The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Yep, that would be the case.
The original war aims, ones which Moscow is sticking to, said that they would withdraw too.
Of course, the war aims said there would be a quick French surrender and no need for nukes too... and that isn't happening.

195 – Unrestricted nuclear use at sea


Soviet nuclear attacks had seen the US Navy lose a battleship and then an aircraft carrier in quick succession. To the Americans, the destruction of the USS Wisconsin was a terrible blow but the loss of the USS Enterprise was far worse. The attack on the latter broke the unwritten rules – those which the Americans had drafted themselves and not told the Soviets about – when it came to the manner in which nuclear weapons were ‘allowed’ to be used at sea. Before it had been underwater blasts yet with that carrier lost in the Sea of Japan, the nuclear strike had been made above the water. The Soviets had upped the ante: the Americans would respond accordingly.

In the Barents Sea, the US Navy struck back. USS Coral Sea – which started the war at Norfolk and had come out ahead of the USS John K. Kennedy while taking a more northern routing towards the Norwegian Sea – launched several flights of aircraft for a long-range strike against the Soviet Navy. Much air-to-air refuelling was done with this limiting the number of aircraft on the strike mission. It would have been better to wait another day, to close the range, but the orders were for a strike to be made as soon as possible. Waves of A-6 Intruders flew from the Coral Sea escorted by EA-6 Prowlers for electronic defence and F/A-18 Hornets on fighter tasks. They sought out warships spotted by radars which were off the Soviet coastline. The Northern Fleet had kept its surface ships close to home during the war. They had many of them in the Kara Sea where they were above the defended bastion below which strategic missile submarines sat yet others were in the Barents Sea. The A-6s attacked them with nuclear bombs. B61s were used, many of them thrown forward when lob-tossing techniques were employed by the US Navy pilots. There were defences that the Northern Fleet ships had. Their land-based fighters were drawn off but the warships had their own weapons. American aircraft in the skies above were shot at with some being brought down. Others managed to get their bombs onto targets though. Above the waters of the Barents Sea, nuclear blasts killed Soviet warships. Eight would be lost. This was a blow though not a crippling one. The Northern Fleet was still active. Yet, the US Navy planned to come back and have another go. Before then, they had several of their submarines open fire too where they used nuclear-armed torpedoes to make underwater attacks.

Refusing to play the impotent victim, Soviet Naval Aviation was preparing a counterstrike. They had been unable to find a sufficient target for a mass strike with their missile-firing bombers so far in this war but the Coral Sea was on its way towards them. Conventional and nuclear warheads would be used on the cruise missiles launched from the Backfires which the Soviets would put into the sky. It would be a nuclear Dance of the Vampires when that approaching carrier group could be located and then targeted. How many F14 Tomcats did the Coral Sea have? A big fat zero being the reason why the Soviets believed they could get her.

This fight was going to go on for some time and escalate significantly.


What happened off the Soviet coast here had immediate repercussions elsewhere at sea. Above surface use was now taking place elsewhere. Each side used the excuse that the other had escalated first to justify what they had done. Naval forces had first been involved but now air forces flying from land bases were getting involved where they were making nuclear battlefields over the water… and pushing for expansion elsewhere now that the nuclear threshold had long been passed.

American and Soviet ships and submarines had been lost in the opening nuclear exchanges. There had been some close calls with the warships of other nations – NATO ones, not Warsaw Pact vessels – but only the navies of the superpowers had their vessels obliterated in nuclear hellfire. Today, that changed. The navies of multiple NATO countries lost ships and submarines to Soviet nuclear strikes. The Royal Navy had two frigates taken out. The Marine Nationale had a destroyer and a submarine eliminated. Between them, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Italy, Spain and West Germany saw the complete destruction of eleven of their vessels engaging in wartime activities. Britain and France had nuclear weapons aboard their warships and submarines. There were depth bombs and torpedoes carried. In addition, the RAF and the French Navy’s air arm (the Aéronavale) had their own ones too for at-sea operations. Ready to step over the line due to the Soviet-US exchanges, once their own ships were targeted by Soviet nuclear strikes requests were made to governments for them to take nuclear actions too. Whitelaw and Mitterrand each had service chiefs asking them to allow for the employment of nuclear weapons in a defensive manner, not just retaliatory. They wanted to defend their fleets with nukes before Soviet nukes wiped them out. Each country had seen its navies take heavy losses during the war which had been raging for the last nine days. They feared that what was left, what had been allowing the naval war to be so decisively won by NATO, was about to be destroyed.

Since the first nuclear exchanges, NATO governments had been trying to bring an end to the use of such weapons. The Canadians and the Europeans all wanted it to stop. The Americans said the same thing: they didn’t want to see a continued series of blows and counterblows either. Yet… they kept on making use of those weapons. American nuclear attacks came just as Soviet ones did. It almost felt as if there were two different Reagan’s in the eyes of his allies. One kept on telling them that the United States wanted to see no more of this. The second one would explain that these strikes had to be made because the Soviets had made their own. There had been the terror of nuclear use there since the start of the war in the allies of these governments. They had feared that their countries would become nuclear battlefields. Everything had been done to first stop the Americans from using nukes in West Germany, making sure that the British didn’t launch on the Soviets after the airborne landings made in the UK and then calling on the French to hold their fire as their borders were approached. All of that success had with that had been thrown away the moment that the US Navy made the first use down in the Med.


The leaders of Britain and France spoke to each other over a link-up. Franco-British cooperation in this war had been quite something. Each maintained strong links to other allies – the British to the Americans and the French with the West Germans – but this connection between the two was ongoing. They two men had been sharing secrets kept from others. There was some delusion in how important the relationship was though. Mitterrand believed that his words of caution had stopped Whitelaw from launching nuclear attacks on the Soviets when they put paratroopers into Britain, those in London especially, while at the same time, Whitelaw had a strong certainly that it had been his wise words which saw France not begin making nuclear attacks the moment that its borders were approached by Soviet armies. Each of them had military chiefs calling for such things yet hadn’t been at the stage to seriously consider doing that because things had yet to move that far. Now things were different.

CENTAG had been defeated. Arguments made that NATO’s armies could hold back the Soviets without the use of nukes had been shown to be false. The rapid escalation at sea where nuclear weapons were being employed had fast got out of hand there. The two national leaders could only agree with their senior military officers that it wasn’t long before countless naval vessels of theirs were lost due to the unrestricted nuclear use at sea. Before they spoke to each other, Mitterrand and Whitelaw had already made up their minds on this. Should one have tried to talk the other out of it, that wouldn’t have seen any success. It wasn’t done regardless. They told one another that they were giving permission for nuclear use to be made at sea by their respective armed forces with attacks made below and above the surface. They agreed to work together in doing this and both coordinate with other allies on that, especially the Americans. It was said by Whitelaw that he believed that the exchanges would be contained to at-sea use. Mitterrand gave his agreement to this… yet he didn’t sound like he believed that.

A couple of hours later, an Atlantique-2 maritime patrol aircraft with the Aéronavale dropped nuclear depth bombs in the eastern Med. against a suspected enemy submarine. This French action was followed not long afterwards by a Royal Navy frigate using its helicopter to employ depth charges with nuclear warheads out in the North Atlantic. Britain and France, like the United States and the Soviet Union, had used nuclear weapons in anger. To some in the know, it was a case of ‘finally’. To others, this was the beginning of the end.

196 – A morning of many suns


Late yesterday, when the Rhineland was falling into Soviet hands, there had been much use made of nuclear weapons at sea: not just the superpowers but with the British and French starting to employ them too. As day broke on September 1st, if the situation wasn’t already out of control, it now truly was. The usage of nukes went quite over the top. There was near free reign giving to commanders on both sides to employ such weapons. Whereas before only navies had been making attacks, air forces joined in too. They used nukes as well over the water, bringing nuclear detonations closer and closer to the shore.

It was madness. Somehow had to stop it! No one was though and the sliding scale of escalation continued.


In the Baltic Exits, between NATO member Denmark and neutral Sweden, passage to open water beyond the Warsaw Pact controlled Baltic into the North Sea had long been blocked off. The Unified Baltic Fleet with Soviet, East German & Polish vessels had been held inside. Neither ships nor submarines could get past. Geography played a major role but so had Danish-led mining efforts. The Danes, supported by the West German Bundesmarine with other NATO navies involved in a lesser role, had laid many extensive minefields. Enemy de-mining efforts were stopped by aircraft, land-based missiles and fortified gun positions alongside NATO navies. Using nuclear blasts underwater against areas known to be mined and above-water detonations to destroy warships, the Unified Baltic Fleet began to blast its way forward. They attacked on the approaches to the Øresund and then inside that stretch of water between the island of Zealand and the Swedish mainland. The plan was that once the Øresund was clear, the same was to be done through the Kattegat and then the Skagerrak too. NATO put an end to that. American land-based aircraft came in and made nuclear attacks of their own. The Unified Baltic Fleet took down some of their attackers but not enough to stop a devastation of much of their combat strength. The blasts on the surface were seen far afield. It was a clear morning and the many false sunrises were witnessed along the Danish shore as well as over in Sweden too.

Up in the Norwegian Sea, Soviet Naval Aviation was gunning for the USS Coral Sea. Aircraft from that American carrier had attacked Northern Fleet surface ships in the Barents Sea with nuclear weapons yesterday. An air counterstrike was planned. This involved sending out reconnaissance aircraft while keeping ready in Kola bases a flotilla of Backfire missile-bombers. When the Bears out ahead found that carrier and her escort group, those supersonic bombers would go after her. The problem was that the Coral Sea couldn’t be found. Soviet reconnaissance aircraft were searching the waters between Iceland and Norway where they expected the carrier to be. That was where she had launched her aircraft from late yesterday and where it was thought she would be now. They were wrong though. Their target had gone south, linking up with the USS John F. Kennedy as that carrier arrived on station in the Norwegian Sea too. What could be done by two US Navy carriers working together was much more potent than the two could do on their own. They were planning to come north, but not until tonight. Backfires would be expected with the Americans intending to make sure that they didn’t fall into a trap. As to those Bears, while not finding a carrier, they came across many other warships in the area, especially closer to Norway. NATO was shuffling about its warships off the Norwegian coast in light of the elimination of the battleship USS Wisconsin and then the rapidly escalating nuclear environment. The Backfires stayed on the ground for now but their scouts send out information to any friendly submarines in the area as to where many enemy vessels, in pairs or small groups (not enough to warrant a missile-bomber strike), could be found. A couple of submarines answered the call. They began making attacks using both conventional and nuclear weapons. This was responded to with NATO warships, submarines and aircraft too employing their own nukes. As with those in the Baltic Exits, many of these nuclear detonations would be seen by those on land nearby.

HMS Ark Royal, the Royal Navy’s lone active carrier (HMS Invincible was still unavailable due to a pre-war arranged major overhaul; HMS Illustrious had been destroyed in a conventional missile strike), was in the North Sea. Orders had her making a run for it, seeking open water away to the north where she was to go around Scotland into the Atlantic proper. Keeping the Ark Royal active when the fighting had been conventional had been very difficult with many lucky breaks coming. It wasn’t believed that she could survive in a nuclear battlefield. The carrier would get away in time, her luck holding. Other Royal Navy ships, plus those of allies, who were between Britain and a hostile-occupied Continent, weren’t so lucky. Soviet Naval Aviation units were joined by Soviet Air Force ones. They had permission to make nuclear attacks against surface targets with any spotted all certain to be hostile. The North Sea had long been dangerous for NATO warships but the employment of nukes against them quickly saw major losses being taken. The Americans, Canadians, Dutch and West Germans saw the destruction of many ships when hit with short- & medium-range missiles carrying a nuclear warhead. Several already bore scars from conventional weapons but when a nuke was used, there was no survival from a hit. As to the Royal Navy, what a horrendous morning they had! Three destroyers and three frigates were obliterated. The half dozen warships were lost in a matter of a few hours. These ships had been vital in helping defend the UK mainland against air attacks, stopping commando activity going over the North Sea and making sure that there was no air bridge option open to Soviet forces still fighting in East Anglia should Moscow change its mind on that matter of closing it. That trio of Type-42 destroyers – HMS Newcastle, HMS Liverpool and HMS Manchester – had been using their Sea Dart missiles in conjunction with the RAF to bring down many enemy aircraft. Their loss would really hurt. One of the frigates not hit like the destroyers were was HMS Arethusa. Arethusa fired nuclear weapons back at the enemy. There was a submarine detected nearby and the launch was made of the ship’s Ikara anti-submarine missile. This threw nuclear depth bombs far from the launching frigate and deep into the water where they scored a kill against a Soviet boat. The explosions were in shallow water close to Scottish coast and while not seen from land like others caused by Soviet weapons were, this was a use of nukes extremely close to Britain itself: done by the British themselves. Killing just the one submarine didn’t make up for all the losses taken in the North Sea this morning though, not by a long shot.

Across the Mediterranean, there were more nuclear attacks. Both the Soviets and NATO used nuclear weapons against the other. These were done in open water and close to land too. At first, the latter took place off the coast of Greek Thrace and close to Cyprus. Using sea power and air power, each attacked the naval forces of one another. Losses among NATO warships were far greater than those of Soviet submarines: significantly so too. In the Turkish Straits, where the fighting around Istanbul was almost won to rid the surrounding parts of that city from invading Soviets, the Turks were dreading nuclear attacks there. None came this morning but they weren’t holding out for it not occurring. Turkey didn’t want to see any artificial sunrises over the Bosporus! Later on, Lebanese civilians, caught in an ongoing war which they had no wish to be part of, witnessed blasts off their shoreline. The USS Iowa, a sister-ship to the doomed Wisconsin, was firing in support of US Marines near Beirut. Those elite troops had been wanted by the Turks to assist them, not get involved in another endless fight in Lebanon but here they were with that battleship’s guns firing sixteen-inch shells to aid them against Syrian troops supported by Soviet air power. Badger bombers were part of that Soviet airborne support and they launched cruise missiles towards the Iowa when firing from far back over land. Those missed the priority target though destroyed other warships as well as amphibious ships too. A pair of Israeli ships got caught up in this attack too. Israel was a nuclear power. Israel would want to retaliate.

Out in the North Atlantic, midway through their crossings, there were those two convoys of ships laden with American military equipment. Each had suffered attacks in recent days with nuclear blasts underwater. Ships carrying tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery and a whole host of military supplies to form up many divisions of national guardsmen all waiting to be flown over to France had been sunk. Some had been atomised with other capsized when swamped by huge waves. The majority of ships with the convoys out of the Military Ocean Terminals at Bayonne and Sunny Point were still sailing though. The need was desperate for what they were carrying to reach France. There were other convoys on their way but these were of utmost importance. When they arrived, the combat loading & on-hand organisation would mean that with unheralded haste, there could be the establishment of strong American ground forces ready to move towards the Franco-Belgium border. This morning, when it was still dark due to the time difference away from waters closer to Europe, there came an ending to that intention to form up a new army so promised by the United States to its European allies. Missile submarines surfaced and fired barrages of missiles at the convoys with conventional & nuclear warheads. US Navy and NATO escorts moved to if not stop the attacks then intercept as many inbound missiles as possible. They got some of them but not enough. Each convoy took fearful losses, especially when the missiles with nuclear warheads got through. Dozens of ships were lost. Their war cargoes were gone. Thousands of American soldiers could now only fight in France with rifles should they be air-lifted from State-side holding sites across the North Atlantic. This disaster was something that would change the war, not in NATO’s favour either.


All of this, occurring as fast as it did, came a surprise to political leaders… where it shouldn’t have. It was obvious that things were going to go like this. They had let slip the dogs of nuclear war and this was what was bound to happen. News came in of attack after attack. The destruction to the Baltic Fleet shook the Soviet leadership when they heard about it; the Americans – plus their NATO allies – were thunderstruck when it became apparent that those inbound convoys, supposedly so very protected, had suffered grave losses. There was some mood for retaliation, more of the same because that was what this series of exchanges was about: each side going after the other for something the other had done and upping the ante.

However, a few calmer voices were urgently calling for a drawback in all of this. They were desperate for an end to this all. The mass use of nuclear weapons wasn’t what anyone wanted to see. Was there a way out of this? Could they step back from the brink? Common sense had yet to break out… yet there became a mood to listen to the doomsayers now. Maybe those who had said all along that any use of nukes would spiral fast out of control were right? A nuclear pause was something that looked possible. Who knew where that might lead. Both sides were willing to blink after a morning like this of so many suns.

If they cannot re-cork it, it'll be city busters next.

Second that, will we see it before the end of the 200th update.