The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

I second this; however, the armoured recce vehicles - Scimitars and Scorpions IIRC - might not fare that well against BMDs. The Russian vehicles have mounted ATGMs while the British vehicles don't. Also, I'm pretty sure the VDV is capable of lifting at least some tanks. Russian Airborne Forces in 2018 had the T-72B3+, so clearly there is at least some capacity to lift them with aircraft (AN-22s?) and the USSR had way more heavy-lift aircraft than Russia does now. Even a company of MBTs will make 1 Inf Bde's job more difficult. 

According to different sources, the British brigade had either a single squadron of Chieftains or a full regiment. Also, they were all in Saxons not Warriors, which obviously don't have the firepower of the latter vehicle. Still though, the British will be on home ground and there will be plenty of other TA, HSF and regular units in play. Plus the 'Normal for Norfolk' locals with their hunting rifles who may be interested in re-enacting Deliverance & Southern Comfort!

In West Germany, the villages are only two kilotons apart...

As the Soviet’s and WARPAC detect NATO transitioning to nuclear operations (maybe through Agent Kolibri) how will they respond with preparatory measures.  It’s one thing to fight a conventional war to remove a conventional threat.  It’s another thing entirely to hasten an potential existential threat to the Rodina.  At this point the Soviets know the F-117 and (air, sea, ground) Tomahawk will penetrate undetected and the Pershing 2 moves to fast to be stopped.  They also know they can’t catch the western SSBNs reliably.  

So... how to find an asymmetric solution to a problem of catastrophic success.

At this point, the Soviets may likely focus on splitting NATO, beginning with WG.  Do this by moving as much into West Germany as possible- and let them see you do it.  Ultimately the WG are likely to take a deal rather than allow their own to be slaughtered.  Once you have WG out, move to the next weakest willed- possibly NL.  Same type deal, only this time with the trapped BDE.  And so on.

landing in the UK fits nicely in this.  Get the British focused on home defense and unable/unwilling to back the other members on the continent due to clamor for forces for home defense.  Isolation wins the day in the UK- you just need them unable to intervene.  It’s cynical, but you can even sacrifice the VDV force to do so.

ultimately the US probably gets a deal as well- the USSR can’t take the seas from the USN.  What they can do is offer safe evacuation for US forces (possibly sans equipment) and dependents and a prisoner return.  Maybe it will be branded as peace with honor...

Just some thoughts on an outstanding timeline!

129 – The war spreads


The Danes, joined by what West German forces were able to, withdrew back from Schleswig-Holstein almost completely into Denmark. There was a little bit of West Germany held by NATO at the top of Schleswig, anchored at the eastern end by Flensburg, but Allied Land Forces Schleswig-Holstein & Jutland (the NATO army-sized command for the region controlling the LANDJUT Corps) had effectively abandoned that country. There were still troops fighting outside of Hamburg though they were no longer under operational command. The retreat by NATO here also included air forces from the various bases south of the Danish-West German border too: Schleswig AB had long ago been lost but Eggebek, Husum and Leck saw pull-outs occur ahead of incoming Soviet and East German forces. The fight would be on that border now where the Danes believed that they could concentrate enough at the base of Jutland to stop any further enemy movement forward. The Americans and the British were both supposed to commit troops to Denmark under wartime plans to reinforce LANDJUT but the former had their 9th Infantry Division in Iraq and the latter were planning on sending the 1st Infantry Brigade to the Low Countries. LANDJUT would need those two formations to retake lost territory but it was believed that they could hold without them. This appeared to be the case too. The Soviets had their Baltic-assigned Naval Infantry closing up towards Jutland as part of the East German’s V Corps and now the Poles had finally shown up, they too were reported to be moving via land over the Inner-German Border to also come this way. Should there be deception in-play with that Polish marine division, the Danes still had many troops on Zealand and also elsewhere among their islands. They could thus concentrate the heaviest of their ground forces under LANDJUT command. The border was a defensible position too. Soviet and East German forces pushed against it throughout the war’s third day but the position held.

The conflict in the western reaches of the Baltic, near to Denmark, had started off badly for NATO when those Soviet marines, supported by East German paratroopers operating just inland of them, had landed on the West German coast. Naval bases had been seized and others quickly hit with attacks. Half of the Bundesmarine’s naval-rolled Tornado strike-bombers had been lost at Schleswig AB. The Danes had been hit hard at home with their naval & air forces taking a beating. Still, it could have been worse: a real effort could have been made to open access out of the Baltic to the open seas beyond by a landing made in Copenhagen or nearby. The Soviets hadn’t made the attempt to prise open the Baltic Exits. A combined Baltic Fleet had been formed with Soviet, East German and Polish assets. They had given the Danes and remaining West Germans a bad time at sea. Ships had been sunk on each side. There had been many engagements and a lot of that was between small warships as well as submarines rather than any capital ships. Neither side could yet claim victory and no one could be sure how long this could go on here for.

Equally less decisive naval warfare was being seen far to the north. The Soviet’s Northern Fleet – their Atlantic Fleet in all but name – hadn’t come out into the open ocean despite there being no physical blockage from the Kola to the North Atlantic. The majority of their ships which had left port were in the Barents Sea, many on their way east too towards the Kara Sea. The Northern Fleet was playing a defensive game closer to home including putting warships atop of the sheltered stretch of water beneath whose surface was their ballistic missile submarine force. There were a few ships which had come west though and they hadn’t strayed far from the Norwegian coast. The brigade of Naval Infantry on-hand had yet to see action but those ships at-sea weren’t going to be escorting it in any forward amphibious assault: it would be an overland mission for them when they saw action. The Norwegians had a coastal-assigned navy and they had seen some action with the Northern Fleet. The rest of NATO’s growing naval power in the Norwegian Sea hadn’t. They were still far away to the west. There’d been a hurry to get together a force to intercept a predicted daring thrust forward by the Northern Fleet out into the North Atlantic or to support that feared amphibious landing… neither of which had occurred. Submarine activities were currently more important than surface action. Each side had many and the Soviets were sending some forward to join those already at-sea when war erupted. NATO believed – incorrectly making assumption once more when it came to Soviet naval intentions – that there would be dozens upon dozens sent into the North Atlantic. This wasn’t the case. Only a few were going out that far and there was no aim on the Northern Fleet’s part to fight a Third Battle of the Atlantic in trying to sink convoys of merchant ships. Something had to change up here if the two sides were going to really get stuck into each other. Otherwise, this odd stand-off, made a distance, was going to continue having no effect upon the war.


The Greeks were still fighting the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Trace. Bulgaria was consolidating its gains, but Greece was aiming to retake all that was lost. This evening – with only a few hours of light left in the sky – the Greeks did something that the Bulgarians thought would have been done if not this morning then at dawn tomorrow: make an amphibious landing. Greek marines and their commandos (a better description for them rather than special forces) made several opposed entries along the occupied coastline at the top of the Aegean. The Bulgarians responded quickly though the Greeks were fast to gain the upper hand. A major ground attack came in from the west too, through Macedonia. The Bulgarians had been caught off-guard not so much by the twin attack – it was somewhat expected – but by the timing. Greek advances were made in several places while elsewhere the Bulgarians did everything that they could to hold their ground. It wasn’t a good evening nor night for them as the Greeks did very well. The conflict here was far from settled but it taken an unfortunate twist that those in Sofia, in Moscow too, wouldn’t like. Across the border in the Turkish part of Trace, the Bulgarian invasion which had started yesterday was something held back. Despite urging from NATO allies to work with the Greeks in joint defence – what NATO was supposed to be all about! – the Turks fought their own fight here. Several times, Greek troops on the shared border, trapped as they were by the Bulgarians in front of them, came close to exchanging fire with the Turks behind them. Each side held their fire and only engaged the Bulgarians but it was a close run thing here. Meanwhile, the Battle of Istanbul continued to rage. Soviet forces fighting for control of the Bosporus had been given that reprieve yesterday when many Turkish forces inbound for Istanbul were redirected to head-off the Bulgarians. That didn’t mean though that they were on the cusp of victory. Not all of their landing sites were linked up and they lost one of them today when Turkish tanks, supported by tremendous artillery fire, retook Atatürk Airport. The surviving Soviet paratroopers who could pull out of there did so and they left behind a ruin. Elsewhere, more of their VDV comrades plus the DShV airmobile troops and the Naval Infantry saw combat as well but nothing on the scale as seen at that international airport. However, it was clear that soon enough, the Turks would come at them too. They wanted to retake their soil, even if it meant destroying everything in-sight during that.

Israeli aircraft were flying in Turkish skies. The IDF/AF was making use of Turkish infrastructure to aid the Turks in their fight defending against the (admittedly half-hearted) invasion of Anatolia. It was a forward deployment of some magnitude for the Israelis. They had only sent a couple of combat squadrons – one of F-15s and the other of F-16s; the Soviets first thought they were facing the Americans – but it was no easy feat for Israel to do this. The IDF/AF were currently flying defensive missions with light weapons loads but they intended to soon fly offensive ones… into the Caucasus. Turkey, so long having refused to be drawn into the Second Gulf War and then the American-vs.-Iranian conflict, was fully involved in the global Third World War and welcomed the assistance given by allies. Most Israeli air effort was currently being expended against Syria – flying from Turkey allowed too an outflanking of Syrian defences – as the war against Assad’s regime continued. The heart of Damascus itself had been bombed when F-4s laden with bombs had hit regime targets in the capital. The Golan and Lebanon were battlefields too, ones where Israel was on the offensive. This war was seeing Arab countries also on the same side as Israel but with the official position that they were co-belligerents and not allies. Egypt had struck against Libya. It was a pre-emptive action with air strikes and naval action. Egypt had the troops available to invade but there was still the strain of the Middle East deployment for Mubarak’s regime so a full-scale attack had yet to commence against Gaddafi.

There was no official ceasefire and there remained exchanges of fire between the two but Iran and Iraq were no longer actively fighting each other. Iraq had been on the verge of defeat and had been looking at the prospect of losing Baghdad to an invading Iranian Army. The Iranians halted major offensive actions though as they switched attention southwards. Rashid had wanted to use the opportunity to strike out hard but he received a stern warning from Moscow to not do so. The Soviets threatened to cut of all help and even aid Iran if that was done. Rashid stomped his feet but didn’t rise to the challenge of fighting another superpower at this time. As to the Iranians, the undertook a major attack against the Americans on the ground in Southern Iraq. Right before the superpowers went to war, the US Army had given the Iranian Army a thumping near to Basra. The Americans were getting ready to ‘liberate’ Iraq yet they were forced to cancel offensive operations due to the war raging in Europe. Khomeini took his chance. He believed that he’d never get another one like this. A major push was tried. Iran attempted to defeat the US XVIII Corps and the I MAF in one go. They threw everything they had it. The Americans held them off. Coalition air power – the British and French wanted to pull their jets out like they did their soldiers but they had an enemy in front of them meaning they couldn’t – devastated the Iranians as they supported those on the ground. It was a battle which should have made news all around the world… but the rest of the world was busy. The Second Gulf War was one which everyone had near forgotten about. Thousands died here for something put out of the minds of so many when only a few days beforehand it had all been at the centre of everything.


Soviet war strategy had planned to keep Asia and the Pacific quiet. That hadn’t gone as planned. The war was spreading. Japan had entered the conflict among other American allies and then there was an air strike launched against Soviet forces in Vietnam by the US Air Force from out of the Philippines. The Vietnamese suffered casualties during this and also declared that they couldn’t stand by and see their sovereignty violated like that. Walking away from Hanoi was mooted among Ligachev and the Soviet leadership but they didn’t take that option after some consideration on the matter. One of the reasons for allowing the conflict to spread like that – they could have forced Vietnam to stay neutral… so they believed anyway – was because of those American air attacks with their F-117 stealth aircraft the day before which had hit the Soviet Union proper. Reagan hadn’t respected the unsaid position (which the Soviets themselves dreamed up) of not attacking each other’s homeland. Ligachev wanted the United States to be hit. An attack was launched with one of several pre-war emergency-only plans followed. It was an ambitious strike, a complicated one too. Long-range Badger and Backfire bombers – nuclear-capable aircraft – flew from bases in the Soviet Far East and launched long-range cruise missiles. These were targeted against Guam and the American bases in the Philippines but also further afield too: Alaska and Hawaii. Airbases in those two outlying states were hit while Pearl Harbor was also struck. A message had gone out over the Hotline to the effect of ‘these ongoing military attacks are of a non-nuclear nature’. The timing of when that was sent had caused debate – too early would risk mission failure; too late could see the Americans already ‘overreact’ – but more than that, some of those around Ligachev were opposed to the idea of making such contact. No message had come from the Americans before they bombed the Soviet Union’s outlying regions with their radar-invisible aircraft, so why should a warning be sent to them? Moreover, it went against agreed policy on not engaging in exchanges of messages with the United States until the Soviet Union was ready to talk about the American surrender of what forces it had left fighting in Europe after victory had been won there. The internal debate was fierce over this matter. If outsiders had known of it, they might have considered that there should have been more important matters to argue over but it was important to the top-level of the leadership. This would be an ongoing issue too where the spark had been set for internal arguments starting which would take on a ferocious character. Meanwhile, the military impact of the Alaska and Hawaii strikes was little. The shock factor in the United States would be bigger yet the Soviet aim had been to do much when, when all was said and done, little actually was.

Latin America was looking likely to be a non-theatre of conflict for the third time that the world went to war this century. The majority of the governments here were either anti-communist and thus pro-US in their foreign policy or neutral in the global power game yet without any real ties to the Soviets. This was America’s backyard. The United States expected and received support from the majority of nations. Declarations of war against the Soviets came from Mexico all the way down to Argentina and seemingly almost everywhere in between. Other matters were pushed aside as the United States did what needed to be done in securing the Western Hemisphere’s overt allegiance at this time. What these many countries could provide in military terms was small but they were on-side and that was what the American wanted. However, there were those who refused to do as Washington demanded. Several nations stuck to their neutrality regardless of American economic threats and the tide which swept Latin America of everyone wanting to be quick to jump aboard the going-to-war train.

Then there was Cuba and Nicaragua. Cuba was more of a Soviet ally than Nicaragua was. Each was hostile to the United States – though blaming the Americans for the current state of affairs – and in neither Havana nor Managua was the slavish following of Washington’s desires seen elsewhere going to be occurring! They declared their neutrality in the conflict that was raging elsewhere in the world. Nicaragua was a nuisance but not regarded by the Reagan Administration as a threat to the United States. Cuba was a different matter. There were Soviet forces known to be in Cuba and the island was ninety miles from Florida. Castro had announced publicly that Cuba was not involved in the war and would stay neutral with Washington believing that he only had done so after his Moscow paymasters told him to do that as part of a deception ahead of an attack. It was decided that the ‘Cuban threat’ couldn’t be ignored and Castro couldn’t be trusted to maintain that neutrality. A demand was sent to Havana concerning the presence of the Soviets in Cuba and the alert status that Castro’s military was at. Seeing the detail, Castro knew that his wasn’t the kind of demand that Cuba could accede to. He would have no choice but to refuse it. Where the situation would go from there wasn’t going to be good yet he believed that this was clearly the American intention all along. Cuba was certain to be at war within days because the worst kind of national humiliation at the behest of the United States wasn’t one which he would impose on his country. The war would spread to the Caribbean.

130 – The slingshot


General Rogers had wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons against the Third Shock Army before that massed tank formation saw action. The four tank divisions had been attacked before they left East Germany by the RAF using Tornados and then US Air Force F-111s had had a go at it as it rolled through West Germany behind the frontlines. SACEUR believed that only the use of low-yield thermonuclear blasts would stop it before it shattered NATO lines and caused an irrecoverable collapse. His political masters had refused permission though. If they had been asked – and they hadn’t been – to give their opinion of the denied attacks, the Dutch government would have said early on the Tuesday morning that they disagreed with Rogers over the matter of using nuclear weapons against the Third Shock Army when it was crossing the North German Plain. Should the question have been posed again to the Netherlands’ leaders, this time at the end of the war’s third day, the answer would have been different: they would have been foremost in pushing for nuclear strike. However, that would have been before the Third Shock Army finally saw action. When all of those tank divisions did meet NATO forces, it was the Netherlands I Corps which they met in battle. The fight with the Third Shock Army started inside West Germany; by the end of the day, the Dutch were fighting on the edges of Zeeland. The Soviets had by that point put a tank army as far into the NATO rear as possible, all the way to the sea.

At seven in the morning, the Dutch 1st Infantry Division joined the 4th Infantry Division in crossing over the border into West Germany. The former division had just managed to stop a Soviet tank division at Rheine on the Ems River and the latter division moved forward on their right flank with the aim of going much further forward: all the way to link up with the Belgians and British out ahead near the Weser. There was the 5th Infantry Division on the other flank, moving over the Ems downstream from Rheine to also eventually make it to what was left of the Weser Line. A salient would be formed around what enemy forces had made it all the way to Rheine and been halted just before they could reach the Dutch border. This wasn’t a complicated plan and was to be done in what was the rear with combat not expected to be seen until much later in the day, away to the east too. The Third Shock Army was being predicted by SACEUR and his staff to move in a southwestern direction and the 1st Infantry Division was supposed to get to their allies in time to block that. The Soviets refused to follow such a script. Marshal Ogarkov was following his own plan of action. He sent this tank army – just as he had done with the First Guards Tank Army last night – in a westward movement not to widen flanks but to make a penetrative attack. The Dutch were hit while on the move and not ready for action. The 1st Infantry Division was north of the Ruhr and still in friendly territory. Air support didn’t spot the incoming rush of tanks. The forwardmost troops were the first to see the enemy. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them, crashing though lightweight opposition coming from West German Territorials also caught off-guard. The Soviets had come through the forests of the Teutoburger (not going the ‘easy way’ around it) and through the countryside of Westphalia. Only after contact was made did the warning reports started to arrive. By then it was far too late. Where they could, the Dutch fought. They were outnumbered and outgunned too. Pieces of two tank divisions went through them on a wide frontage, shooting them up as they tried to deploy. Every effort had been made in the past few days by the Netherlands to get its army mobilised and off to war and then a large portion of it was suddenly wiped out with apparent ease by the Soviets. The fighting was short and extremely violent. The 1st Infantry Division – with Leopard-1 tanks and M-113 conversions for infantry carriers – was wiped out with almost contemptuous ease. Onwards the Third Shock Army went. It was almost as if the Dutch were a speed bump, nothing serious to worry about. The Ruhr was to the south and they could have turned that way but instead they stayed on course. The border was crossed. Soviet tanks poured into the Netherlands. One division, the 47th Guards, did break away from the main body though only at this late stage (ten o’clock) and it raced for the crossings over the Rhine between the Ruhr and the Dutch border rather than going into the Ruhr. The 7th, 10th & 12th Guards Tank Divisions had a mission in the Netherlands though, not fighting inside West Germany. NATO threw aircraft at them but not troops. Dutch reservists on security duties at home were run over. From Enschede to Zevenaar, the Third Shock Army had a wide frontage with the trio of tank divisions side-by-side.


T-64s and T-80s entered the Netherlands. There were almost a thousand of them. Urban areas around Arnhem and Enschede weren’t entered though towns and villages saw Soviet tanks move through them. Twente Airbase was overrun while bridges on the IJssel (peacetime fixed civilian links and the pontoon crossings that the Dutch Army had put in in recent days to aid movement) were captured intact. The Soviets didn’t stop here. Midday saw them over the IJssel. Panic was erupting all around them. The Third Shock Army was using its mobile artillery and armed helicopters for close air support. There were aircraft in the skies as well, attacking any sign of resistance offered by the Dutch and NATO forces here in the Central Netherlands. Dutch civilians suddenly found their homeland was a battlefield. Dutch rear-area troops fired on tanks and infantry carriers even when they knew it was hopeless. That it was. The Third Shock Army wasn’t going to be stopped. At Soesterberg Airbase, Sukhoi-22 attack-fighters in Polish service had raided this facility several times ahead of Soviet tanks showing up. The Americans, who flew F-15 fighters from here, were in the process of making an emergency evacuation but a regiment from the 10th Guards Division got there faster than anyone though possible. F-15s were shot up on the ground while one of the jets operated by the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron was shot down as it tried to take off when shells from several 30mm autocannons fitted to BMP-2s hit it. US Air Force ground personnel fought a heroic fight but it was a quick fight with only one outcome: defeat. Utrecht was bypassed by the 7th Guards Division while the 12th Guards Division was engaged in taking crossings over the Lek River (the Rhine Delta through the Netherlands split into several waterways) on the flank. With the urban area around Utrecht behind them, now the Third Shock Army went for Amsterdam and the North Sea too.

It was two in the afternoon when the first elements of the 12th Guards Division reached the Hook of Holland. The port here was entered like The Hague (the seat of government) and the harbour areas of Rotterdam would be. The fighting in a built-up area wasn’t as bad as it could have been but it was still unpleasant. Dutch soldiers who wanted to fight here could inflict more damage than in open ground. The North Sea coast here held those two ports and seizing them was something special for the overall Soviet war aims. As to Amsterdam, the two other divisions went towards it. The 10th Guards Division made the short turn inwards to go straight up towards the capital of the Netherlands while the 7th Guards Division made a wider sweeping move. At Schiphol Airport a major fight took place. The airport became a battlefield, so too did the Fokker aircraft plant. The Dutch were unable to do much to delay forward progress though. The Soviets had all of those tanks and infantry carriers while the men they had fighting at home were generally on foot with light weapons. Amsterdam was soon in Soviet hands. One of the two Third Shock Army divisions stayed here while the other carried on moving. The tanks didn’t stop until they reached Den Helder with the naval base being captured – wrecked in the process – as the finale of the attack before six in the evening.

The 5th Guards Army Corps also went into the Netherlands today. They attacked later in the morning, breaking West German positions on the Dutch 4th Infantry Division’s flank by getting over the Mittelland Canal then making a left turn. Crossings were made over the Ems River and then the Dutch 5th Infantry Division was met in battle on the border between the Netherlands and West Germany. Six brigades formed the advancing corps with a range of tanks and infantry vehicles fielded. This was their first time in battle and not everything went to plan. Certain sub-units went east, not west, in navigation errors of quite some magnitude. NATO air power hurt them greatly especially when American A-10s got in under the air cover. But this was a large force, spread out on a big frontage. The corps attacked in a northwestern direction, going through the well-equipped but overwhelmed Dutch reservists. The Northern Netherlands was less densely-populated as the Central Netherlands was and there were no rivers to cross either. The POMUS sites at Coevorden, Ter Apel & Vriezenveen were overrun. These held the equipment for the US Army’s 5th Infantry Division though with that formation caught right in the middle of transit to the Gulf when war erupted, Texan national guardsmen with the pre-alerted 49th Armored Division were arriving to make use of the stored gear and ammunition here. They weren’t formed up yet and the POMCUS facilities had already been repeatedly slimed with chemical strikes. Before the Americans could make a real fight of it, they were lost in battle. The 5th Guards Army Corps kept on advancing through the afternoon and into the evening. Bits and pieces of the Dutch 5th Infantry Division, those trailing behind who hadn’t been out front, were engaged where met. Groningen was reached, so too the shores of the inland body of water which was the IJsselmeer. Two brigades approached Leeuwarden Airbase from where Dutch F-16s were flying alongside those A-10s (they’d come over on Sunday from their home bases in Britain) but before the tanks and riflemen could reach the facility, dozens of helicopters approached. The Soviet corps had its own regiment of DShV and these airmobile troops conducted an assault from behind. A couple of those F-16s did get away in the chaos – they made combat takeoffs where they dropped flares and zoomed straight upwards – but every A-10 that was on the ground when the Soviets arrived was caught here. NATO losses of air power caught on the ground at Leeuwarden were worse than what had happened at Soesterberg and Twente.


There were British troops in the Netherlands. The 5th Airborne & 19th Infantry Brigades, plus smaller British Army combat units as well as a host of non-combat elements, were arriving today. Ships and aircraft were bringing them in through here where they could form up on Dutch territory before going into West Germany behind the Netherlands I Corps. It had begun yesterday and was rudely interrupted when Ogarkov made what was later called ‘the slingshot’ in how he pushed the Third Shock Army and 5th Guards Army Corps forward in the speedy manner he did. Several ships – North Sea ferries requisitioned for wartime service – were suddenly given orders to turn away from their approaches to Rotterdam and to head to Flushing or Zeebrugge instead. RAF transports and civilian airliners (many of the latter were also bringing American troops into the Netherlands as well) inbound for airports in the Southern Netherlands were also diverted away from the battlefield that this country had suddenly become. But there were those troops already here and they went into battle.

British Paras and men from the Queen’s Regiment – 3 PARA and 3 QUEENS – were hastily diverted from their airhead at Glize-Rijen to fight on the Lek near to Ridderkerk. They were trucked there in civilian vehicles and light armoured vehicles from the 5th Airborne Brigade’s assigned Life Guards squadron were supposed to join them. The Scorpions & Scimitars didn’t show up – a flight of Hinds got ‘lucky’ when scouting and knocked out many of them while delaying the others – and the British soldiers were soon facing Soviet motorised riflemen with tank support. Ridderkerk was abandoned and the fight moved to Dordrecht. There were Royal Artillery gunners with the infantry for the fight there and the Life Guards now had some of their vehicles in-play. If the battlefield had been open country, the British here would have lasted only a few minutes. The Soviets were facing water obstacles though and the regiment-group from their 12th Guards Division was only on a flank securing mission. They didn’t push home their attack. Dordrecht was a victory for the 5th Airborne Brigade yet by nightfall, as there was more fighting elsewhere in the Rhine Delta where Dutch reservists failed to hold on, they’d be ordered to withdraw back to the Maas River.

The 19th Infantry Brigade fought on the Maas too, downstream where it ran just inside the Netherlands behind the border with West Germany. The 47th Guards Division, which had peeled off from the main attack by the Third Shock Army that had gone into the Central Netherlands, had themselves gotten over the Lower Rhine. Crossings had been secured near Rees and Wesel. West German Territorials there on security tasks were overwhelmed. The Soviets could have gone southwards – down the Rhineland to link up with those who’d gotten across in the early hours – but they drove westwards towards the Maas; overrunning RAF Laarbruch on the way too (RAF Regiment light armour and riflemen sacrificed to allow for the evacuation of many, but not all aircraft). Ogarkov’s mistake here would cost him dear a few hours later. Dutch lines-of-communication security troops became riflemen for a moment before the river was the frontline. Bouncing the river had appeared to be an upcoming easy feat. However, French and Belgian Mirages both filled the skies, coming in low on bombing runs while Dutch F-16s were above them on fighter missions. The 47th Guards Division was hit hard. River crossings were soon made but it was late now. Aided by the Dutch, the British 19th Infantry Brigade fought to contain the bridgeheads. NATO was being pushed back here, giving ground as the day ended but the Soviets hadn’t been fully able to get going. Each side blasted the other with all that they had – Dutch civilians caught in the way – before the British & Dutch received reinforcements. French tanks showed up to save the day. There was a counterattack made and the forwardmost penetrations cut down to size. This was only able to work because the Rhineland behind the 47th Guards Division was a battlefield too with other NATO forces there hitting them from their exposed flank too: American troops flown in from home who hadn’t lost their POMCUS sites, the 2nd Armored Division, were going northwards as the French & Belgians went east and south.

The Southern Netherlands was saved, at least for today anyway, from sharing the fate of the rest of the country which was now under enemy occupation. Ogarkov’s slingshot had seen most of the nation fall but not the southern portion. Good news that couldn’t be called though, not after all that had happened today with the fighting for the rest. Civilian casualties would reach a staggering number and the Soviets had captured another NATO capital.

Well. That's a lot of progress in just one day. I can't think of many equivalent offensives that produced the same result in just one day (maybe on the Eastern Front in WW2).