The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

107 – Global reach


Operation Elbe was being undertaken by forces assigned to Marshal Ogarkov’s Western Strategic Direction. His headquarters had no input in what was happening elsewhere though where Soviet-led military operations were underway. Western–TVD only covered a particular portion of Europe too, far from all of it.

Military action was taking place in other areas of the Continent. Norway was struck at with the northern portions of this NATO member in Scandinavia attacked by air and missiles before the Soviets moved troops forward into battle. There was no aim to fully invade Norway though, taking over all or even a major part of the country. Instead, there was a limited incursion of ground forces following the distant strikes made against airbases – Andoya, Banak, Bardufoss and Bodo – and radar sites. There were few high-grade Soviet troop formations in the Arctic parts of the northwestern corner of the Soviet Union to make use of. Still, a couple of motor rifle regiments (fully-manned units taken from divisions which required mobilised reservists to be complete) moved against the border and would go over into Norway. They were to go no further than the Porsangerfjorden. Wartime plans for the defence of Norway by the Norwegians and their NATO allies called for a main defensive line to be much further to the west: the Lyngenfjorden Line as part of Fortress Norway. There was a brigade of Soviet Naval Infantry as well as some DShV airmobile units which formed the wartime 55th Army Corps with those motor rifle units (which used MT-LBs as their main armoured vehicle) and they were ordered to establish a security zone on Norwegian soil, not march on Narvik. The motor rifle troops began the ground invasion after the airmobile units had gone in.

Not fully invading Norway was all about pragmatism. It would require more available forces than they were available and was considered something to be rather costly in terms of expected losses. For a Soviet victory to win here it would require making use of Finnish and Swedish airspace – against the will of both – and likely see a war with each of those countries too, probably at a point when Soviet forces were stretched out and exposed. In Moscow, they’d decided to leave those two nations neutral. This meant that they wouldn’t have to fight either and also deny them as NATO allies. The idea was that once the Soviets had finished with Western Europe, Norway would be fast to see sense and come to the negotiating table. There was the expectation that while the Americans would like to make use of the country as a base of operations against the Soviet mainland itself, this couldn’t come to pass due to what was happening elsewhere. However, on the day before the war began, entry was made into Norwegian waters of a US Navy surface action group. They had one of their battleships, USS Wisconsin, along with a flotilla of escorts too, active in the Norwegian Sea. In a hastily arranged attack, bombers with Soviet Naval Aviation went after the Wisconsin when the attack went in against Norway. Anti-ship cruise missiles from Backfire bombers hit the Americans and the Soviets believed they’d either sunk that warship or at least badly damaged it. They had achieved neither.

Bear missile bombers, carrying bigger payloads, flew from airbases in the western half of the Soviet Union and made launches of their missiles when above Hungary. The cruise missiles went through Austrian airspace, avoiding Yugoslavia, and down over the Alps into Southern Europe. Italy came under fire first before Spain was also targeted. There were impacts against an American garrison for a paratrooper unit of theirs in the north of Italy though the majority of the targets were Italian and Spanish airbases & naval bases throughout their countries. These were all expected to be made use of by NATO in wartime and hit now. Both conventional and chemical warheads were used. Some of those missiles went off-course, hitting civilian areas too.

There were more of those big Bear bombers which also stayed in friendly airspace without flying directly into the face of the enemy. These ones made launches of missiles when over the Black Sea. Greece and Turkey were hit with a focus solely on military sites. Some cruise missiles went further though, overflying Turkey and coming out over the Mediterranean to strike at the British bases on Cyprus as well as hitting Israel too. Greece and Turkey were soon to see direct invasions made against them. Bulgarian and Soviet forces out of Bulgaria as well as Soviet ones staging out of the Caucasus were going to be entering each. Like was the case with Norway, the objective wasn’t to fully conqueror the two. That would be a big task, meaning the commitment of more forces than the Soviets had available when they were attacking in Western Europe. What they intended to do was to pound each and imitate full invasions. That meant that the Bulgarians were fully involved in going onto Greece heading for the shores of the Aegean – as well as making a smaller effort on the Bulgarian-Turkish border – while the Soviets put paratroopers into the Istanbul area as well as their Caucasus based cross-border invasion. The VDV force, a full division, fighting around Turkey’s biggest city were seeking to open up the Turkish Straits. They’d be joined by Naval Infantry out of the Crimea making a supporting amphibious landing soon enough. The Battle of Istanbul was already underway though and what a fight this was to be distraction or no distraction!


The war in Europe had broken out because of incidents of armed conflict between the superpowers in the Middle East. Accidents those incidents might have been, but what came next was deliberate. Soviet commanders wanted to use nuclear weapons here. They protested at the orders which had come that they weren’t to. The odds were stacked against them, they said, and to not use such a weapon meant that there was the very real chance that they would quickly lose this fight spread throughout the region. Though they wouldn’t know it, that wish was mirrored by senior American commanders following the initial outbreak of open war here. They too wanted to employ such weapons with the belief that with the war raging in Europe about to demand full attention, the United States would be defeated in the Middle East otherwise. As the war went onwards past the opening strikes, those on each side would continue to push for authorisation for nuclear attacks and prepare their forces for the moment that permission was sure to come. If what happened wasn’t as deadly as it was without them, each side was readying themselves to hit the other with the ultimate weapons of war with every effort made to pressure those above into allowing for their employment. These commanders would get their wish soon enough, just not at the start of World War Three.

In the eastern Med., the Soviet Black Sea Fleet fired first. They’d been here since they came through the Turkish Straits back at the beginning of the month (unless the Turks were beaten, they weren’t going home!) and already struck against Israel covertly. When hitting the Americans, they actually went early too. It was only a matter of a few minutes but it was ahead of the allotted time. Missile launches were made from multiple warships of the Fifth Squadron firing on the Sixth Fleet. The large cruiser Slava led the attack, firing its arsenal of Sandbox anti-ship weapons. Those warships not launching had come together to make the surface units of the Fifth Squadron almost one vessel with as many defensive weapons as possible facing outwards expecting retaliation. Meanwhile, the US Navy defended itself, shooting at the incoming missiles as well as maritime reconnaissance aircraft (flying from Libya, up from behind them) acting as stand-off guidance for them. USS Saratoga was hit but by only two of the many incoming missiles. It was still a terrible morning for the Sixth Fleet with many casualties and the aircraft carrier knocked out of action for the time being. It could have been worse though: nuclear warheads of those missiles would have wiped her and all those who sailed in her out in a flash. The French Navy lost a carrier soon afterwards. The Fifth Squadron had submarines assigned and one of those put a trio of torpedoes into the FNS Foch. Herculean efforts were made to save her but the flooding was too much. She went down a hundred miles off Lebanon. The Foch had been sent here to ty to keep the (relative) peace but went down in war. Most of her crew were saved: that wouldn’t have been the case had a nuke been employed.

In the Persian Gulf, the battleship USS Missouri was targeted by Soviet aircraft flying from Iraq. Just as was the case with the Wisconsin off Norway, the Missouri survived. She was hit several times though, taking significant damage: again, a nuclear attack would have seen her lost. There was still fight in the Mighty Mo though. Working with other US Navy ships, and as many friendly Coalition assets in the Gulf as possible, there was work underway at once to hit back against the Soviets with their Eighth Squadron. The Americans knew where the Soviets had their Kirov-class battle-cruiser Frunze. Before the day was out, every effort would be thrown at sinking her when she was trying to hide in Iranian waters. Two carriers out in the Arabian Sea were targeted too. USS Carl Vinson was hit a total of five times when Shipwreck missiles from that Oscar-class submarine long trailing her struck home. One of those was a dud but the four others weren’t. The Vinson went up in flames and would be soon lost to those fires. As to her attacker, the K-206 would be sunk within the hour by a US Navy submarine when making a run for the expanse of the Indian Ocean. Backfire bombers carrying missiles overflew Iran from their temporary bases in the Caucasus. There was a delay with their attack though when there was a close-call with the Iranians who came really close to engaging them with their Tomcats. In Tehran, Khomeini decided that Iran would fight as a co-belligerent alongside the Soviets but the decision was made late and there was thus that near ‘friendly fire’ incident before word got out that Soviet aircraft weren’t to be engaged far from previously agreed operational areas for them. Foxbat interceptors were with the Backfires – MiG-25s vs. F-14s would have made an interesting fight – but the airborne incident used up too much of their fuel; it was a mission that the Soviet Air Force had never wanted to fly alongside their Naval Aviation comrades and they’d found an excuse to avoid what came next. They wouldn’t make it out over the waters of the Arabian Sea and thus the Backfires were all on their own. USS Constellation, who the Soviets were after, had her own Tomcats up and they were in an ambush position after being directed towards the approaching attackers by an AWACS. They too could have faced the Foxbats in battle had the circumstances been right and been in a good position to ambush them from three sides at once. It was just the bombers though. The US Navy pilots fired long-range Phoenix missiles before the Backfires launched their anti-ship missiles. Plenty of those big aircraft exploded in the sky while the others turned back. The Constellation escaped a sure-to-be deadly attack unscathed.

Soviet air units stationed in Iraq and Syria were right in the middle of their redeployment from the former country to the latter when the war began. They weren’t ready to launch attacks southwards against Coalition targets. They were told to strike regardless, especially since the US Navy was supposed to be wiped out in those other attacks. Efforts were made to launch missiles but also make bomb runs against multiple targets in many countries. Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab Monarchies were all enemies. A poor showing was made. The Americans and their Coalition allies, plus the Israelis too, might not have been fully ready for World War Three but they were still in a strong position. Soviet aircraft were shot out of the sky, the majority before they could launch attacks. A raid by a Spetsnaz unit to destroy AWACS aircraft on the ground in Saudi Arabia – doing what had been done in West Germany – failed miserably and that left the Coalition with their airborne radar aircraft. They got them airborne and used them to blunt the Soviet strike. In the following hours, the E-3 Sentrys would too be involved in controlling the activities of both American and British aircraft which struck at the two remaining Soviet bases in Southern Iraq, the ones which had long been surrounded. Ar Rumaylah Airbase was bombed heavily ahead of a ground attack coming later by British Paras joined by Gurkhas. At Umm Qasr, where those rescued Soviet sailors from the sunken Admiral Spiridonov (the destroyer whose captain set into motion this whole war) had been taken too, the Naval Infantry unit there did as it was long prepared to and struck outwards against the US Marines. The Americans were taken aback by this, shocked that instead of curling up in defensive position the Soviets would attack outwards. It brought them out into the open though. Aircraft lined up in the skies over the Al Faw Peninsula to make bomb runs and more US Marines poured forward into the fight. The Soviets there were quickly on the back foot and in a whole world of hurt.


This global reach of the Soviet’s overseas deployed forces didn’t extend all across the world though. They had more military forces elsewhere but the decision taken in Moscow was to limit their war.

They made no attacks neither in the Americans, the rest of Asia nor in the Pacific. Strikes weren’t made out of Cuba nor from Vietnam; there was no Second Korean War launched nor were actions taken to hit Pearl Harbor, Alaska or anyone else in that oceanic region which at the beginning of the war lived up to its name.

The Politburo could impose their own restrictions on themselves all that they wanted. Pushed by the US Navy, the Americans would take the war to the Pacific to make it no longer peaceful. Had they heard of the Lehman Doctrine in the Kremlin? Boots on the ground it wouldn’t be in the Soviet Far East, but that long exposed coastline, plus the interior as far as the Americans could get too with their machines of war, were all going to see war come to them soon enough.