The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Good to hear.
'Not very well' is the answer to that. A march on the English Channel has started and doesn't look like it can be stopped.

121 – European flanks


At Tana Bru, the Norwegians blew up the bridge over the Tana River in the face of the approaching Soviet Army. The leading elements of a motor rifle regiment – PT-76 light tanks and MT-LB armoured personnel carriers – were within sight of this river crossing when explosive charges dropped it perfectly into the ice cold water below. There had been airmobile troops who’d been holding the bridge since the war began and did so for more than twenty-four hours. Those men had been beaten off in a Norwegian counterattack though with the majority of the 1179th Air Assault Battalion killed or wounded ahead of their incoming relief. Norwegian tanks, Leopard-1s, had supported the infantry too coming from the Porsanger Garrison to drive the Soviet DShV back. The major in command of the battalion of riflemen dying all around him had repeatedly requested permission to blow the bridge to deny it to the enemy. That was refused: the bridge was wanted for the use of the 55th Army Corps. If the Norwegians blew it up, then that was that: no deliberate Soviet-caused destruction would occur though. Civilians and a few scattered Norwegian soldiers from the South Varanger Garrison (another Norwegian battalion-sized unit, this one down on the Soviet border) crossed over if they could and then the demolition occurred when the enemy armoured vehicles came within two kilometres. The engineers did a great job and were proud of their work. They were aware too that there were still more of their fellow soldiers plus civilians still on the other side. The Soviets had spent the war’s first day and then into the next completing their occupation of everywhere east of Tana Bru. They’d brought forward two regiments of motor rifle troops – detached from parent divisions because they were Full Strength units whereas the larger formations were Reduced Readiness ones and took a little time to mobilise. There was only one good road which ran through South Varanger and it had been one which the Soviets had used. They’d bypassed the town of Kirkenes and kept on coming. Tana Bru was as far as they would be going though, for now at least.

Most of the Norwegian Army was gathering further away to the west: where the Americans, the Canadians and the British (the latter now just a battalion of Royal Marines, 45 Commando, instead of any larger force) were also assembling. The main defensive line was to be at the chokepoint next to the Lyngenfjorden. They didn’t know that the Soviet offensive was only planned to go half that distance, to the Porsangerfjorden instead. Regardless, in the area in between from where the Tana River formed a barrier at the narrowest point on land between the Arctic seas and Finland too, the Norwegians had men forward there. They were scattered special forces and commando units everywhere in between. The whole area was a guerrilla’s paradise; an occupier’s nightmare. It was going to take some time for the Norwegians and their NATO allies to understand what the Soviets weren’t going to be doing. In the meantime, the 55th Army Corps would have to come over the Tana River and go through Finnmark towards the Porsangerfjorden. They still hadn’t employed their full forces – as little as they were – here. Lone brigades of (further) airmobile troops and marines were still unused and the rest of those two motor rifle divisions were also due to enter Norway. Limited objectives they all had but that didn’t mean that it was a small force. The size composition, plus rate of entry, reflected what the Soviets believed that they could realistically operate and supply here in such unfriendly terrain. They were also fully aware of what the Norwegians intended to do with their commandos. In the skies above, Norwegian F-16s were now undertaking full combat mission after a slow start. Their home base off in distant Bodo had been strongly hit at the opening of the war with ballistic missiles. The survivors of two squadrons of strike-fighters made use of various other airbases and forward operating stations afterwards though they found that there were Soviet Spetsnaz active. There was sniping done at distance which killed personnel, mortars were lofted close-in and there were also firings of SAMs from man-portable launchers when take-offs & landings were occurring. This was an unpleasant experience for the Norwegian Air Force and it restricted their operations. When they did fly, they were outnumbered. The Soviets were using good aircraft themselves and were taking control of the skies. They’d downed more Norwegians than their opponents had done to theirs. Other Norwegian fighters were soon promised from elsewhere in the country with the Americans & Canadians too sending fighters, but in the meantime, Soviet MiGs were appearing further & further westwards each time. They were quick to cover the Soviet Army engineers at Tana Bru too. A new crossing, of several planned, was being built. It couldn’t replace the downed bridge yet it would provide the 55th Army Corps with a way across to keep moving deeper, as slow as they did, into Norway.


The stretch of Autobahn-7 between Flensburg and the town of Schleswig (the former up close to the Danish border; the latter halfway to Kiel) saw Soviet air activity above it too. MiG-29s were flying out of the captured Schleswig Airbase and they tangled with Danish F-16s over a wide area of sky to keep them clear. In came Soviet bombers once the NATO fighter threat was gone. Backfires, usually employed for the missile-carrying role, could carry bombs too. The Tu-22Ms followed the course of the highway at low level and dropped their belly cargo: each had sixty-nine 500lb bombs. Hundreds of high explosive weapons of war fell to the ground. The majority missed the narrow target directly but that didn’t matter much. Their combined effect was enough to kill those below and destroy their capability. Those were more Danes, supporting troops for one of their combat brigades with the Jutland Division. The 3rd Infantry Brigade had men at the frontlines very close to the outskirts of Schleswig and they were under attack by MiG-27s as well as Mil-24s. Defensive anti-air fire at the frontlines had already hurt Soviet air efforts gravely but behind them, reconnaissance had spotted there being little in the way of air defences. The Danes were still getting themselves sorted out – this was only one brigade of the three they had up in Jutland – and they were relying on their fighters to cover their rear more than ground-based air defences. Those falling bombs from the Backfires caused a wave of destruction on and off the autobahn. Military trucks and supporting armoured vehicles were caught up in this. Hundreds upon hundreds of Danish soldiers were killed. So too were West German civilians. The southbound carriageway was being used by the Danes but the northbound lanes were full of cars, buses and trucks. Tens of thousands of civilians were making their escape, fleeing the war behind them and heading for the safety they believed was in Denmark. Accidents and breakdowns had brought about one long jam; this only got worse when people abandoned their vehicles and started walking. Now the Soviets dropped bombs on them. It wasn’t deliberate though there was an awareness that this highway was full of civilians. Still, the military need was pressing and so Autobahn-7 was bombed regardless of the cost in human lives.

Denmark itself had yet to be invaded. East German paratroopers and Soviet Naval Infantry had landed on the eastern, Baltic side of Schleswig-Holstein at the opening of the conflict to secure air & naval sites. They’d been reinforced by Soviet tanks airlifted in and then an East German motorised infantry division coming up towards them. There’d been no fighting for the urban areas of either Hamburg nor Lubeck and only a little of that seen in Kiel. Half of the Kiel Canal was in the hands of the East German V Corps though it was unusable already. That wasn’t a major objective though. Destroying NATO forces in the area, here already in the northernmost region of West Germany and those moving in from Denmark, was the mission. It would mean an ongoing advance up into Jutland too: the whole peninsula was full or airbases & airports as well as further military sites from where Danish and West German resistance would come as well as the still expected British arrival. While there were no invading forces yet in Denmark, the country had been attacked like others in the NATO alliance with air strikes and the entry of special forces since the door had been kicked open. The Combined Baltic Fleet – Soviet, East German and Polish vessels with air cover – was active fighting the Danish Navy and what was left of the West German Navy that wasn’t caught in port. An invasion of Zealand was expected and this was being defended against; the Danes had no idea that the Polish troops they feared attacking Copenhagen were going to be few in number and going into Jutland soon enough too. Like Norway, this whole flank of where the majority of the war was taking place elsewhere in Europe remained a battlefield.


West Berlin was no longer a battlefield though. At 14:00 hours local time on August 24th, a city-wide ceasefire came into effect. Starting an hour later, East German and Soviet forces moved forward to take the surrender of the remainders of the garrisons of Western troops. For thirty-three hours a defence of the city had been made. Attacked without warning, surrounded on all sides and with zero external support, those Americans, Britons & French in West Berlin never had a chance. The talks pre-ceasefire and then the surrender was conducted rather professionally. Terms had been offered and accepted. Still, those were harsh terms and non-negotiable. The East German IV Corps moved forward and took custody of soldiers and equipment. Prisoners would be marched off into captivity with the promise of good treatment; all spoils of war were for what the victors chose to do with them. Those spoils would unfortunately include West Berlin’s civilian population when East German paramilitaries came in afterwards. By then though, the defending soldiers from the West were long gone… and finding out what ‘good treatment’ actually meant as well.

It had been the Americans who had made the move to surrender first. The British – what was left of their garrison, not much at that – and the French were informed of the terrible situation that the US Berlin Brigade was in where it was almost out of ammunition and casualties had mounted to a level where it was unsustainable to try to provide for them. Civilian losses were extraordinary too and this was sapping the will of the Americans to fight. Neither the British nor the French commanders thought themselves at the point of surrendering yet – each knew they would have to eventually though – but the Americans did. There was no reason to keep fighting, it was said, when all that was being caused was pointless loss of life. Large parts of the southern half of West Berlin were alight all around them too, adding poorly to their outlook as well. The Americans sent a party forward under a white flag and started the process of giving in. Fighting on regardless was considered by their allies but without the Americans, that was impossible. Their own situations were looked at again. They each had the same issues with ammunition depletion, horrendous losses, civilian casualties mounting all around them and the enemy on all sides. A joint surrender was thus agreed where all three garrisons ceased fighting at the same time. The fighting came to an end here in this outpost deep inside East Germany. Gunfire wouldn’t end though in West Berlin. Those unruly occupying troops that would move in after East German and Soviet regulars left would arrive following the ‘security forces’ that had gone in ahead of them. There was a marked increase in the actions of the Stasi and KGB following the surrender of Western forces as they sought to go after those they foresaw as being certain to make the holding of the city troublesome. War may have left the city but the horrors of occupation continued. The East Germans had been told that no matter what occurred with the particulars at the end of the soon-to-be victorious war, West Berlin would never be given back to the West. The city was liberated and would stay that way.


With Soviet air support but no troops from their Warsaw Pact ally, the Bulgarians were invading Greece. Like his counterpart Erich Honecker up in East Germany, Bulgaria’s leader Todor Zhivkov was told in advance of the coming war. There was still little time to prepare though. The Bulgarian armed forces were sent into action regardless of whether they were ready or not. Thankfully, the Greeks weren’t alerted to the coming attack and were like the rest of their allies wholly unprepared to put an immediate stop to the Bulgarian cross-border attack. Zhivkov sent his armies marching to the Aegean Sea. Greek forces in Thrace and Eastern Macedonia were unable to stop them. Making a strong flanking effort, the Bulgarians used their paratroopers and air-portable mountain troops to imitate their main effort going towards the city of Thessaloniki. The battlefield of Macedonia was a bloodbath. Taken by surprise and fearful of their second city being lost, the Greeks threw in troops and aircraft at a prodigious rate. If the Bulgarians had been serious about occupying Thessaloniki, they never would have gotten there. The geography didn’t favour a main advance into Greece going that way out of Bulgaria though. To be honest, only a little better was the lay of the land for a direct southern attack out of Bulgaria into Thrace to reach the sea. Yet it was that way the Bulgarians went. Access from the wider Thessaloniki area to the coastal region was cut by forward Bulgarian units and then the main force went forward. Greek forces here fought back and they had their successes. However, they weren’t able to stop the Aegean being reached. The Bulgarian Second Army – it fielded several divisions on paper but none of them were at full strength – then turned inwards to try to destroy those Greeks cut off inside. This was no easy feat. Greek aircraft came forward to try to support their trapped men on the ground. Elsewhere, those Greek Army units who had ‘saved’ Thessaloniki were reinforced ready to push eastwards while the Greek Navy was preparing to support amphibious landings into Thrace too. With Soviet troops still transiting through Romania – neutral in this war but with access rights given to Soviet forces on the ground and in the air –, the Bulgarians were on their own and looked in trouble. They believed that they could hold on though especially as this was the scale of what they were attempting to do. Limitations had long been realised when it came to any foolish notion of marching on Athens: holding Thrace was believed possible especially since lines of communication back home were short and could be defended.

Where the Bulgarians were physically cut Greece off from Turkey. There were cross-Aegean connections, ones which the Soviets were attacking, but when it came to what was going on there, there were shocked expressions among members of the alliance that these two nations were part of from those who should have known better. Greece and Turkey were flying aircraft, sailing ships and moving troops about in the Aegean to face off against each other. They weren’t shooting at one another but they each feared that while they were at war with the Soviets, the other would try to attack their territory. It was insane… it was also the reality of Greek-Turkish relations.

Turkey hadn’t been invaded out of Bulgaria though the whole Istanbul area was a battlefield. The country’s biggest city sat on the Bosporus: the northern end of the Turkish Straits. Soviet paratroopers with their 98th Guards Airborne Division had landed either side and were joined later by the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade and then the 23rd Landing–assault Brigade too. These amphibious & airmobile brigades brought in light armour like the airborne division had as well as a lot of good troops. They were all in an area where Turkish Army units, also full of well-trained and well-equipped troops, were present. The Turks outnumbered the Soviets too. The Battle of Istanbul was something that history was sure to remember. Turkish attacks had driven back the majority of Soviet moves out of their points of entry but this was far from over. Starting midday on the Monday, across the Bulgarian-Turkish border came the Bulgarian Third Army. This was a distraction effort as the Bulgarians lacked the capability to get to Istanbul on their own but they were moving that way. The Turks were quick to start peeling away troops around Istanbul to oppose this, fearful that the Soviets – maybe the Romanians would too enter the fighting after a delay? – would be right behind them. From capitals of allies, this decision was criticised yet it was stuck to. For the Soviet soldiers battling for their lives around Istanbul, they relief they got came at the perfect time for them. They were close to defeat beforehand but now the chances of holding out for good to what they had (not that much to be fair) were much better than before. As to these distractions by crossing borders and strategic blunders in defence, the citizens of Istanbul and nearby knew nothing about them. Thousands were dead already, thousands more wounded. The ongoing war for them meant something far more personal as families were killed and lives ruined. Elsewhere, the Soviet invasion into Anatolia from out of Transcaucasia had stalled. The Seventh Guards Army – a mis-mash of many units used because of their readiness state – had been fought to a standstill by Turkish forces in the east of their country. Kurdish guerrilla operations (unrelated to any Soviet interference despite claims to the contrary) and what was happening with Iran and Iraq didn’t stop the Turks from doing this. They were achieving victory here in the east. If the Soviets wanted to march on Ankara, even Istanbul, going through Anatolia, then they weren’t going to be able too. Terrain and the number of available forces favoured the Turks. They knew that… so did their opponents though. As elsewhere here in the region, with Greece as it was Turkey, this fight was all a sideshow for the main event elsewhere.

The Turks, as expected, aren't doing too badly. They're well-equiped and have a very big army, while the troops attacking them are the Bulgarians and airborne elements with what I would presume are second-rate Soviet follow-on elements: I think they and the Greeks can hold their own. I know the attacks on the flanks are largely distraction movements, but it would make Moscow very happy if they did sucesfully capture the banks of the Bosporus.

122 – Permission denied


Estimations for the casualties suffered by the United States on the first day of the war were at about the ten thousand mark. This was dead and seriously wounded military personnel in several theatres of war. A third of that figure came from the loss of the carrier USS Carl Vinson though that didn’t take away from the fact that in Western Europe, American losses with US Army & US Air Force personnel were horrendous. The use of chemicals against garrisons where men slept, not even getting the chance to see the enemy, was behind many more of the losses incurred. Direct combat losses were still shockingly high and it was them which would see the number of casualties on the second day skyrocket too. To think that United States wasn’t going to do anything dramatic in reaction might have been the thinking in Moscow, but that was foolish. The Americans were aiming to hit back as hard as possible anywhere that they could in response to bring the cost of the war home to the Soviet Union… literally. RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus had been struck by cruise missiles at the opening of the war though there had been some warning due to the overflights of them above Turkey from where the Bear bombers launched from up in the Black Sea. British and Cypriot casualties were taken and the Americans present did lose personnel though the number wasn’t that high due to the (little) time given for them to prepare for what was coming their way. This effective outpost in the Eastern Mediterranean had been targeted because the US Air Force was flying a large detachment of F-117 stealth aircraft from here for operations first over Iraq and then later Iran. The Soviet leadership had been worried over those aircraft and their capability to strike Soviet targets as part of America’s ‘pre-war aggression’. Their fears were proved right, though only once the United States had been struck first. Now the F-117s were flying against Soviet targets. Seven strikes were made in the early hours. Bombs were dropped deep inside the Rodina at military targets up through the Ukraine, the Crimea and into the Caucasus. One of them was hit by a SAM returning from a bombing run near to Sevastopol and came down over the Black Sea when trying to make it back to friendly territory but that was it: Soviet air defences didn’t touch the other six aircraft. NATO allies were rather alarmed afterwards when they found out because the Americans hadn’t told them what they were about to do. This could have looked like a nuclear attack and caused the Soviets to overreact those allies expressed in their post-strike concerns. They were correct too: at one point, where Ligachev and his inner circle were safe in their bunker far from Moscow, there was the fear that it was. Cooler heads prevailed when it became apparent that this wasn’t a strike with strategic weapons. There had been a moment when some of those in the bunker almost lost control before their comrades calmed them down. Outside, no one knew that though, especially not the Americans. Using their stealth aircraft based in Cyprus, plus others deploying to new sites away from their desert base in Nevada, F-117s would soon be back in Soviet skies bringing the war home to them. No Soviet strikes had taken place against American soil and it appeared to the Reagan Administration that there was to be some sort of belief with the Soviet leadership that in turn no American strikes would come against their homeland. That wasn’t going to happen, not when so many Americans were being killed like they were around the world.

Mass casualty losses occurred for the Soviet Navy on the war’s second day. The US Navy got its revenge for the Vinson. In the Med., while the USS Saratoga was temporarily out of action after being hit yesterday, the rest of the Sixth Fleet was active. Two submarines got up close to the Fifth Squadron: the Soviet’s Black Sea Fleet forward detachment. It was close to Syria and had partial air cover. Those land-based fighters didn’t stop the torpedoes from the submarines below the waves. The helicopter-carrier Leningrad and the missile-cruiser Slava were each sunk. Thirteen hundred sailors were aboard the two ships. There were many rescued yet many more weren’t. Some of those rescued from the water by other warships with the Fifth Squadron then were onboard more sunken vessels too when a mix of Egyptian, French, Israeli and Italian aircraft made attacks throughout the day. None of these had the spectacular success that those two American subs had in the face of defensive missile fire from the remaining warships, plus their air strikes weren’t co-ordinated, but they did get their licks in. The US Navy wasn’t finished either and came at the Soviets with their warships exchanging missile shots with the Fifth Squadron as it got closer to Syria hitting a few more ships. If they thought that they were going to be safe there, that was going to be shown to be false. The Saratoga was afterwards heading for Italy where repairs would be sought, possibly Spain though if there was too much Soviet long-range air activity above the Italian Peninsula. Racing towards the Med. to take her place was the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. This second carrier had been at sea when the war started and was crossing the North Atlantic to join the US Navy force here. A day out from the Gibraltar Straits, a Soviet submarine moving into attack was spotted and struck at first. It was sunk and the Eisenhower sailed onwards. Libya and Syria, aligned with the Soviets, were going to feel the full force of the carrier’s striking power along with whatever was left of the Fifth Squadron by that point. There would be a Turkish Straits mission – the carrier wouldn’t come close but stay back in the Aegean Sea – too for this soon-to-be busy carrier.

Across in the Persian Gulf, the USS Missouri and the Frunze duked it out in one hell of a fight. Battleship enthusiasts would be jumping for joy at the thought of an Iowa-vs.-Kiev fight… until there was an understanding of the human cost in such an engagement. The day before, the Soviet’s Eighth Squadron (Pacific Fleet units in the Middle East) had failed to get the Missouri and the Frunze had for all intents and purposes ran away afterwards with the American vessel in pursuit. Supported by American and friendly Coalition air power, the Frunze was doomed whether it had gotten the Missouri or not. Flying from the carrier USS Forrestal over in the Red Sea (tanking when above Saudi Arabia), electronic jamming aircraft were active near to the Frunze first. US Navy F-14s clashed with Iranian F-14s too – the aircrews in none of the interceptors seeing each other – as the incoming air strike was aided. The electronic attack included missile firings against radars as well as the passive jamming. A-6s laden with Harpoon missiles appeared in the sky and so too did further Harpoons coming from the Missouri and other warships. Many, many American anti-ship missiles were fired, all bearing-in on the Soviet missile-cruiser at once in a well-timed strike. SAMs flew skywards as the Soviets burnt through some of the jamming using brute force but those inbound missiles were coming in from every direction. The Frunze, nor the few warships with her, would stop them all. Thirty-four hits were achieved. The Missouri would have to officially share the kill once it was confirmed that the huge enemy warship was completely on fire and being abandoned after so many missile impacts, though the battleships’ crew considered the kill ‘theirs’ regardless. Close to six hundred of the seven hundred plus crew wouldn’t get off the burning Frunze. The Missouri would later that night race forward at flank speed where she would target the remains of the ship with her guns and escorting destroyers fired torpedoes into the once mighty vessel as well. Hell… they were just making sure it was finished!

At the same time as the already destroyed Frunze was being sunk by a vengeful US Navy, the Americans came very close to losing another carrier though. The USS Constellation retained her luck (yesterday’s failed Soviet Backfire strike wasn’t to be repeated), but out in the Indian Ocean the USS Ranger was hit by a lone torpedo. She was inbound for the Gulf, on the way before the war started. From under the water some distance off, a Soviet submarine fired four at her. All of them were VA-111s: experimental super-cavitating weapons lancing through the water at two hundred knots. The rocket speed torpedoes were designed to use nuclear warheads because while fast, they weren’t very accurate. It was conventional warheads that they all had though despite protestations from local commanders when the request was made to make a nuclear strike. The Ranger took a glancing blow from the one torpedo and this did cause damage. She could still carry on though and wasn’t going to be stopped from joining the Constellation off Iran. Likewise with their Soviet opponents, the Ranger incident once against saw senior American commanders request authorisation for the use of nuclear weapons. The US Navy believed that they never would have lost the Vinson should they have been able to use nukes and they nearly lost the Ranger because they couldn’t employ them. Any sign of Soviet submarines would be met with nuclear-armed depth charges they said. Refusal came to both the Americans and the Soviets in the field. This was a political decision made by their leaders. Still, the military need was thought there by those in uniform who would keep on making the requests where they said that the use of nuclear weapons at sea could be controlled without further escalation.

There was fighting ongoing across the Middle East on land and in the skies. Israel was now in open warfare with Syria and Soviet forces within that country. Iran and Iraq, both Soviet allies in their war against the West, were still fighting each other too despite everything else going on in the world. Anyone sensible in Baghdad or Tehran would have called a halt… but there was no one with sense in charge in each capital. The Americans down in Southern Iraq, who’d won a famous victory against the Iranians before the war with the Soviet Union, halted offensive operations though. CENTCOM was instructed to hold with General Crist being told that inbound reinforcements from home were being diverted to Europe. It was madness, Crist argued, to do that because the disruption to their deployment would see them not fighting anyone at all for an undetermined time when he was ready to make use of them in Iraq. That wasn’t to be though. There was though the completion of the operations against Soviet forces near to his troops though at their isolated outposts in the rear. Despite a fierce defence, US Marines won control of Umm Qasr from Soviet Naval Infantry. At Ar Rumaylah Airbase, British Paras and Gurkhas opened their attack there but they soon found that the on-scene commander offered a surrender. The composite battalion of Soviet DShV airmobile troops gave up after an initial exchange of fire. It should have been a famous victory for the British but rumours coming of what was happening in Europe dampened spirits at a time when they should have been soaring. At lot of American attention was being focused on Iran at this time too. US Air Force strikes were going into that country like US Navy ones from the Constellation. Iran was fighting back but suffering many losses. Reconnaissance efforts by the Americans were looking further afield: up towards the Soviet border. They were waiting for the Soviet Army to enter Iran and come down to the Gulf. There was no sign of that happening though. This wasn’t something that could be understood by the United States nor its allies. Getting a look inside the complicated state of Soviet-Iran relations would have told them the truth of the matter but that was impossible at the time being. Khomeini was doing what he’d always done and putting Iran first. Letting Soviet troops into his country wasn’t what he regarded as something that would see the survival of him and his regime. They’d never leave, he believed, and so weren’t being invited.

The Pacific was still quiet. The war had yet to spread to this ocean and the a-joining East Asian landmass. Countries here had entered the war though. In a diplomatic blow to Moscow, Japan and the Philippines joined with their American allies in this fight. South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand were all on-side too though not in such an overt way as their neighbours were. Yet, North Korea and Vietnam, Soviet allies, had done nothing and the Soviets themselves weren’t making any military moves in the region apart from defensive preparations. This meant that while war had come to the Pacific, there hadn’t been any real armed clashes yet. It was an odd situation. It was a situation not due to last for long either. Australia and New Zealand (the latter putting aside difficulties with the Americans in the face of an enemy which was the Soviet Union and its actions) were in the late stages of their preparations to move military forces but the Americans were ahead of them. The carrier USS Midway had sailed from Japan after the (welcome) surprise of not being attacked in port; USS Enterprise had left Pearl Harbor too with her escort group attacking marine life on the way when it was mistaken for a Soviet submarine. Two more American carriers – USS Kitty Hawk and USS Nimitz – were to leave West Coast bases soon enough. This ocean belonged to the US Navy. The carriers, along with as many other warships that could too be gathered, were all to head for the Soviet Pacific coast. The US Air Force was likewise inbound for war that way. The air war in Europe was the priority but attacking the Soviets where they lived were something to be done as soon as it could be. There were already requests logged, long before these Pacific-assigned American forces had seen action, for them to make use of nuclear weapons too. Across on the other side of the ocean, Soviet commanders were aware of what was coming. Permission was asked for and soon granted to start hitting Japan when Ligachev and his top people realised they had failed to keep Japan out of the war. Permission was sought too for the use of nuclear weapons to be employed against the US Navy as it crossed the ocean. The air wings from four carriers could do terrible things if unleashed against the Rodina. That permission was denied. Those who requested it would keep on asking, just as American commanders would too. How long could permission continued to be denied?

These battlefields are important in a geo-political sense but Europe is key, Western Europe in particular. It is where the war is being won too!
Typo fixed though 'none nothing' is great alliteration I think! I'm not sure where we go with North Korea but China is for sure staying out of this.
Yep, unless the stealth aircraft attacks do a spectacular hit, and that isn't easy, then they are only good for the political blow of being bombed. The Soviets will dedicate assets to going after them but they did have a massive AD set-up independent of their air force and it won't cost them much overall.

I'd imagine that with the Soviets making such good progress, people in the Force de dissuasion and the Strategic Air Command must be getting twitchy.