The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

I can hear the song in my mind!




I would have to agree. The television and radio would be rather uneventful during wartime.


The Marham landing sites - the ones nearby for a march on the airbase - are going to be lost. All caused because the GRU shanghaied the HVA into helping them: a regretful act for them though Score 1 for Britain on that.
The two remaining Soviets aren't in that bad of a shape but will quickly be so. It was, and remains, only Sarah's belief that she was about to be abused: these guys might have planned to, might, but won't.
I strongly considered having him killed by his own side: IIRC you initially suggested it when I asked for story ideas. I'll let the UK Intelligence Community have him instead to be squeezed dry.

The Britons; fifteen


Sarah opened her eyes and sat up. She was on the ground, down in some mud, and found that her hands were bound together in front of her. It was plastic cabling that had been used. This was digging into her wrists and the pain only got worse as she now tried to work herself free. Sarah carried on regardless, doing everything that she could to free her hands. Her face stung too. She recalled being hit there before everything went black. How long ago that was, she didn’t know. It couldn’t have been that long ago though: the sky was still dark. Her eyes looked around as she carried on doing what she was to get free. Sarah got on her knees first and then pushed herself upwards. She heard someone say something – it sounded like Kolya… maybe? – and she quickly dropped back down. There was a horrible taste in her mouth that she was now aware of. It was metallic tasting: blood. That second Soviet commando had hit her hard in the face, knocking her out and causing her to bleed. She wanted revenge for that. Before then though, she had to get free. So much had been taught to Sarah long ago back at the HVA academy. Breaking free from restraints like this was something she was sure she had been shown even if she couldn’t remember exactly. Bite and rip with your teeth: Sarah tried to recall if that had been told to her. It sounded like the best idea though. That she did. She carried on wiggling too, aiming to snap what she couldn’t use her teeth to tear apart. It was taking forever! Sarah kept at it though. She recalled what she had done before Brow had smashed her in the face with his rifle stock. Hitting Kolya like she had done had been satisfying but it hadn’t been smart. She should have just done a runner. Why had they left her alive? Sarah didn’t know. It didn’t make sense. Yet that they had done. She’s been knocked into unconsciousness, tied up and then dumped nearby. The two of them would be busy but it wouldn’t have taken long to kill her. She could only assume that they wished to deal with her after they had done the work that they had. Sarah had all sorts of imaginings as to what that would involve from rape, torture to a gruesome death. None of that was going to befall her! She kept attacking the cabling around her wrists. It was coming free. Just a bit more… a little more… keep going… nearly there… c’mon… almost… and… we’re there!

The cabling was torn in half. Sarah unwound it all, threw it down and raised a hand to her face. The right side stung to the touch. She couldn’t imagine how it looked but knew Brow had done some serious damage to her. He and Kolya were idiots though because she was free now. Sarah stood up again, slowly. She was on the other side of a low wall, near to a farmhouse. There were those fields out ahead. She thought she saw movement out there then had that confirmed. Again, it was Kolya she heard. He was calling out to his comrade: ending whatever he was saying with the name ‘Vlad’. She was still calling him Brow regardless. When he replied, Sarah knew where he was too. Sarah decided that she’d finish the two of them off for what they’d done to her and what she believed they intended to do as well.


John ran into a roadblock. He came across it too late. He took the Land Rover around a corner and up ahead there were armed personnel there to stop vehicles. Stopping, backing up and turning around to go back the way he came wasn’t an option. Whoever had sited this checkpoint had done their job well should their intention had been to surprise someone. If he tried to flee, all of their attention would have been on him. John would have to bluff his way through this. On cue, John stopped the vehicle. He counted five of them though was certain that a couple more of these British personnel weren’t in view. There were two adults and a bunch of teenagers: military cadets with their instructors. Kids with guns frightened John more than any adult did. He’d done his own teenage paramilitary service with the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) – if he hadn’t, he never would have got anywhere back in East Germany – and been among others who were keen to use their weapons even when the adults didn’t want them to. Kids were the same the world over, John was sure: only their instructors were keeping these youngsters in check. He was asked to turn off his engine and step out of the Land Rover. John did just that, moving slowly. He was asked his identity and what he was doing out on the road at this time of the morning. What John told his questioner (one of the adults) was full of truth: the best lies always are. He was fleeing Narborough, which was near to an RAF base, because of all that was going on above. Things didn’t look good and he wanted to get away from danger!

He had nothing to prove his identity though gave them valid information which he assumed someone would try to confirm on the radio. Two of the teenagers searched his vehicle while another one of the adults supervised them. John was glad it was the youngsters. None of them were looking like they were doing a real thorough job. He held his nerve. They weren’t going to find that pistol he had hidden in the manner which they were conducting their search. John was asked why if he was coming from Narborough and going to King’s Lynn as he said, he had then come this way: it was a bit off the beaten track, wasn’t it? His explanation was that he’d been close to an air crash and then going around that, he had subsequently got lost. All he knew, he tried to say with as much honesty as he could muster into his voice, was that getting out of Norfolk seemed to be the best of ideas at this time. Had he seen anything to make his suspicious? John asked what was meant by that. Armed groups of men moving about? No, he hadn’t. Everything was going swimmingly. Then it wasn’t. One of the teenagers who’d been searching the vehicle called out with alarm that he’d ‘found something’. John froze as one of those instructors raised his rifle and told him not to move, ‘or else’.


Sarah found a large stone, one almost brick sized. It was a good find and it would make an excellent weapon. A gun, even a knife, would have been far better but this would still do! She went to find Brow first. Kolya would still be hurt after where she’d hit him earlier – if he lived past tonight, if she failed to kill him, he’d be passing blood in his urine after she’d hit him in the kidney – and Brow had proved himself the more dangerous when he’d sneaked up on her. She did the same to him. He was distracted by one of those electrical control boxes for the landing lights. Ever-so-carefully, Sarah crept up behind him. The pathfinder was kneeling down and she got into position. The heavy stone was held in her right hand and she slammed it down atop his unprotected head. There was a crunch. His limp body fell sideways to the ground. Sarah at once knew that he was dead. She picked up the stone from where it had come out of her grasp and found it wet. In the moonlight, it looked like black oil on it. It wasn’t though: that was the blood of someone killed far from home. Kolya was away to the left. Sarah went that way, moving slow and low. There was noise above. An aircraft were low in the sky, coming this way. Sarah really hoped that it wasn’t one bringing in Soviet parachutists! It kept on going though, past here. She’d make use of that noise. Kolya was looking upwards into the sky. Now!

She sprung forward, racing towards him with the stone in her hand. The intention that Sarah had was to slam it into his face. He’d been sideways on to her and was turning. His rifle had been hanging loose across the chest, held in place by a shoulder strap, and Kolya’s hands were trying to bring that upwards. She was faster though. She had him caught cold. The impact struck him not where she intended: the swung stone crashed into his lower face on the jaw line. It came out of her hand again too. Kolya went down and she was atop of him. She recalled how John had killed Paul earlier and her hands went to Kolya’s throat. Sarah jabbed a knee into his side, where she’d hit him earlier. His struggles ended with that. Tighter and tighter her grip was on his throat. She screamed at him to die, cursing at him in both English and German as she did so. Her face came down to his. Sarah looked into his eyes as the life went out of them. Goodbye, she told him.


John was asked if the gun was his. One of the adults had taken it off the teenager whom John had been certain wouldn’t find it. It was held by the trigger guard, dangling off the man’s finger. Two rifles were pointed at John and everyone was focused on him. There was an eagerness to shoot him. He could feel that desire. No answer came from him. He was without one. He’d told himself earlier that he could talk himself through any situation but this was now out of his hands. Without waiting for long, John was instructed to get on the ground. Lay face down on the road, he was told, and spread your arms and legs. Everything inside John said to make a run for it. Go now! One of the teenagers moved his rifle closer and John felt the tip of the barrel poke into his temple. John thought about snatching that and shooting the first adult, rolling under the Land Rover and then shooting the other one before anyone could react. It was a good plan. But what about the teenagers? Would they do nothing while this happened, no matter how quick John was? Doubts came just as fast to him. Could he pull that off? What if made the attempt but found that the rifle he would snatch wasn’t loaded? It was possible that the cadets – with or without them knowing it – had unloaded weapons. It was possible… There were shouts coming at him: GET ON THE GROUND! John let out a sign. He dropped to his knees first and then laid down as instructed.

The sky was getting light as dawn broke. He was facing back eastwards and John could see the shadows of aircraft in the skies again. From several of them, he tried to make out if he was watching paratroopers falling from them. John couldn’t be sure but something was happening with those aircraft being as large as they were and flying low. However, he could have been imagining it all. Questions were being shouted at him with answers demanded. What was he doing with a gun? What was he up to? John remained silent and still. There was increasing activity around him. One of the adult instructors was on the radio and John heard him report that they believed they had a ‘Russian spy’ in their custody. Then one of the teenagers got excited as the morning got a bit lighter. He was calling out that there were paratroopers falling from transport jets. No one seemed to believe him. Someone else took the youngster’s binoculars off him and called out that ‘Jimmy is telling the f***ing truth’. Another of John’s captors knelt down in front of him. It was one of the adults, the first one who had questioned him upon the vehicle stop being made. John was asked if they were friends of his. As before, he kept his mouth shut. He knew he was caught and in hot water. He could only fear that someone would eventually make a proper effort to make him talk, but before then, he wouldn’t be revealing anything. The commotion soared. John heard the other adult talk about RAF West Raynham being that way where there were men with parachutes coming down. Now John’s hands were bound with plastic cuffs and then his feet were too. He was lifted up and into a sitting position. There remained two rifles on him. No one was taking any chances. There was no escape for John. Again on the radio, there were reports being made though this time not about him: those were of Soviet commandos falling from the sky. John carried on saying nothing. He’d await his fate.


She ran. Sarah left behind the two bodies – how many was now that she had killed in the past few days? – and disappeared into the nearest woodland. She had taken a knife from Brow and the AK-74 assault rifle that Kolya had. Morning was here now. She heard aircraft and distant explosions. Sarah feared that parachutists would be dropping behind her despite her being sure that without Brow and Kolya, there would be no guidance for them at either landing site. She realised that she’d just done her bit for Britain, as unintended as it might be! Lost in moments, Sarah wanted to turn back around. She thought of that bicycle she’d ridden here on. But going back wasn’t an option. She kept on moving, hoping she wasn’t going around in circles. There was plenty of light now. Another huge explosion was soon heard. She couldn’t imagine what caused that directly but could only explain it as war coming to Norfolk. Sarah came out of the woods and reached a country lane. She thought about following it but worried about running into someone. Instead, she went over a wall and through a field. She stayed low while crossing that. Animal sheds appeared and she heard the noise of a mass of turkeys inside them. Running between several, Sarah grimaced at the thought of her footwear in animal muck. On she went, past those shed and down the side of a farmhouse. A face appeared at a window. Sarah stopped cold. It was a little girl, maybe six or seven years old. The girl flashed a smile at her. Sarah waved back, trying to be friendly. The child disappeared. Sarah did the same. She had seen some more trees and went into them. A low-hanging branch caught her in the face, right where she’d been hit earlier. The pain! Sarah stopped to catch her breath and forced herself not to touch her face. She looked up, trying to see where the sun was in the sky so as to get directions. It was impossible though due to the foliage. Swearing did her no good as to discovering which way to go. She had to keep moving though. On she went, carrying on through the woodland to emerge at the edge of another field. There was a fence and on the other side, two ponies. One of them looked at her. She wondered whether she could ride it. The idea was near instantly dismissed though for the absurdity of that. She followed the treeline until she reached the end of that cover.

Sarah saw another farmhouse. She ran awkwardly, ducking down through another field towards it. A story entered her mind, one to tell. Approaching the building, Sarah checked that the knife wasn’t visible in her pocket. She then found somewhere to leave the rifle out of sight. Abandoning it wasn’t what she wanted to do but she needed to know what she faced first: the rifle would only complicate things. She went to the front door of the farmhouse and banged hard on it. After waiting a few seconds, she did so again while calling out ‘is anyone there?’. Someone was. A woman opened the door slightly, looking out with concern. Sarah, covered in blood and surely with bruises too, asked her for her help. The woman – in her fifties and looking every bit the farmer’s wife – pulled her inside. She had seemingly hundreds of questions, all ones full of concern. The professional liar which was Sarah told her, and her husband when he appeared, a pack of lies. They were sympathetic. The couple believed every word about the man who’d attacked her and from whom she’d run from. Sarah had found safety… for now anyway. There was a war underway nearby as Britain was being invaded as there wouldn’t be much safety here for long. Yet, for now, she’d successfully escaped certain death.


End of Interlude

It has begun, I see; methinks it won't go well (eventually) for the invading forces...

BTW, congrats at reaching 250k words, with many more to come, hopefully...

James G, the Hungerford Massacre occurred on August 19, 1987; would that be affected ITTL? (Some people are going to think Michael Ryan was a sleeper Soviet agent ITTL, methinks...)

Part Four – Norfolk Dawn


133 – Britain–vs.–Scuds


Long-term British defence studies had for some time highlighted the danger to the UK mainland arising from a wartime scenario where the Netherlands could be occupied by Warsaw Pact forces. The threat from air, commando and missile attacks would be grave enough should wartime fighting remain inside West Germany but matters were expected to be far worse if the Low Countries were entered by hostile forces. The East of England would be regarded as effectively the frontlines of war, written warnings had concluded. At the MOD, ministers and service chiefs had taken the issue seriously… as seriously as the Treasury, which controlled the flow of money, would allow. Of course, this was all hypothetical though. Such warnings had been made in peacetime. Preparations made were those which could be afforded, not all that was needed, with the general feeling that the situation would hopefully never arise that the British mainland would ever be put in such a position. There were drafted plans made in case the very worst happened. Whether those would be enough, the country was soon to find out. On the morning of the war’s third day, the fighting that Britain found itself involved in against Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces was taking place inside West Germany. By that evening, the Dutch coast opposite East Anglia, from Den Helder to the Hook of Holland, was in enemy hands. It all happened so fast. NATO took a stunning defeat and this put Britain in that position which had been feared could occur. Across the North Sea, there was once-friendly territory which was now hostile. Soviet air and missile forces were spotted moving in behind their far-ranging tanks: commandos were expected to be present as well, just not as visible. That night, captured airbases such as Leeuwarden, Soesterberg & Valkenburg were attacked by the RAF and the US Air Force flying from Britain while the Belgians and French also sought to do the same as well: the enemy presence in the Netherlands not only threatened Britain, but the left flank of NATO members on the Continent too. Aircrew after-action reports on damage inflicted were promising though post-strike reconnaissance wasn’t as welcomed. All three of those sites had been captured without any demolition nor destruction of stores done and each was quickly being defended. As to Soviet mobile ballistic missile-launchers, there had been no luck in getting at any of them. They’d rolled forward behind the tanks of the Third Shock Army yet not come to the frontlines on the Rhine Delta – where Belgian, British and Dutch (what little forces of theirs were left) troops were fighting to keep the rest of the Netherlands unoccupied – though. Hiding in urban areas around the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, the missiles were fired late that night and this continued to take place past midnight into the next day. Britain came under Scud attack.

Cheap, reasonable accurate and packing quite the punch, Scuds rained down on East Anglia. The Soviets weren’t using their newer (and fewer) Spiders. The Scuds would do. There was no defence against them. Targets throughout Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex & Cambridgeshire were on the receiving end of this massed missile strike. The majority of the warheads carried high explosive warheads though there were a few chemical strikes as well. Military and dual-use civilian installations were hit… by those on-target. Many others went awry. Colchester and Peterborough were hit by off-target missiles and caused large numbers of civilian casualties. It was military facilities which the Scuds were focused upon though. There were airbases and garrisons as well as supply bases. Later analysis from the British would detect an odd pattern in this Scud strike. In Norfolk, none of the several airbases in that county there were hit. By that point, it was apparent why this was the case though at the time, this wasn’t considered. If it had been noted, the thought would have been that the Norfolk airbases got lucky. Ones in other counties didn’t get any luck. There were bases across East Anglia from where the Americans and the British were flying with a few recent arrivals of Dutch aircraft that got out of their country too. NATO air operations were underway at the time. There were long-range air strikes taking place – RAF Tornados and US Air Force F-111s – as well as fighter missions being flown by each air arm as well. In the skies over East Anglia and also out ahead over the water plus into Dutch airspace, Warsaw Pact fighters were in the sky engaging with NATO ones. The majority of them were Soviet but there were Polish fighters as well. One Polish MiG escaped several attempts to bring it down and made a landing in Lincolnshire at RAF Cranwell. The pilot was defecting and was welcomed (while under close guard though) yet his managing to do so had been quite the feat when everyone was trying to shoot him down. Losses were occurred by the opposing sides. Some aircraft managed to limp back to friendly bases but others crashed with or without aircrew inside. For their fighter operations, the RAF was using Lightnings & Phantoms. The Americans had brought over many aircraft in recent days to the unsinkable aircraft carrier which was Britain. There were F-4s and F-16s – including many from pre-alerted Air National Guard and Air Reserve units – flying. They were protecting not just their ally but their own significant military set-up spread across the UK.

Putting a mass of fighters into the sky had been done not just to shoot down NATO ones, but to support air strikes taking place. The ballistic missiles were to do a lot yet the intention was to also use aircraft over Britain to drop bombs and fire short-range missiles of their own. MiGs and Sukhois evaded efforts to kill them by NATO fighters and broke for their targets. They went after communications and ground-based air defences. Bombing radio antenna and transmission stations wasn’t easy to do. Nor was it any less difficult for those aircraft to go after radars and SAM batteries. Fixed British air defences – the big installations which were at RAF Neatishead & RAF Trimingham – were hit but getting at the mobile radars was impossible for the Soviets as it was for NATO when targeting mobile ballistic missile launchers. There were SAM sites across East Anglia. The British had deployed their Bloodhound missiles in a mobile role while keeping their Rapier systems near to American-used airbases (the latter part of a long-standing agreement). Hunting SAMs, for any air arm, was dangerous work. MiG-25s used in a stand-off role stood more chance of evading counterfire than the Su-17s sent in low. Attacking aircraft were knocked out of the sky long before they could get anywhere near the targets that they sought to kill themselves. NATO kills of enemy aircraft on anti-SAM missions would climb above ten before dawn broke the next day; minimal loses of their own to their air defence missile-launchers had been inflicted during this. Like with other things, the British couldn’t understand at the time why so much enemy effort was expended here. They had no idea why orders coming from high above forced aircrews into making suicidal attacks like this to try to eliminate such SAMs. Of course, soon enough, that would become apparent: the Soviets didn’t want them engaging their big transport jets.

In hitting the airbases like they did with their Scud missiles, the Soviets caught few aircraft on the ground with these missiles. Airbases were full of hardened shelters and there was limited time spent out on the flight ramp, taxiways and runways. It was facilities and personnel which the missile targeting was all about. When striking against other military targets, the inbound missiles caught few troops destined for the frontlines on the Continent but came in against the supporting infrastructure. There was a wealth of targets with plenty to blow up and many to kill. And, with the civilian targets that had a military use, the Scuds were sent to hamper the rear-areas of NATO’s fight on the Continent. Stansted Airport and the harbour at Felixstowe were of great importance to that. Missiles rained down upon them, blowing up much though also causing much damage nearby when those that were off-target still exploded despite missing where they were aimed at. All told, seventy-six Scuds hit the British mainland overnight: another nineteen either failed to launch properly or ended up in the sea. As to shooting any of them down? Try hitting a missile coming in on a ballistic arc at Mach 5 with what defences NATO had in 1987. There was no possibility of doing that and the missiles were unmolested in-flight.


The commando threat was part of that pre-war concern when it came to Britain’s ability to defend itself if the Low Countries – all or part – came under enemy occupation. Before the Soviets got their tanks through the frontlines in West Germany to tear through the Netherlands, there had been very few attacks made on the UK mainland by armed raiders. The operation conducted at Chequers to successfully kill Prime Minister Thatcher had been conducted by a specialist KGB team. GRU Spetsnaz personnel had made an attack in Scotland against Rosyth naval base and another big attack had been conducted at Dover on the Kent coast. These were maritime-orientated raids. The damage inflicted was bad but nothing to seriously affect the course of the war. Pre-war planning had anticipated many more attacks and there were defences against these plotted. A wave of dozens upon dozens of strikes that had been feared hadn’t materialised though. TA troops, supported by cadets and the new Home Service Force, were stationed across the country ready to repel them. Key points were guarded and reaction forces assembled, including several small SAS detachments for hunting down runners (not as fixed defenders). East Anglia, along with the wider Eastern England region – up through Lincolnshire and across Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire & Rutland –, was full of these troops. Many ‘sightings’ of enemy attackers had been made. False reports were chased down and effort wasted. It would be unfair to say that complacency was soon starting to appear but there was some evidence of those positioned ready to oppose such enemy commando activity not being as prepared as they should be as the time went on after so many false starts. When it came to it they would, and did, fight but there was rather often the initial belief that this might be another ghost hunt.

Foreign commandos made an appearance in number in the early hours of the war’s fourth day. Through the darkness of the first hours of that Wednesday, there were lots of them. Soviet Spetsnaz came across from the Netherlands as well as the North Sea coastline of West Germany too where that was under Warsaw Pact occupation. Many aircraft got shot down on the way in before they would parachute men or on the way out afterwards (meaning there would be no return flight with more commandos) but others go through unmolested. Aircraft used were small, light ones. There were An-2 biplanes flying about as well as captured Western small aircraft. Several helicopters carrying Spetsnaz teams made long overwater flights too. With enemy fighters in the sky, air defences coming under attack and the continuing Scud strikes, the British and their NATO allies were overwhelmed. They got who they could but it wasn’t enough. Gunfights erupted where commando teams saw the enemy. There were quite a few big fights. Elsewhere though, what the Spetsnaz got up to wasn’t initially something that drew attention to them. The entire 4th Spetsnaz Brigade had been committed to operations in Britain. No individual mission was conducted by a force larger than a platoon. The whole brigade didn’t arrive at once and nor did the incoming men who made it bring with them any seriously large heavy weapons. They still managed to do a lot though. Without their opponents being aware of it, hidden behind all the distraction caused by comrades and also the air & missile attacks, the Spetsnaz were shutting down British fighting capability in the east of the country even if that wasn’t at once apparent. However, success came alongside failure. Several stone-cold defeats were inflicted, ones which put hard-won victories at risk. A lot had been staked on the commandos doing much and they weren’t able to achieve all that was intended.

The commando activities were different from what the dropped pathfinders were up to. There were far fewer of these men, no more than a hundred in total. Half of their number had been in Britain for several days and gone to ground where a couple of teams linked up with supposedly friendly agents in-place. The rest came in through the hours of darkness. Scuds weren’t falling in Norfolk but detachments of pathfinders parachuted in to link up with comrades on the ground. They gathered around a selection of chosen airheads for an inbound invasion force. For reasons unknown, there was a complete failure with one of the link-ups in the western half of Norfolk where a pair of East German undercover intelligence agents were meant to support Soviet pathfinders. The GRU had their own people elsewhere and the Soviet high command would rue the day that trust had been put in Germans! Pathfinders on the north coast of Norfolk, up in the high ground before the slope down to the sea in the Cromer area, were sent in to activate beacons not directly tied to any particular landing of incoming invaders but as general support. To a man, each one of them was shot dead when they ran into a British patrol. Those part-time reservists from the local TA unit had won themselves a famous victory against supposedly elite soldiers. Their officer reported in what he had come across: enemy parachutists setting up transmitters on the Cromer Ridge. The report was received. It was acted upon like others were in the manner of being another indication of enemy commando activity. The idea that these beacons were there for transport jets bringing in thousands of enemy paratroopers instead of many dozen Spetsnaz just wasn’t considered. Why would it? Any invasion of the UK mainland was preposterous and not worthy of being taken seriously.

Near to RAF Marham, there would be no planned Soviet landing of their VDV paratroopers from the 76th Guards Airborne Division. Tornado GR1 strike-bombers with two standing RAF squadrons as well as a training unit with more of those aircraft (the Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit: here from RAF Honington which was having its planned runway repairs interrupted by war) were flying from Marham, all with a nuclear mission if it came to that. No paratroopers would be attacking their base directly as intended soon after landing. At RAF Sculthorpe and RAF West Raynham, each in western Norfolk too, there would soon be the arrival of enemy attackers though. The Americans had F-111s flying from each location with a wing of those swing-wing jets having arrived the day before from their home base in far off New Mexico to deploy across the nearby sites. There was a squadron of Jaguars GR1 attack-fighters at RAF Coltishall over to the east: the two other squadrons based here pre-war were in the Gulf and West Germany. Pathfinders were on the ground ready to guide in assault troops to make a short march on Coltishall. Norwich Airport was a small, regional facility. There were TA soldiers there and it had been used for communications flights by the RAF and NATO allies while civilian flying was banned. Likewise with North Denes Heliport (for North Sea oil platform use) on the coast at Great Yarmouth, there were pathfinders near to the airport.

Dawn broke on August 26th. Operation Red Eagle was in full swing now. Transport jets, even some heavily loaded helicopters too, were crossing the North Sea inbound towards these airheads in Norfolk. Marham (even with there being many planned drop-zones around it) was a wash-out but the other five were viable landing sites. Warsaw Pact fighters were in the sky again. British and NATO interceptors rose to meet them, unaware of what was behind. Another barrage of Scuds came again, just over a dozen this time, as well. The Second Battle of Britain had already technically started but, now, it was really underway.

Only one landing in Essex that's a fair distance from the nearest other landing.... looks like that one may be cut off.

If the Peterborough Scud hit London Road, I predict a mass rising against the invader...