesome- nice to see 8-40 Armor (Desert Dragons) mentioned. They had some training facilities on Fort Huachuca and their reserve center in Tucson. Their are vestiges if a subcaliber range visible on google earth. By 1987 the USAR was on the cusp of getting rid of their last M48A5s and fielding M60A3 TTS. By 1989 8-40 for sure had M60A3 as DAHSUM states RC had divested last M48s. I’d like to think if they were deployed to ME early they’d have M60s (at least RISE Passives if not TTS)- even with US M833 “staballoy” 105mm ammunition, the little extra protection the M60 hull gives may be appreciated going up against Chieftains. If they’re TTS with M833, it was the best all around tank sight/fire control/ammo combo of the 105mm armed US tanks in the 80s, as the M60A3 sight and FCS incorporated lessons learned from the M1s development.