The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Soviet logistics and rear areas must be stretched really thin by the pace of the advance. Could the Soviet offensive run out of gas and ammunition soon?

France is redeeming its military reputation in a big way along the Rhine. "Cheese eating surrendering monkeys" won't be a thing TTL.

160 – Political interference


The waves of RAF Tornados and US Air Force F-111s which had flown deep strike missions from British bases over the Continent on the war’s first three nights didn’t occur on the fourth night. Some of their bases had been assaulted by Soviet paratroopers with losses taken to the strike force. From other nearby sites, there were instead attacks being made against enemy-held airheads inside Norfolk to stop Operation Red Eagle in its tracks. These were air units under NATO command and had been used by SACEUR as his semi-strategic strike force throughout the conflict. General Rogers commanded them yet he didn’t own them. Smashing the Soviet landings in Britain was of great importance. However, he considered that striking hard-to-hit targets far in the Soviet rear throughout mainland Europe was needed more. His political masters disagreed. The politicians wanted the aircraft to instead bomb RAF Coltishall, RAF Sculthorpe, RAF West Raynham and Norwich Airport. They got their wish and Rogers just had to deal with it. There were other air reserves who’d been doing the deep strike missions and it was those that NATO’s senior commander for the defence of Western Europe had to use instead. He had other American and British jets as well as French & West German ones flying from Continental bases which could conduct long-range penetration attacks. The numbers were fewer though.

In addition, when informed that the UK-based strike force was re-tasked for tonight, Rogers was promised further aircraft instead which SACEUR had yet to see brought into play over Europe. There were B-52s which could fulfil a major ground attack role against Soviet exposed forward units who were without an in-place proper air defence network yet. The big American bombers packed a massive punch. As the evening got later, and news came that there were Soviet forces crossing into Belgium, Rogers’ planned to use them over that country. He had two squadrons to use. Alas, once again, political interference came. One of the two was suddenly re-tasked to join in the bombing runs over Norfolk: he had the other one and saw that they were soon flying for fear that they would likewise be sent elsewhere. When the bombs from them would fall over Belgium they would do some stellar work in devastating enemy units out ahead… and also see the Belgian Government rage at the destruction wrought when collateral damage was later observed. The US Air Force had its super-secret F-117 stealth aircraft too. These were not under SACEUR’s command with their usage dependent upon the Joint Chiefs back in the United States. Some of them had been in Cyprus pre-war when they made attacks over the Middle East before the outbreak of conflict with the Soviets saw them make bomb runs over the USSR. Rogers considered those strikes done for political purposes rather than any military necessity. There were other F-117s, the rest of the unit stationed in Nevada. For several days, Rogers had been trying to get his hands on them to make use of such aircraft. The Joint Chiefs finally agreed to their use in Europe though kept their own direct supervision. The plan drawn up was for those F-117s to put laser-guided bombs into fuel & munitions dumps as well as hitting bridges. These targets were on the far side of the Iron Curtain where they were well-defended. Destroying them tonight wouldn’t have an immediate impact at the frontlines but it was believed that that would soon come about. It turned out that there were no precision bombs available for the F-117’s strikes. The aircraft had been carrying out other missions before they were tasked to support SACEUR and during those, all political strikes too, stocks of laser-guided bombs had been used up. Those munitions were ones housed at the scattered airbases from where the aircraft were flying from: it wasn’t as if there were none available anywhere. The bombs would have to be brought to the airbases but that wasn’t something that could be done with the click of two fingers. No one had thought to tell Rogers this until the last minute. It was a screw up, nothing more than that. There were unguided bombs available and the F-117s flew with them instead. The targets would be hit but the results were never going to be good. SACEUR could do nothing about that.

There was other political interference elsewhere when it came to NATO air operations that same night that SACEUR was unable to put a stop to. NATO wasn’t a dictatorship but an alliance where member states fought together yet still retained their national control if need be over their assigned forces. Prime Minister Whitelaw’s insistence that hitting those airheads in Norfolk was important as well as the Joint Chiefs doing what they did with the bombs for the F-117s came alongside what the Dutch & French Governments did. There wasn’t much left of the Royal Netherlands Air Force. Its NF-5s and F-16s had seen a lot of action and many losses. Only two airbases in the Netherlands remained unoccupied but from Gilze-Rijen and Woensdrecht, there were no Dutch nor NATO aircraft flying: American GLCM missile units had long left the latter facility too. There were Dutch aircraft now temporarily in both Belgium and France with their NATO command ultimately being the Second Allied Tactical Force (2 ATAF). 2 ATAF wanted them on missions they specified. The Dutch did their own thing following political instructions. F-16s made attack runs up in the northwestern part of West Germany near to the town of Rheine on the Ems River. The Royal Netherlands Army – again, there wasn’t much left of that too – was holding out in a fully surrounded position while being battered by Soviet artillery. Those Dutch fighters were sent to silence those guns because the politicians foolishly believed that there was a chance to save their cut-off men there. Without the proper 2 ATAF support, the strikes weren’t very successful. Their NATO partners blamed the Dutch Government (which was down in Belgium, looking to move to France soon) for the loss of those men and aircraft involved in this debacle. French military forces had come under NATO control at the start of the conflict when President Mitterrand committed his country to the fight. There had been opt-outs made clear from the beginning though so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that what was done tonight was. Armée de l'Air aircraft were thrown into missions over Belgium. Much co-operation was done with their allies but this was the sudden absolute priority for the French and that was where they directed their air power towards. There were Soviet tanks tearing towards their country and into Belgium they made attack run after attack run. Both the 2 ATAF and the 4 ATAF – these two commands were hold-overs from World War Two with current NATO roles – had AdA aircraft taken from them as France bombed Belgium. Rogers had no input in what the Dutch and French did. He feared that this was going to continue to happen too as NATO countries, while remaining committed to the war, were thinking more and more about themselves now rather than the combined war effort.


SACEUR’s opposite number on the far side of the frontlines was having similar problems when it came to political interference in his long-range air missions. Perhaps the two of them could get together and commiserate…?

Marshal Ogarkov had been overseeing semi-strategic missions conducted by Soviet long-range strike aircraft against distant, well defended targets too. There were swing-wing Sukhoi-24s which went deep into the rear but also the use of bombers – Tupolev-22s & Tupolev-22Ms – either flying bomb runs or, in the majority of cases, launching cruise missiles. Strikes conducted by these aircraft on missions for the Western-TVD had ranged out across Britain, through the Low Countries and into France. These were important and came alongside the firing of ballistic missiles and the dispatch of Spetsnaz as well. From out of nowhere, an order came to Ogarkov that the air strikes plus missile hits (nothing was said about the commandos though) which were taking place against French targets were to cease. This was with immediate effect too. Ogarkov protested this instruction back to Stavka from where it had come. When told that the order stood, Ogarkov requested that there be some leniency given in terms of the cessation. He explained that the air strikes weren’t happening in a bubble and there were other elements involved in these with support missions being flown by other aircraft ahead of the attacks. This was rejected. He was told to cease those strikes against France regardless of what else was happening. As to those aircrew in other aircraft… oh well, they would have to fight their way back out. This was war and losses happened.

Several years past, Ogarkov had suffered a spectacular fall from grace due to political infighting back in Moscow. He hadn’t been forcibly retired though he was shunted aside from his high-ranking military position in Moscow and sent to Eastern Europe. He’d learnt his lesson from that. Ogarkov confirmed the receipt of the clarification to his orders and cancelled a wave of planned missions as well as ongoing ones. These were ones which were meant to target French military and civilian targets. Included among them was a mass strike of ports down the coast from Flushing in the Netherlands all the way to Le Havre in France which were feeding the NATO war effort. Many of them had been hit before but this strike was to be something special. There were ships going in and out of each with much military activity on the shore. Furthermore, intelligence reports which Ogarkov had seen had told of a mass of civilians – from across Western Europe – trying to get onto those ships. The civil disturbances where they were being stopped from boarding ships played their own role in helping the ongoing war against NATO. Ogarkov was unable to see Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk all raided. However, there were other ports along the coast outside of France: Ostend, Zeebrugge, Terneuzen and Flushing. Those Belgian and Dutch facilities where there were was much activity would also be able to get extra attention now. Ogarkov was hopping mad at what had been done yet looked on the bright side with that issue as it meant a better concentration of fire power onto those targets. He sent his long-range strike aircraft towards them with bombs being dropped as well as missiles fired from far away.

The banning of airstrikes over France meant more than just those French ports that didn’t get hit tonight though. There were to be no more attacks made against targets such as transportation infrastructure, airbases and such like. This was going to make a difference in many ways, none of which Ogarkov could see as being beneficial for the war that he was fighting. However, while he wasn’t told why he wasn’t allowed to bomb that one country anymore when every other one in reach was still somewhere authorised to be hit, he had his suspicions. They were playing a complicated political game back in Moscow – or wherever the Politburo had gone to hide out – when it came to France. It was clear to him that they were trying to take France out of the war. There had to be other things going on too with that. Ogarkov expected that soon enough, when the timing suited his masters and involved messing up what he was trying to achieve, he’d receive instructions to do or not to do something else. He would have no control over that and be forced to accept it like had been the case now. A refusal from him was hardly going to stop such a thing. If he said no, they’d fire him; if he resigned, they’d find someone else. Whatever was happening with France, he’d have no influence in that. He was just a tool of those politicians like every man in uniform fighting their war was.

161 – Distant battlefields


There was no good reason while Cuba should ever have become involved in the Third World War with that island nation becoming a distant battlefield of the conflict. However, into the war Cuba came. Fidel Castro hadn’t had the best of relations with Gorbachev and matters didn’t really improve under Ligachev either. Supporting Cuba gave the Soviet Union very little while the cost was high. When the war commenced, Castro wasn’t eager to enter it nor was Moscow pushing for their entry either. The Americans had a different view of the situation. There was the certain belief that at any moment Cuba was going to strike against the United States to cause a distraction to the global war effort. There had been a watch put on Cuban activities and the mobilisation of their armed forces was spotted. Cuban troops in the east of the island were concentrating within striking distance of Guantanamo Bay. Other soldiers as well as the Cuban Air Force and Navy were all observed preparing themselves for wartime operations. In addition, Soviet forces in Cuba were leaving their barracks as well. It was believed among Reagan’s advisers and American senior military officers that Cuba was going to go after Guantanamo Bay and co-ordinate with the Soviets attacks elsewhere. All sorts of notions were put forth about what the Cubans might do with none of those being acceptable to the United States. Havana had received a demand from the Americans to stand down their island-wide alert status, confine the Soviets to their barracks and withdraw troops back a distance of twenty-five miles from the edges of the US Navy base on their island. Castro had already declared neutrality ahead of all of this. These military preparations were being done because, at the urging of his brother the defence minister Raúl Castro, an American attack was feared. The two Castros had been told by the in-country Soviet ambassador that the few thousand Soviet troops on the island were dispersing less they be attacked in barracks.

There was a deadline set by the United States for Cuba to act on America’s demands. Castro had sent no reply though was planning to do so: it wasn’t going to be one where he rolled over for the norteamericanos. Yet, the aim was to stop an attack and Cuba’s leader was framing a response where defiance but non-hostility would be shown. Long before that deadline expired, the Americans struck regardless. Aircraft and missiles were in Cuban skies. Cuba came under a barrage of United States military might. Nationwide there were opening attacks though the majority were concentrated in two areas. Around Havana, military command-&-control sites were hit along with a couple of airbases while in the capital, ‘regime targets’ in the form of official buildings were struck. Other activity was near to Guantanamo Bay. Here it was exclusively military targets which were hit by those attacks. A handful of Cuban warships – small ones at that – were sunk off-shore too. Following the opening strike, and while American fighters flew in Cuban skies, there was the airlift into Guantanamo Bay of US Marines. A battalion of riflemen, reservists from New England, joined with the garrison there and soon enough there were several warships – big ones, naturally – within shooting range of the coast. Any seizing Guantanamo Bay by the Cubans against what the Americans had there before they made this reinforcement would never have been easy but now it looked impossible in American eyes. The Cubans might have had the numbers but it would take something very special to get through all the physical defences, the certain air & naval gunfire attacks and then the defenders dug-in there. The United States would soon be trumpeting their success in pre-empting an attack against the base.

The Castros couldn’t do nothing in response to all of this. Raúl ordered a military response while Fidel challenged the propaganda coming from the United States with his own. Poor Cuba was the victim of imperialist aggression, the elder brother declared, but would fight against this with all her might! The younger brother preferred shells to words. Guantanamo Bay came under artillery fire and there was also the use of tactical ballistic missiles as well. Troops were instructed to march towards the sounds of those guns. Storming that outpost of foreign imperialism was understood by Raúl to be difficult but he was still ready to give it a try. Cuba had a lot of men to push into the fight. Raúl would keep sending them towards Guantanamo Bay in the face of United States efforts to stop them. Those Soviets troops in Cuba didn’t face an initial attack against them. The men of the 7th Special Motor Rifle Brigade had left their garrisons and dispersed – something long practiced for fear of a nuclear attack – as ordered to. There was other Soviet-operated infrastructure on Cuban soil, Lourdes SIGNIT station being the most prominent, and some of that faced American attack but not these troops. Out in the countryside south and west of Havana the Soviets were, far away from Guantanamo Bay. Orders from home told them to stay here rather than get involved in a fight such as the one sure to rage away to the east. Meanwhile, from above, the Americans monitored their progress with suspicions aplenty about what the sure-fire secret cunning plan which Moscow and Cuba had for the use somewhere of that brigade.


The Pacific wasn’t living up to its name. American and Soviet strikes and counter-strikes against each other across this ocean against each other continued. The United States was fast gaining the upper hand here. They were making sure that the theater of conflict was soon to be limited to just the northeastern corner of the Pacific, up against the Soviet coastline. No longer would there be missile-carrying bombers which ranged far out over the ocean launching attacks upon American territory. Bombs and missiles would hit the Soviets where they lived instead. One of the opening moves was the attack on Vladivostok by the US Navy.

USS Midway, the American’s Japan-based carrier, had left Yokosuka unmolested and gone to sea as fast as possible. Soviet assumptions were that this vessel would wait until it was reinforced by other US Navy carriers before it saw action. There were to be submarines employed into locating and sinking it while the Midway was believed to be ‘cowardly’ hiding. No such thing was done. Making a high-speed, high-risk run, the carrier had gone around the bottom of Japan and into the Sea of Japan on the other side of the island chain. The skies above where the Midway was had seen some air-to-air action beforehand and there were aircraft out as well as a couple of submarines. Still, the Soviets didn’t spot her. Aircraft were launched towards the Soviet Union. There were F/A-18s acting as fighters (the carrier didn’t have F-14s) with A-6s fulfilling the strike mission. Supporting aircraft provided tanking, electronic warfare tasks and airborne radar coverage. Those Hornets got involved in a fight with Soviet interceptors from their air defence forces while the Intruders went in low. Bombs fell away from the attacking aircraft over several targets around the Pacific port city. Back to their carrier the US Navy aircraft went afterwards as the Midway then began making an escape. It was feared that a major attack would be thrown against them and now was the time to get away from that. During the withdrawal, Japanese and US Air Force fighters were also in the sky where they engaged the Soviets too. Japan was at war too since Soviet efforts to keep them neutral (they’d allowed American aircraft to fly from their bases) had seen Japan come under Soviet missile attack. Each side saw losses occur to their aircraft over the Sea of Japan. When it came to the strike itself, despite what the Americans would say afterwards in official announcements, not that much had been achieved in terms of real damage. This wasn’t about that though. It was really a matter of making a strike against Soviet soil.


In the Gulf, the war raging in Europe had seen everything slow down considerably here yet not completely end. Soviet forces in Iraq had finally been finished off and the Iraqis weren’t doing anything of significance anymore. Their territory was held by American-led Coalition forces but they had Iranians on their soil as well. Despite the fears of the United States, there had been no movement through Iran of Soviet forces pouring southwards across that country. Iran’s own army in Iraq might have done well against the Iraqis but they had been thoroughly beaten in combat with the Coalition near to Basra. There were still American attacks being made against Iran yet no more major ongoing operations as seen before the balloon went up in Europe. United States military reinforcements for the CENTCOM in the Middle East were now being redirected towards SACEUR. To say that that was a chaotic situation would be an understatement especially since part of that redirection involved sending those that had already made it to the region (but not seen combat yet) as well as their transportation having to go through Egypt on their way. The Suez Canal was used for shipping while Egyptian air space was crossed. Egypt was a Coalition nation but it sat right between several other ongoing conflicts which had erupted in relation to the Second Gulf War and the Third World War.

The Israelis were fighting the Syrians and the few Soviet forces in that country. Libya had struck against the Americans in the Med. and this had soon brought about the decision taken in Cairo to take on Gaddafi. Egypt was a major artery in the global war effort and also a country at war. That war had come home to Egypt with a Soviet commando attack in the Suez Canal – causing obstruction that would be cleared but created quite the backlog – and then aircraft from Libya striking at Egypt. Those attacking fighters and also bombers too had Libyan markings but they were flown by Soviet & Warsaw Pact aircrews. Almost every country in the region was at war due to secondary conflicts such as this Egyptian-Libyan strike. Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen… the list went on. Direct superpower intervention themselves or to pressurize allies into the fight took place yet there were the actions of locals too which saw this whole region become a battlefield on a scale far bigger than the fighting in Europe. Jordan and Sudan as well as the trio of Algeria, Morocco & Tunisia were those absent from this fight but how long could it be before they would join in too?


The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, another US Navy capital ship fighting this global conflict, had spent many months in the Red Sea during the war with Iraq. Aircraft from her flight-deck flew missions across Saudi Arabia and onwards. The Forrestal’s position in such a stretch of water was also about politics too considered the Soviet-friendly regimes in Ethiopia and Yemen. Up and done the Red Sea the carrier and her escorting flotilla of ships went with sailings made up the northern end done so her aircraft could be in range of Syria too while also being available to cover Suez as well. The opening of the war with the Soviets had seen the loss of the USS Carl Vinson. Eliminated by a swarm of cruise missiles from a Soviet submarine, the destruction of the Vinson had come at a great cost in terms of life as well as a morale-sinking blow for the US Navy. There were two more carriers in the Arabian Sea though another one of them, the USS Ranger, took a glancing blow from a torpedo in another attack. CENTCOM’s commander General Crist wanted the Forrestal to join with the Ranger as well as the USS Constellation. Iran was yet to be defeated and there was still the (mistaken) belief that Soviet armies were to come down through Iran into battle. The Forrestal was brought through the strait which was the Bab-el-Mandeb into the Gulf of Aden. Ethiopian and Yemeni opposition to this had been non-existent while there had already been the elimination of Soviet forces of the Yemeni-owned Perim Island: French Foreign Legion soldiers from Djibouti had won a victory there. In open water, the Gulf of Aden was searched extensively for the enemy. There was soon the detection of a submarine identified as a Soviet attack boat. All sorts of weapons were hurled at it while the Forrestal turned away out of danger… before that submarine got her. Everything the US Navy had done to kill it had failed and it raced into an attack position. Four heavyweight torpedoes hit the carrier. These were mission-kill shots. Sink she wouldn’t and a painful trip to Djibouti would come but the Forrestal was out of the war. Her attacker got away too and the Americans believed afterwards that this was the same one which had attacked the Ranger before.

Far away and only an hour or so later there was a submarine engagement in the Barents Sea. Up there in the Arctic, the Americans had a couple of their submarines active. One of them, USS Chicago, was here to hunt for Northern Fleet surface ships but wandering right into her path came a very different vessel. It was a strategic missile boat, a submarine carrying SLBMs. The Chicago opened fire. There were no orders to not do such a thing. This was an enemy vessel attacked in wartime. That Delta-3-class boat was heading for the submarine bastion in the Kara Sea but was crossing the Barents Sea where US Navy submarines had free-fire rules of engagement. Down to the ocean floor would go the wreck of that sub-surface bemouth and she took sixteen intercontinental-range nuclear missiles with her. This was the first kill for the Chicago though not the first instance of combat. Soviet naval aircraft flying from land bases had spent the day before hunting her and coming close to getting a kill on the American submarine they had spotted. Torpedoes and depth charges had been dropped but none had come close. When their submarine had set sail, the Soviet Navy had yet to know that there was an American boat out there. Once that had been detected, it was far too late to alert their extremely valuable vessel: that Delta had gone silent and deep. The loss for the Soviets wouldn’t be the same in physical terms as what the Americans had just suffered in the Gulf of Aden but this was still a major blow. The Northern Fleet’s commander would see it as a preventable loss. That wasn’t in the case of a warning should have been sent to it but in the manner of how there had been knowledge that an enemy submarine was nearby and it wasn’t sunk using the weapons available to those aircraft which had tried to get the Chicago. Those conventional weapons hadn’t worked. The admiral in his command bunker at Severomorsk was sure that nuclear ones would have. Unbeknown to him, off in distant Dubai, when CENTCOM’s commander was told that another one of his carriers had been knocked out, his thinking was exactly the same: nuclear weapons used below the surface would have destroyed that Soviet attack boat before it hit the carrier Forrestal.

Permission had been denied not very long beforehand to local commanders in both American and Soviet uniform to employ nuclear weapons at sea. There had been a strong refusal. Requests were made again from Severomorsk to Stavka and from Dubai to the Joint Chiefs. There was talk of a controllable situation when nuclear warheads were used in sub-surface engagements. These matters were brought to the attention of political leaders. With such requests, favourable arguments by those in uniform were made for going down this route. These were now given more consideration than they were before.