The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

183 – Proxy bombs


Just before dawn on the Sunday morning, a car left a rural property in County Tyrone. Its driver and sole occupant was a civilian who drove away from his family back inside the house which had been his father’s before him and his father’s too. The Electrician set off with tears in his eyes. Masked gunmen, a group of five of them, were there with his wife and two children. They had given him a choice: see his family killed before his eyes and be left alone with the guilt and grief, or drive to the military checkpoint not far away with a bomb which would kill him but his family would be spared. He had taken the second option. He was a Catholic and those men said that they were too but he considered them Agents of Satan for what they forced him to do. For months, The Electrician had been given stern warnings by the Irish Republican Army not to continue working for ‘the Brits’. He had a family to feed though and self-employed in an economic environment such as Ulster in 1987 (unemployment close to twenty per cent), he couldn’t turn down work even if that meant servicing the electrical systems at a nearby police station. Those threats had turned to action, that of the worst kind. He took the quickest route to an RUC-manned roadblock on the road into the nearby Cookstown. Those armed policemen were outside there and checking vehicles. He had a bomb inside his. The Electrician was told he was sitting on a pressure device. If he got off the seat, the bomb would explode prematurely. If that happened, the gunmen’s leader had said, his family would be killed. They would be watching. The Electrician was to drive up to the roadblock, close his eyes and the explosion there would see his family back at the house live. He did as he was told. The car reached the checkpoint and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) members approached. Then there was a fantastic explosion when the watching terrorists set it off by remote control. The Electrician would die along with three policemen. As to his family, they would be left unharmed. The IRA had just delivered a proxy bomb. They’d done this before, back in the early Seventies. In those incidents, those chosen as unwitting bombers had been given the chance to escape but that wasn’t the case this time. The leaders of the East Tyrone Brigade, one of the semi-autonomous units of the IRA active in Ulster, had decided to up the ante in the ongoing ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland. Today was the eighth day of the wider World War Three but that war was having an impact in Ulster. Making the excuse of retaliation for the activities of the security forces, an attack like this was staged. It was done for wider reasons than just to kill a handful of policemen. The IRA wanted to show that their fight to defend Catholic communities – even when killing one of their own in the process – was going to continue no matter what.

Ethic cleansing was taking place in Belfast. The loyalist group known as the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) was involved in this in an unofficial manner using gunmen disguising their attacks as the work of others: they were using the cover name of Ulster Freedom Fighters to avoid direct links with the UDA. It was men from the South Belfast Brigade who were most active in this yet there were other brigades from across the city were involved too. It must be noted that the ‘brigade’ term for loyalist and republican groups didn’t necessarily mean thousands of men but was a loose description. Regardless, the South Belfast Brigade had access to many weapons to arm those who volunteered to take part. The ethnic cleansing being done, including on this particular morning were there would be expected to be a day of peace from people who claimed religious motivation in their activities, involved in the main burning people out of their houses through Catholic areas of the city. There were some killings done as well. Still, the aim by the UDA leadership in Belfast was to clear certain areas without resorting to slaughtering many. They targeted families in the most exposed parts of the wider Catholic community who were in generally Protestant areas rather than going after strongly Catholic areas where IRA gunmen could be found defending those parts of Belfast. Front doors were kicked in, people inside told to get out and then the fires were started. There was no time to gather belongings and no chance to reason with these people. Crowds gathered in the streets to watch. Sometimes the now homeless families were attacked by members of those crowds. The security forces in Belfast didn’t intervene. The RUC had a presence in the city and there were the part-time soldiers with the Ulster Defence Regiment as well, a multi-battalion formation for Ulster-wide security tasks now fully mobilised. The UDA had the right connections with those at the top and in key positions throughout to make sure that if those in uniform wouldn’t look the other way, then their personnel were deployed elsewhere at the time of these house burnings. In addition, many members of the UDA had positions within the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment too including some of those involved in this ethnic cleansing done under the guise of the Ulster Freedom Fighters.

Near to the border with the Republic of Ireland, the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade was undertaking what the British authorities were calling a ‘Tet offensive’. They’d gone over to guerrilla warfare actions, not the expected usual terrorism that might have been expected elsewhere. This was South Armagh though and such a thing, while a surprise, wasn’t completely out of character for the Republican gunmen in this area. The region had long been somewhere that the British Army only moved through in helicopters rather than by road and the RUC were near locked out of. Smuggling across the border brought in money to buy arms, there was a dedicated local base of support and the influence carried by the South Armagh Brigade leadership throughout the wider IRA was strong. They could go all out in their war against ‘the Brits’ if given the opportunity to do that. World War Three was that opportunity. For the first few days, there had been opposition from the British Army to what the South Armagh Brigade was doing. However, more and more gunmen came out, many coming from over the border to join the fight, and there then came that decision taken by the UK Government to withdraw almost all regular troops from Northern Ireland. The IRA stepped up their attacks as the troops pulled out before declaring ‘Free Armagh’. This was pure political theatre. County Armagh was far bigger than just the southern areas where the IRA established themselves in strength. Where they did have control, this area now belonged to the IRA though. Neither the RUC nor the Ulster Defence Regiment were coming back in here again. Roadblocks were set up, patrols ran in the open, fortified military observation posts on hilltops that the British Army had abandoned were blown up and the South Armagh Brigade had their victory. There were very few Protestant families in the region. Almost all of them took heed and left. Catholic civilians certainly all didn’t support the IRA. They had no choice though but to now keep their heads down and mouths shut in Free Armagh… the IRA had already shot dead a few who had spoken out against this madness.

While the UDA might claim not to be terrorists, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) didn’t play the innocence game. They were openly sectarian and had gone ‘international’ before by bombing civilian targets in the Republic of Ireland: the centre of Dublin included. The UVF had several of those misnamed brigades with the most violent being the Mid-Ulster Brigade which had a reach across much of Northern Ireland. Cover names were often used for their activities too, especially the most violent ones against the innocents. Attacks had been undertaken in Ulster throughout the time that the war had been raging overseas which gave them an opportunity to take advantage of. UVF gunmen struck in the name of the Protestant Action Force and the Red Hand Commandos. The Mid-Ulster Brigade was killing civilians again, including this morning. They issued public statements that they were targeting the IRA but those whom they killed almost always had no connection with that fellow terrorist group. Politician figures on the Nationalist side were shot at or blown up while so too were leading community figures without any real political standing. The murders were being done in a brazen fashion too. The UVF had no real fear at a time like this of being stopped by the security forces. There was collusion at work yet also an overstretch among the authorities. Rural areas were where the Mid-Ulster Brigade were making their attacks with any presence of the security forces being light and late to the scene. The terror activities were done to induce terror. They wanted Catholics to be frightened and also to flee. It was a different sort of ethnic cleansing than what was being done in Belfast. The UVF had another brigade there yet their rivals in the UDA were doing the majority of things in that city while the Mid-Ulster Brigade had seen gunmen come out into the countryside. An agreement had been struck on that note at the highest levels for the rivals to focus in different areas doing what they did while having the same overall goals. Maghera in Country Londonderry witnessed gunfire this morning as the UVF struck in this little town. Gunmen broke into a family home and killed the three male residents – one of them a fifteen year old boy – without harming the women who lived there. Those murdered had been dragged outside the house before being lined up to be shot for no other reason than being Catholic.


There had been warnings issued for many years by politicians, senior military officers and intelligence figures that should World War Three ever erupt, there would be a terrible impact upon Northern Ireland. Outbreaks of extreme violence were feared when terrorists would take the opportunity to strike against innocents. With a global war distracting Britain but also the outside world, the concern had been that the extremists would go all out given such a chance. This feeling had been held among those in the UK, Ireland and America as well as in Ulster itself. Then that war had started. It came so quickly allowing no time for any preparations to be made to avert the bloodbath which Ulster became. The threat of nuclear warfare with Ulster sure to be a target in a general exchange between the West and the Soviets was the most pressing issue at once for many ordinary people inside Northern Ireland yet there quickly came all of the violence throughout the Six Counties. The maniacs had taken over the asylum! Those ordinary people, who may have voted in elections for parties which ran on ethno-nationalist platform, didn’t want to see this happen. Their political leaders were just as distraught at what was going on. Unionists and Nationalists had something in common here. That was true too with even the Sinn Fein leadership: years of work at moving towards a political solution were being thrown away by gunmen. None of them could do anything about it though. The killings continued.

Across the border, there were refugees arriving. It wasn’t a flood like had been seen in Continental Europe of people fleeing the Soviet Army but the Republic of Ireland was still dealing those who’d abandoned their homes and livelihoods turn up seeking safety out of Ulster. To the shock of the government in Dublin, there were even Protestants among them: it wasn’t just Catholics leaving. Dublin arranged for refugee centres to be opened up, ones with capacity for more than the numbers who had already come. There were troops on the border too who were sent there in case the fighting spilled over. In County Louth, two soldiers were shot dead. Their killers were IRA gunmen who didn’t want to be stopped from crossing back-&-forth. Dublin would later discover that those killers were citizens of the Republic of Ireland instead of Ulster residents as first thought. The thought of more of that, plus the fates of people north of the border, drove Dublin to act diplomatically. They implored Britain to see this stopped this and also contacted the Americans seeking them to intervene. However, with both Britain and the United States so distracted as they were by fighting the Soviets, nothing came of this. The Irish could do nothing to stop what was going on and were trying to steady themselves for worse things to happen.

At the start of the war, there were six battalions of regular troops in Ulster along with two more of TA reservists. Headquarters Northern Ireland – the British Army command – controlled too many smaller detachments of soldiers in combat and non-combat roles. At first, many areas of the Six Counties didn’t see the violence which was witnessed elsewhere. Londonderry was free of the worst of it along with some parts of Belfast as well. The Ulster Defence Regiment – nine battalions strong – was mobilised alongside RUC reservists. Both of those TA infantry battalions and one of the regular ones left within days of the war starting but the majority of the troops stayed in Northern Ireland. Where possible, a lid was kept on things in terms of stopping mass outbreaks of violence. Killings happened but those were isolated ones. Then the orders came for the rest of the regular British Army soldiers to leave. The war was going bad for Britain and its NATO partners with the troops being needed away from Ulster. Security matters were left in the hands of the Ulster Defence Regiment and the police… organisations infiltrated by loyalist terrorists. As groups such as the UDA and UVF were now able to better operate, the IRA plus additional Republican terror networks also struck. There were even attacks made on some of the departing British Army troops from those who had long demanded ‘Brits out’ too. The IRA’s Derry Brigade opened fire with a heavy machine gun on a bus laden with Grenadier Guards leaving their Ballykelly garrison where they killed and wounded a dozen departing soldiers. When British soldiers did leave Northern Ireland, those same terrorists from the Derry Brigade would go into Londonderry – or just ‘Derry’ to them – and change the security situation there for the worse: there would be a return of Free Derry in the maiden city without any soldiers there.

The strike against those soldiers at Ballykelly came after there had been other attacks against British military targets across Ulster during the war. RAF Algergrove had been shelled by homemade mortars which had terrible accuracy but caused some damage and loss of life. A military signals post for communication relay in Country Antrim was targeted by gunfire too. There was a belief that there was a hidden hand at work with these attacks. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) was a smaller group than the IRA but just as violent. It was also one with a Marxist ideology which had helped it secured weapons from worldwide sources that Britain believed had the ultimate blessing of Moscow in seeing them delivered. The INLA had made those attacks on Aldergrove and at the lonely signals post. Alongside killing soldiers leaving Ballykelly to go off and fight on the Continent, to suspicious minds it all looked connected. The British believed that the Soviets were aiming to do more than just hit at British military facilities in Ulster but also keep the troops here. There were some mental jumps made among the paranoid to join up the dots, yes, but it did overall make sense. Republican terrorists were being seen as delivering their own proxy bombs (in a different sense than the man in a vehicle) on behalf of the Soviet Union. There was no direct evidence which came to prove that Moscow had an influential hand in what was happening in Northern Ireland but many thought that that was the case.

Ulster is where I spent a hell of a lot of my 24 year’s service. One thing I always thought about was what would happen if the Russian Bear decided to come to visit the west for a short or long holiday.

You have nailed it right on the head with this chapter the regular British units that did Op Cara Cara as it was called kept the lid on it. The UDR was staffed by some incredibly brave men and women who put their lives on the line each and every time they put on their uniform. No military is perfect and there would bound to be rotten apples in the bag a sad thing to say but also very true. What the IRA and UDA need to remember is that if NATO makes it through the war the British Army will come a calling and softly softly and if the Russian Bear wins well Siberia is always in need of forced labour.

Well done a great update as usual.

Thankfully we never had to find out but I think things would have gone to sh*t.
Once the Army left and the UDR took over, things really went to hell. You're correct that the UDR were a good force but so much evidence has come to light about collusion with terrorists that it made the bad apples seem far worse than they were.
Those in ulster have taken their chances. Neither outcome for them looks appealing!




Well... maybe. There is some caution. Their political leaders, not caught up in the bloodlust, are aghast. Many on the ground will soon have regrets too.



All those out in the open are just begging to be shot should a real force of soldiers not overstretched come at them. They for once don't have the eyes on the world on them and have gone too far.
Typos fixed, thank you.
Moscow is being blamed but if they had anything to do with it, it is only very limited. For Moscow, this is all a good distraction though.

The Defence Council isn't meeting in Moscow. They are in a 'secure location'. Can anyone help me tell where they would be?
It won't be Mount Yamantau because that wasn't built. Anyone know so I can make a location edit?

185 – The Mole


The GRU’s spy at the highest levels in NATO wasn’t actually a Soviet agent. Instead, The Mole was an operative of the Stasi. The East Germans had many long years past recruited a young West German and then crafted his career leading to him being where he was today. The Stasi had the time and experience to play the long game with a traitor functioning as a mole. Their man was inserted into the West German civil service and moved slowly but steadily upwards. The Mole was active within the foreign ministry and then on the fringes of the intelligence services as well. Secret data was fed to East Berlin but there were also the human relationships which The Mole built where he was respected and trusted among his many colleagues. He had contacts with military figures and politicians the higher he rose too. The Stasi were careful not to see him ever endangered. If there was something urgent wanted in terms of information, if it was high risk even with an even high reward, then another spy would be used. The Mole was too vital to be exposed.

To those who knew him, The Mole was a quiet man who rarely expressed emotion. He was punctual, efficient and on top of his brief when working. In his private life, he lived alone and kept himself to himself. He had a military service record as a conscript back in his youth and his politics weren’t of the outspoken kind. This made The Mole not remarkable – not interesting – in terms of anyone paying any extra notice to him. It was his work which was what people took notice of. The Mole served West German governments of several political shades in important ways. His career saw him appointed to many different posts through the years in the diplomatic and intelligence arenas. He had professional contacts everywhere and access to a lot of information. One single Stasi case officer had served him from the very beginning though there had been cut-outs used for information exchanges. Messages were exchanged via brush passes and dead drops. There was no adventure for The Mole to be had in this and nor did he seek any. He was committed to a cause and never strayed from his training in the art of espionage tradecraft. Documents would be photographed with micro-cameras – some very fancy tech indeed – though he would also commit to paper in the privacy of his own modest home detailed recollections of conversations he had been party to or had overheard.

The Mole never took a Mark for his service to the German Democratic Republic. He wasn’t blackmailed nor coerced into what he did. He followed instructions from his handler too, never going off script. Every few years, say five or six, The Mole had met with his case officer as well as others in a controlled environment for a thorough debrief. His yearly vacation would on those occasions see him spend time with the Stasi directly. These meetings had never taken place in East Germany: Austria, the Netherlands and Spain had been chosen instead. Each time, unbeknown to him, The Mole would be drugged and subject to an interrogation of which he would give truthful answers but have no memory of afterwards… he’d recall having a bit too much to drink and then having strange dreams. He was trusted by the Stasi but they operated with the view that it was best to confirm before trusting. The information he supplied was always of the highest quality. He’d never let his handler down nor showed any sign of no longer being influential. The East Germans believed that he would be of use to them for another fifteen to twenty years. There was so much more that he showed promise of giving for all those years to come.

But then war had erupted. The Mole was nearly killed himself within the first few hours of it. An emergency signal had been sent to him alerting him of the coming conflict without providing details. The Mole had been very lucky in his brush with death during a Soviet missile strike in West Germany. It hadn’t shaken his loyalty to East Germany but hardened his already long hatred for the Soviets. He was German though, that much was expected. The Mole was needed by the West German government. People were dead or missing and the nation in chaos during an invasion which had come from out of the blue. Someone reliable like The Mole was irreplaceable at a time like this where West Germany was soon on its knees. The Mole travelled with the West German Government as it moved first to the Regierungsbunker where there was the major gathering on the war’s first morning and Chancellor Kohl was replaced by Defence Minister Wörner. He stayed with the central figures of government during their time spent in Aachen and then, after the Rhine was crossed, down in Saarbrücken. He was out of contact for a long time with the Stasi (who had to consider the possibly of his loss) but had in recent days shown up in Paris. The Mole was in the French capital as a high-level appointee to his country’s representative on the relocated NATO Council.


Considering NATO institutions had in many respects been kicked out of France in 1966, for them to be back here twenty-one years later was a bit of historical irony. They were here now though because Paris was ‘safe’. Spread across a school and several office complexes that the French Government had turned over to NATO use through the Fontenay-aux-Roses region, The Mole was the senior assistant to his country’s Permanent Representative to NATO: he’d replaced a man who’d taken himself and family to Switzerland when abandoning West Germany at its crucial hour. In this part of Paris, southwest of the centre of the city and near to Vélizy-Villacoublay Airbase, there were many NATO staff put up in temporary accommodation while working here. The Mole had activated an emergency contact signal with a cut-off, one dragged up from his memory. He’d expected to soon meet with a Stasi officer and knew it would be risky in the middle of the major French security effort around Paris yet did his duty regardless. Alas, there was no fellow German – The Mole saw all Germans as Germans, with a temporary divide in politics – who showed up but a Soviet spook. The East Germans had lost their man in Paris to a French intelligence-led security operation but the GRU still had an officer of theirs active in the French capital.

Lord Carrington had many meetings with West Germany’s de facto ambassador to NATO and The Mole was present for many of those. He spent time with that diplomat too as well as enjoying full access to others who were making Fontenay-aux-Roses their home. Paperwork passed through his hands and was there when telephone calls were had with all sorts of important people, West German or not. The Mole ended up much higher than the Stasi had ever thought he could go… it was only a war which brought this about though. Yet, all his work was being done for the GRU. East Berlin was not involved in any of this due to the situation with only the Soviets having an officer in Paris who had yet to be caught by the West’s spy-chasers. A wealth of information flowed out. The Mole didn’t particularly enjoy the one direct meetings which he had with that GRU officer because he knew what the Soviet Army was doing to West Germany. He carried on spying though and made use of brush passes with cut-outs. The Mole focused upon the overall goal of everything that he had ever done: doing his bit to create a united Germany, even one beholden to Moscow in the end. That was what he fought to achieve for all of these years.

When the Soviet Defence Council asked the director of the GRU what information had come from Paris, Ivanshutin was able to reveal much due to the activities of The Mole. This wasn’t about which battalion of NATO soldiers had moved to where, where was the new air strike coming and how many exact available shells there were for artillery pieces etc. No, it was geo-political strategic intelligence of the most secret nature coming from the heart of NATO. Ivanshutin could call it ‘golden’ without any need for hyperbole. The KGB had their own spies active, well-placed moles in important places, but they had nothing like this agent-in-place that the GRU had now effectively stolen from the Stasi. The intelligence previously delivered had checked out too with none of that being something that NATO would willingly give away to break up a spy ring in a counter-espionage operation. There was more of that high-grade secret information delivered today to the Soviet leadership. They had asked about what the Western Europeans were saying amongst themselves and to the Americans about the ongoing employment of nuclear weapons. Ivanshutin said that Western Europe’s leaders were aghast. They were up in arms at this escalation to the nuclear stage. Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany were the focus of what the Defence Council wanted to hear: what were their governments going to do? Ivanshutin was only able to tell them what The Mole had passed on yet he did add his own organisation’s spin upon that. Western Europe was trying to figure out how to put the cork back in the bottle. They feared that the underwater usage of nukes would soon be above the ocean’s surface, turning after that to the employment of such weapons on land. The battlefields at that stage would be their countries, with both sides using nuclear weapons on each other through Western Europe. The next stage foreseen in a runaway situation was strategic use against cities, again with the belief that it would be their cities first. The leaders of these countries were trying to encourage the British and the French to join them in getting the Americans to put a stop to using nukes.

Hearing this, Ligachev and his comrades allowed themselves a smile. This was what they wanted to hear. They had their own efforts underway to divide NATO in wartime but, here, NATO was doing their work for them. There would be more plots and plans coming from the Soviet leadership after this news where they sought to stir the pot some more. The Mole, far away without a clue about any of this, carried on with what he was doing and more information would soon be flowing from him. How very useful he was for those who had none of the same interests for Germany as he did.