The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

The death toll could make World War II look tame...

I also think that things aren't going to go as planned...on both sides of the war...

38 – Allies, friends and volunteers


The United States was at war with Iraq. This had begun by the Iraqi attack against American soldiers deployed inside Saudi Arabia and therefore the official position of Washington was that America was yet another victim of an unprovoked act of aggression in the same vein as Iraq had undertaken against its neighbours. In relations with allies, the United States presented this position and wasn’t ready to countenance any expressed opinion that things were any other way. Washington expected those nations allied to America to not maintain friendly relations with Iraq following this nor aid Baghdad in any manner. The Americans weren’t demanding that their traditional allies to join them in this fight but they would like to see that done. There already was a Coalition and it was one which they wanted to grow. Governments were listened to when they expressed the reasons why they couldn’t join the fight: there was no effort to force them to enter the conflict. Yet… those who didn’t want any part of this weren’t being looked upon with any current favour in such a situation. This approach was causing unease in places but Washington believed that it was in the right here. Iraq was now using chemical weapons in the ongoing war – not against United States deployed forces though – and their other actions in occupied territories were widely known about. How could anyone defend Iraq at a time like this?

Many countries entered the Coalition but didn’t send any military forces to the Gulf. What they did was cut relations with Iraq, close diplomatic facilities and impose sanctions upon Iraq. However, for others, entering either the fighting directly or the alliance arrayed against Iraq wasn’t something that they believed it was in their own best interests to do. They were thinking of themselves here as they considered their own needs now and in the future. Turkey was prominent among these nations allied to the United States which didn’t join the Coalition.

Turkey shared a border with Iraq. Relations under neither Saddam nor Rashid had been friendly yet they hadn’t been hostile too. On either side of the Turkish-Iraqi border, both countries had a common enemy: the Kurds. The Iraqis had other smaller ethnic groups which they considered to be troublesome and whom Baghdad oppressed. It was the Kurdish population of Iraq which was the biggest problem for Iraq though and they shared the same issue with Turkey. For a long time, the Turks had been combatting their own ethnic Kurdish population. Ankara considered them terrorists and treated them as such. The Kurds were spread even further too, across from both countries into Iran too. If it was one thing that these trio of nations, none of which were friendly with the other, could unite behind it was to be against the Kurds. Before he sent his tanks southwards into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Rashid had been doing all that it could to subdue Iraqi Kurds and there had been coordination with Turkey on this.

Washington requested that Turkey act against Iraq when Rashid’s army killed American soldiers at Dhahran sparking the war between the United States and Turkey’s neighbour. Turkey was a NATO nation and one with whom the Americans had extensive military relations. There was no demand that they enter the fighting but they were asked to join the Coalition against Iraq. The response from Ankara was that they were willing to act as honest brokers to settle the American-Iraqi dispute, make sure that American military interests in Turkey were protected against any possible Iraqi actions and also work to make sure that the Iraqi ability to wage external warfare was crippled through making sure that sanctions worked & Iraq was isolated. An explanation was made by Turkey. They were unwilling to see Iraq smashed apart in war though because of the fear that Iraq could fall apart and negatively affect them. The Kurdish problems that Turkey was considered to be something manageable that they had with a stable Iraq: things would be very different, unpleasantly so, should Iraq be destroyed as many were calling for. What Ankara was willing to do was to see Iraq return its army back over its borders and for a peaceful solution. This didn’t go down well at all with the United States. The Americans wanted to make use of several military facilities inside Turkey, ones built for NATO use in a conflict with the Soviets, bases near to Iraq too, for air operations against Rashid’s regime when the situation moved to that stage. This was something else that Turkey, joined by many European governments, were not willing to see happen. There were Soviet forces inside Iraq and hitting them from Turkish soil, or anywhere else for that matter, wasn’t something that they were going to support.

Turkey stayed out of the Second Gulf War despite being one of America’s allies. There were many who were not happy at all with this, especially in Washington, but it was how the situation currently stood.


Relations between Iraq and Syria had been friendly for many years until Saddam came to power in Baghdad. Both regimes had been led by Ba’athists who promoted Arab socialism. There had been moves afoot to bring the two countries together as one back in 1979 when the presidents of each agreed to this. Saddam, then vice president of Iraq and in many ways the country’s real leader, had almost been cast aside into obscurity if that had occurred because Syria’s Assad would have taken over the combined leadership soon enough. Saddam had his July coup – he allowed his president, an old ally, to live but killed of many opponents real and imagined – and the relationship between the regimes was destroyed. The Ba’athist split was a big deal under Saddam. That wasn’t something which Rashid had wanted to see continue under his rule. He had been making strong efforts since he took power to restore friendship between Baghdad and Damascus… something encouraged by Moscow.

Iraq’s war with its neighbours and then the Americans, plus several Western countries as well, was a conflict which Syria was aiding Iraq in.

There was no open support because Assad didn’t want to see Syria actively fighting a conflict like that but he was willing to give help to Iraq because of the current friendly relations which he was keen to maintain. There were weapons transfers made, sharing of intelligence and Syria would work to undermine the effects of those sanctions. Syria too made attempts to sabotage the growing of the Coalition using diplomatic methods. What Assad was doing wasn’t something that the Americans and others were unaware of. Israeli intelligence discovered Syrian activities first and this was later confirmed by Western espionage efforts. How to deal with this was something still under discussion. Fighting Syria at a time like this wasn’t a popular line of thinking but there were other options on the table for consideration.

Why was Syria aiding Iraq? Damascus was in the same position as Turkey was: they didn’t want to see Iraq fall apart should the Americans and the Coalition be able to tear Rashid’s regime apart and bring down their neighbour. It could be argued that Syria could move in afterwards to take advantage yet Assad didn’t think that there would be much to gain there at all. He believed that instead it would destabilise his own regime and bring him down. The new leader in Moscow had added his input into this. He ‘agreed’ with Assad that the West couldn’t be allowed to take Iraq apart. Therefore, Syria would have Soviet support in aiding Iraq on terms of friendship. That support came with security assurances too.


Flocking to Iraq were volunteers to join the fight. These weren’t the same sort of ‘volunteers’ who were fighting the still ongoing conflict in nearby Afghanistan, not at all. Instead, nation states were sending military personnel to Iraq in an organised fashion so they could aid that country in its war.

The men dispatched were said to be volunteers but they were no such thing. From Eastern Bloc nations, there had long been military personnel of theirs present in Iraq through its war against Iran. They flew aircraft on combat missions, operated defensive equipment and provided technical support for complicated military wares. Real-life experience was gained in modern warfare by those sent to fight Saddam’s war against the Ayatollahs. Once that conflict ended, many went home. Not all of them though and now that number was increasing once more with this new war. When in Iraq, despite their apparent status as volunteers, these men from overseas were under orders. They were in the Iraqi command chain when they took part as operations. At the same time, they responded to official instructions from elsewhere too. Outside Baghdad, at a secretive communications site run by the Soviets, there was great input into the actions of these so-called volunteers who’d come here to fight for Iraq. Their activities were cleared though here first. Restrictions upon what they could do and what they couldn’t do were issued. Rashid, who’d started this war because he had no desire to be constrained by foreigners, had at first sought to stop such a thing just like he had kept American captives away from Soviet intelligence officers. But, as the war took its course and he needed more Soviet support, he gave in there too once more to demands from abroad.

As had been done with the foreign military observers who openly wore their own country’s uniform and there was no pretence that they were volunteers, these military personnel from across the Eastern Bloc playing the role of volunteers were supposed to be kept away from the frontlines. In Moscow, East Berlin, Warsaw, Prague and Sofia they didn’t want their people ending up as captives of the Coalition. The worst fears were that they be captured and would talk publicly rather than be killed: their lives were of little concern in the grand scheme of things.

Keeping them out of Coalition captivity worked well until the night following the Iraqi gas attack at Abqaiq. One of these volunteers, a Soviet Army officer of the rank of a major who specialised in chemical warfare, was taken prisoner after going much further forward than he was authorised to. The Omanis were in the thick of things once again and shot forward with a squadron of their tanks joined by a company of infantry in armoured personnel carriers – each vehicle sealed up in full NBC posture – on a raiding mission to hit the Iraqis. They came across several groups of the enemy and killed many while taking others captive. Those prisoners were grabbed by soldiers wearing their own NBC suits and once they had those they snatched inside their vehicles, they took off those men’s suits to establish their identity. The Caucasian among the prisoners stood out at once. He was separated from other POWs and fast transferred away from the anywhere near to the site of his capture. News of him being missing would go back to Moscow via Baghdad and there was a serious effort made to discover if he was dead, a prisoner or just elsewhere out of contact. The Coalition didn’t have to try to figure things out before reacting. They knew at once who they had in their possession and would be quicker off the mark than their enemies expected.

40 – Operation Black Marauder


Before the Iraqi use of nerve gas, there had been that urging from back home for CENTCOM to act, to ‘do something’, in the Arabian Peninsula to combat Iraq’s advances. Air and naval action wasn’t enough: those back in Washington at the Pentagon and the White House wanted a fight on the ground. After chemical weapons attacks, that clamour to strike only increased. CENTCOM’s commander General Crist was having his forces work flat out to get assembled and was confident he could bring significant ground forces into the fight come July 1st but the pressure from Washington was for a strike to be made before then. He gave the order for Operation Black Marauder to occur in the evening of June 28th.

US Army Rangers, supported by Green Berets and a specialised helicopter aviation unit, launched a mission to hit the Iraqis near to the Saudi port town of Jubail. A pair of assault companies from the 2/75 Rangers linked up with detachments from the 5th Special Forces Group who were already on the ground at several sites around Jubail, deep in occupied territory but near to the sea. The 160th Aviation Group provided the transport in the form of Chinooks as well as fire support with multiple Little Birds. They call came up from Bahrain with an earlier suggestion of using men from the 82nd Airborne Division in addition rejected ahead of the mission. Once the Americans were on the ground, they went into the attack. US Air Force and US Navy aircraft had already been active here and would be available to help those involved with Black Marauder get back out again, though when they were here this evening they were on their own. There had been a concern over friendly fire but there was too no need for air strikes during the operation because of what the Rangers and Green Berets were here to do.

General Al-Obaidi and his mobile command column had been repeatedly spotted in the Jubail area ahead of Black Marauder taking place. He was leading the Iraqi Southern Army (active in Saudi Arabia) and there had been repeated attempts by the Saudis first and then recently the Americans too to kill him in an air strike. He moved around a lot though with his headquarters defended by anti-air platforms. American signals intelligence efforts had been tasked to track him down for successful air strike but there had afterwards come a notion put to the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon to capture him and his staff instead. The intelligence boon from doing so was expected to be great with the overall strategic effects considered greater than just leaving him another corpse in the desert. There were many risks, real dangers, with launching a snatch mission over an air strike but it won approval from the top and CENTCOM was ordered to see it done. Crist had the men available and that pressure from home drove the mission forward. The Rangers were held ready to go for several days while the Green Berets followed-up leads coming from communications intercepts. Many of those waiting on Bahrain had believed that they would never get the order to go…

…but then the command column was spotted and tracked. The helicopters lifted off from Sheikh Isa Airbase, flew north first before turning back west to reach the coast and then inland. The Green Berets opened fire on the collection of armoured vehicles and brought it to a stop before the helicopters touched down in the desert. Out went the Rangers, charging into a fight with the Iraqi security detachment. Al-Obaidi was being moved away from the stalled column at the time as his aides feared that the field army commander was in the way of another air strike. What they didn’t expect was the Americans to have troops here. Several Little Birds, AH-6 & MH-6 light helicopters, were flying above the fighting below. They opened fire with machine guns and even rockets. More than two hundred elite light infantry soldiers, many of them who’d fought only a few years past in Grenada, were beneath them as Iraqi troops who put up a fight were overcome. Those Rangers were all adorned head-to-toe in full chemical warfare suits. Conditions inside them were uncomfortable to say the least. No gas alarms wailed but those men who took combat injuries with their NBC suits left torn open were terrified of exposure to gas just as much as the bullet wounds several of them took. The American casualties taken weren’t enough to stop them from achieving their mission though. Target #1 was captured, unwounded too. Other Iraqi captives in the form of headquarters staff were taken alive as well. Most of the security detachment was wiped out when they had fought well and bravely yet stood no chance when hit with an attack like this.

Al-Obaidi and senior staff identified by uniform rankings were soon pushed into the second Chinook outbound from the ambush site: the first one contained urgent medivac passengers. Other captives were bound and left a distance away from their vehicles. Plenty of those tracked and wheeled vehicles had taken battle damage yet all were examined by Rangers and Green Berets here for intelligence tasks. The captives were the first priority but the second were documents and any useful physical intelligence that could be pulled from them. While this was ongoing, the existing hurry was increased. Inbound were spotted an Iraqi tank column. A company of tanks were incoming at speed, alerted by an emergency message that the Americans hadn’t detected going out. A few of the Little Birds carried anti-tank weapons which hadn’t yet been used and these were fired off but the Iraqis kept on advancing. Black Marauder’s commander didn’t want to bring in an air strike because he worried over the accuracy of dropped bombs from high-speed jets. He evacuated his men to the rally sites instead once grenades were thrown inside the majority of the command vehicles. He also took a quick glance at the gathered Iraqis being left behind: what would their superiours do with them? That was their loss. His mission was to get his men out.

The Rangers and Green Berets included plenty of walking wounded among them. They carried bundles of intelligence material – how much of it would be really useful was something to be decided later – and were retreating in the face of the enemy though were hardly running away. They’d won here and everyone knew it. The helicopters were soon in the air and fast back out over the Persian Gulf on their way back to Bahrain. The Iraqi field commander was already there, a high-profile captive taken to be exploited for all that that was worth. Around Jubail, several flights of F-16s then went into action against the Iraqi tanks who came too late to save their commander but arrived just in time to face quite the severe air attack.

Good set of updates; congrats at reaching 50k words, James, with many more to come, of course...

Thank you.
Loads more in store!



Things have yet to get to that stage of intervention but they will not do nothing in the face of - what they consider - a Saudi humiliation of them.

   Ouch that is going to hurt the Iraqis and probably shock a lot of their other troops that learn about it. If I didn't know things were going to get a hell of a lot worse I would suspect that the destruction of this reinforcements as well as the stalling of their campaign with increasing losses and supply difficulties would make it the high water mark of the Iraqi invasion.