TLIAFD: Peashooters against a Dreadnought

Peashooters against a Dreadnought


Introduction

In July 1996, Britain was attacked by the Alien race which struck elsewhere in the world too. The country came under assault with a massive loss of life suffered during the engagements with those who came from the unknown beyond the stars. Despite the final human victory during the short global conflict, for the UK to consider itself to rank among the victorious is in many ways regarded as a sick joke due to the utter destruction to the nation and the death toll incurred.

The fighting undertaken by the British Armed Forces as part of the war effort was in many ways almost the case of the use of a peashooters against a dreadnought.

Not even the radio episode called Independence Day UK

But nice to see a mini TL about the 1996 War James G,

PERICLES and the peashooters

Military command and control for the armed forces wasn’t completely destroyed during the opening strike against London. Portillo and the defence chiefs were killed when below the MOD and the fires raging out from Trafalgar Square did consume the headquarters complex at Northwood on the city’s edges too. Northwood was just inside the fifteen mile radius of destruction and its loss was just as grave as that of the command post underneath the MOD on Whitehall. However, there was the survival of other headquarters facilities for elements of the British Armed Forces which were far beyond London. Portillo had authorised the beginnings of Operation PERICLES a few hours before he died. This allowed for there to be a readiness made in case the Dreadnought over London had hostile intentions. That it certainly had. In the few hours after the destruction of the nation’s capital, PERICLES turned from a contingency plan into a reality. Two senior surviving members of the government, Ken Clarke and Stephen Dorrell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Health Secretary, were taken to RAF High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Clarke had been removed from London as a sort-of ‘designated survivor’ while Dorrell had been absent for other reasons when everyone else was killed. Clarke assumed the role of Prime Minister when he was assured by those in uniform that there was no chance that Major nor anyone else in the middle of London was alive. He and Dorrell, joined by a few Civil Service officials, agreed that a military counterattack needed to be made against the Dreadnought. It was still over London but the (correct) hypothesis was that it might move onwards to continue its reign of terror.

PERICLES was a plan for the RAF to make that counterattack. Elements of the US Air Force based in Britain joined in too: they had no contact from home and their commander assumed the worst. Fighter aircraft were to mass and make missile attacks against the Dreadnought with the intention of destroying it and bringing it down. Such thinking represented those in uniform as what to do with an airborne target such as the one above their nation which had just killed millions. As many aircraft as possible were given orders to arm up and get airborne. There was coordination so that the fighters wearing the markings of the RAF and the USAF would all come towards the Dreadnought at the same time from every direction. PERICLES was meant to be the greatest of all aerial victories against a helpless airborne opponent who had – at that point – shown no ability to resist such an attack made against it.

Jaguars and Tornados were sent towards it as well as F-15 Eagles. Those pilots involved had no idea about the shielding employed by the Dreadnought nor that it had its own onboard air power to counter them. Missiles were fired against the vessel with none of them making a successful strike. Faced with what was thought to be an electromagnetic defence, British & American pilots were given orders to go in close and use their guns. Before they could do that, out of the Dreadnought came those attack-fighters carried within: ‘Hornets’ would be what the RAF would later call them due to their attack behaviour when the Dreadnought came under threat. That first aerial engagement was a massacre. The Dreadnought was on the move, heading slowly in a northwestern direction, when it was attacked and the Hornets were first seen. Aircraft wreckages would litter the ground among the ruins of London as well as across Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Not a single Hornet was lost in action nor was the paint on the Dreadnought scratched. More than fifty RAF & USAF jets were downed though when engaged by the weapons carried by the Hornets were employed.

They might as well have used peashooters.


When the skies were cleared of those aircraft, the Hornets made a return to the Dreadnought and conducted a turnaround. Out they came again afterwards and this time not into early afternoon skies filled with jet fighters. Unopposed, they went on the offensive in one of the many Hornet Raids which the Dreadnought used its organic air power to strike out while it carried on with its own deadly tasks at the same time. In groups of either four, seven or eleven in each attack (the RAF could count them on radar screens but not understand the mathematical reasoning), the Hornets raided military bases across the East of England. They went after where many of those attacking RAF & USAF fighters had come from though also struck elsewhere. Last-ditch opposition was mounted against them yet, once again, without a single appreciable gain despite much heroism and all efforts expended.

Six airbases were raided by low-level attacks made using multiple passes by the Hornets employing their mounted weapons which caused air-feed fires. In Lincolnshire, they targeted RAF Coningsby and RAF Waddington. Tornado F3 interceptors flew from the former; out of the latter were based Sentry AEW1 airborne radar aircraft. These aircraft had been involved in the failed attacks against the Dreadnought that lunchtime and now their home bases were shot-up with aircraft attacked on the ground. RAF Coltishall and RAF Marham in Norfolk were on the attack list too. The Jaguar GR1s from Coltishall had been massacred when engaging Hornets earlier that day while the Tornado GR1s from Marham hadn’t been involved because they were principally strike aircraft. Marham got the attention of that group of eleven Hornets who did a tremendous amount of damage though including successfully targeting the hardened aircraft shelters inside which the Tornados sat. The reason for that was a matter of long-term planning with regard to the Alien belief that in the conquest stage of their war against humanity they would be facing these aircraft then when they brought their landing force into play. Down into Suffolk more Hornets went. They struck at RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall: where the Americans could be found. F-15s at Lakenheath and a variety of supporting aircraft in the form of airborne tankers & electronic warfare aircraft were at Mildenhall. Each of the half dozen airbases were thoroughly worked over.

Non-flying stations used by American forces based in Britain for military intelligence and national security electronic purposes also gained attention from the Hornets that afternoon. They launched assaults against RAF Chicksands in Bedfordshire, RAF Feltwell in Norfolk and RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire. Antenna array and satellite dishes were blasted to ruin. This was strategically-important infrastructure part of the global military network of the United States’ war machine which was lost so early in the conflict. It was all taken out in overt attacks from recognised attackers. That wasn’t the case with other strikes made though. Up in earth orbit had been seeded those Rocks from the Heavens. When the City Destroyers had come down from their Mother Ship, they had placed into orbit hundreds of rocks. A few of them had fallen ahead of the Main Attack against earth’s cities where they quietly knocked out global communications links. No longer with the element of surprise sought, more of them fell to earth following the elimination of more than three dozen of the world’s biggest population centres. Part of the rocks burnt up in earth’s atmosphere but the core of them – taken from planets far beyond humanity’s knowledge – remained intact and slammed into their targets. There was only kinetic energy used here rather than explosives yet the results were devasting. Of the ones which hit Britain on the war’s first day, the American facilities at RAF Fylingdales and RAF Menwith Hill were targeted by such destruction. These two locations in North Yorkshire were even more important to the United States in the strategic sense than the East of England sites but were likewise destroyed. RAF High Wycombe was hit by one of these giant rocks striking home with perfect accuracy, forming a crater and annihilating the military presence here for good. The trio of hits in Britain were coordinated with those against NORAD under Cheyenne Mountain, NATO’s military headquarters at SHAPE in Belgium as well as nuclear bunkers underneath Russia too.

Before it’s loss, the High Wycombe facility was a hive of activity with signals emissions being tracked by the Dreadnought and information was then relayed on to the Mother Ship from where the attack using one of the Rocks from the Heavens was directed. Among the hundred plus deaths which occurred in the Buckinghamshire countryside were those of Clarke and Dorrell, the two men trying to put together a new British Government in light of that morning’s decapitation strike. Meanwhile, onwards the Dreadnought kept on moving, still going in a northwestern direction away from London… towards Birmingham.

Hornets on the rampage

During its time over Birmingham, there was no resistance to the Dreadnought from either British or American aircraft. There remained combat aircraft available yet none saw action. The stunning losses incurred earlier that day – all for zero return – was a factor in that and so too were the devastating air attacks made by the Hornets towards many of the airbases from which those fighters had flown. However, the most important factor was the lack of command and control following the sudden demise of the headquarters staff (and the politicians too) at RAF High Wycombe. No orders came for anything like what was attempted around lunchtime to be repeated. Moreover, there were other elements of Britain’s armed forces still waiting upon their own orders too. They waited and waited. In the meantime, the Dreadnought send out its own aerial attackers while it moved away from Birmingham towards the next major population centre on the list for destruction.

The Hornets went on the rampage to the west that evening after striking out to the east earlier on. The results were just the same: complete success everywhere with zero effective opposition. The Royal Air Force was first in the firing line. The Hornets went and swept over the transport airheads at RAF Brize Norton and RAF Lyneham in the Thames Valley region. Big jets and large turboprops were caught on the ground. Base facilities and the runways came under fire too. A flight of Hornets raced towards the extensive RAF Fairford as well. That was a standby base for the USAF and while there were no aircraft there, the place was shot-up and engulfed in fire. Should the Americans have wanted to make use of it in the future, they would have been unable to. Boscombe Down, an airfield used by the MOD for experimental flights and the Empire Test School, was given the same treatment. Up on the Mother Ship far above Earth, detachments of the invasion force were planned to make landings in the South-Central area of England where these airbases were located so they were attacked first. In addition, the whole region was littered with garrisons for the British Army as well. Towards many of them the Hornets flew and they fired their weapons against them with impunity. Barracks’ across Hampshire, Wiltshire and the eastern side of Surrey were set alight.

The South Coast was home to Royal Navy facilities. At Portsmouth and at Plymouth’s Devonport, there were warships present when the Hornets appeared. Others had already set sail with orders to just get to sea and away from immediate danger. This all took time though and much of the Fleet was still tied alongside when the skies filled with attackers. Warships fired off missiles and their guns too, all finding that they couldn’t do anything at all to neither stop nor distract their attackers. Fourteen warships and four submarines tied alongside were wiped out. On that blackest of all days for the Royal Navy, those losses included the two aircraft carriers HMS Ark Royal and HMS Invincible. Portions of the US Navy’s Atlantic Fleet and the French Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet had already been struck at while tied alongside at (respectively) Norfolk and Toulon by more Hornets from City Destroyers over their homelands too: what was done here to Britain’s naval forces wasn’t a one off.

Moving away from military only targets, the rampaging Hornets struck further that evening. In Gloucestershire, GCHQ Cheltenham – a communications interception facility in the similar vein to America’s NSA at Fort Meade (also eliminated) – was set on fire when Hornets fired upon it with their mounted weapons. Government offices in the small city of Bath, down in Somerset, were attacked due to information gleamed through signal interception conducted by the Dreadnought that there was activity at them of a high-level political nature. The burning of a portion of the historic city did achieve the objective of killing several junior ministers from the shattered British Government who’d been brought to Bath for the purpose of trying to establish some form of political control. A pair of Hornet flights – seven each – also went after the bridges over the Severn Estuary. Two road links went over the river to connect Southern England to South Wales. They were full of civilian refugees fleeing English towns and cities fearful of being killed. The bridges were brought down resulting in hundreds upon hundreds of deaths and wiping out major transportation links that any British resistance on the ground to the planned follow-up invasion would likely need to support a fight against conquest.

The Hornets returned to the Dreadnought as it moved into final position against the third population centre to come under fire. When they did so, more of those Rocks from the Heavens fell again. Porton Down (right next to the burning Boscombe Down) was hit by one of those, blowing the place to smithereens. It was targeted because it was the home of Britain’s chemical & biological weapons research. Those who destroyed it feared a role it could have played against them. The nuclear research facility at Aldermaston was evacuated of personnel right after Porton Down was wiped out though no lump of rock from outer space fell upon it despite those fears. Nuclear weapons didn’t cause concern by those aiming to conquer Earth: what might have come out of Porton Down was something of worry though and so the threat was dealt with pre-emptively.

They been watching and planning for some time!

Interesting stuff: I'll read over it properly when I'm finished at work.

There is a radio drama about the UK's battle during Independence Day. It can be found on YouTube. Some of it is pretty cringe-worthy but parts of it are entertaining.

Clutching at straws

Up until the previous December, the headquarters for the senior RAF officer holding the post of Air Officer Scotland & Northern Ireland had been located at RAF Pitreavie Castle. By July 1996, the use was made of a bunker at RAF Leuchars following a defence review. In the aftermath of the destruction of the command post at RAF High Wycombe, control moved to Leuchars with regards to Britain’s air defences. That day when the Dreadnought was blasting cities and its Hornets were running riot saw plentiful confusion with patchy and often inaccurate information available to the RAF. Up at Leuchars, the threat posed was still misunderstood many hours after it had first been on full display. Using jet fighters against those seeking to destroy Britain was believed to be the only course of action available. Raids by Hornets striking military bases had focused on first eastern and then southwestern regions of England: the northern portions and also Scotland had been untouched. Numbers and capabilities, especially the range, of the Hornets was unknown giving the impression that there would be safety further north. Out of Leuchars came instructions for any and all RAF air units to evacuate from the South to go North and West too. These orders were sent via the fastest means of communication… radio signals all which the Dreadnought picked up. While gathering strength, the RAF opted to make another attack against the Dreadnought on the evening of July 3rd. Operation PERICLES wasn’t directly repeated in detail but the results would be the same: the peashooters would fail in spectacular and tragic fashion.

Information had come to Leuchars that the Luftwaffe had been active over German skies earlier that day where they were reported to have caused possibly disabling damage to the City Destroyer over their country which had laid waste to Berlin, Hamburg and then the Ruhr. It was said that Soviet-built MiG-29s (in Luftwaffe service following German reunification) had engaged Hornets coming out of one of the openings of City Destroyer #12 and fired missiles inside there. The electromagnetic shielding was reported to be inactive when Hornets departed & returned leaving a vulnerability which the Germans had exploited. This what the RAF were told. It didn’t tell the whole story and the results of that stroke of luck were overmagnified. It wasn’t an act of malice: just misunderstanding and too much hope. The RAF were clutching at straws in believing this and would pay the price.

RAF Tornado F3s were sent back into the fight. They flew from Scottish airbases with many of them having evacuated facilities in England during the day. Following the plan drawn up, several flights made themselves known by coming at the Dreadnought high and with their radars active. The Dreadnought was moving north at the time, closing in towards another British city, and from out of it came those Hornets. On cue, the Tornados rapidly turned around, lit their afterburners and ran back north as fast as they could. At that moment, two move flights of the RAF’s premier air defence aircraft, which had been flying low with radars off, climbed and raced towards the Dreadnought from each side. They intended to fire carried Skyflash and Sidewinder missiles right where their enemy was exposed at that key moment. Such a thing didn’t occur though. Right ahead of the Main Attack launched against Washington, the City Destroyer over the American capital had shown an air defence capability of its own before the presence of its Hornets had been revealed: it had shot down a helicopter using a mounted laser-type weapon. No one had told the RAF about this and the Dreadnought over Britain had yet to employ the many of those last-ditch defences which it carried against an attack. The Tornados were taken under fire from the Dreadnought itself with almost all of them were wiped out. Such a thing had happened to many of those German MiG-29s too and it had been them exploding, not the City Destroyer, which had been observed. The tragedy over the skies over the Ruhr was repeated above Staffordshire.


Another politician had been at that point taken by the military into safety with the view of giving the country some form of legitimate political guidance. The Scottish Secretary, Michael Forsyth, was in a bunker below HMNB Clyde: the nuclear submarine base at Faslane. Flag Officer Scotland & Northern Ireland (the Royal Navy’s equivalent to the RAF officer at Leuchars) joined him and they received information about the RAF’s attempted attack and also monitored the progress of the Dreadnought too.

They were told that there had been complete failure in engaging the immense vessel and that it was bearing down upon another city that night without delay. Manchester was to where it was heading and there was nothing that the RAF was able to do to stop it.