The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Iran will be the focus of tomorrow's update.
How do you say 'jeez, that's a nice looking set of mushroom clouds' in Persian?

Well... they are nuclear capable and dual-rolled if necessary for a land strike so it is a bonus. Still, far too late to make much of a difference. The US Navy spent the war not in a position to send a carrier or two towards Kola while the Soviets were waiting with their bombers. Now most of the bombers are gone, the carriers can go, but, alas, too late in the war now. Things are getting 'hot'.
The risk was there for both sides with units having nuclear orders cancelled but not getting through. The Americans find out and respond with a Hotline message but, again, too late.
The leadership think Reagan is the crazy one though and keep finding 'evidence' of that.

Typo fixed, thank you.




CENTCOM had asked a few updates ago and so the attack will be authorised.
Change 'the Soviets' to 'the Americans' there and you are spot on.

I'll read this timeline when I have time. This seems promising.

I don't think the Soviets are in denial about this, they received assurances nuclear warfare would stop and it continued.

Even if they accept the explanation about the sub not being able to receive orders the Iranian strikes were deliberate.

I wouldn't want to be on Iceland or Guam right now.

205 – Six for six


Ballistic missiles had been used throughout the war. The Soviets and their allies, including both the Iraqis & the Iranians before World War Three broke out ‘properly’, had fired many of the infamous Scuds while there had also been the use of newer missiles too. The Saudis had used ballistic missiles against Iraq and then once the fighting started with the Soviets, the Americans had employed some of their Lance missiles as well. All of these instances had involved the employment of either conventional or chemical warheads with them. Nuclear-armed ballistic missiles hadn’t been used. However, when launches were made throughout the many different theatres of warfare raging it was often not known until warhead detonation that the missile wasn’t armed with a nuke. So many missiles were dual-capable and could have been carrying a nuclear warhead. If the Americans and Soviets had been launching ICBMs from silos or SLBMs out of strategic missile submarines, or certain missiles with a shorter range but known to only have nukes as their armament, then there would have been no doubt that a nuke was being employed: with the others it was impossible until impact was made. On countless occasions, all across the globe, there was absolute terror while missiles were in the air because no one could know for sure that this wasn’t a nuclear attack disguised as a conventional one. No matter how many times non-nuclear launches were made, the fear didn’t go away.

Today, when selective Soviet launches came within a short period of time from multiple locations with ballistic missiles going in different directions, it wasn’t known whether this was an attack with nukes or not. It didn’t look like such a thing but at the same time, it could just well have been. Both EUCOM and CENTCOM reporting stations broadcast ‘Pink Panther’ alerts. The name changed daily and it was a warning that ballistic missiles were in the air over Europe and the Middle East. There weren’t that many of them and none were going intercontinental but the urgent flash notice went out and over-rid other communications. On radar screens, operators and analysists tried to tell what type of missiles they were. Early indication was sought to discover whether this was a conventional attack or whether a different broadcast from Pink Panther needed to be sent out. The missiles climbed away from previously unknown launch sites – these were mobile launchers who would at once redeploy – and there were second-stage separations of missile bodies. All attention was on them. The flight time was going to be short but every second counted.

Suddenly, the alert broadcasts changed: ‘Amber Moon’!

Those were SS-20 Sabres in the sky.

Nuclear detonations occurred in Europe and the Middle East. Keflavik Airbase on Iceland was hit. So too was Karup Airbase in Denmark. The NATO command centre at Kolsås leir on the edges of the Norwegian capital Oslo was another target. In Egypt, the airbase at Cairo West was struck. The naval base at Souda Bay in Crete was attacked. Finally, last on the list of successful impact zones, was the naval airbase at Sigonella in Sicily. There were crashes of missile fragments in Iraq from a weapon which failed to make proper orbit. In Hungary, a massive but non-nuclear explosion blew up a launch site where a missile went off there rather than far off in a distant target.

The SS-20s used either carried a trio of medium-sized thermonuclear warheads or a single large one. Much of Oslo was destroyed by a one megaton blast which missed the buried command centre at Kolsås leir (which itself survived) while a big chunk of the coastline on the Greek island of Crete was wiped from the face of the earth when another huge warhead was deployed there. On Iceland, only one of the three aimed at Keflavik made a direct hit while the two others landed nearby, both exploding in the populated southwestern corner of that island nation. All three warheads aimed at Karup struck there and inflicted immense damage in the middle of Jutland. Two of the three warheads reached Sigonella with only one of the going off; nearly the same situation occurred with Cairo West though the single blast was off-target and did little direct damage to the airbase while instead blowing up a large patch of desert. The USS Missouri had evaded her planned demise when in the Persian Gulf: hitting a fast-moving ship with a ballistic missile fired from so far away was a big ask and the missile didn’t even leave Iraqi airspace before it broke up. As to that on-the-ground explosion at the launch site in Hungary, it was of a missile aimed at the military base of Caserma Ederle (a second target in Italy, the only country to be targeted twice, but foreign military forces there).

The Amber Moon alert reached some of those in the firing line as well as many others not targeted by the SS-20s. There was very little time to react. The time to do so was less than a minute once it was realised that these were nuclear missiles – the SS-20 couldn’t carry conventional ones – and not much could be done apart from those in the way to seek shelter. In military terms, the loss was greatest at Karup, Keflavik and Sigonella. Those places were full of NATO aircraft. Cairo West also had many aircraft present but the near-miss saw the majority of them unhindered from flight operations. Souda Bay had much shipping there and the loss of plenty of them was significant yet not something that was going to change the war. Allied Forces Northern Europe continued to operate inside the buried Kolsås leir while outside their bunker the city of Oslo was literally gone. The missiles came with a message from the Soviet leadership which went out over the Hotline to the Americans.


Reagan was on the NECAP aircraft over Ohio at the time; Bush was at Mount Weather in Virginia while SecDef Weinberger was underneath Pennsylvania at Raven Rock. This communication came just after a flurry of other important incoming messages. First there had been the reports of successful detonations of the American nuclear strike against the Iranian Army – they’d wanted initial information; not eager to wait it out – before both NORAD & SUBLANT were in contact concerning nuclear blasts of unknown origin which had occurred sometime before up in the Barents Sea. There was now clarification of what had happened there whereas before (ahead of Operation Thunderstreak against Iran) there had only been confusion. It was being considered almost a certainty that a missing / presumed sunk US Navy submarine had followed standing orders ahead of the nuclear truce with the Soviets and made an attack there. It had engaged an unidentified subsurface target with what appeared to be nuclear depth charges. This issue with the USS Boston, it being uncontactable and possibly capable of further attacks, was what the United States’ leadership was focused upon when the Pink Panther alert turned to an Amber Moon alert. Next up, the Hotline message came. Everything happened so fast. Information was fed to them because they needed to know. It also overwhelmed them.

Reports were coming in of what exactly had happened with those SS-20 strikes but ahead of the details, the Soviets were supplying their own on that. Their message told Reagan that Soviet nuclear attacks had been made in a deliberate fashion. This was no accident. It was done because the United States had broken the agreed-upon nuclear truce between the two of them, answering Soviet offers of an honest ceasefire and end to the conventional war in such a manner as they had. The message, signed off by Ligachev, stated that there had been a nuclear attack against a submarine in the Barents Sea and then Soviet personnel in number had been killed down in Iran by further nuclear usage. The Soviet Union would not stand for the Americans doing this. They were retaliating accordingly while desiring a situation where contact between the two superpowers returned to the subject of a global end to the fighting.

After the Hotline message, as discussions were about to begin as to how to respond, there was contact sought with Reagan, Bush and Weinberger from others. The (new) British Prime Minister, the French President and leaders of Canada, Israel & others all placed urgent calls. Generals Rogers and Crist bypassed the Joint Chiefs to contact Weinberger directly as was the chain-of-command in such a situation. SACEUR and CENTCOM’s commander had each seen forces under their command hit with nukes and were expecting more to occur. The maddening situation was only exasperated by the urgency coming from foreign leaders and American military commanders; Rogers and Crist were followed by the commanders of SAC and PACOM too.

No immediate response was sent to the Soviets. Hurd and Mitterrand, plus Israeli MP Shamir, were spoken too and so were the military commanders. Other high-ranking officials (from the US Intelligence Community as well as the National Security Council) were brought in on the teleconference as well. Input came from everyone, some of it unwelcome. Everyone could agree that something had to be done though no one could agree as to what that was. Rogers and Crist were insistent that a nuclear response must be made. They called for a return strike, using many more weapons than the Soviets: Weinberger agreed with them where he called a proposed attack ‘disproportionate’ but ‘not enough to cause a full weapons release’ from the Soviets in reply. Others agreed that the United States had to return fire though there was disagreement on how and on what scale. The two leaders of Europe’s nuclear powers ended up arguing with each other too.

It took an hour. Reagan finally made a decision. It would be one that would please none. Six for six it was: six nuclear attacks to match the six ones which the Soviets had successfully managed to get through. Targets were selected from a planning list and missile launches were made. ‘Pale Horse’ was broadcast as a warning to friendly forces.


In East Germany, the Soviet command centre at Zossen–Wünsdorf was targeted; the big airbase at Sperenberg (not a combat base but much used by transports and support aircraft) was also attacked. Across in Poland, another headquarters complex, this one at Legnica which the Soviet commander General Postnikov had only just been evacuated from was struck. The combined headquarters set-up & airbase at Milovice in Czechoslovakia made the target list and so too did the Gorna Malina command base in Bulgaria. Finally, outside of Eastern Europe, Shayrat Airbase in Syria, being used by Soviet aircraft, also drew nuclear fire directed at it. This American nuclear strike did as the Soviet one did: it avoided Western Europe. It had long been believed that in any superpower-to-superpower nuclear exchange, those would occur first in West Germany. The ironic joke was that the distance between towns in that country could only be measured in kilotons. The two targets in East Germany and the one in Czechoslovakia were all far back away from West Germany. Whether this situation would last was a different matter but for now, nuclear war seemed to have skipped this country when common wisdom had always been that it would first start there.

Into Eastern Europe, the Americans launched Pershing-2 ballistic missiles and GLCM cruise missiles from mobile launchers at military sites in them. Zossen–Wünsdorf was wiped from the face of the earth while Sperenberg took a near-miss. Legnica was soon no more and neither was Milovice. A Soviet SAM unit in Bulgaria shot down the pair of GLCMs coming towards Gorna Malina to avert that particular nuclear strike. Down in the Middle East, the battleship USS Iowa joined one of her escorting missile-cruisers in firing nuclear-armed Tomahawks against Shayrat with complete destruction to there coming. No longer would MiGs & Sukhois from there be bombing US Marines fighting in Lebanon. Those launches against European targets came from American missile units currently operating from sites in Britain, France and Italy. The Pershing-2s had been based pre-war in West Germany but were now in France; the GLCMs were UK-& Italy-based ones that had been hiding in the English countryside and that of Sicily too since the war begun. Neither European leader was best pleased at this, France’s president especially, though the Italian PM was also dealing with the knowledge that his country had suffered a nuclear strike on his soil whereas the other two had not. The Americans had told them first, so there was that, but the notice was short and the launches were also being made no matter what. The situation was urgent and the Americans were going to launch those missiles from where they were based.

It had been five for six instead of six for six. Like with the Soviet attack, the Americans used several missiles (each with just the one warhead) to attack their targets yet had seen the Bulgarian attack averted by a good defence. It could be argued that they should have made eight attacks because that was what Ligachev had done yet the failure of two of the Soviet ones meant that Reagan made just the six. He did this to answer the nuclear attack with one made in return to match it. The aim was to show the Soviets that while they could strike at will, so would the United States. The limited nature of the reply, against military advice, was done not to escalate further too. Reagan wanted to end this. A return message over the Hotline was sent to this effect.

Across the world, the leaderships of many nations not already in secure and safe locations went to them now. Military forces of the warring powers were joined by those of the neutral ones, especially those nuclear armed ones, in going to the highest possible alert status. Everyone was waiting for what was going to happen next. Fingers were on triggers as prayers were said. No one wanted to see apocalypse follow this but the fear was there that it was just a moment or two away. It just wasn’t conceivable that nuclear use would stop after these exchanges.