Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

[stevep]

That is devastating but a very high risk option as it invites US response. Especially given the size of the attack makes clear the Soviets are definitely totally involved. Even if most communications with subs and immediate control of a lot of the Minutemen are damaged/destroyed there is the danger that some subs especially, losing contact with the US or possibly hearing reports of some nuclear attacks will launch in the belief that its been an all out strike.

Do the Soviets use nuclear weapons against any other targets? Thinking mostly of Britain of course as we also have a nuclear deterrent and do they try and knock that out?

One point in that a ~20-25kton explosion is almost certainly to be a fission or boosted fission weapon rather than a thermonuclear one as those are much, much more powerful.

[lordbyron]

Just did two nukemaps on the Offutt and Ellsworth blasts. A 22-kiloton ground-burst nuke would destroy or damage a large part of Offutt and Bellevue, Nebraska, but wouldn't even cause broken windows in Omaha; OTOH, a large part of Bellevue would suffer lethal radiation poisoning, with Omaha getting enough to sicken people. Of course, take into account weather conditions, wind direction, etc.

Likewise, Rapid City wouldn't even suffer any damage from the 16-kiloton surface nuke at Ellsworth, though the latter would suffer massive damage...

Likewise, downtown Kansas City would suffer destruction from the 25-kiloton nuclear weapon in the downtown area and the rest would suffer damage and/or fallout effects, depending on where the bomb detonated...

Now, with the DC blasts, the casualties are horrific, so you got that pretty accurate. The Pentagon takes damage from the two DC bursts, but it is sturdily built, so Bentsen should be alive, depending on where he exactly is in the Pentagon...

If I were writing this attack, James G, I'd make the Offutt and Ellsworth blasts either sub-launched missiles, missiles from Cuba or, hell, even Mexico (just keep the Kansas City and Berbers Point blasts as is; of course, this is your story, and it's a damn good one, too)...

Waiting for more, of course...

Other than that, good update...

[lordroel]

Another epic updated James, deaths has come to America and it is enormous.

[Deleted]

Music to listen to while the apocalypse happens...



"Apocalypse" - from the Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome OST

[ingsoc75]

I think this song is more appropriate:

[lordroel]

I think this is a good song:

[James G]

May 1, 2018 22:11:33 GMT stevep said:

That is devastating but a very high risk option as it invites US response. Especially given the size of the attack makes clear the Soviets are definitely totally involved. Even if most communications with subs and immediate control of a lot of the Minutemen are damaged/destroyed there is the danger that some subs especially, losing contact with the US or possibly hearing reports of some nuclear attacks will launch in the belief that its been an all out strike.

Do the Soviets use nuclear weapons against any other targets? Thinking mostly of Britain of course as we also have a nuclear deterrent and do they try and knock that out?

One point in that a ~20-25kton explosion is almost certainly to be a fission or boosted fission weapon rather than a thermonuclear one as those are much, much more powerful.

The belief is that the US won't return fire. There is more to the attack than just this but this is the nuclear bit. There is more to be revealed when the HotLine messages come in. I'm writing that soon as possible.
Britain won't get the nuclear treatment but will face attack like other countries will do.

May 1, 2018 23:07:45 GMT lordbyron said:

Just did two nukemaps on the Offutt and Ellsworth blasts. A 22-kiloton ground-burst nuke would destroy or damage a large part of Offutt and Bellevue, Nebraska, but wouldn't even cause broken windows in Omaha; OTOH, a large part of Bellevue would suffer lethal radiation poisoning, with Omaha getting enough to sicken people. Of course, take into account weather conditions, wind direction, etc.

Likewise, Rapid City wouldn't even suffer any damage from the 16-kiloton surface nuke at Ellsworth, though the latter would suffer massive damage...

Likewise, downtown Kansas City would suffer destruction from the 25-kiloton nuclear weapon in the downtown area and the rest would suffer damage and/or fallout effects, depending on where the bomb detonated...

Now, with the DC blasts, the casualties are horrific, so you got that pretty accurate. The Pentagon takes damage from the two DC bursts, but it is sturdily built, so Bentsen should be alive, depending on where he exactly is in the Pentagon...

If I were writing this attack, James G, I'd make the Offutt and Ellsworth blasts either sub-launched missiles, missiles from Cuba or, hell, even Mexico (just keep the Kansas City and Berbers Point blasts as is; of course, this is your story, and it's a damn good one, too)...

Waiting for more, of course...

Other than that, good update...

There are several bits I need to work on here. I should have run nukemap to check on those.
Thank you for pointing this out; there are changes to that update coming.

May 2, 2018 3:11:01 GMT lordroel said:

Another epic updated James, deaths has come to America and it is enormous.

It could have been far worse.



I'm going to edit and repost the update (in an hour or so). There are things wrong which have been pointed out here and elsewhere. For one, the fired missiles work with 100% success and the warheads have 97% success. That doesn't play out well. Some other bits aren't really clear for readers either.

[lordroel]

May 2, 2018 16:37:29 GMT James G said:

It could have been far worse.

[/quote]
What could be worse than seeing some cities getting instant sunshine, being invaded perhaps at the same time.

[James G]

May 2, 2018 17:24:17 GMT lordroel said:

May 2, 2018 16:37:29 GMT James G said:

It could have been far worse.

What could be worse than seeing some cities getting instant sunshine, being invaded perhaps at the same time.[/quote]

What I meant was multi-megaton, city-obliteration on an industrial scale across the country where civilians are killed just to kill civilians. This isn't that.

[James G]

This is a repost from yesterday which has been edited.


(150)

17th September 1984:

Strategic Air Command (SAC) had their headquarters at Offutt AFB, located next to the town of Bellevue in Nebraska. This was in the middle of the North American continent, chosen many decades before as the ideal location due to how far away it was from the oceans. Offutt had once been the home of the Glenn L. Martin aircraft factory which had built all of those B-29 bombers in World War Two, including the two – Enola Gay and Bockscar – which had dropped the atom bombs on Japan at the end of that conflict. It was here where the first nuclear attack to open World War Three occurred. Bellevue was located against the edge of the airbase; the city of Omaha lay to the north. In both the town and the city, there were two family homes whose long-term owners were quiet couples who undertook uninteresting lives living here in the American Mid-West. They were people of no note. They were also GRU officers on long-term undercover assignment taking part in a charade that they were Americans whose identities had been stolen. Their primary mission was that of reconnaissance of Offutt up close; a secondary task had long been foreseen as well. The morning that the war began, the couple who lived in Omaha drove a rental van to the house in Bellevue. It was parked in the outside garage on the property and at half past ten (local time), all four GRU personnel drove away in a station wagon together. They got far away from Bellevue pretty quick and headed off towards a distant hiding place to await later instructions. They had left something behind in the van.

At exactly 11:00hrs Central Time, a thermonuclear bomb parked inside that garage in Bellevue detonated. It had a blast yield of thirty-five kilotons. It was a ground burst and a lot more destruction could have been done had it been exploded in the sky. Regardless, it was on the ground and on the edge of the base perimeter of Offutt. There was a heck of a lot of activity going on there at the moment of detonation with aircraft in the middle of an emergency deployment to get them airborne. Offutt wasn’t home to bombers like it used to be but rather stand-off strategic electronic reconnaissance aircraft and also specialist SAC command-&-control aircraft. One of them was taking off when the bomb exploded, heading into the sky with SAC’s commanding general aboard. There was already one identical aircraft up on the Looking Glass mission (twenty-four hours a day there always was one airborne) with this one set to join it ahead of others. That wasn’t to be. The aircraft was only a few feet off the ground when it was obliterated like those still on the runways and taxiways. The fireball, the thermal radiation and then the blast wave destroyed Offutt and killed almost everyone present above ground… those who were alive would wish that they weren’t. There was a bunker beneath the base, one which had been sealed minutes beforehand. Those inside there escaped the blast but the ground burst still affected them as the bunker was hit with an earthquake and external access blocked afterwards. Bellevue was destroyed in the explosion as well. Thousands were killed there with civilians – men, women and children – caught first by the nuclear detonation and then what came afterwards. Up in Omaha, the explosion next to Offutt did very little initial damage to that city due to the distance and the fact that it exploded on the surface. However, weakened blast wave was followed by fallout which would soon come as the wind that morning was blowing towards Omaha and it carried a lot of radiation that way pretty fast. Tens of thousands would die there too and their deaths would be rather horrible.

Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota was hit milliseconds later by another ground burst explosion where a nuclear bomb was delivered by unconventional means. The SAC facility here near to the famous Black Hills had bombers and more of those aircraft outfitted for the Looking Glass mission: aircraft which could coordinate nuclear warfare and also command-launch ICBMs from silos on the ground below. These were the targets, everything else – almost the entire fleet of SAC’s B-1A bombers and the service personnel who were stationed at Ellsworth – were secondary. Again, a vehicle (this time a truck) was parked just outside the base perimeter though on the street rather than on private property. The GRU officer who left it parked there did so with ten minutes to spare before detonation and jumped on the back of a motorcycle which had pulled up alongside him, one driven by a comrade. The two of them sped away but the driver was careless and just minutes later he lost control of the motorbike when avoiding a truck as he approached the interstate junction: he knew what he was fleeing from and should have been more careful. The bomber himself was killed and the driver was left with horrible injuries. A passing motorist stopped to help and while sickened by what she saw when it came to a motorcyclist who had lost the lower half of a leg, she tried to help him. That man shouted beneath his helmet in a language which the motorist didn’t understand even if she could have heard it. Then came the detonation. This bomb was smaller, at twenty kilotons of destructive might, but it did its job. It was perfectly-sited on an open street without security and, like the Offutt bomb, built on American soil from components smuggled in just for this purpose. Three of the B-1s had gotten away but the others along with those Looking Glass aircraft were still getting ready to fly when the bomb went off and then the blast wave followed that. Rapid City was nearby, off to the southwest, and there was only little damage done there and a few lives lost. Luckily, the winds were blowing the other way and directed fallout through rural areas rather than towards that urban location.

NAS Barbers Point on Oahu, just west of Honolulu, was hit by yet another similar blast. This was again a base for aircraft that would take part in providing airborne control during a nuclear war. It was a US Navy facility with many aircraft on the TACAMO mission assigned there. A submarine had come close overnight and delivered a six-man team with their own underwater vehicle which they (while in Scuba gear) rode to a nearby beach and hid an explosive device. That was moved forward by those GRU men half an hour before the bomb’s detonation and this was hard physical work. They were spotted by a civilian and took his life quickly. Nonetheless, the bomb wasn’t eventually placed in the exact spot it was meant to be. Patrol activity around the base perimeter came close to detecting the team of bombers. They covered the bomb with sand and made a dash for it, heading back to the water’s edge to get far away from here. When the bomb went off, detonating with the force of twenty kilotons, it’s planned destructive force was negatively affected by the wrong positioning with local geography taking a toll on weapons effects. It was placed too short of the target. The attack on Barbers Point was a last-minute addition to the whole attack. A missile would have done a far better job. The base wasn’t knocked out of action as fully as planned. What TACAMO aircraft were out in the open were hit by the blast wave but two of those getting airborne when DEFCON 2 had gone into force got away clean. Should directed, they would control submarines launching missiles in retaliation from the safety of the sky. Of course, the plan hadn’t been for there to be an alert taking place when the bomb went off and all aircraft should have been eliminated on the ground but that was beside the point: the mission hadn’t been done perfect to plan.


Kansas City in Missouri wasn’t a military target like those three airbases. It was where the vice president was supposed to be at the moment of the coordinated attack taking place. Just in case there were last-minute changes in his schedule – which the GRU had access to when they shouldn’t have had – the bomb in Kansas City was joined by others waiting in St Louis (where he was earlier that morning) and in Milwaukee (his next stop). The other two didn’t detonate at 11am – it was midday in Washington – but the Kansas City one did. The GRU team who left a twenty kiloton bomb in a vehicle near to the building where he was to host a speaking event were already long gone and did what they were told in setting a timer and getting clear. John Glenn had already left the airport to get clear himself, running from something he didn’t know was coming, but the bomb still went off.

Downtown Kansas City was ground zero for this blast, on the edge of the Kansas-Missouri state line. It was an urban area with civilians all around. When the bomb exploded in the late morning hour, the city was full of those who lived and worked there, plus those visiting the unfortunate city. No warning had come for anyone to take any form of shelter. All of a sudden there was a flash and that was the end of their lives. Away from where the fireball died out, the blast wave followed and that spread outwards. Then came the fallout to follow all of that. Kansas City would be left devastated but there were thousands upon thousands of survivors who weren’t killed outright. They would die soon enough though. As to the actual detonation site, below the boiling mushroom cloud which rose up into the morning sky, a crater was formed to be soon filled with water from the Missouri River.


Washington and the wider area around the District of Columbia were targeted with six missiles, not people-placed bombs. These came from a Tupolev-95MS6 bomber, a Bear to NATO, which had left Cuba some time before and flew in a course heading northeast over the North Atlantic. The Bear flights were regular where those huge Soviet aircraft headed back-and-forth to the Soviet Union from Cuba. Early in that aircraft’s flight, it had attracted the attention of a pair of F-15s from out of Florida which had done a fly-by. The aircraft was not carrying any external weapons and acting innocent. Intimidation was carried out by the US Air Force pilots but they didn’t manage to gain any reaction. They let the Bear fly onwards, home to Mother Russia. Later on, when almost two thousand miles away from Washington, six cruise missiles fell from the internal bomb bay. The weapons carried hadn’t been seen by those fighter pilots and the aircraft wasn’t on any sort of threatening course. The Bear carried onwards, leaving the deployed missiles to fly their own course heading in a different direction. These were Kh-55 cruise missiles: what NATO deemed ‘AS-15 Kent’. They flew low, undetected and unmolested over the water and towards the United States. No radar picked them up and no sirens announced their arrival.

Each AS-15 had a warhead size of two hundred kilotons: ten times the size of those bombs elsewhere. They were fused for airborne detonation at optimal altitude to cause the most destruction. One exploded above Andrews AFB in Maryland where below them there was a converging of senior politicians in the presidential line of succession on their way to join aircraft to take them away to safety. Some of those people were already on the ground, others in helicopters or cars racing towards Andrews. The missile got there first. Another AS-15 was targeted against NAS Patuxent River, also in Maryland and where more US Navy TACAMO aircraft were located and were being scrambled from at the moment the nuclear explosion occurred above. That AS-15 exploded off-target, above Chesapeake Bay, yet did enough damage to the US Navy aircraft at Patuxent River to achieve enough success. Missile #3 struck in Virginia and exploded in the sky above the CIA headquarters at Langley. The facility below was wiped off the face of the earth along with all of those at work there. The final three AS-15s were set to explode in the sky above Washington. They were targeted upon Capitol Hill, the historic Navy Yard and the White House. One of those had dropped into the ocean long before reaching Washington; there other pair would be rated as successful blasts. Congress didn’t take a direct hit but was close enough to the devastation caused by the other two and so all of those elected representatives inside at the time who hadn’t been evacuated to their deaths at Andrews were killed on Capitol Hill instead. As to the White House, set on fire by the British in the War of 1812, the Soviet missile obliterated it and those inside & on the grounds such as President Edward (Ted) M. Kennedy.

The urban area of Washington, with major nuclear explosions taking place all around, was all secondary to the planners of this missile strike. Once again, it was full of civilians. None of them were given any warning at all of what was coming to kill them. The ‘lucky’ died instantly; others wouldn’t be so fortunate to suffer such a quick and painless end to their lives.


Death and destruction associated with the three blasts at airbases in the Mid-West & Hawaii, what happened in Kansas City and the explosions in & around Washington paled in comparison to the horror which occurred in North Dakota. Twenty missiles were fired northwards from Mexico. These were RSD-10s, better known as SS-20 Sabres. Each carried a trio of warheads which had the power one hundred and twenty-five kilotons of explosive force. Forty-five warheads were fused for ground burst and fifteen for airburst. One missile didn’t get off the ground; another didn’t function properly in the mid-stage of its flight. As to the warheads – the remaining fifty-four – another three didn’t detonate. Regardless, fifty-one still exploded above or near to their targets. Minot AFB was beneath by a pair of those explosions (a wing of B-52s flew from there) with the other targets being the buried Launch Control Facilities (LCFs) for the ICBMs. Each LCF controlled ten Minutemen ICBMs in individual silos.

The plan was for three warheads from each missile body to be spread out with ground bursts on different LCFs and airbursts as well. A lot of development work on the SS-20 had been done in recent years when they were removed from Eastern Europe following Kennedy’s diplomatic coup and that had improved their accuracy a great deal. These missiles and their launch vehicles had entered Mexico last month and been hidden in the mountains far inside that country. From their position, they had all of the United States mainland within range. Concealment measures had been used on the launch vehicles up close but the best concealment for them was that no one was looking for them. Unfortunate Mexican nationals who had come near, not knowing what they were seeing (or not seeing as few came very close) were killed on the spot just in case there was a chance, the smallest of chances, they did talk to someone who might understand what was hidden so close to America’s borders. There was a body count on the SS-20s before they were even fired.

The SS-20s came from Mexico on a ballistic trajectory, through a gap in United States radar and satellite coverage. The BMEWS system and the supporting PAVE PAWS network each didn’t cover the majority of Mexico. Satellites positioned above the Eurasian landmass looking downwards didn’t see their launch ever so far away. There was one line of defence facing southwards, that being the US Navy’s Space Fence system. This was there to monitor anything in orbit but also fed information to NORAD. Soviet commandos inside New Mexico at Elephant Butte used small (non-nuclear) explosive charges to knock that facility’s capability to report information on the incoming missiles; they were still seen though by the radar array pointed upwards but no warning which came pre-detonation to Cheyenne Mountain. However, when the blasts went off, sensors nationwide picked up the four dozen plus nuclear detonations across the western side of North Dakota on the ground and in the sky. Initial casualties on the ground would be low as these were rural areas struck. That would change once the fallout kicked-in: much radioactive debris was sent into the sky from the ground bursts targeted on those LCFs buried beneath the ground. The Mid-West and parts of nearby Canada would see death on a biblical scale fast coming their way.

[lukedalton]

chilling, i image that the USA will respond in kind at least at theatre level before both side decide keep things conventional (even in AH.com, the lack of escalation has always been a big narrative block that at the end we had to handwave)
In Europe even if not involved a massive spyhunt will happen for any terrorist/hardleftsupporter/possible GRU or KGB agents and anyone unlucky to be caught will get a treatment that will make look what the Al Quaeda agents had get IRL as a picnic as everybody will be terrified of possible nuclear terrorism

[lordroel]

May 2, 2018 18:54:34 GMT lukedalton said:

chilling, i image that the USA will respond in kind at least at theatre level before both side decide keep things conventional (even in AH.com, the lack of escalation has always been a big narrative block that at the end we had to handwave)
In Europe even if not involved a massive spyhunt will happen for any terrorist/hardleftsupporter/possible GRU or KGB agents and anyone unlucky to be caught will get a treatment that will make look what the Al Quaeda agents had get IRL as a picnic as everybody will be terrified of possible nuclear terrorism

Well if James foolws the Red Dawn clasic movie then both sides will not go full nuclear, as the Colonel explained in the movie, the Soviets want to take the US in one piece so they won't use more nukes, and the US won't either on their own soil, which is why the war has been mostly limited to conventional weapons

[James G]

May 2, 2018 18:54:34 GMT lukedalton said:

chilling, i image that the USA will respond in kind at least at theatre level before both side decide keep things conventional (even in AH.com, the lack of escalation has always been a big narrative block that at the end we had to handwave)
In Europe even if not involved a massive spyhunt will happen for any terrorist/hardleftsupporter/possible GRU or KGB agents and anyone unlucky to be caught will get a treatment that will make look what the Al Quaeda agents had get IRL as a picnic as everybody will be terrified of possible nuclear terrorism

The Americans will fire back. I am not going to go down the route of handwaving anything but try to explain. Not everyone will agree but I will try my best to do what I can. This is only fiction though.
Worldwide recriminations will come certainly once the how with some of those bombs is later revealed.

May 2, 2018 19:01:44 GMT lordroel said:

Well if James foolws the Red Dawn clasic movie then both sides will not go full nuclear, as the Colonel explained in the movie, the Soviets want to take the US in one piece so they won't use more nukes, and the US won't either on their own soil, which is why the war has been mostly limited to conventional weapons

I am following the movie and how I interpret that is that the US returned fire. The war goes conventional in the US. A factor is fallout which both sides suffer and also that reason explained in the film. Again, not everyone will concur with that line of reasoning: this I know.

[James G]

(151)

17th September 1984:

That commando team at Elephant Butte weren’t alone when they made military attacks just before and just after the war commenced with those many nuclear detonations. Across wide areas of the country, Soviet Spetsnaz – special forces under GRU control – went into action undertaking small-scale strikes. They were joined by Cuban and Nicaraguan commandos as well. These men were expendable to some though not to others. None of them were wasted and while often they were sent on what could be considered suicide missions, there was always the plan – even if it was forlorn hope – that they would be able to do what they had to and then escape. Rally points post-attack and hiding spots were pre-selected and at many there were the support teams in-place to operate them. Hidden sites were located away from the targets where the commandos hit. They were either to wait for the invading armies to show up or undertake follow-up missions. First though, they had to survive their initial actions.

Military communications sites were struck all through Alaska, the West Coast, the South-West and the Mid-West. Detachments of commandos assaulted pre-scouted targets. They carried satchel charges for demolition along with their personal weapons too. Not all of these locations which they moved against had American military personnel around them and those that did were only just getting a general alert when all of a sudden armed assaults came. At other places, there was no one for the commandos to kill but still explosive charges to be placed. The mission planners preferred unguarded sites which were out of the way. What was targeted to be blown up were what the Americans would call ‘nodes’: where communications converged. Radio antenna for broadcast & relay and telephone switching stations were hit. Silence in communication where dispersed elements of the US Armed Forces would fail to talk to each to exchange information was the goal of this. Some strikes had success and others not so much.

Other commandos struck at multiple US Air Force bases also in the western half of the country. SAC facilities were where they were sent against, to hit their bombers on the ground before they could get into the sky. Carswell AFB and Dyess AFB in Texas were attacked; so too was Barksdale AFB in neighbouring Louisiana. Castle AFB in California, Eaker AFB in Oklahoma and Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan were also the scenes of commando raids. At all six, a whole lot of chaos and destruction was caused. Heavy weapons such as mortars and RPGs were used to destroy aircraft on the ground while shoulder-mounted SAMs were fired against aircraft being flushed from where they were exposed when not in the sky. Attacks were mounted from inside and outside of the bases; the latter when men had got through the perimeter fences. Deaths occurred as gunfire ripped through each. SAC had US Air Force security police units who had just received emergency alerts and they were trained to repel such attacks. Whether they actually really expected something like this was something else. The commandos had mixed results. The assaults on Dyess and Wurtsmith were big successes; Barksdale was an abject failure. Elsewhere, the results were mixed. B-52s were shot up and so too a lot of buildings. Personnel were killed including flight crews. Gunfire came back the other way though, cutting down the commandos during their attacks and when they withdrew. At Eaker, the Nicaraguans there were pinned down and made a last stand while all around them B-52s were alight. Soviet commandos at Castle were detected during their initial clandestine entry and responded with a fierce attack against the full might of the security detachment which came down upon them; they had to make a run for it after shooting up some aircraft but being unable to get more. Those commandos which could, withdrew afterwards and headed to their rally points. Many others died at the airbases which they attacked. Flight operations at the five sites apart from Barksdale – the Cuban team was killed to a man through pure bad luck and didn’t hit a single aircraft – were halted for varying lengths of time when the B-52s not shot-up or blown up were unable to get airborne until debris was cleared and the last of the attackers rooted-out. Major efforts were underway to get these bombers in the sky but temporary disruption of flight operations, at such a crucial time, occurred on a wide scale.


The commandos attacked when at the same time pathfinders arrived. The Soviet-led attack on the United States included an invasion and for that to proceed as planned, those taking part needed to have the way opened for them. Pathfinders come by air, sea and land. They would be followed by bigger forces making their way in once Red Star got fully underway.

Covert means were used to get those pathfinders to secure the chosen landing sites for those following behind them. Arrivals of armed foreign invaders took place in the Alaska and five CONUS states. These were small detachments of Soviets, Cubans and Nicaraguans used once again for these missions. Their task wasn’t to strike out and attack in noisy assaults but rather make entry quietly. What opposition was encountered was dealt with though there wasn’t much of that in the selected locations. Aircraft on charted commercial flights air-dropped some pathfinders but also made landings to unload men & equipment as well. Submarines and small boats delivered others along the coast who either swam ashore or were deposited at lonely jetties. On foot and in light vehicles, there were pathfinders who went into the United States via that method of entry as well. Securing the landing sites for follow-on forces meant eliminating any opposition found quickly but more-importantly establishing communication on the ground for those others in greater number on their way. Radio beacons were set and landing sites highlighted with infrared reflectors. Local communications were cut to deny word getting out once the main arrivals took place. Overwatch positions were then reached by snipers to keep watch less something go wrong.

Soviet pathfinders arrived in Alaska with entry made in many isolated coastal spots. There were Cubans established in California’s Imperial Valley and more near to the California-Arizona state line. Nicaraguans were inside southern & southeastern Arizona. New Mexico saw Soviets arrive in the centre of that state and Cubans were to the south of them across the US-Mexican border area. More Cubans and Nicaraguans were in south-central Colorado. Through Texas, along the border, but also the Gulf Coast too, further Soviet and Cuban pathfinders were present. The way was being held open. There had been shooting incidents and not everything had gone to plan with navigation not always perfect and also shooting incidents taking place. General success had been achieved regardless of hiccups. This had been because each location was as isolated as possible and free of as much military or civilian presence as possible. What was needed though was the arrival of the invading forces. The pathfinders were few in number and exposed; should they be properly detected, they wouldn’t be able to hold. The encoded, burst radio transmission messages were going out for the first invaders to start arriving where the pathfinders were waiting for them… and the Americans certainly were unawares.

[James G]

(152)

17th September 1984:

Glenn was alive and so too was Bentsen. The vice president had gotten away from Kansas City while the secretary of defence was deep inside the Pentagon. Much of the building around Bentsen had suffered serious damage but it was still standing. He was inside the sealed NMCC and ‘the tank’ kept him and those with him alive yet others weren’t so fortunate to be protected against the radiation coming from the twin nuclear blasts across the Potomac in Washington. Glenn’s aircraft was above Missouri and was no longer deemed Air Force Two. Within minutes of Bentsen realising that Washington had been hit and with NORAD adding further confirmation of that, Glenn took the oath of office where he assumed the presidency. He was sworn in as the nation’s fortieth president by one of the dignitaries who’d been with him going to Kansas City: there was a circuit court judge aboard who, as the law said, was therefore a notary public and able to undertake that act. What was now Air Force One was a VC-137A aircraft: not a VC-137C which was usually Air Force One or even a specialist E-4. There were secure communications aboard but this aircraft didn’t have all of the capabilities for communications like those other aircraft did. Those had all be destroyed on the ground at Andrews and Offutt. It would have to do though.

All sorts of partial, incomplete information was coming into both the secretary of defence and the new president following the nuclear attacks. NORAD confirmed multiple nuclear attacks though with no clear indication yet of methods of delivery for those bombs which had gone off. Nor was there either much concrete information about the actual blasts themselves. This was all taking time to gather and then be passed onwards. Time wasn’t what was available. Glenn needed information that couldn’t yet be got to him so that he could act. The country was under attack and he was the commander-in-chief. An open radio channel remained open between the president’s aircraft and the Pentagon and Bentsen listened to the determination in Glenn’s voice when he said that now was the time to strike back against those who had attacked the country like this. Only a fool wouldn’t think that this wasn’t the work of the Soviet Union. There was what Israel’s prime minister had said right before the nuclear blasts happened but, more than that, there was no other country that could have done this. No missile tracks had been spotted and no bombers had been detected on radar as coming in. Still, who else could have done this? It was the Soviets. Bentsen and Glenn were both in agreement that this attack couldn’t go unanswered.

Then a message came into the NMCC on the Moscow-Washington Hot-Line.


The Hot-Line wasn’t a red telephone beloved of fiction. Neither was it a telephone connection either. The link between the capitals of the two superpowers had teleprinters at either end. It was old-fashioned but it reliable. Every hour of every day, a test message went one way or the other across the Hot-Line. The USSR-to-USA test message which should have come at midday hadn’t been sent. One came at eleven minutes past the hour though and this time it wasn’t passages from Chekhov.

It was addressed to ‘President Bentsen’. In an instant, it became clear why the Pentagon hadn’t been targeted by whatever other weapons had been employed in the nuclear attack against the DC area. General Secretary Ustinov’s name was on the communique which came from the Soviet Union. It informed the man whom the Soviets believed to be Kennedy’s replacement – they had no reason to believe they hadn’t killed Glenn in Kansas City – that the Soviet Union had launched a ‘pre-emptive military strike’. This had been done, the message said, to avoid an attack which the Soviet Union ‘was well aware’ that the United States was to launch against them. The Soviet strike using ‘special weapons’ had ‘only’ seen ‘military and political targets’ struck, not pure civilian ones. There would be no further strikes ‘at this time’ using those special weapons. It was ‘regretful’ that this had been done. However, the Soviet Union felt this ‘necessary’. Ustinov requested that Bentsen reply before things ‘went further’ than they already had: there was ‘much’ for them to talk about ‘as soon as possible’.

Glenn and Bentsen discussed this. The two of them were without any other surviving senior officials and high-level advisers but there was enough of an understanding between them following this message from Ustinov. Both reaffirmed that the attack mustn’t go unanswered. The Soviets had just confirmed their responsibility. They had hurt the ability of the United States when it came to command-&-control of nuclear forces, but the blow hadn’t been fatal. Fighting a drawn-out nuclear war would be difficult to do yet there was still the capability to launch a counterattack at this time with what was left. Should there come a second Soviet attack, fixed locations like the Pentagon, NORAD and elsewhere would likely be targeted but for now they were operational. Glenn told Bentsen that by hitting back straight away, that second attack should be deterred. There must be an expectation in Moscow – or wherever Ustinov had run to – that by getting Bentsen talking, he wouldn’t return fire. A counter-strike would be launched instead. Then, only then, would that Hot-Line message be answered and it wouldn’t be one which Ustinov was probably expecting. As a decision was made on how exactly to retaliate, further information was coming in. There were saboteur strikes taking place nationwide with SAC bases coming under assault and other armed raids going on. That was important for it delayed SAC getting its B-52s in the air... but as Glenn said, that was why the United States had a nuclear triad. In addition, the US Navy had got through a message to Cheyenne Mountain, using back-up links, which pointed to the missile field attack in North Dakota having been undertaken by missiles which had come out of Mexico. That news, which Bentsen wanted confirmed first, quickly changed the draft plan.

Twenty-five minutes after the Soviet nuclear attack, the United States responded with one of their own. They were ready beforehand but a delay had been caused by getting that confirmation on Mexico being used to host Soviet missiles which had struck the United States. Another delay had been incurred due to the drafting of a response which would go over the Hot-Line to Ustinov. Finally, once everything was ready, President Glenn, not ‘President Bentsen’, sent the first of two replies to Ustinov and the Soviet Union. The second would be delivered to a teleprinter in Moscow; the first would come by thermonuclear means.