The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

There will be different forces all over the place. The big NATO exercise was meant to start in the following weeks but ahead of that, other things were happening. It is summertime and good training weather.
I've used the idea in stories before of personnel at training centres racing to be replacements/reinforcements and I will do again her with this one. There was a NATO unit of Tornados in the UK - RAF/West Germans/Italians - and they are one of many which I will put into play. Smaller, almost tiny numbers of other forces will be just as important too though.

amir & stevep
I didn't realise Peterborough had so many alt-historians in it. That's at least 3 in the area I know of now.

Didn't NATO use geese as opposed to dogs for alerting the security units of intruders at airbases?

Makes sense. I would rather fight the whole RAF Regiment than a damned goose to be honest - they're vicious bastards. Once saw them described rather accurately as 'snake chickens'.

Humour aside, good update. The Spetsnaz prospects in the near future do not look good, especially if they're considered to be spies as opposed to lawful combatants upon capture.

I’m betting SOF and other high intelligence value prisoners (intelligence, reconnaissance, communications, aircrew) on both sides won’t enjoy captivity as they are pumped for any information they have.

With the chemical attacks likely having killed and wounded hundreds to thousands of NATO military family members and the local civilian population, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a reluctance to accept surrenders from NATO forces on the whole. Much less the nihilism that may step in as the nuclear threshold is approached by aircrew who have seen their loved ones die horribly in a chemical attack.

A second order effect of the persistent chemical laydown is disruption of other transportation sectors.  For example, the M3/M25 is likely contaminated by the Heathrow attack as are the BR East Coast Mainline and the A1(M) by the Alconbury attack.  They are going to require surveying and either rerouting or decontamination stations entering and leaving to prevent the spread of contamination; the decontamination equation gets worse for a dusty agent that has shorter persistence, but is more susceptible to being spread outside the initial marked strike zone by the wind.  Plus all the nasty contaminated runoff from the area and the fact that every casualty is contaminated...

I’m wondering what civil capacity existed in the UK circa 1987 to handle this in the scope and scale required.  I’m thinking the surveying may fall under the ROC’s (mostly nuclear) umbrella, and the actual decontamination is a matter of detergents and hot water but not sure. Maybe the TA or HSF get called in to help with the surveying and decon? 

117 – Defeat on the North German Plain


August 24th 1987 would be a day long remembered in British military history. It would be recalled for all the wrong reasons though, in the same manner as February 15th 1942 was with that second date being when Singapore fell. On this Monday morning, the British Army suffered a grave defeat on the North German Plain. It wasn’t one from which there could be any recovery in either the short- nor medium-term. Thousands of men were left dead or prisoner; others ended up trapped behind enemy lines soon to join them. Major combat units, large professional ones of well-trained and well-equipped forces, were wiped out wholescale. Attacking Soviet and East German forces went through the British. It would be too much to call it a massacre, but it was close to being so. Faced with the Soviet war machine in full swing, the British Army couldn’t stand up to it. It was all too much for them. The situation was the same with the West Germans also fighting on the same patch of ground along with what few Americans were here too; the Dutch managed to get away though escape wasn’t what they would eventually end up achieving. The stunning loss that the British and their NATO allies suffered while fighting east of the Weser, between there and the Inner-German Border, was a shared defeat between them all.

Without their full complement of available units, as well as the ongoing terrible supply situation, the British and their allies tried to fight off the advance made on the war’s second day by the Second Guards Tank Army. On paper, NATO had the stronger force here in terms of numbers. They weren’t at full strength though. The individual units weren’t fighting where they were supposed to be under plans for wartime and they weren’t aided by what was happening in the rear. NATO had achieved much overnight air success but once the morning came, the Soviets and the East Germans flooded the skies with many more aircraft than they had before. The Poles were called upon to throw in jets and armed helicopters to add to this. There was also the continued use of long-range rockets and tactical ballistic missiles. Chemical weapons were also employed. Defending against all this was a challenge itself. Then there was the onrush of tanks, so many of them. The Second Guards Tank Army bought its two tank divisions – the Soviet 16th Guards Tank and the East German 9th Armoured – into play after previously just using their trio of motor rifle divisions. The addition six hundred tanks onto the battlefield made the difference. They weren’t used in penny-packet fashion but instead as armoured juggernauts at regimental size. The gains made yesterday by the motor rifle units were built upon. The East Germans came out of the Altmark and across the Luneburg Heath. Both the Soviet 21st & 94th Guards Motor Rifle Divisions had been battered about much yet they maintained a strong position. East German tanks came up behind them to crash into scattered units from four different NATO armies. Most of the 9th Division fielded older T-55s and when these met their opponents in battle, the fight should have been won by NATO. They did have some much newer T-72s as well but the T-55s saw most of the action. The Soviets were with them too, using their own T-64s from the motor rifle divisions. Plenty of East German tanks drew fire when they were pushed forward. They did cause much damage back yet in the main that was to armoured infantry vehicles and infantry instead of top-of-the-range NATO tanks. An overall advance begun in the face of defensive fire. Their tanks kept on coming forward, outnumbering those of their opponents. The Dutch and West Germans were in the way first with the East Germans overcoming them though with their division being left a ruin afterwards. It opened up a gap though for the following tank units from the motor rifle divisions to go for the Americans and the British who’d just had their flank torn open. The US Army’s Forward Brigade (3rd of the 2nd Armored) and the British 1st Armoured Division – with only the 7th & 22nd Armoured Brigades – would have been able to fight the East Germans off and should have been able to beat the Soviets off if this was a fair fight. It wasn’t though, not in these circumstances. They attempted a retreat, a tactical withdrawal, and one which left the survivors of two West German brigades behind. Aircraft and helicopters struck from above, fighting through everything thrown their way to stop them and thus taking shocking losses as they did so. NATO too threw in much air power, so much of that also lost in the doomed effort to save their men on the ground. Friendly air intervention helped to slow up the retreat to try to reach the Weser near Verden and it also allowed the Soviets to get behind them. A last engagement was fought just short of that river which the Anglo-American troops came so close to reaching in the hope of coming back again soon enough when reinforced. They were destroyed instead. The Forward Brigade and the 1st Armoured were wiped out. The Dutch and another West German brigade retreated as well. Those serving with the 41st Armored Brigade were waiting for the rest of their comrades-in-arms homebased the Netherlands to come reach them; the men with the 31st Panzergrenadier Brigade were quite aware that their fellow West Germans had already been lost. The pair of brigades went north, falling back in the direction of the North Sea. Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven were that way: there was a forlorn hope that an escape could be made at some later stage. East German harassment operations were conducted to keep them moving off the battlefield. A serious effort to destroy them wasn’t yet made because concentration as being paid elsewhere… give it time though and those who escaped this morning would be eliminated soon enough.

West German paratroopers, their elite fallschirmjager with the 27th Airborne Brigade, had been sent to Hannover overnight to hold the line some distance outside that city along with what parts of the 1st Panzer Division were left fighting in the general area. Coming up behind them was most of the 7th Panzer Division with the British bringing their 4th Armoured Division too, minus those left on the Weser near the Westphalian Gap. This was an impressive force when all assembled and they did have an open supply route coming up Autobahn-2. Stopping that attack made by the remains of the 207th Motor Rifle Division, joined by the fresh 16th Guards Division, was impossible though. All of those Soviets tanks, supported by armoured vehicles & air support, came at the British and the West Germans. It was a huge attack with the Soviets throwing everything into it all at once. They unleashed all the firepower they had in support. Those West Germans on the frontlines were pounded as they were held in-place while the newly arriving 7th Panzer took the full impact of the massed Soviet tank attack. The British moved to their aid, abandoning the planned mission of sweeping up onto the Luneburg Heath and taking the Soviets effectively from behind. Their 4th Armoured was only partially complete as a formation with many pieces either still back in the UK or in transit. Soon, they were standing in the way of Soviet tanks which lanced through the West Germans and came at them next. Soviet artillery, rockets and air attacks shifted to the British right at that very moment in a perfectly coordinated manner. The 4th Armoured was unable to do anything about which went through them on the Leine between Hannover and Hildesheim. Hot on the heels of a wave of explosives, the 16th Guards Division quickly reached Garbsen between the bigger of them too cities. Those British and West Germans not overrun by the armoured juggernaut were soon cut off.

The cost in terms of damage wrought to the Second Guards Tank Army was just as huge. When the twin advances stopped near Verden on the Weser and close to Hannover’s airport, the overall strength was now down half of what it had been at dawn yesterday. The East Germans had lost two-thirds of their division and the Soviet 21st Guards Division was in a similar state. The 16th Guards Division still had three-questers of its strength with many tanks left but the 94th Guards & 207th Divisions had about half of what they once had. The five-division field army needed to halt. It really needed replacing by another moving in to take its place. That wasn’t to be. The morning was over but the fight wasn’t. Under instruction from his superior at the First Western Front HQ, the army commander released the last of his combat units. It was an independent tank regiment: another ninety-plus tanks. They went across the North German Plain and over the Leine near to Laatzen. Some surviving Britons were met, ones who’d already had a full tank division go through them already. A spirited defence was put up but it was pointless especially since hundreds of heavy guns was suddenly all given a target mission of the Laatzen area. Across the river went that regiment, linking up with the remains of the 16th Guards Division that had orders to disregard losses, forget going north anymore and turn westwards for the Weser. An onrush of Soviet tanks raced for the Westphalian Gap once more, the scene of that British victory last night against that VDV armoured column. Other elements of the beat-up Second Guards Tank Army were at Verden – a reasonably good site to cross the river at – and there were also those airmobile troops (plus the remains of another VDV regiment which had come in overland) in Bremen, but the main river crossing was to be attempted near to Porta Westfalica in the coming afternoon. There were NATO troops there, British and West Germans, who suddenly were ordered to assume defensive positions and hold the river-line. Their chances didn’t look good at all…

…especially because the Third Shock Army, with four further tanks divisions, was moving up to the border too aiming to start seeing action tonight wherever needed.

Meanwhile, behind where the frontlines had moved to, a large portion of West Germany lay in ruins. The fighting had been short but the destruction caused was extensive due to the extreme violence used. Air strikes, missile attacks and artillery had delivered explosives and gas into the eastern side of the North German Plain. There were cities and large towns everywhere from out of which many civilians had fled (plenty of them were on that autobahn stretching to the Weser and caught in a traffic jam like no other) but in which many still remained. The war had touched Celle, Hannover and Hildesheim in ways it hadn’t done to those closer to the border such as Braunschweig, Goslar, Salzgitter and Wolfsburg. The scale of civilian casualties was horrendous. This was somewhere that no one would have wanted to fight a war if they were concerned about innocents getting caught up in it. Rear-area Soviet and East German troops moved in. They had many tasks to see to, including dealing with cut-off NATO troops that were seemingly everywhere. Many of them would soon start surrendering, others would fight on though despite the helplessness of the situation. The war was moving on, deeper into West Germany, but behind those new frontlines it didn’t feel over to those left behind.

   Very nasty for NATO and for the British especially given their limited forces.  However as you say very, very bad for the population of west Germany with almost certainly worse is to come.