The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

I absolutely love the idea of them being Neighbourhood Watch members - it's just so ironically funny to me, more amusing even than them being MPs or police officers or senior military personnel. I really like the idea of them sitting around the table with a bunch of upper-middle class 'Keep our streets clean' types, listening to their companions talking about 'filthy commies' or something along those lines!

To me, that is how an good espionage op should work: people doing your work for you, unaware that they are too.
It helps keep down the workload on the officers, brings in more product and is a safety value against detection.



I didn't see that role for them.
However, thinking on it, I like the idea of them being dragged - against their will - into fulfilling a role as part of the shelter network. This will mean that the two of them, loyal officers, will be doing what traitors-natives would doing but those at the top of the operation get more reliability there.
I agree that those at the bottom end of the pile, the natives, will be getting a rapid end when their usefulness is done.

Nice map, seems the Netherlands 1st Corps needs to do their own Dunkirk evacuation soon.

127 – Ambush in the English Channel


The Royal Navy wasn’t waiting for dawn to get out to sea. Daylight would mean too many eyes able to observe the departures from Devonport and Plymouth as the ships left those already targeted bases. Instead, moorings were slipped in the early hours with warships being guided out in the darkness by harbour pilots. A flotilla departed each base with transfers due to take place between each out in the English Channel. Two task groups were being formed up: one going eastwards with the destination being the Norwegian Sea and the other heading towards the North Atlantic out to the west. There were aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and support ships. Late to the party, the Royal Navy was determined to make a big impact on the war. That wasn’t to be though. There was an ambush ready and waiting for them.

Not long before the sun began to rise, the two distinct task groups had taken shape. They were each beginning to start moving too with several ships already sailing out ahead. The carriers were taking on aircraft at this time. HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal had each left Portsmouth without their Sea Harrier FRS1 attack-fighters. Flying from land bases, those Sea Harriers were coming out now and making their landings. It was during this difficult and dangerous process (night landings always were) when the Soviet Navy struck. There had been a set of eyes on land, a GRU officer alerted by an agent in-place at Portsmouth, who had spotted the departure using stolen and expensive night vision gear of the two carriers making their way towards the sea. He’d made a broadcast afterwards using a powerful transmitter which linked to a satellite. The haste he was forced to employ by his masters and with the British being on high alert for something like this, he was nabbed soon afterwards by a detachment of armed Regulators (the Royal Navy’s police) supported by a MI-5 team. By then though, he’d already made his broadcast and started the process of destroying his signalling equipment. The word was out that the British ships were at sea. Onwards the message had gone, to a waiting submarine at the western end of the English Channel. This was the K-148, an Oscar-class missile boat and a sister to the sunken K-208 which had hit the US Navy so hard the other day in the Arabian Sea. The former aimed to do what the latter had done: sink a NATO carrier, even two. It took some time to get a firm fix on the Royal Navy ships and this was done despite the presence in the skies nearby of both RAF and French Navy maritime patrol aircraft hunting for any submarines. When the targets were acquired, the K-148 launched. Twelve SS-N-19 Shipwreck cruise missiles were fired. Two quickly failed but the other ten tore onwards.

HMS Exeter was in action once again. The destroyer had knocked down several cruise missiles yesterday evening over the English Channel and aimed to repeat that feat when the radar operators spotted more. The Shipwrecks were very different from the AS-6 Kingfishes. They came in lower and manoeuvred defensively, even sacrificing themselves to protect others. The swarm process was a difficult thing to achieve and there was the interception of one of them hit by a Sea Dart that the Exeter got in among the group of low-flying missiles. However, the other nine raced towards where Illustrious was. Close-in escorts fired Sea Wolf SAMs and there was the launch of chaff into the sky. The Royal Navy only had a few minutes to react. They used that time well though. Anti-missiles guns – the Goalkeeper and the Phalanx – were fitted to ships and they fired hundreds upon hundreds of high explosive rounds into the sky to join the Sea Wolf missiles. Two more Shipwrecks were shot down. Seven were left though.

Illustrious was hit five times with the helicopter support ship RFA Engadine drawing another two. The inbound cruise missiles weren’t ‘wasted’ in hitting any of the other ships nearby. Those were important vessels, but the two aviation-capable ships were the priority targets for them. Each Shipwreck carried a 1600lb warhead and came in to strike its target at a speed of Mach 1.6. Neither British vessel could survive hits from such weapons as these. Engadine was blown in half. The bigger Illustrious was set alight from bow to stern. Hundreds of Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary sailors were already dead with many more soon to join them among the burning remains of each vessel.

The K-148 went after Ark Royal too. Inbound aircraft had been waved off and the carrier was racing away eastwards towards the Straits of Dover. Behind her, escorts were positioned to shoot at incoming missiles and were also doing all that they could to locate the Soviet Oscar before she could fire again. The Fleet Air Arm helicopters flying from several destroyers and frigates were all over the water while above them there were further maritime patrol aircraft. Torpedoes and depth charges were lined up ready to drop on that submarine as missiles and guns were held in firing position to launch against other Shipwrecks. Time ticked away. The Ark Royal was at near full speed. There was no time for anyone to hold their breath in waiting, there was just too much to do. Onboard the K-148, strenuous efforts were underway to locate the fleeing target. Illustrious and Engadine had been ‘easy’ kills but that other Royal Navy carrier was providing more difficult to find. Finally, it was thought that the Ark Royal was in sight. Eight more missiles were readied to fire. Shouts of alarm came first: ‘torpedoes in the water!’. From above, one of those RAF Nimrod MR2 – flying out of RAF St. Mawgan in Cornwall – dropped Sting Ray torpedoes. The K-148 dove deeper than it was, ejecting noise makers into the water. This at once drew even more attention to the submarine, but there was nothing else that could be done. It worked too. The torpedoes were avoided and the K-148 escaped destruction. So did the Ark Royal though as she managed to get away from the ambush which had wiped out her sister-ship. As to that Nimrod, along with a pair of French Atlantique-2s, the airborne hunt for the Oscar went onwards in what ultimately was a fruitless effort. The RAF aircrew hadn’t used all of the weapons at their disposal. There was a depth charge within the Nimrod and it was one of the naval-rolled WE.177s: that would have done the job that the torpedoes had failed to do. Permission for nuclear weapons release was withheld though.


The Engadine was finished but the Illustrious was still afloat. There were many sailors aboard the carrier still alive. Evacuation efforts took place following the massed missile attack. Several warships were ordered away with clear instructions that they had priority missions: unfortunately, attempting to save the lives of their fellow sailors wasn’t one of those priorities. There was still a war going on – it hadn’t ended when the Illustrious was hit – and an enemy submarine out there. Other vessels were tasked to move in to assist with the efforts to save as many lives as possible.

Few men came off the burning carrier unwounded. Burns victims were everywhere. Many lessons had been learnt by the Royal Navy after ships had been hit in the Falklands resulting in fire. The material of uniforms had been changed and evacuation efforts had got a real-life exercise. Still… the numbers of men suffered from the effects of fire were huge. Then there were all those others who gained injuries following the shock damage spread throughout the ship upon the force of impact. Broken bones, concussions and crush injuries were aplenty. Others had been saved by their fellow sailors from suffocating in the smoke but weren’t in a good shape at all. The wounded and unwounded helped get as many men off as possible onto ships which came nearby and also several helicopters as well. Yet, others were left behind with evacuation not coming in time for them. There were plenty of sailors who were pulled alive from burning parts of the ship but died before they could get off. There was no capability and no time to remove the dead: only the living could get off the Illustrious.

The fires kept on burning as the carrier consumed itself. The island superstructure collapsed inwards, down through the already ripped flight-deck. The metalwork of the Illustrious was melting. A last hurrah was made to get everyone off who could be before it was impossible to continue. The fire waited for no one though. It moved at its own speed, killing rescuers and those who came very close to being saved. The evacuation finally had to be cancelled. There was no longer any recognisable form of a ship: just a burning lump of metal that the sea would eventually take.

Casualties arrived ashore throughout the morning. The majority went to Portsmouth though the French would take a few across the Channel to Cherbourg. News of what had happened out on the water was something that was supposed to be a military secret. Word would spread fast through the Royal Navy though, even beyond in time. The deaths of more than five hundred sailors and the injuries sustained by three hundred more – plus the sudden missing carrier too – weren’t something that could be hidden.

Ark Royal’s escorts would catch up and the task group would reform on the other side of the Straits of Dover to head northwards. Ships that were supposed to be formed around the centrepiece that was the Illustrious would still go out into the North Atlantic regardless of the now absent carrier. Back in the English Channel, that unsuccessful hunt for the Oscar would go on long after the submarine departed to also go out into the open ocean. Not knowing for certain that the Shipwreck-armed boat was gone would throw a spanner in the works for other things though. A mass of shipping – RFA vessels but also civilian vessels – was in the Solent: the sheltered stretch of water behind the Isle of Wright. At Portsmouth, Southampton and also the smaller Marchwood (a military harbour) these ships had been loading on the equipment and stores for the British Army’s 1st Infantry Brigade. Its Jutland mission had been scrubbed and the brigade was meant to go to West Germany by way of Zeebrugge in Belgium. Personnel wouldn’t be going by sea but everything else would be and was all aboard these ships. A delay was now imposed before the ships could sail. The Soviet Navy had unintentionally kept the 1st Brigade inside the UK; soon enough, the Soviet VDV would have the uncomfortable experience of finding out the hard way that these British regulars hadn’t left the British mainland and would fight on home soil.

Second that.

Vital service it will really be: the only regulars in a force of such size left in the country. Britain will spend tremendous effort in the few hours before the landings getting other good troops across the Channel.



A very similar situation had just been seen in West Germany. One of those VDV columns - with tanks attached too - did cause utter panic and went flying forward. The 11th Armoured Brigade gave them a fight in the end though, shattering them completely... unfortunately a Soviet tank division showed up the next afternoon. The latter cannot and will not happen in the UK.
I am attaching some tanks to the invasion force: just a battalion (31 in number) of T-62s from a GSFG ind. regiment. They will be airlifted in, taking up room for them & gear on aircraft, and will try to make a difference. There are many more tanks in the UK though: British Army ones, even some West German Leopard-1s based in Wales!