Soviet Domination - STORY ONLY thread[{locked}]

[James G]

Early August 1984:

For a successful lie to work, to be believed and to bring about the desired intent, there is much that can be done to assist in that lie. Tell it big, is one: ‘he bigger lie, the more it will be believed’ as said by Goebbels. Mixing bits of truth in with the lie is something else that can be done for when the false bits of the lie are denied, the true bits thrown in will be admitted to therefore causing doubt among those who heard all or part of the lie. Get someone else to tell the lie is another successful route to go down; even better, someone who actually believes it. Yet another method of telling lies is to choose your initial audience well because lies are best told to those who want to believe them. Professional liars, those who do this for a living such as spies (maybe politicians too), understand these basics. They don’t always work and lies aren’t always believed, but when they do, they work well.

The KGB began the process of revealing the existence of stay-behind networks across Western Europe. What was revealed was a lot, a mix of truths & falsehood, through those who’d naturally be opposed to such a thing and to those who’d be aghast. The big lie wasn’t that the stay-behind networks were real, because they were, just what they were there for. Across NATO countries but also non-aligned ones, there had come the organisation post-WW2 of a secret set of preparations made for resistance following a Soviet invasion of those countries. This was done country-specific and set up with the knowledge of some governments at the time though not that of other governments. Over time, the networks became more and more secret. They were to launch a terror campaign in the event of an occupation and that wouldn’t just include occupiers but collaborators within too. There was also the intention that if any of the countries in which there was a stay-behind network had a change of government to a communist one without war and invasion, there would be resistance as well. People were recruited to the networks and weapons were stored. Training was done overseas and this took place in Britain due to the involvement of MI-6 alongside the CIA in overseeing the whole thing. Over the years, the individual networks across the many countries had seen incidents occur with some members of the secretive groups becoming involved in violent events and there also being the use of those hidden weapons for purposes not intended. Not all of the networks were ready to do as tasked should the worst occur and Soviet tanks roll in while others were far too ready and were engaging in what were terrorist actions using their stay-behind role when there was no actual mission for them. Certain governments in 1984 knew all about what was prepared while others didn’t. The KGB was aware. They didn’t know all the details and would have been surprised if they did, but they knew enough. Stories started to be told to those willing to listen of this terror network waiting to be unleashed in times of tension or war: the tension bit was hyped up especially. Links were revealed with criminal acts in the past and extremist political groups. Accusations were made that certain people knew about the stay-behind networks and had kept that secret. Rather than everything coming out at once, there was the drip-drip effect to keep the story going. Some outrageous lies were told yet among them oftentimes the truth came out as well. In three countries across Western Europe, two in NATO and one not, where the revelations were made there was quite the political drama.

It began in Italy. The network there was named Gladio. Those involved with Gladio had been behind many terrorist atrocities, the revelations told, including bombings and assassinations. Small media outlets revealed the news with solid information sent to some and good leads given to others for them to find out more. Most of the allegations made in Italy were true with only a few falsehoods added in. The latter were political ones to do with deaths over the years where the work of the secretive network was alleged to have been behind that. Members names were revealed, weapons dumps pinpointed and previous cover-ups exposed. The KGB manipulated things beyond that though, linking all activities where right-wing terrorist attacks – real ones and the ones which weren’t – all to the CIA. They went a bit far with that and lost the belief of some of those who might have believed mostly truth and a few of the lies. Others swallowed the lies hook, line & sinker: those who wanted to believe, did so. Beyond the smaller sections of the Italian media, questions over what this Gladio was all about moved to the bigger parts. Politicians had questions to ask. The matter turned rather serious after a week. It was the cover-up that was looked at, not the actual events themselves.

Belgium had its own Gladio scandal. The network in Belgium was actually named SDRA8 but the name Gladio stuck after Italy. Again, there were lies added into the truth. Right-wing terror groups, some thoroughly nasty people who engaged in criminality as well as committing acts of terror, were exposed for their Gladio links. Others were falsely named to be part of the same thing. They were accused of subverting democracy and working with the CIA to do that. There had been some murders in the past few years which were now wholly linked to these Belgians working for the interests of a foreign country. Other deaths were called murders and linked to them too. Unlike in Italy, the Belgian government didn’t react strongly. There was more knowledge present that the SDRA8 was in-place with more involvement of the Belgian security services. The media were better controlled as well and weren’t allowed to run riot with as many lies as they would have liked. Belgians weren’t up in arms at such a thing as they were told about. Still, investigations were launched and following the initial spurt of activity, more serious looks were made at what had been going on in Belgium through the past several decades.

Spain was the third country where the Gladio revelations were made. Under the rule of Franco, a stay-behind network had been established in the Spanish mainland and its external islands. Spain was still outside NATO but there had been a fertile breeding ground for such a hidden organisation should the Soviets ever come or Spain should ‘fall to the communists’. Spain was currently led by a Socialist government with parliamentary assistance from the Communists. Neither political party were in anyway Soviet-friendly but there had been a backlash among certain Spaniards that the country had gone they way they had always feared. Through last year and into this one, there had been small but lethal terrorist outrages across the country. In the revelations made by the KGB using proxies, these were all linked to the stay-behind network. Furthermore, there were allegations made that the Gladio attacks were staged with the help of the Americans from their military bases in Spain. Some of these were being withdrawn, others were supposed to stay for use by the US Air Force and the US Navy. While the government was still deciding what to do – and not believing the lies about the links to Rota and Torrejón – certain domestic protest groups did. There were marches organised and some violence occurred, especially outside the entrance to the airbase near Madrid. US Air Force personnel at Torrejón stayed right out of the way and let the Spanish deal with that: orders from back home were to not get involved at all at this time of tension. The politicians in Madrid had bad memories of Franco and US cooperation with him; these Gladio truths and lies brought those memories flooding back.

Stay-behind was one thing that the KGB was aware of with information collected over a long time. They knew something else too, something more recent. That was the secret talks which had been taking place for some time now between France, Italy, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands when it came to the future of NATO in the face of seeming disinterest on the part of Kennedy being committed to defending them. That feeling was widespread yet among these countries it was stronger. They didn’t all agree on everything. There was no secret conspiracy. They weren’t thinking of breaking away from NATO nor trying to force other countries, especially West Germany, to do the same. There was no belief among them that Kennedy was under the spell of Moscow. There was also no written down grand masterplan for how to do this and to leave other erstwhile allies all alone. They had been talking but only to help keep the United States involved in NATO and to make sure he was aware of the danger of drifting away from facing down the Soviet Union. The KGB, assisted by some of those working for them but otherwise by dupes, spread a whole load of lies about this apparent conspiracy. Some of those were actually contradictory and damaged the narrative in-places much to the KGB’s chagrin. However, the majority of it worked. What also was achieved was the framing of where the leaks came from where fingers were pointed at those involved but not supporting the others and thus willing to sell everyone else out. The lies were told across Western Europe and further afield across the Atlantic through Canada and the United States. Then the KGB sat back and watched to see how this would all play out. They would be disappointed with certain bits but pleased elsewhere. Division and distrust was what they wanted, now and in the coming weeks.



Early August 1984:

Mexican communist troops reached Naco first and then soon afterwards Agua Prieta too. The Arizonian town of Douglas lay across the border from the second Mexican town over in Sonora and through there, there came another last minute rush of refugees plus Northern Alliance soldiers deserting. Agua Prieta was left a ghost town afterwards with almost all of its citizens leaving along with everyone else who’d been there. No one wanted to remain behind to suffer the same fate as apparently what had happened in Nogales and also Cananea as well. Massacres were reported to have taken place in each with the Red Terror said to have occurred. Border Patrol agents and national guardsmen in Douglas could do nothing to stop the onrush unless they used their weapons and that was something explicitly not allowed. However, when the first communist soldiers approached the border crossing at the designated port of entry, they then had their weapons out. There was a flag-raising show on the Mexican side and shooting could be heard over in Agua Prieta. At Douglas, like elsewhere along the entire US-Mexican border, there had been a closing of traffic for some time now unless it was authorised. Refugees had ignored that – crossing anywhere that they could and many dying in the attempt – and so too had certain Americans who had gone south. The latter had included some brave (or foolish) journalists, aid workers who went to help & bypassed official restrictions and also those who deemed themselves ‘freedom volunteers’. American citizens went south to fight the communists and defend freedom. In Agua Prieta, it was them being shot at when they stayed behind. These were a wide mix of people with all sorts of motives and backgrounds. The ones who remained in that Mexican town rather than make a run for it like other sensible ones did regretted that decision. They were either killed as they made a last stand or taken prisoner so be sent down to Mexico City for propaganda purposes. American forces north of the dividing line could do nothing about that. They had their orders to stay their side of the border and defend it but not to cross over.

As communist control spread further along the border, it extended inside Mexico too as the Northern Alliance (really a misnomer now) lost the city of Chihuahua. When the communist attack recommenced outside, despite American air attacks, there came further fifth column assaults inside. The guerrillas were all meant to be dead, killed last month, but that had been far too optimistic of a summary. Struck from the outside and within, Chihuahua’s defenders couldn’t hold out. There remained no heart in them to fight here for the Monterrey Government nor anywhere else. The garrison commander abandoned his post and fled. Many of his men did the same, aiming to take their chances in the mountains outside where the communists were certain not to have full control, surely not? Those who were left defending the city, fought when the inevitable attack came but were overrun. Panic hit them when some men tried to surrender and the attackers moved forward getting in among the defences. When the moment of collapse came, it was quite sudden as the shooting stopped. Communist troops swept into the city afterwards. They began an orgy of violence there. Looting, raping and killing went on with officers unable to control the men. This did allow some of those who would be sought by the city’s new rulers to get away with their lives from Chihuahua, heading for the mountains too, but still facing an uncertain future when on the run.


The fall of Chihuahua saw the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force asked to resign from his position. At a meeting between the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defence Bentsen, the general had once again pushed for his people to be on the ground in Mexico as forward air controllers for the air strikes going in. He had been arguing this from the beginning and it had been denied with the official policy of ‘no boots on the ground’. Northern Alliance military officers were doing that instead: calling-in the air strikes coming from American aircraft above them. Around Chihuahua, but at so many places beforehand, so many bombs had been misdirected. There was the feeling that in certain places, those on the ground were working for the communists too in bringing down bombs in ‘friendly fire’ incidents. This was hotly-contested by the CIA who had their people in Mexico and not in any uniform. They said that wasn’t happening. That general knew it had happened again around Chihuahua. He clashed with the Chairman – a US Army officer considered by many to be a political toadie to the president – and also Bentsen over this leading to that request for his resignation. Bentsen actually agreed with the man he asked to resign on the need for US Air Force personnel on the ground though he didn’t believe the intentional mis-directing of bombs was taking place. In addition, the general’s comments with regard to the ‘stupidity’ of the president’s strategy when it came to Operation Avid Castle were a step too far. Like Muskie before him, Bentsen was having to get rid of senior military officers who raged against Kennedy and disrespected the commander-in-chief. This was the United States and there would always be civilian control of the military. That was the way it was. Advice could be given, was welcomed indeed, but elected politicians decided policy in the end.

The rest of the Joint Chiefs – the Chief of Staff of the US Army, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps (there was no Vice Chairman) – weren’t best pleased at all with this. Their opinions of their Chairman were very low and of their president even worse: Bentsen was recognised as being caught in the middle and doing what he could when someone like Ted Kennedy was in the White House. Boots on the ground were needed. It would be costly in terms of men and also politics, but it was the only thing to be done. They believed, and suspected that Bentsen was with them, that the Monterrey Government was going to fall soon enough. Nogales and Agua Prieta would be repeated from Yuma to Matamoros very soon. The US Marine Corps general worked with his US Army counterpart to put together a draft plan for when it came to Baja California. At the moment, they knew that any idea of an intervention on the ground there where it looked like the non-communists could hold would be rejected, but it was something to go back to when the end came for the rest of Northern Alliance resistance. There would be a plan in-place should Kennedy change his mind and allow for entry into Mexico of American troops – soldiers and marines – despite all the domestic issues that would cause. Work was started on this by their subordinates though there then came the issue of the disruption to force levels with that following events taking place on the Korean Peninsula.



Early August 1984:

Combined Forces Command put in a formal request on August 9th for reinforcements in South Korea. Kim Il-sung had ordered North Korean forces to up their attacks but more than that, new American reconnaissance directed north of the DMZ showed signs of an invading army forming up. The North Korean’s concealment efforts were relaxed some and what was seen was a mass of tanks along with a whole load of infantry. They weren’t there for no reason, especially not positioned behind what were recognised as likely avenues of attack in an invasion. Cross-border shelling and commando raids could be dealt with by what was stationed in South Korea but the joint US-SK force couldn’t hope to hold back a tide of North Korean armour like what was spotted as well as all of that infantry. The request went to the Pentagon for United States reinforcements to come into South Korea, while domestically the Seoul Government started to call-up reservists.

Contingency plans, those recently updated, were put into action. The aircraft carrier USS Midway was already operating near to the Korean Peninsula with her battle group out of Japan. To join her would be the USS Carl Vinson sent from exercises underway down in the South China Sea and set a course northwards; USS Kitty Hawk at San Diego was made ready to head to the Western Pacific too if needed to support the Midway and the Vinson. From Alaska, the Philippines and Japan, US Air Force units were directed to start making deployments to either South Korea or Japan with further forces from across the United States mainland getting ready to join them later if needed. The US Marine Corps had part of their 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa and more over in Hawaii. The whole division, joined by some more marines from California, would form up in South Korea ready for action. Joining them to fight against a North Korean attack would be US Army elements spread across the Pacific Basin as well. There was the 2nd Infantry Division stationed in South Korea attached to the IX Corps which would be reinforced by the 25th Infantry Division moving from Hawaii. That latter formation only had two brigades and so to provide a third, that would come from one of those assigned to the 7th Infantry Division based in California. Further troops would come from a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division sent to South Korea – the rest of the division staying in North Carolina on alert – as well as US Army Reserve units from selective locations too. Army National Guard units in Hawaii, Oregon and Washington (state) were mobilised under federal orders and would undergone immediate training ready to deploy if needed.

Combined Forces Command wanted more than what was sent. The commanding general, a four-star US Army officer, believed that there should be three carriers instead of two & one on stand-by, twice as many aircraft as sent, the whole of the 1st Marine Division instead of part to reinforce the 3rd Marine Division and both the whole of the 7th Infantry & 82nd Airborne Divisions. The North Koreans were getting ready to launch an invasion, he believed, and he needed troops on the ground ready to stop that. More were promised including further forces than which he asked for should that attack come, but only if it did. The command set-up meant that he reported direct to the US Army Chief of Staff rather than through the multi-service US Pacific Command and his protest went to the Pentagon. Why were troops being held back? He was told that there was a Mexican contingency plan. National guardsmen were to be made available if the crisis got any worse short of war on the Korean Peninsula but regular forces were to stay where they were for now. This was not on. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Formations of the National Guard were in no way comparable to the regular US Army. Staying within his chain-of-command, he asked for this to be put to Bentsen only to find out that the secretary of defence was behind this hold back when he had signed on with the preparations made by part of the Joint Chiefs for possible intervention in Mexico should the president authorise that. This wasn’t liked when heard back in South Korea. The head of the US Air Force had just resigned and, looking from the outside, it looked like power games were being played at the Pentagon. Left frustrated and impotent, all that could be done was to get the reinforcements being sent into position as soon as possible. The IX Corps and the III Marine Amphibious Force would be positioned ready to counterattack a North Korean advance with South Korean forces ahead of them. Airbases filled up with arriving aircraft and there were US Navy carriers & warships off-shore. Daily clashes with the North Koreans kept occurring but the wait was on now for the really big fight.



Mid August 1984:

The 1984 Summer Olympics had been taking place in Los Angeles and they ended in the middle of August. The games had been boycotted by several nations and there had been non-attendance by other countries due to internal issues – civil war and revolt – at home. In the final medal table, the United States topped that with the Soviet Union coming second, a close second at that. President Kennedy had opened the games with Vice President Glenn attending the closing ceremony. There had been a friendly atmosphere but a lot of security throughout. That security failed on the last day though. There was a shooting incident outside the Memorial Coliseum stadium just before Glenn arrived. He wasn’t the target; gunfire was directed at a party of Israeli diplomats instead where three of them were killed and two more badly injured. LAPD armed officers shot dead several gunmen and captured another one wounded while a further two escaped. The captive, turned over to the FBI after a turf-fight with the LAPD, was revealed to be a Palestinian. He wouldn’t talk but the Israelis would pass on in later days his links with a well-known group: the Abu Nidal Organisation had struck once again. As to the Olympics closing ceremony, that took place regardless following a delay where Glenn – surrounded by Secret Service agents – did what he was in California to do. California was an important state come November and Glenn was no mind to be seen as a coward.

Libya was one of those several countries which had boycotted the games; Iraq, Nicaragua and North Korea among the most prominent others. The followers of Abu Nidal who went on a shooting spree wouldn’t have been able to do this without the backing of Libya who used the excuse of so many international arrivals into Los Angeles to infiltrate these gunmen. When the FBI traced the weapons used, they rolled up a Palestinian network across California but also caught that Libyan connection as well. Israel was already ahead of the FBI. Once again, another air strike was mounted over the long distance from Israel to Libya. Libyan air defences were better prepared than before yet the Israelis were expecting that and went about their attack differently. Bombs rained down on ‘regime targets’ across Tripoli once again and there was also a smaller strike against Colonel Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte as well. President Kennedy’s brother Bobby had been murdered in Los Angeles in 1968 by a Palestinian. It was said that his affinity for Israel was heavily-influenced by that slaying of the Kennedy brother who hadn’t but (arguably anyway) could have made it to the White House otherwise. Full diplomatic support was given for the second Israeli attack on Libya and there was an order for the USS John F. Kennedy to put F-14s in the sky to cover the Israeli egress back from their strike mission. In all honestly, the Israelis weren’t best pleased to have fully-armed Tomcats in the sky when their jets were outbound and there was a belief that their initial launch from the carrier named after Kennedy’s other slain brother could have helped alert the Libyans that something was up. Still, that was glossed over. At this time, Kennedy had Israel’s back. Certain Israeli government figures started plotting and planning at what else they could get away with at this time with such strong American support. They heard complaints from certain sections of Western Europe about unilateral American action happening but didn’t care less. Neither did their backer in the White House… and he should have.

The Olympics hadn’t been used as a cover just by the Libyans. The Soviets and the Cubans were both participants at the games with teams taking part and delegations sent. Other issues, serious issues of contention between them and the United States, were pushed aside supposedly for the benefit of sport. There was a propaganda war being waged using the games. Like the infamous drugging of the East German team, Soviet athletes were doped up too. Winning medals at the Olympics wasn’t for the benefit of their athletes nor sport but for the state itself. Alongside those who officially attended the games from the Soviet Union and Cuba, there were citizens of theirs who came into the country while the games were going on. They didn’t go to them but rather elsewhere. Entry was made using passports from different countries, from where those arriving transited through, with tourist visas used. These people, eventually hundreds of them, stayed away from Los Angeles and went elsewhere through the United States but also up into Canada too. Once in selected locations, they met up with others. Weapons were gathered and intelligence information gone over. Transport for their ‘big day’ was arranged. Then they waited. For some, they would do what they were in the United States & Canada to do before the war commenced; others would strike to open it. The countdown approached one calendar month until that was.



Mid August 1984:

Noriega was eager to get on with it. He had deep concerns, secret worries that caused him great worry, that the Americans would find out what was coming and put a stop to that by acting first. In Panama, he was the only one who knew what was coming. He had told no one else that there would be an assault to take the Canal Zone very soon. No one else needed to know until closer to the time, those in the country which he ran would do as they were told following guidelines set down in exercises. Noriega didn’t trust anyone to keep their mouth shut… but then he didn’t trust anyone. When that time came, so far away it seemed, the Panamanian Army would attack. Before then though, just to make that more difficult – although the Soviets would send him some troops to assist; after hostilities began, not before – Noriega had to bring American attention towards Panama. He was in the same boat as Kim Il-sung was across in North Korea: seeing American troops arrive to reinforce what they had before that attack and therefore making the opposition stronger yet all for the purpose of leaving the American homeland exposed to attack. No further reinforcements would come afterwards for the Americans in Panama when the attack came, the plan ran, but before then, there would be reinforcements. There had come a message in the past week passed on from the Soviet military attaché at the embassy. It told him to begin the process of drawing enough attention now that the time was right.

The organised protests began again. This time the people were out in greater number than before. The events were stage-managed though meant to appear spontaneous. The call was for the Americans to leave and the Canal Zone to be turned over to the Panamanian people. Tens of thousands of people came out to demand this. Some did as they were told, but the majority joined in when given the right incentives. They were led by march directors out of Panama City and Colon towards American military bases where they made a lot of noise and this time were allowed to get a little ‘wild’. That they did. Cars were overturned. Windows were smashed. Mock US flags burnt. Curses and spittle were directed at American military personnel outside of the selected bases. Glass bottles were thrown. Fists were used in a few instances to try and harm sentries and guards. Rumours had spread through the crowds of some of the recent crimes committed by American servicemen against innocent Panamanians (all lies). The Americans had not just stolen Panamanian territory but they were violating its women too! Panamanian police were present and stood by while this happened. They did nothing to intervene. There were standing orders to move in if things got really bad, but it didn’t go that far. Enough was done for the intended purposes. Even if the Americans had an attack of the stupid, they would have to know that the Panamanian authorities had allowed these protests to happen and none nothing to stop the violence. That was intended. Noriega was to let them know he was doing this.

Noriega had the Panamanian Army out in the field again. More exercises were run, just outside the Canal Zone. These were far bigger than last time. There were two divisional headquarters active and troops answerable to them conducted live-fire exercises with assaults on defended positions. Each division was in all honesty no more than a brigade but Noriega was able to boast that his army was immensely strong by having both of those. Equipping those so-called divisions was not much armour nor heavy guns but a lot of man-portable weaponry. Some of it was American-sourced, other pieces from France: the French had been busy in recent years selling weapons across what parts of Latin America hadn’t been at war and Noriega had been a good client. The men themselves were a different beast. They were conscript soldiers and subject to harsh discipline. When the National Guard had been in existence, its job had been breaking the heads of unarmed civilians in support of the regime. Would these men be able to take part in a real fight? Could they survive modern combat? Were they able to be led effectively, especially when going up against the US Army? Those questions would be answered soon enough. There would come a decision in Washington to reinforce what American forces were in the Canal Zone on a deterrence mission. Noriega would show them how that deterrence would fail and also find out how good – or how bad – his Panamanian Army really was when not killing civilians but fighting real soldiers. Soon.



Mid August 1984:

The highest-levels of thinkers at the Pentagon, the smartest guys in the room, had said that there would be an assault to take Saltillo and then afterwards the Mexican communists would advance down towards Monterrey for yet another set-piece assault. The first city would have to fall before the capital of the Northern Alliance would be taken. That made sense. Saltillo and the troops forced into there couldn’t be left to threaten the rear of an attack on Monterrey. No one had told Tirado López’s Nicaraguan military advisers nor his own Mexican generals that that was how things were meant to go though. Even if they had, they were doing what they were to end the civil war as directed from Havana, not the Pentagon. Everyone recognised that the capture of Monterrey would do that yet there were those two schools of thought as to how that could be brought about. In Mexico City, bypassing Saltillo was judged to be worth the risk for there was no offensive capability in its garrison. Moreover, from Havana, there came the rush to get on with things and end this for good. There was a timetable that was in danger of slipping. Northern Alliance territory all the way up to the Rio Grande needed to be taken and Monterrey stood in opposition to that. It was the key to unlocking the end.

Cuban troops were involved in the attack on Monterrey. It was Managua in 1980 all over again when they had been there to bring down the Somoza regime. This time as they brought down the Northern Alliance they were a little less open in their presence but there they were to help in the assault playing a key role again. Light yet heavily-armed troops were mixed in with Mexican communist forces which came down from the mountains above and away to the west. Most were on foot or in light vehicles yet there were also aircraft in the sky. Flying back over Texas, the crew of a US Air Force E-3 Sentry were witness (via radar screens) to a whole load of airborne contacts detected in the Monterrey area where before there had been a dearth of air activity. It was known that the Mexican communist were using light aircraft to fly around small groups of men – some of which had been shot down – but there were many contacts all at once. One of the battle staff aboard suddenly realised what he was seeing: airborne assault! Standing orders while Operation Avid Castle was still going on were that Mexican communist aircraft and helicopters were to be engaged if possible but this was quite the big deal with so many targets in the sky and no fighters at once available. Those aircraft near Monterrey were low-flying turboprops of all shapes and sizes and were soon dropping parachutists as well as weapons canisters. A flight of F-16s was eventually on-station after racing down and ready to engage plenty of defenceless targets, which they did, but against retreating aircraft which had no idea of what came down from above to hit them with missiles. That was too late though. The Cubans paratroopers were already taking part alongside Mexican communists in getting into Monterrey from nearby landing sites and far behind forward defences, those already being hit by frontal assaults all over the place. Inside Monterrey, the US Embassy was located at a hotel that the Americans had fully taken over and surrounded by US Marines: the only boots on the ground in Mexico. There was the diplomatic presence at that hotel and also the presence of the official military mission to the Northern Alliance. When the assault came on the city’s edges, that building was wracked by gunfire inside and then the detonation of several bombs throughout. The terror attack was something supposed to be guarded against and in part it failed where it didn’t see the deaths of neither the ambassador nor the senior US military staff as planned. Regardless, it was seen as quite the blow to the United States.


Monterrey fell during the night of August 18th / 19th after the initial morning attack. In less than twenty-four hours, the Northern Alliance lost their capital. Those at the embassy waited for instructions following the ambassador’s request to urgently leave the city like the Monterrey Government was. Washington appeared to be twiddling their thumbs rather than making a decision. President Herzog Flores and some of his government escaped; others weren’t so lucky. It was to Nuevo Laredo on the border opposite Texas where Herzog Flores was going. The Monterrey Government – they were going to need a new name, weren’t they? – was now in its last days. The Americans stayed behind in Monterrey, retreating into their compound, while around them more and more Mexican communist troops (but not Cubans) flooded into the city. As before in other cities, there would be a blood-reckoning as the Red Terror arrived.

Up in Washington, Kennedy met with the National Security Council. He was told that despite their efforts to disguise their presence, Cubans had been spotted involved in the taking of Monterrey. They were there and they might be elsewhere in Mexico too… there might have been some mis-identification of Cuban soldiers as Guatemalans & Nicaraguans instead. The president asked what would it take to roll back the tide of the hostile advances? The answer was the same as before: boots on the ground, in addition to far bigger air strikes such as B-52s on Arc Light missions. Only the full shebang could stop the final fall of democratic Mexico and a reaching of the US-Mexican border down almost all of its length by communist forces. Nothing else could stop that.



Late August 1984:

Since before his election in November 1980, newspapers across the United States had been sitting on stories alleging personal misbehaviour of President Kennedy. They knew about his extramarital affairs, the façade of his marriage and his drinking. He was a Kennedy though. He was a champion of women’s rights and minority empowerment. He was the president. These were the excuses that editorial boards gave to journalists who dug deep but were refused permission to see printed the truth. Only the tabloid the National Enquirer had printed allegations and those had been rubbished as lies afterwards. The respectable media organisations, the big boys, hadn’t done so. There had been no intention to do so either before or after 1984’s election. That was his personal life and his policies – universal healthcare insurance, passing the Equal Rights Amendment, revolutionary positions on gay rights – were different. Many journalists had fumed while patiently waiting for one day things to change; others had been bought off with friendly relations with the White House in the form of access and off-the-record briefings where they ‘forgot’ what they knew. Some newspaper columnists made allusions to what was known and editors allowed that but there was no front page blockbuster exposure. Kennedy had friends and those friends were often involved with the media who favoured what Kennedy stood for in public; there was no mood to bring him down.

The economy had tanked though. The country was in recession and people were losing their jobs. Last Christmas’ Wall Street Crash was really starting to bite. Kennedy was regarded as having done nothing to fix that. Congress was deadlocked with the last two years seeing his domestic agenda forestalled and while that wasn’t seen as being his fault all of the time, he was in the White House when this happened. The Hope of 1980 was now a Malaise by 1984. Adding to this, Kennedy had sat back and let the communists take over Mexico. Late, far too late, in the day, he had made a big show of intervening: news coming out of Mexico said that American bombs had killed civilians there instead of stopping the onwards march of Castro’s puppets. Kennedy was the president when this all happened. People were blaming him nationwide and Kemp had a stellar lead in polling for November. He was going to take the White House. From there, Kennedy had become cold and isolated to his usual friends as there was crisis after crisis internationally which he was said to be attending to rather than focusing on the domestic concerns of ordinary Americans. Still popular among many, his faithful followers were always there, he had lost the respect of many other Americans.


At one of those big newspapers, the initial journalist who had worked hard to collate a lot of information on Kennedy’s personal behaviour had bugged her editor over and over again throughout the summer to finally see her story in print. She was a noted liberal and previously a strong Kennedy supporter. She had started looking into her story first to rubbish the rumours… only to find them true. She had been refused permission to publish what she had and then offended by the offer of friendship from the White House via an intermediary. All she wanted was to publish her story and expose Kennedy for the fraud that he was. Finally, her editor gave permission. That had come from above, higher up with the newspaper’s owners who didn’t share her personal views but whom had made a judgement call on Kennedy when it came to how their readers would respond to a story like this at this this time. They deserved to know the truth about their president so came the justification: in other words, their readers wouldn’t punish them by not buying the newspaper afterwards in protest.

The New York Times ran a front page story about an affair of the president’s which had taken place during the campaign in ’80. The full details, plus the moral outrage – oh and pictures; everyone likes pictures –, where there in print. That journalist had had several years to work on the side confirming details and getting more than she had back in ’81. President Kennedy was married man who’d been running for the White House back in ’80 and using his wife and family man image to help with that… having allies squishing Chappaquiddick comments along the way. During that time, he had been doing what he had with the woman working for his campaign. The cover-up was exposed too with how people in the know while that was going on silenced. The woman involved was spoken to as well and she had her piece to say about how Kennedy had duped her and used her. The story itself was kept under tight wraps until right before it ran as well with Kennedy supporters at the newspaper not being aware until the last minute that it was going to run: they didn’t get the chance to protest openly nor make calls to friends in the White House, who might have made a last ditch effort to kill this story. The story went out, surprising everyone in its detail and the shock of seeing all of this in print. It was to be the first of several: the floodgates were about to open with further stories to follow, some true yet others not. An October Surprise this might not be but this was going to hurt the re-election campaign of the president a lot.



Late August 1984:

The fall of Monterrey really had been the key to unlocking the last resistance in Mexico away from Baja California (which was a different beast entirely). Across the four states through the north and northeast – Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas – the Northern Alliance crumbled when their capital was lost. Soldiers deserted en masse, there were surrenders and there were retreats which turned into bloody routs. The last week of August saw the Rio Grande reached. Ciudad Victoria was finally in communist hands and so was Monclova as well: two cities away from that river where there had long been strong resistance. It was the border towns and cities where the attention fell though. First it was Reynosa then Matamoros in the lower reaches of the river’s valley. Then Acuna and Piedras Negras further upstream were taken. Nuevo Laredo, which lay between them and to where President Herzog Flores had fled to, was then taken: the president went across the river into Texas. Heading upstream, Ojinaga was taken next. Attention moved to Juárez, opposite El Paso. There was a major fight on the edges of and then inside Juárez. Northern Alliance soldiers here fought and they didn’t run. Why hadn’t they done that elsewhere, it was asked. They had and had done so successfully at times; it was just the case that defeats had come in the end. Juárez went the same way. The communists brought up troops, lots of them, and overcome the defenders. They then went into the city after the defenders had bought an extra for those in the city. Up ahead was the river and it was over there that tens upon tens of thousands of Mexicans – civilians and soldiers – tried to flee. Across the bridges or through the water they tried to go; the latter not forming much of a barrier at all. US Border Patrol agents were joined by the El Paso Police Department in trying to stop those crossing and there was assistance too from national guardsmen from Texas and New Mexico. Like before elsewhere, when the final rush of people came, there was no stopping them. These people wanted to get away from what they had been told would happen to them under the communists. The Monterrey Government had spent a lot of effort playing up the terrors of communist rule and the people in Juárez had heard about the Red Terror elsewhere. There was safety in the United States and there was no stopping them getting there.

Once Juárez was taken, there were only a very few isolated crossing spots left along the Rio Grande and elsewhere west of Juárez through the desert where communist control didn’t extend. People still crossed the border though their numbers were tiny; so many died in the attempt as well, killed by the desert. Communist control of the frontier cut off the flow of refugees which had so long been a source of hot contention. On the other side of the border, national guardsmen from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas monitored the presence of what they regarded as the enemy over there. There were refugee camps where FEMA was active and into them the majority of refugees were located. Others though hadn’t gone to them and headed further into the United States, far away from the border as they still didn’t feel safe being that close. Other states had sent help to the Border States with national guardsmen arriving from Colorado, Oklahoma and Arkansas due to agreements between governors. Everyone was waiting for those in Washington to wake up though and see the threat that they did. The regular US Armed Forces, soldiers & marines, were needed on the border. Everyone would tell you that the communists wouldn’t stop when they gotten this far. Why couldn’t they see that in Washington?

Baja California was still holding out. The Tijuana Government refused permission for Herzog Flores to come there with the five-man ruling council in-charge denying him position to come to their city and set up a government. No, thank you, Mister Former President. Communist troops backed by Nicaraguan ‘volunteers’ were applying the pressure on Baja California. They were active at the tip right at the southern end of the peninsula and also pushing towards the Mexicali Valley at the top too. In the skies above, there were American aircraft though few in number. They attacked ‘high priority’ targets: artillery & armoured vehicles at the top and ships at the bottom. It was communist infantry which was the problem though. A military liaison team was in Tijuana though there was a disagreement between Tijuana and Washington over their exact role but also the wider role and mission of American air power above Mexico. Senior generals in Tijuana had never been in agreement with how things had been done with the Monterrey Government willing to allow the Americans to do what they wanted. If American aircraft were going to drop bombs, they would say where but they would also want to see it done properly and not in the stupid way it had been done before. The dispute went on, harming the motives of both sides. Tijuana also wanted recognition as the successor government of Monterrey. Herzog Flores claimed to be the legitimate president even though he was in involuntary exile in the United States now. That council in Tijuana denied his legitimacy and claimed their own. While these arguments raged, the Mexicali Valley came under attack while up through the Gulf of Mexico, there were ships everywhere who flew flags from many different far away countries making use of harbours on that waterway’s eastern side while waiting to go further north. Cuban troops, not Nicaraguan so-called volunteers, were arriving in this area south of (US) California.



Late August 1984:

An Italian lawyer turned politician who’d been making a big deal out of the Gladio revelations in his country was shot dead outside the offices of his former law firm in Milan. The murder was an execution which took place in daylight and in front of witnesses; his killer sped away as a passenger on a motorcycle. Across in Spain, there was another killing, this time that of a member of the Spanish Cortes who was investigating Spain’s own Gladio scandal. The parliamentarian was run down in the street right in heart of Madrid by a vehicle which was later found abandoned and burning. Both murders took place days apart and were hardly anything but deliberate assassinations. There were other attempts elsewhere across Western Europe to take the lives of high-profile people who were making a big deal about the secret network of guerrillas answerable to the CIA and with major links to terrorist groups. In Sweden, the Netherlands and again in Italy, another trio of politicians and journalists (two for the former; one of the latter) were lucky to escape with their lives when faced with failed killers. These were again attacks made out in the open and in front of witnesses by those who afterwards evaded capture.

Gladio (despite that name being Italian-specific) was a name being spoken of across Western Europe through NATO and non-NATO countries. There were investigations starting as well as a lot of speculation. Facts, real solid information were something hard to come by yet there was a lot to talk about. Parliaments were in summer recesses at this time. When they returned, there was certain to be a lot more to talk about. Some governments knew beforehand yet others were surprised: most pleaded innocence in public regardless. Outrage came from political figures on the left, on the right and in the centre. Troublemakers popped up, making a scene and getting their name in the news where they were able to jump on the bandwagon. This was something that had to be stopped! There needed to be investigations! Whoever was responsible for all of this needed to be named! The CIA cannot be allowed to get away with this! And so on. Whether ordinary people, citizens across the continent really cared, was something not yet apparent. They weren’t out protesting in the streets about all of this.


Separate from the Gladio issue, there was the biggest ever anti-nuclear march in West Germany the last weekend before the end of the month. This took place on a warm Sunday in Bonn where tens of thousands of people converged upon the city for a demonstration against nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Coaches, buses and trains brought the people to the federal capital and there was a good atmosphere for the main event. Families were there in number with images for the news of children holding homemade signs calling for neither to be present in West Germany: no power stations and no bombs. This was a popular nationwide cause across the country and no longer something for just extremists. Events at Unterweser last year were remembered for the fear which they had spread across the nation and there was too the concern that the country should be free of nuclear weapons. The Americans had withdrawn many of them yet others remained in their hands plus those of other countries – Britain and France – who it was said had theirs in the country too. Moreover, West German military forces would have access to other nuclear weapons at times of crisis and war. These were immoral weapons, designed to kill civilians, and the protesters wanted them removed from their country just like they wanted the nuclear power plants to be shut down.

The Greens remained taking advantage of all of this. Unterweser had propelled them into the position of power that they had and they weren’t going to let that go by ignoring what motivated people to vote for them. Their Bundestag members were an odd bunch, a mix of all sorts. There was a lot of arguments between them and division when it came to a lot of domestic issues yet the anti-nuclear thing was what united them better than other aspects of public policy. Many of them were in Bonn for the demonstration. Fischer was present and made a big show of himself; so was Bastian. The retired general had something to say about his murdered former partner too. Petra Kelly, Bastian said, had been killed by the CIA. That was a terrorist organisation as evident by what was going on elsewhere across Western Europe. His public statements on this declared that the CIA was killing those who were asking the difficult questions and finding out the truth about Gladio. There was a Gladio in West Germany too. He would expose that… with help from his fellow countrymen. He then proceeded to hi-jack the protest march as best he and some dedicated followers could and lead a march towards the American Embassy. The CIA should be thrown out of West Germany, he announced, and the Americans could take the rest of their nuclear weapons too! The impromptu march was peaceful and when the West German police moved to stop it, there was no violence. Bastian’s sudden followers had no hardcore members. The embassy was somewhere that they got nowhere near. Frustrated in his attempt, when stopped, Bastian was back in front of the cameras and taking to journalists again. He spoke for his party and the West German people he said when he repeated his demands. ‘Geh raus, geh raus, geh raus!’ He was speaking for neither but sure did make out like he was demanding that the Americans ‘get out, get out, get out’.



Late August 1984:

A petrol bomb had been thrown into the home of a US Army officer where he and his family lived in the Canal Zone. He was on duty; his wife and baby daughter were at home. The two of them lost their lives in the resulting fire. Panamanian police officers at first arrested a suspect but then inexplicitly let him go while saying officially that they hadn’t detained anyone at all. The same day, shots were fired at an American military base in the territory from distance with what appeared to have been a high-powered sniper rifle; two soldiers were killed, another gravely wounded. These twin events, combined with the state-organised public protests and also the provocative military manoeuvres on the part of the Panamanian Army, saw the Pentagon ordering a reinforcement mission to the garrison in the Canal Zone. The US military was beginning to feel the stretch with the recent reinforcement to the Korean Peninsula and also troops retained at a higher readiness level at home should there come a ground intervention in Mexico (there were preparations made but officially that wasn’t happening) but there was still some to spare. The 193rd Infantry Brigade based in the Canal Zone with its two battalions of infantry was reinforced by a third battalion, an Army Reserve unit from Colorado, to complete its force structure. In addition, a whole brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division was sent to Panama as well. There were national guardsmen in Puerto Rico and that formation there was given the order to start mobilising for possible deployment to Panama in addition to the regular soldiers deployed. Bentsen wanted more done. He wanted to deploy another brigade of paratroopers yet the White House wanted to hold those men back for now. What was dispatched to the Canal Zone was judged to be able to hold off any Panamanian attack until reinforcements could arrive to relive those on the ground. The secretary of defence had met with the president and found him in the mood to send troops to Panama; Kennedy was angry at Noriega for taking advantage of the distraction of the United States elsewhere by doing what he was at a time like this. The president was heavily-distracted by what was being said in the newspapers about his personal life but his stance on this issue was that Noriega wouldn’t bully the United States out of the Canal Zone, especially not when it meant having Americans killed in that attempt. However, on the subject of Mexico, when Bentsen raised the issue of whether this was the time to get serious about sending ground forces into Mexico, Kennedy once again refused to consider that notion. That wouldn’t happen under his presidency. He was not getting involved in a war which the United States could be seen as starting in Latin America. Bentsen told him that the United States hadn’t started the war which was already taking place. The president didn’t see it that way. He and his secretary of defence were at an impasse on this issue.

The soldiers flew from Fort Bragg in North Carolina to Howard Air Force Base in the Canal Zone. C-5 and C-141 strategic transports, big multi-engined jets, flew the 1st Airborne Brigade down to Howard with the men, their equipment and supplies going along with those Army Reserve men from Colorado as well who were routed through Fort Bragg. A straight line from North Carolina to Panama went southwards and through Cuba. A slightly-longer route avoiding Cuba went above the Yucatán Channel and then near to Honduras and Nicaragua. The transport jets were laden with fighting men and couldn’t make those flights even with an escort without putting the passengers at risk. There had been shooting incidents with the Cubans in the skies over the Yucatán Channel and there were also either Cuban fighters or Cuban-controlled Nicaraguan fighters down in Central America. A different route had to be taken for the transport aircraft, going around Cuba to the east of that island and past Puerto Rico and then looping back around. The jets had the fuel to make that and the delay incurred wasn’t significant in real terms. They soon came into Panama with the arrival of those reinforcements for the Canal Zone’s defenders. That wasn’t the point though. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States was having to move around its own military forces cautiously less they come under attack. It had been a long time since that had happened. Central America from the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal was almost all in hostile hands apart from Belize and Costa Rica. Cuba had influence throughout and there was a belief that should the transports have overflown Cuba or Cuban-controlled/influenced territory, they would have come under attack. That would have brought a major United States response yet a lot of soldiers, helpless when aboard those jets, would have been killed first. The United States had thus been intimidated in such a manner into not risking that. Talk of such a situation would have been regarded as farcical only a few years beforehand yet it was happening now. Kennedy had been talking tough about acting to stop Cuba for all that it was doing yet the situation had come about that now this was the case because those words hadn’t been backed up by real action.

In and around Cuba, which those transport jets avoided, and also along the coast of Central America, there were other aircraft as well as many ships. They had all come from a different hemisphere and were too cautiously moving around. Concern over attack was one thing but more so was the intention to be as uninteresting as possible so no one would pay too much attention to them. They were busy delivering men, equipment and supplies as well… just for a different force with a different upcoming mission.

[James G]

Early September 1984:

There wasn’t an official suspension to Operation Avid Castle. However, there were no more air strikes taking place over Mexico. The Monterrey Government had wholly collapsed across the north & northeast while over in the northwest there remained those diplomatic difficulties with the Tijuana Government meaning that there was no cooperation on the ground. Fighter patrols of American aircraft were no longer being run above Mexican territory ready to protect the now missing strike aircraft. There were also only a few reconnaissance flights now taken place when before there had been many. US Air Force jets were covering the border regions (from inside the United States itself) and going down above Baja California but no further on intelligence-gathering and certainly not on the same scale as before. There was no longer any major fighting taking place apart from that in Baja California. It was there though in the first days of September, when the skies were almost clear of the Americans, that the pressure was really exerted on the Tijuana Government by Tirado López’s communists. In the south of the peninsula, the fighting moved to La Paz with that port city attacked from behind, the landward side, and soldiers fighting there for Tijuana unable to stop the city from being taken. Northwards, there came a major communist push from out of Sonora and towards the Mexicali Valley. The delta of the Colorado River stood in the way of that latter move: an opportune moment came for American air strikes to occur. Yet they didn’t. Washington wasn’t recognizing Tijuana and the diplomatic spat meant that the defenders on the ground weren’t given help from the skies. Whether American bombs would have been effective enough to stop the offensive which came was debatable but there they weren’t and into the top of Baja California came communist troops. The communists were on the march again, pushing westwards and unable to be stopped. Tijuana remained some distance away with mountainous terrain good for defence in the way but it was clear to most that the last days were coming of organised anti-communists resistance in Mexico.

At the White House, there was deep concern when it came to Mexico though not on where the fighting was taking place but instead when it came to Americans who remained inside Mexico now that Tirado López was on the cusp of final victory. In Mexico City there were those detained when captured fighting as volunteers for the defeated Northern Alliance; in Monterrey, there remained that embassy compound with the diplomats and military personnel surrounded in that city. The prisoners who were paraded for the cameras and called mercenaries & war criminals consisted of an assortment of people which the president had turned up his nose at when it came to them personally but made it clear that they were American citizens regardless of the views which they espoused and what they had gone to Mexico to do. He wouldn’t allow for them to be executed as Tirado López was threatening to do. The compound in Monterrey remained unmolested but surrounded with those inside reported to have been physically blocked from getting out of there by communist troops. This was an outrage, a clear breach of international law. Mexico City was the capital of Mexico, Tirado López had said, and those in Monterrey had been there working with an illegal secessionist regime. That was false and a lie to muddle the situation where accredited diplomats were being kept prisoner with weapons pointed at them and threats to shoot should they attempt to depart. Those who wanted the United States to take action against the communist regime pointed to both situations, two sets of hostages held in different circumstances, as justification for air attacks against Tirado López’s regime to recommence along with a movement of American troops into Mexico. The proponents of the latter had been long in their calls for this; there were demands to put troops into Baja California and to do so now. Kennedy refused to do so. He wouldn’t be drawn into doing that and was having Mondale work on a diplomatic solution to get every American out of Mexico who was being held there. He said so in a televised statement made to the American people though avoided any form of press conference or public meeting. The sex scandal he was facing with those revelations about his personal misdemeanors continued unabated; he was unable to bring that to a stop yet was committed to heading that off by bringing about ‘success’ elsewhere. That, unsurprisingly, was not regarded by anyone else as a winning strategy for November’s election.


Despite the lack of overflights by aircraft on tactical missions above Mexico, from where so much previous intelligence had been gathered, there was still an intelligence effort underway by the United States when it came to Mexico. The armed forces, the CIA and other intelligence agencies from the alphabet soup of organisations were busy collecting, collating and analysing information from many sources. However, political interference was everywhere with objectives that suited the careers of those at the top being more important that the national interest. People below were generally trying to do their jobs properly though there had been years now of this type of thing where the intelligence gathered was discarded if it didn’t fit the pre-set political thinking. Those who rebelled against this were pushed aside, slowly but effectively. What was observed in Mexico was now all taking place from afar as well, only adding to the dubious quality of understanding what was being seen in work environments which were unfriendly to those not saying the ‘right’ things.

Foreign troops were inside Mexico. That had been something denied at first but then a fact which had to be accepted as such in the end. The narrative became that there had always been foreign troops there in fact. Early September saw a revision of the intelligence picture on that put to the highest-levels of the United States Government. Cuban troops were inside Mexico alongside those of Guatemala and Nicaragua. None of these from elsewhere in Latin America were involved in the last of the fighting and were being held back in what were seen as defensive positions ready to respond to any American invasion of that country. From Havana, Guatemala City and Managua, there came the promises of defending the Mexican Revolution and that was apparent in how those countries had arrayed defensive military forces inside Mexico. No full consensus within the Intelligence Community had emerged but there was general agreement on most of this. Cuba had a corps of two divisions in Sonora, near to Hermosillo: those troops were positioned to blunt an invasion coming south out of Arizona. Around the city of Chihuahua – within the Mexican state named the same – there were between two and three divisions of Guatemalan & Nicaraguan troops there: ready to get in the way of an American advance coming southwards from New Mexico. Furthermore, another Cuban corps of three divisions was detected in the Saltillo-Monterrey area where they would be positioned ready to intercept an invasion out of Texas. This all made sense. This was what would be the best way to defend Mexico against an invasion. Mexican communist troops would be on the frontlines with those of their allies behind and ready to block a deeper penetration. Congratulations were passed around among those who made such judgements where they all agreed that they had correctly predicted what was planned by those over there in Mexico to bring to a stop an American invasion. They had figured it all out. The intelligence revision was passed upwards to the politicians: the professionals and the amateurs.

The maskirovka continued. The United States was being duped in what they were seeing but more so in how they perceived the intentions which they put on those foreign troops. The numbers were twice what was seen. Three field armies, not corps-level groupings, were present. There were Soviet forces in Mexico as well, in among the Cubans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. Only four brigades were there – two motorised rifle formations (from Cuba) and a pair of airmobile brigades too (from the western parts of the Soviet Union) – yet those Soviet troops weren’t seen in places and elsewhere mis-identified as being from Latin America. The Americans didn’t see other Soviet forces too, those of a far more worrying nature. Small teams of Soviet Air Force personnel were in Mexico at multiple air-strips which would see the temporary use of Soviet combat aircraft when they arrived for a short period and then moved on elsewhere. Reconnaissance satellites and what was left of the field intelligence network of spies on the ground didn’t know about the fleet of huge trucks which had come in from ships into Veracruz and then disappeared deep into the Mexican interior into hidden positions in the mountains. There had been work done on the vehicle bodies to disguise them and make them not look like the weapons of war which they were. At Guaymas and at Tampico, the preparations around those ports weren’t recognised for what they were in the form of the readiness to make much more use of them soon enough.

There was a defensive mission in Mexico by those there to defend the revolution which had taken place but it wasn’t the defensive mission envisaged by the fools and political toadies to their north: the best defence was always offence instead and that was what those being gathered were in Mexico to do. Nonetheless, that couldn’t be fully done by those deployed into Mexico alone. They would need the assistance for their forward defence, their pre-emptive offensive mission, that would come from the further two field armies which were nearly complete over in Cuba and being readied to ship-out soon enough. Many more Soviet troops were waiting there, ready for the door to be kicked in ahead of them.



Early September 1984:

Every time that they struck, the North Koreans upped the ante. Nothing that South Korea nor the United States did to try to knock some sense into Kim Il-sung was working. He continued to send shells southwards in random artillery barrages up and down the DMZ while also having his commandos make attacks as well. With those special forces deployed into South Korea, they were cut down each time by an alerted defender whenever they struck. Still they were sent though – their lives were expendable – and each time they came unstuck in the end. Early September saw another big attempt to conduct an attack using these expendable men. Four big attacks were to be mounted using commando groups gathered together when on South Korean soil after entering the country in far smaller numbers. One South Korean political target was to be hit; three American military sites were also to come under armed assault. Nothing like this on such a scale had ever been tried before. It was very complicated in planning and a suicide mission for those involved for even if they achieved their aim, they were all destined to be killed or captured in the end.

South Korea’s president, General Chun Doo-hwan, was targeted for assassination at the hands of the first commando team. They raided his temporary residence at an army base outside of Seoul when he was sleeping; he hadn’t been at the Blue House for some time now. Almost forty North Koreans attacked with assault rifles, machine guns and RPGs. Some had satchel charges as well to help them blow their way in. A furious battle commenced with no quarter given by either side. The South Korean soldiers engaged were that country’s own special forces from a training school whom their president (and effective dictator) had brought in to protect him. Seventy-five deaths occurred before the shooting stopped including all but two of the North Korean attackers. As to the president, he escaped unharmed.

The trio of American bases which the North Koreans moved against the same night were Camp Red Cloud, Camp Sears and the Yongsan Garrison. The Camp Sears attack never got started with two incoming strike teams both engaged by South Korean heavily-armed patrols before they could get near there. Sudden, confusing random-chance occurrences in meeting left many dead, including South Korean civilians caught in the cross-fire. Camp Red Cloud and Yongsan were each hit with dozens of commandos assaulting both and attempting to hit the housing facilities at each rather than the military-focused infrastructure. Sentries had their throats cut and the alert guard forces saw their barracks blown with more satchel charges once infiltrators got inside. The sirens had sounded at each of the attacked sites ahead of each raid but it was a general alert. There had been many of those recently. The timing of the attack was deliberate the three o’clock in the morning, the hour when human beings were at their most tired. Still, despite everything seeming to work against the defenders, those who fought back did so really well. They had trained for this. The initial belief that this was yet another false alarm was shown to be force when the explosions started and the gunfire came. Yongsan’s defenders fought better those at Red Cloud. The North Koreans started to withdraw and those who got away were chased down as further American and South Korean forces, including armed helicopters (one of which was brought down with a missile though), converged upon the areas. Some captives were taken with North Korean prisoners grabbed but most were killed during the fighting. Hundreds were left dead and wounded in and around the US Army Korea facilities.


It was clear that North Korea was going to continue their attacks and they would get even bigger. President Chun told Kennedy this after those night-time attacks during an urgent trans-Pacific telephone call between them. Chun was not a popular man with the president yet the defence of South Korea in the face of North Korean hostility where Americans had already been killed before these attacks was something that the US president had committed himself to. Chun asked for more American troops. He told Washington that he was going to start fully-mobilising South Korea’s reserves because war was coming on the Korean Peninsula. He urged Kennedy to send more Americans than already had been deployed. The North Koreans still had that massive invasion army ready and waiting and soon enough it was going to move across the DMZ. It would be Seoul first where Kim’s tanks would go, then Pusan afterwards. Further American reinforcements would be needed to stop them from doing that. Maybe there was the chance, Chun added, that the reinforcement just might be enough to force Kim to back off. It hadn’t worked before, but maybe it might now.

Chun’s request caused another dispute over the worldwide deployments of American military forces at the top of the US Government. Once again, more were being moved out of the country and sent overseas. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to send the rest of the 7th Infantry Division, the remainder of the 1st Marine Division and that carrier held ready at San Diego. Bentsen disagreed with this plan of his subordinate’s and just wanted to send one, not two, brigades of US Army troops, none of the US Marines but to deploy the carrier. The Secretary of Defence’s say here was meant to carry more weight. That wasn’t the case though. Kennedy backed his general, putting him further at odds with Bentsen. The 7th Infantry Division and the carrier would start moving as soon as possible with the 1st Marine Division to follow soon enough. The president made sure with that order that there couldn’t be any possibility of any movement of US forces into Baja California even if he had completely reversed himself on that. He was also removing more and more fighting men from California weeks ahead of an incoming invasion.



Early September 1984:

Only a fool wouldn’t suspect that something was up with what the Soviets were doing across Europe. Over on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, there were strange troop movements including those of some of their Warsaw Pact allies that gave the initial impression as having to do with what was deployed in Poland following the invasion but wasn’t that at all. There were soldiers and aircraft moving further eastwards, through Poland and into the Soviet Union. Westward movement would have been worrying yet so too was that movement to the east. Certain East German and Czechoslovak formations followed Soviet units going that way. Western intelligence agencies had no answer as to the real motive. In the Baltic and the Mediterranean Seas, on the edges of Western Europe, plus down in the Black Sea as well, the Soviet Navy was active. They were conducting late summer exercises it appeared but these were unlike any seen before. Monitoring generally from afar, though up close and personal when able, these were again confusing in intent. They didn’t look neither offensive nor defensive in the fashion as previously observed. There was a lot of speculation but answers weren’t forthcoming.

When it came to Soviet activities in Western Europe, the fact that the Soviets were behind what was going on was recognised by governments: there was just no real reason behind it. The Gladio killings were the work of Moscow. The leaks which had preceded them were again seen to have the hand of the KGB – or often one of its Eastern European proxies – behind them. There was a destabilisation effort underway it appeared, one to break NATO apart and detach the United States from Western Europe led by public outrage. Yet, too much had been done by the Soviets and they had given the game away. What had begun back earlier in the summer was starting to be seen for what it was now… though not everyone was in perfect agreement. There was general understanding yet nothing specific among governments. What was demanded was a motive, an identifiable reason. There wasn’t one. The Soviets weren’t about to invade Western Europe, that was clear. Why then go to all the effort what they were to try to interfere in inter-government relations? That big question was left unanswered. It needed an answer to unite Western Europe fully. Events continued meanwhile with further Soviet destabilisation attempts. However, the West was more awake than before. Even some previously hesitant governments, those who saw the Soviet Union being blamed for everything including the weather, had to see that there was a general theme to all of this even without that answer which they so sought.


The British caught a ship on its way to the Republic of Ireland when they stopped it while it was transiting international waters. It was laden with guns to be sent to Republican terror groups in Ulster. Intelligence from out of Northern Ireland showed that many groups were waiting upon the transfers. They had received their guns from ‘friends’ in the Middle East and were eager to put them to good use. A plan was put into motion to make use of this all and roll up several networks and catch some very bad people. That ship wasn’t on its own though: there was another one. Elsewhere, MI-5 had been collecting intelligence on the arrivals into Britain of some strange individuals throughout the past couple of months. Who these seemingly-innocent tourists went to see was something of great interest. No motive could be found but what could be taken from this was so. Holes were filled in with previous intelligence on suspected foreign nations now being confirmed as being in contact with Soviet / Soviet-proxy intelligence. A picture was emerging of something very strange going on but, again, there was that missing ‘why’. Thatcher demanded answers that no one could give her on this.

West Germany was meanwhile hit with two domestic spy scandals that the government tried to hush up. A spy for the Stasi’s HVA named Rainer Rupp who worked for NATO ran before he could be detained by West Germany’s BfV counter-intelligence organisation: his recent activities had caused serious concern when it came to worries he was looking at documents which he shouldn’t be. The BfV moved in far too late and in a rather clumsy manner allowing Rupp to escape to East Germany. In response, the West German foreign intelligence agency, the BND, was brought in to undertake an investigation of its sister service due to the concerns of Chancellor Vogel. In doing so, they uncovered evidence that the deputy head of the BfV, Hans-Joachim Tiedge, probably was a Stasi asset as well; it appeared that he had aided the escape of Rupp and might also have been involved in the Unterweser events of the year before when that nuclear power plant had been bombed. Tiedge’s superior, Herbert Hellenbroich, protected his subordinate’s reputation but when even further suspected malfeasance was uncovered about Tiedge and how the Red Army Faction had been able to have so much success in recent years when he was supposed to be at the top of the effort to stop them, the head of the BfV abandoned his junior man for the BND to take away and interrogate. Someone slipped Tiedge a vial of poison for him to end his life but he didn’t take it: when found, the finger of blame went towards Hellenbroich… who promptly fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. The Stasi had lost themselves a major asset in Tiedge and what looked like mid-ranking one in Rupp. Rupp had been passing on a lot, it was discovered, all of it the most-secret NATO intelligence about war plans going back for many long years. As to the BfV – West Germany’s equivalent of MI-5 – that organisation was left in chaos with the arrest of one and the suspicious death of its top two personnel and investigations throughout. Some other things came out when it concerned BfV files on The Greens that were looked at. How could it be said that there were no links between them and financial donations that, through third parties, could be traced back to the Stasi? How long had the BfV known about this?

France and Italy retained their recent close relationship. The lies spread in August about how Mitterrand and Craxi were behind an effort to form a breakaway NATO hadn’t harmed their bi-lateral relations nor either domestically with their populations. The actions of the leaders of the superpowers, Kennedy and Ustinov, were of more of a concern. The American president and the Soviet general secretary seemed hellbent on pushing the world towards a conflict, one which would inevitably involve a war in Western Europe if it got out of hand despite predictions that it would occur elsewhere in the world at the beginning. Neither wanted their country involved in that. A Soviet invasion of West Germany would unite Western Europe with the United States – Mitterrand would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Kennedy there – but that looked increasingly unlikely despite all of the tension. It would be in Korea, in China, in the Middle East or in Latin America where there would be an outbreak of fighting. Mitterrand and Craxi agreed upon that… and they agreed as well that a conflict in those regions didn’t have to, and therefore shouldn’t, involve their countries as long as the Soviets didn’t attack NATO. That aside, their intelligence agencies were cooperating with others in aiding the pushback against Soviet attempts at destabilisation and there was joint effort between France’s DGSE and Italy’s SISDE in stopping the killing of another Italian parliamentarian looking into Gladio by what looked like a Soviet-backed attempt to frame the CIA for that. Everything that was discovered there was passed on to their contacts in other countries. There was too the joint Paris-Rome effort to prevent that war which they feared was about to happen, one outside Europe but risked dragging in Western Europe in. It was better to stop it from happening in the first place. The two countries were doing their best in this… their best wouldn’t be good enough though. When the time came, a decision would have to be made there.



Early September 1984:

It seemed like all around the world there was heightened tension with conflict certain to soon break out in regions where allies, proxies and puppets (it depended upon your viewpoint) of the superpowers were pushing against each other’s interests. What would be the Big One, World War Three, was looking more and more likely. There were others who were making desperate efforts to prevent that with nation states and international organisations trying to get mutual enemies old and new to back off and talk instead of fight. The superpowers themselves were involved as well in giving the appearance of trying to dampen some regional tensions yet encouraging others. Ordinary people were starting to get very worried no matter what their governments were saying: that being those who had access to uncensored news, which was certainly not everywhere. So many more had no idea of what was coming, of what would kill them straight away or afterwards because the struggle for life, just to exist, was all that mattered to them. Geo-political alliances and regional supremacy were all that others concerned themselves with though.

It was five years since the Chinese had – in the words of Deng – given the Vietnamese ‘a spanking’ during the short invasion by and then withdrawal of the PLA. Vietnam hadn’t forgotten that nor how China still occupied small but significant parts of Vietnamese territory along their mutual border. There had been flare-up after flare-up over the years with artillery shelling and infantry combat around that occupied territory. The PLA hadn’t budged from where it sat in occupation and the Vietnamese weren’t about to budge in their desire to retake what was theirs. Modern Vietnam had driven the French and then the Americans from their country: the same would be done with the Chinese, even if it took a while. At the end of June, a Soviet official delegation had come to Hanoi and met with the Vietnamese leadership. The chance to retake what rightfully belonged to their country was offered. Vietnam jumped at the opportunity offered ultimately from Ustinov. For years, Andropov had been urging them to take on the Chinese but not giving Vietnam the means to do so… all the while using the air & naval facilities at Cam Ranh Bay for Soviet interests in Asia. Heavy weapons had been sent to the Vietnamese and they were putting them to good use. They were also marshalling strong forces nearby, ready to move to retake what the PLA held. As to the Chinese, the strengthened Moscow-Hanoi ties were noted and so too the increase in combat leading up to what was looking like a mass attack by Vietnam. That was responded to accordingly. The PLA was hitting back while marshalling its own forces. Some of Deng’s colleagues urged him to attack, but he was waiting for the Vietnamese to make the first move and commit themselves. They would then be smashed apart in a counterattack. While each side waited for the other to take the necessary next step, those outside watched with horror as the death and destruction increased. There was a finale coming there. The concern was that the Vietnamese would eventually bring in their Soviet backers and when that occurred, the Chinese would call upon their American allies.

In Panama, there was increasingly a stand-off all around the Canal Zone between American soldiers and the Panamanian Army. Diplomatic relations between Noriega and Washington had fallen apart. Panama refused to accept responsibility for the deaths which had occurred in the terror attack on an American military family plus those shootings of soldiers too. There had been bitter complaints when the United States brought more troops into the Canal Zone with accusations that they were deployed to intimidate Panama on its rightful sovereign soil. Panamanian reserves were called out, to defend the nation against ‘American aggression’. Costa Rica had offered to host bi-lateral talks between the two sides and act as an honest broker. Neither side was willing to move to that stage, not at the moment anyway. The focus instead was on preparing for conflict. To that end, war looked even more likely when – doing as they had done in South Korea – the American flew out of Panama military dependents as well as all but the most-important civilian staff. They weren’t to be present should Panama and the United States start fighting.

Over in the Middle East, the Iranian Navy had deployed its warships into the Persian Gulf in number. There had been a clash with the naval forces of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, one which the Iranians had decisively won. Their warships were heavily-armed and Iran was a naval power: the communist regime in Tehran had been building their naval capabilities for years including purchasing warships built to Soviet designs in Polish shipyards. They had land-based missile support and also air cover; neither of which the Saudis and the other Gulf Arab Monarchies had much of. Iranian warships had chased away others and left Iran in the dominant position in the Persian Gulf when it came to naval fire power. Commercial shipping was unhindered by this though, the oil still flowed with tankers going past the destroyers and frigates carrying all that fire-power. The Americans had sent an aircraft carrier to the Arabian Sea, far outside the Persian Gulf, but they were there and the Iranians were where they were: there had been no clashes between each of them when separated over a distance. Everyone was waiting on Iran to make the next move, one sure to be another aggressive act against its neighbours.

Libya remained chastised after the attacks it had taken from Egypt first, then the Americans and finally Israel. Colonel Gadhafi was still ranting and raving on the air waves and threatening to cut oil supplies to those in Western Europe who stood with Israel. Libya was a big supplier to Western Europe yet that cut both ways: Libya needed the oil revenues which came with their exports. Gadhafi had yet to carry out his promised retaliation against Israel for the air strikes made. What they might be was something unknown. Outside observers noted the military build-up occurring as Soviet aircraft and ships arrived in Libya. It was widely believed that the Soviet Union was making good the loses of equipment and munitions which Libya had used and lost in earlier military clashes. This was being sent for the next round of fighting, when Gadhafi backed his words with action. That was incorrect: what was going to Libya in weapons shipments being spotted wasn’t to be used by the Libyans and nor against Israel either. Something else was soon to happen instead.

Along the Turkish-Iraqi border, there were low-level clashes which had taken place throughout the height of summer and continued into September. Turkey hadn’t called upon her NATO allies for assistance and instead the Turks were dealing with Iraq by themselves… though Israel was providing help by covert means. Iraq had pushed more Kurds towards Turkey and the Turkish government responded to that by trying to stop Saddam from doing such a thing. This meant putting Turkish soldiers in the way of those Kurdish refugees. Sometimes those soldiers shot at the refugees when it was said they were armed terrorists; other times they exchanged fire with the Iraqis when each side accused the other of crossing over the border. Many NATO countries had complained about Turkey’s actions when it came to the deaths of those Kurdish refugees which Turkey called terrorists. As to Iraq, Saddam sought no help from his neighbours Syria and Iran: they were both enemies of his despite being tied to an alliance with the Soviet Union like he was. Moscow wanted him to apply the pressure on Turkey and he did. He was getting something out of this for himself soon enough when the time came to hand out rewards. Up in Ankara, where the generals had assumed a leading role out in the open rather than behind the scenes, their erstwhile ‘allies’ aboard kept complaining about Turkey’s behaviour. They were furious. Turkey was a victim of aggression and was defending itself. Turkey would do what it had to do to protect itself and damn the consequences from others who didn’t see the bigger picture. If that meant moving into Iraq to establish a security zone, a favoured idea among the generals in Turkey’s capital, then so it be.



Early September 1984:

That West German intelligence officer who’d gone on the run, Rainer Rupp from the BfV, turned up in West Berlin. He attended unannounced to an arranged press conference alongside Gert Bastian (he’d said he was bringing a surprise guest) before he then left ahead of any move to arrest him by the West Berlin police. The police were in legal limbo when it came to Rupp as no criminal charges had been filled against him as well as there being the fact that West Berlin was technically not part of West Germany. Rupp still left with haste though and went back over into East Berlin. Maybe the West Germans might not have detained him – officially or unofficially – but what he revealed to the gathered media put him at risk from being effectively kidnapped by the CIA or another intelligence agency in the West. Bastian said that to the assembled media and he might have been correct too.

What Rupp said, and the copies of documents which he supplied to anyone who wanted them, supported what Bastian was in West Berlin to say. It was in that city where he intended to stay himself for some time as well due to its special status. Bastian claimed that he was speaking on behalf of both The Greens and also the Generals for Peace. As to the former, he was the acting spokesperson for them due to Kelly’s death though that was rotating position (like the party leadership) and carried with it little real authority. When it came to the latter, the Generals for Peace had once been an organisation that had some respect attached to it for its makeups of notables: there were retired military officers from France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal (an ex-president in fact) and West Germany alongside both a Briton and an American too back when it had first begun. Bastian had taken over though, leading to an exodus of his colleagues from the Generals for Peace and now he was trying to do the same with The Greens too. He wasn’t a very popular man despite his own beliefs to the contrary. He did have a lot to say though and the media came to listen to him. Rupp had supplied stolen documents from NATO which Bastian explained showed how the Americans were willing to fight a nuclear war all across West Germany from city-to-city, from town-to-town and from village-to-village. That was in these war plans which he revealed as he made a big show of it all. He was asked if they were authentic. Of course they were, he said, he had checked their veracity himself through contacts he said he maintained; there was no way that these might be forgeries! When it came to Kelly, Bastian once again spoke of her. He declared that he had knowledge of how and why she had been killed by the CIA. The government in Bonn could deny that all they wanted. The West German people should know that the Americans had killed her. There were probably other West Germans which they would try to kill too, and that was why he was staying in West Berlin to be safe from them and the cooperation given to them by Bonn.

The very next day, a group of Red Army Faction terrorists assaulted the US Consulate-General in Hamburg. They intended to take over the whole building and had a list of demands to issue less they start killing hostages taken. This was something meant to take place the next week, right on the eve of the war which was to come elsewhere, anywhere but in West Germany. That spy Rupp had been helping to provide coverage, at a distance, for them pre-attack. He’d run before being exposed though and could no longer do that. The KGB had decided to do something else with another proxy used in another country for a distraction as part of their maskirovka. The Red Army Faction knew nothing of that nor the higher intention, just that their Stasi contact called off the mission and then went into hiding himself. However, their fear was being caught themselves and put in prison – or ‘shot while resisting arrest’ – without getting the chance to undertake their propaganda assault. They went ahead regardless of being told not to. They didn’t have everything ready but hoped for the best, relying on luck and determination. For their own sake, they should have really just have gone into hiding. Security was tight at the Hamburg diplomatic mission like it was elsewhere across the country with diplomatic & military sites due to recent events. US Marines gunned down half of the terrorists even before West German authorities in Hamburg could join in to also take shots at the men in balaclavas running around with AK-47s in the middle of the afternoon. Of eleven men and two women involved in the attempted assault, three survivors emerged. The Red Army Faction should have done more reconnaissance and also not made a daylight assault either. They didn’t even get fully into the grounds let alone a building to hold hostages within. The trio of those who remained alive – two badly injured and one without a scratch on him – were then detained by the West Germans where they would face not a pleasant time indeed.


The revelations in West Berlin and the shooting in Hamburg were two entirely separate things in the minds of both governments in Bonn and Washington. Rupp was a spy for East Germany and Bastian either the same or a really committed useful idiot. The Red Army Faction had deserved just what they got. Inter-government relations shouldn’t have been harmed by all of this. Unfortunately, there were some who took advantage of what happened. Chancellor Vogel remained in a difficult position within the SPD where his foreign policy had countless critics. There were some who wanted to believe the worst when it came to the Americans. They had been informed of how Gladio extended to West Germany beyond what Bastian had previously revealed and considered that there remained questions to be answered when it came to Kelly’s assassination. What Rupp had told the world about when it came to American nuclear weapons being destined to be used across West Germany in the event of war was something always suspected but now shown to be entirely true. That was all taken at face value when questions should have been asked – as they had been in West Berlin – over the authenticity of such documents. Then there was the extremely strong American reaction in Hamburg where gunfire had emerged from inside the diplomatic compound going outwards into Hamburg’s streets. Vogel and others explained to their colleagues that this wasn’t the time to be causing trouble here. This were matters which could be sorted out at government-to-government level. Stasi manipulation of events, with the KGB ultimately behind that, was something to consider too. West Germany couldn’t be caught up in a power-play between Moscow and Washington.

Those members of Vogel’s party agreed with that last bit, just not in the way that he meant. They moved against him, believing that he was endangering the country at this time of worldwide tension. It wasn’t going to be easy and would take time. They were out to bring him down though, using cooperation from The Greens if necessary. In the meantime, before the behind-the-scenes undertaking could fully get going to depose Vogel as head of government, the effort was strengthened when the foreign minister resigned: he was with the SPD ‘rebels’ but as a matter of principle stepped down to avoid any hint of duplicity when in his role. Vogel appointed someone else in his place, someone who he trusted and someone who had long ago been vetted by the BfV and shown to have no security risk about him. That was false, he was someone who retained a hidden connection to the Stasi. This whole thing wasn’t the work of those across the Iron Curtain but they would be very quick to make use of it, very quick indeed.



Mid September 1984:

A lone SR-71 made a reconnaissance flight above Mexico in the early hours just before dawn on the morning of September 12th. The Blackbird whizzed high and fast over the north of that country making a trip starting in the northwest and ending on the eastern coast. Tanker refuellings were made at either end though far outside of Mexican airspace. During the last leg of the actual overflight, as the aircraft passed above the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains, approaching Tamaulipas before taking images of Tampico, there came the launch of surface-to-air missiles from out of those mountains. A volley of SAMs came up unexpectedly, missiles which the onboard detection systems were able to spot but not classify. Standard evasion procedures were followed: the Blackbird accelerated and made a course change. At such speed and altitude, the incoming SAMs were evaded and Tampico overflown. Later analysis of the missiles said they appeared to be a derivative of the Soviet S-300P system, what NATO called the SA-10 Grumble. However, these weren’t SA-10s at all. Studies commenced to identify what had tried to blow the Blackbird out of the sky. Only later, many weeks later when such weapons were encountered again, would it be realised that S-300V missiles – subsequently codenamed the SA-12B Giant – had been used. Neither the SA-10 nor the follow-on SA-12 was a weapon in the arsenals of the Cuban armed forces, nor those of Guatemala & Nicaragua, especially not the Mexican military either. They were Soviet missiles: high-value weapons and not something to be passed to allies.

The flight of the Blackbird came on Pentagon orders. Bentsen ordered the flight where the US Air Force’s premier strategic reconnaissance jet made that pass recording images with its cameras over areas identified as being of interest. There had been some strange goings on across the border which had concerned certain high-level officials but which were dismissed by others. The head of the NSA had expressed a worry that the electronic intelligence gathered from inside Mexico on the activities of the Cubans and their LACom allies didn’t make sense. What it all meant was a mystery. The mystery wasn’t something that could be left unsolved, Bentsen decided. Satellite passes hadn’t satisfied the NSA with the thinking that their patterns could be predicted and – shock horror – there could be deception used to hide what should have been seen. Something was being hidden in Mexico. It was something that a sudden Blackbird overflight might be able to detect. All of the information collected by the Blackbird was analysed afterwards, some back at Beale AFB in California where it returned to but also elsewhere across the country as well. Those looking at what was gained didn’t know what they were looking for. They were searching for the unexplainable. That was quite the task. There were odd things that were seen across the camera pictures and the radar images. Activity around Mexico’s few pre-war airbases was higher than was expected and there were also some improvised sites for aircraft spotted nationwide. Where combat aircraft were seen, these were identified as those in the service of those countries which had troops inside Mexico there to ‘defend’ the country. MiGs and Sukhois of various types were caught by the flight of the Blackbird. Guaymas and Tampico, the big ports on the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico, either side of the country, were busy with shipping though not necessarily crowded: military equipment was arriving by sea though not that much. Those troops in the north that Cuba and the LAComs had in-country were still where they were beforehand and no major revision was done of numbers of them, especially not intent. The Blackbird also had reconnaissance images from the Mexicali Valley area as well as those taken of Sonora where the fighting west of the Colorado River Delta was being supported from; the Mexican communists were moving in more troops to bring an end to resistance in Baja California. They’d taken Mexicali itself and were rolling over anti-communist resistance in the wider area. As to anything else, the mystery remained unsolved. Something was up in Mexico, just no one knew what. Other things were going on elsewhere in the world though, requiring attention – such as more Blackbird flights – to be directed towards them.


That same day, hours later in the evening, Cuba purposely sought a military clash with the United States. It was deliberate, one with full intent to create an armed engagement. The Cuban Air Force had had a terrible couple of years when ‘volunteers’ were lost when engaged by the British during the Belize War. Earlier this year, there had come American air intervention over the Yucatán Peninsula and then the Yucatán Channel as well during the June shootdowns. Twice, the higher ranks had been purged of senior officers who’d overseen the disasters in the skies. This third time wasn’t meant to be a third time lucky, but a third time where everything would be arranged to achieve a victory. The seeking of the clash was done to bring attention, not divert it. It fitted into the maskirovka. There was a reason behind this beyond Castro’s pride. Admittedly, he had intervened and made sure that it was Cuban forces and not Nicaraguan ones involved as the Soviets had wanted to see done yet everything else was the same when it came to the why.

A flight three of Cuban MiG-23s – the latest -23MLD variant and not a downgraded export version either – raced north away from Cuba and out over the Florida Straits. Their course took them towards mainland Florida, along its southwestern coast, and to do this they went around the Florida Keys. United States airspace was crossed when the MiG-23s went inside the twelve-mile territorial limit near Key West before going back out again over international waters. They pressed on towards the Florida Peninsula still. Onboard jamming was used and they were up high in the sky. Attention was sought…

…and it came. From out of Homestead AFB raced a pair of F-15 Eagles and they were tasked with engagement of these aircraft. Their parent unit was the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing home-based up in Virginia yet a detachment as down in Florida with some F-15s at Homestead and others at MacDill AFB too. The Homestead fighters were those on immediate alert though others from MacDill were due to join them soon enough. Specific Cuban intentions were unknown but these aircraft were clearly acting hostile and had already violated US airspace. The rules of engagement for the F-15s were to escort them back to Cuba forcefully. There was a right of self-defence too and the limitations on that were tighter than they had been for US Air Force aircraft when in operation over Mexico yet looser than could often be expected in such a situation like this at another time. The F-15 pilots took off expecting to knock down these Cuban jets; escorting them back wasn’t something that could be easily done unless the Cubans wanted to be super-duper cooperative.

As the F-15s closed in upon the MiG-23s, homing in upon all that jamming the Cubans were giving off rather than using their own radars, they themselves suddenly found that they were being counter-intercepted. Radars were detected to the south, behind the MiG-23s. The flight computers on the American aircraft picked up a pair of radars belonging to Cuban MiG-29s. The F-15s made a turn and then the warning sirens went off: both new contacts opened fire and the warnings said ‘Alamo’. The AA-10 Alamo was the R-27 air-to-air missile, one of the most advanced pieces of Soviet missile technology. The pilots wanted to scream obscenities back to base when they came on the airwaves – an E-3 Sentry for airborne control was lifting off from distant Eglin AFB but for now ground control out of Homestead was meant to be watching the skies – announcing that there were MiG-29s in the sky. Thanks, but that was far too late. The F-15s manoeuvred to avoid the incoming missiles and prepared to return fire. Note was also taken at that point of the MiG-23s having turned off their jammers… and activating their own radars now. Five against two with the MiG-29s to the south and the MiG-23s to the west, which started firing more of those damn Alamos. The tactical situation was all wrong. It was a trap. Evade!

Both F-15s were hit. The first exploded in mid-air, killing its pilot. The second took major damage and the pilot ejected, hoping to be soon picked up by air-sea rescue. All five Cuban aircraft turned back for home. Sirens wailed at NAS Key West, where the US Navy had aircraft, but they, like the other F-15s coming from MacDill, were far too late. June had been avenged. The Cuban Air Force had got its revenge, Castro had his too. And the United States was going to react, sending the world spiralling now towards war.



Mid September 1984:

The news of the air clash between American and Cuban fighters shouldn’t have become as public as fast as it did. There hadn’t been an intention to cover everything up like large elements of the media were saying, but neither had there been a rush to put information out there fast. The leak occurred though and it wasn’t one which told the complete truth. The American people were informed that US Air Force fighters had been shot down over US airspace and that one of the pilots had been shot at while attached to his parachute following his ejection. How much of this was sensationalism, how much was a mistake and how much of this was a deliberate lie were open to speculation. Atop of all of that, there was the claim that the White House intended to cover everything up and not react at all. That certainly wasn’t true. The media had almost all completely turned against Kennedy now though. The big newspapers and the television broadcasters were against him and outdoing each other to take pot-shots at the president. They fought against their competitors to break the newest story, the most-damaging. The revelations about more affairs come tumbling out. Whether they were all true was up for debate. More significance was the scale of the cover-ups undertaken. Loud voices in Congress were calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate those; even louder calls were being made for impeachment. It was less than two months before the election and everyone could agree that Kennedy was finished. He couldn’t turn this all around now, no way.

Following the air battle, and the understanding that the Cubans had sprung an ambush, the National Security Council had met to decide how to react. Kennedy, Glenn, Mondale, Bentsen, Vance and Turner were all present in the room below the White House while from the Pentagon there was a telephone-conference with the Joint Chiefs. As had been the case beforehand, two plans were put to Kennedy from the Joint Chiefs when it came to responding. That was how he liked military options presented to him and the military brass at the Pentagon – as politicised as elsewhere – followed that lead. Operations Dark Horse and Dark Knight were put to him. Each contained an attack plan to hit back at Cuba. They both involved air strikes though were different in intensity; each also made sure that American bombs & missiles weren’t to go anywhere near where the Soviets had their forces in Cuba. Dark Horse was preferred by Kennedy and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Glenn and Bentsen pushed for Dark Knight, which was the stronger of the two proposed operations. The vice president and secretary of defence wanted to flatten a trio of Cuban airbases around Havana. That Dark Horse operation was limited to attacking two sites, and with less bombs, but would mean hitting them at once; the second operation would need some more time to assemble the necessary strike options to do the worst. The vice president pushed strongly for Dark Knight and eventually won out. There would be a delay – which ended up fuelling the claims from the media of inaction – but Cuba would get its just deserts. Dark Knight was due to commence over the night of the 14th / 15th.

However, it wouldn’t happen.


In the past, when he was in trouble at home on the political front – though admittedly less than what he was going through now –, Kennedy had done something aboard or in the field of foreign affairs to offset damage. The distraction had worked each time it had been done. The KGB knew this and had helped create the circumstances for some of those distractions as well. Andropov had long wanted Kennedy to remain where he was because with him in the White House, the Soviet Union would always be safe from American attack. Ustinov didn’t see things that way and neither did new KGB Chairman Fedorchuk. Regardless of the new thinking, the precedent was there with Kennedy always willing to jump at a chance to act abroad when under attack at home.

The American president was given an opportunity do be seen doing something. Mondale was contacted by the Soviet Ambassador and told that Gromyko wanted to meet with him. The Soviet foreign minister was open to discussing many things including especially a way in which relations could be repaired between Moscow and Washington when it came to the tensions across Latin America. The Soviet Union had great influence there. It was made known, in what was regarded by Mondale as a rare confession of the truth, that the Soviets were struggling when it came to having to spend diminishing oil revenues on food imports. Meeting with the National Security Council when it assembled again, CIA Director Vance told the president that the Soviets really were hurting at home. This was the time to put the screws on them. Mondale agreed with that. Glenn and Bentsen were cautious and then soon angry when Dark Knight was called off. It was postponed, Kennedy said, but they knew that it was cancelled really.

Mondale was told to get in touch with Gromyko to set up a meeting. There was a lot of hope that so much tension could be brought to an end. Kennedy was looking forward to how he would present that to the American people and plotting – before a meeting even took place! – how to announce the success that he would say had come. It didn’t occur to him, nor anyone else at the top of the US Government, that they were being suckered. There was an art to the Soviet maskirovka, it was something special indeed.



Mid September 1984:

There was a meeting long arranged in Vienna where the West German foreign minister was due to meet with his East German and Austrian counterparts in the Austrian capital. The change in personalities when it came to the head of the West German party going to Vienna delayed but didn’t cancel that meeting; neither did a recent change too when it came to the leadership of Austria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The new foreign minister sent from Bonn arrived on the Friday night rather than the planned Thursday. Trade between the three countries and East Germany’s debts were the subject of discussion though there were also cultural matters to be touched upon too between them.

Oskar Fischer was a thoroughly experienced diplomat and politician. Circumstances beyond his country’s control – nor that of the Soviet KGB either – had put him into a meeting with the two babes in the wood whom he met with. He took advantage though, following the script when necessary through deviating (within pre-set boundaries) when needed to be as well. The two men he met with were unknown quantities in some ways yet not in others. There was also the fact that the head of the Stasi, Erich Mielke, had informed him that his West German counterpart would be ‘agreeable’ on certain things. Fischer knew from that, without being directly told, that there was a connection between the Stasi and the man from Bonn. Those matters which they were gathered to talk about were discussed between the three men and their aides: there was no need for translators with German being the native language of each man. Afterwards, Fischer asked for a meeting of just the three of them, alone. The Austrian hesitated but was won over to agree when the West German said that he would comply. It was most important that they talk, Fischer said, a matter of concern for the countries which they all represented.

There was a real risk that war was coming between East and West. The superpowers were on the edge of conflict with one another. Maybe that would begin in Asia, maybe in Latin America. Either way, that war would spread to Europe straight afterwards. East Germany and West Germany, but unaligned Austria too, would all eventually see war come to them. It didn’t have to be that way though. Their countries didn’t need to be fought over once again, especially not with nuclear weapons being used as Fischer said he feared what would happen: one only had to look at the recent revelations made in West Berlin by the duo of Bastian and Rupp when it came to such weapons. How many millions would die? How many tens of millions would die? And for what purpose? The wars of the Kaiser and Hitler hadn’t had the capability to eliminate the German people from the face of the earth: a nuclear conflict would certainly do so.

A proposal was put forth by Fischer. Should conflict erupt between the superpowers, the three nations represented here would stay out. They would declare their neutrality in that fight. Pressure would come but they should remain strong in their opposition to be drawn in. The Austrian reminded Fischer that Austria had no intention of joining any power block, even a neutral one like Fischer proposed. No, the East German said, he wasn’t proposing any public grouping of the three countries. They would just agree to not get involved. That would be the scale of their cooperation: a determination to not see the German people slaughtered in a war between the superpowers. The Austrian remained unconvinced that this would work. His government would desire to see Austria kept out of any war, naturally, but he didn’t think that this was the way to go about it: secret agreements made here would come back to haunt them all in the end. As to the West German, he had said nothing. Fischer asked him what were his thoughts on the subject? He said that he would put it to his government. The Austrian asked whether it would be something that his counterpart would be personally supportive of? Fischer asked the same thing of the West German. Yes, it would be: he would do his best. West Germany had no part in this dispute between the Soviet Union and the United States. If he could show to his government that East Germany felt the same way, and Austria was too behind German neutrality, it stood more chance of success.

Before their meeting broke off, Fischer told the two others that he was aware that there was an effort underway to cool superpower tensions. It was an odd thing to say considering he had just convinced them both that war was coming. However, Fischer said that while he hoped that would achieve the goal of making sure that war didn’t come, there was always this agreement to fall back upon. The Austrian interrupted to say that no agreement had been made but Fischer carried on with what he was saying regardless. This should be kept under wraps for now. It would do no one any good to have these talks revealed. If that superpower diplomacy failed and the worst happened, these sensible men who had met here and come to an understanding still could avert tragedy for the German people.



Mid September 1984:

Gromyko was due to come to Washington on the Monday, September 17th. He would meet with Mondale as well as Kennedy. Fruitful discussions were expected. At the White House and the State Department, the weekend before the Soviet foreign minister arrived saw long hours worked in preparation ahead of that visit. So much hope was placed on the outcome of the talks. Retaliation against Cuba was officially still on hold though there was a feeling that it wasn’t going to come. The media gave the president hell on this but then they had been on his back all summer now and Kennedy pushed it out of his mind as best he could while he focused on setting the parameters of what would be discussed with Gromyko. Everything else wasn’t secondary: it just wasn’t important in any way when it came to the deal anticipated to be thrashed out with the Soviets now that they had shown the willingness that they had. Mondale believed that they were fearful that Cuba and the others in Latin America were going to drag them into a war which they certainly wouldn’t want. North Korea was another issue that Mondale was going to raise with Gromyko too. That was recognised as something more difficult, yet the president told him that deals had been struck with Gromyko in the past on what had appeared to be more serious areas of contention. It could be done.

Across the United States, some very odd things happened that weekend. The National Security Adviser, Admiral Turner, took the weekend off work at the White House because he was very ill; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had a serious case of the flu as well yet he made it into the Pentagon only to go home soon enough. No one knew that neither man had more than the flu nor was there a serious connection made between these two seemingly unrelated events. From several of those refugee camps along the US-Mexican border, individual people left them without being noticed and headed deeper inside the country. They had never been Mexican nationals despite what they said. Local police forces across the nation responded to reports of people missing from their homes or vehicles. This occurred in rural locations nationwide and didn’t make any sense. There was no reason to connect any of those disappearances across so many states. An electrical fault at a power station in California and another at similar site in Georgia occurred leading to electricity outages where power had to be rerouted elsewhere onto overcrowded distribution lines. Scheduled ships due to arrive over the weekend at various nationwide ports, especially on the Gulf of Mexico coast and through Alaskan harbours, were delayed for various reasons with arrivals expected Monday morning. A pair of Texas Rangers vanished while carrying out their duties; a Kansas Highway Patrol officer also disappeared while out on the road. These were all little things in a big country. Other, similar occurrences happened throughout the weekend. There was no big picture to look at where they could all be put together to make sense of what was being seen. To do that would be to start with the assumption that something was afoot… and no one was thinking that.

American reconnaissance focused southwards towards Mexico, Cuba and elsewhere across Central America & the Caribbean picked up sighs of what were judged to be further defensive measures. Aircraft and ships were being moved around. The Cubans were waiting on Dark Knight to occur, the LAComs were still ready to fight to ‘defend the Mexican Revolution’ and the Soviets appeared to be moving what few forces they had in Cuba out of the way of any United States attack less the upcoming talks with Gromyko fail. On several islands in the Caribbean, small independent nation states not tied to any power block, flights were arranged for commercial aircraft come Monday with those chartered jets taking tourists and businessmen to several destinations in the United States. The travel was arranged in the proper fashion and correct documentation filled out. There was nothing odd about this, nothing at all.

Elsewhere in the world, secret mobilisation started across the Soviet Union. The initial process begun but wouldn’t fully kick-in until the weekend was over with. Selective officers from the reserve were recalled to service with millions of soldiers due for a call-up in the coming days. Soviet aircraft moved around internally across the country while there was also activity at submarine bases; many strategic missile boats slipped their moorings and dived while left behind – waiting for a satellite overfly – were inflatable mock-ups. The Soviet leadership left Moscow. Gromyko was among them though he certainly wasn’t preparing to go to Washington. In North Korea, Kim Il-sung was keen, extremely eager in fact, to get on with it all. He had to wait and he wasn’t happy. Noriega considered backing out… an idea which lasted a few minutes when he started to ponder over the consequences of that. The Castros and the Ortegas were ready, as ready as they could be anyway; Gadhafi and Saddam were ready to do as they were told though didn’t know the full picture at all. In Britain and Israel, their intelligence organisations didn’t like some of the odd worldwide events which were being seen. MI-6 and Mossad both saw strange things. What they were seeing, they didn’t know. It didn’t make sense. The maskirovka continued right up until the very end of the peace.


[End of Part III]

[James G]

[Part IV]


Chapter Nine – Red Dawn

17th September 1984:

DC Metro Police responded to a shooting incident in Georgetown just before morning rush hour. Two men were found dead, both shot in the head, while a suspect was seen running away. Officers converged upon the general area looking for the shooter. Others begun investigating by talking to a witness, searching for whomever had made the 911 call from a payphone and also trying to identify the bodies. The wallets from both men had been removed but there was a search nearby in bins and such paces in case they had been discarded following a possible robbery. That was the working assumption following a string of disturbingly similar crimes in the area over the past few weeks. Those officers would never get to discover that this wasn’t a robbery at all, nor that one man was a CIA case officer with the other deceased being a Soviet diplomat who’d left his embassy an hour beforehand. A warning had been passed on but only to someone who’d moments later lost his own life.

Several hours later, as the time was just approaching a quarter to midday in Washington, a phone call to the president was forced through to him in the Oval Office. It originated from overseas, in Tel Aviv, and was routed through the Israeli Embassy. The president was busy but the prime minister himself was on the line and kept stressing the urgency. What it was about, he wouldn’t say. This delayed things. Kennedy took the call soon enough though: he would always take a call from Israel and shouted at his chief-of-staff for causing the hold-up. His opening pleasantries were interrupted. Yitzhak Shamir called him ‘my friend’ and told him to leave Washington. Leave now, Shamir told him as Kennedy tried to interrupt, for the Soviets are about to go to war with you: this is not a joke. Kennedy was rather taken aback. He had a million questions. When? Where? Why? What did Shamir know? What was going on? The prime minister was a former Mossad man. He knew more than he let on, there were things that he couldn’t say. However, there were other things that he nor his country didn’t know as well. All of those answers were ones which he nor Israel just didn’t have. Leave, Shamir told him, and ‘get in your helicopter’ and go.

Kennedy kept Shamir on the line. When was this attack coming? In what form would it take? Surely Israel was aware that only today Gromyko was coming to Washington, yes? They were meant to be talking to trash out a mutual understanding to avert war in Latin America. Others came on the line. The Deputy National Security Adviser – Turner was still out with ‘the flu’ – initiated a teleconference call. He brought many people on the line with him, separate to the Kennedy-Shamir call but so that they could hear that. These others included the White House Chief-of-Staff, Bentsen over at the Pentagon and Vance at Langley. Kennedy asked his questions of Shamir again. Shamir told him that he didn’t know all that Kennedy wanted to know. More could be discussed later. There was a war coming: ‘get on your helicopter!’ He then told Kennedy that the Israeli government was evacuating the city and moving to safety. He had to go. Shamir cut the connection. The chief-of-staff brought in the head of the Secret Service on the second call. Questions went around. Discussions were had over what to do. Shamir’s comment that he and his government was leaving Tel Aviv frightened the Secret Service chief more than anything else which he had heard. He told those on the line in Washington that they needed to start contingency dispersion of the government. They needed to do it now. There was no timescale given. No one knew how long that they had. This could all be a mistake. Kennedy said that he was contacting Mondale so they could talk to the Soviet Embassy or even try to contact Ustinov directly in Moscow. There must be some kind of mistake, he said.

Others weren’t talking the chance. Bentsen left his office and went into ‘the tank’, the National Military Command Centre (NMCC): a secured internal room within the Pentagon. The Secret Service started sending out alert signals. The missing Turner’s deputy started making calls as well, including getting Marine One spun-up. From over in the Old Executive Office Building – just across from the White House –, the Secret Service chief ordered his personnel to get Kennedy out of the White House. There was something very, very wrong with what was going on. There was no time to play around.


Vice President Glenn was due at an event inside Kansas City at midday. He was running late for that campaign stop, one of several through the Mid-West today and tomorrow. Rather than being in the Missouri city, he was still at the airport outside there and where he was just about to de-plane. There had been a delay earlier in leaving St. Louis. Those at the event he was due to attend would wait though for he was the vice president.

Over their radios, the Secret Service agents heard the codeword ‘Beetroot’. It was today’s codeword for a war alert: ‘Yellowcake’ meant an assassin while other codewords meant different things. There was procedure for this. The aircraft would be leaving Kanas City now. Air Force Two today was a VC-137, a four-engined Boeing-707 conversion. The aircrew were told to get back up in the sky. They were told the urgency and didn’t ask questions. Only the bare-minimal safety checks were done before moving and several more as the aircraft was taxiing. The civilian control tower was told that Air Force Two was lifting off – no reason was given – and they had to clear the skies. Several Secret Service agents were left behind on the ground along with dignitaries and the media. Air traffic control redirected an incoming United Airlines flight, forcing an emergency go-around & a devil of a fright for the passengers aboard that Boeing-727, and the VC-137 raced down the runaway. Glenn had questions. Everyone aboard had questions. ‘Beetroot’ was all that they had heard and that was enough. A fast take-off commenced, one which wasn’t very comfortable for the passengers. Up the aircraft went, climbing away and pretty damn fast. Kansas City was left far behind.


The Secret Service provided protection to the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate. The two men were second and third in line to presidential succession. Those agents heard ‘Beetroot’ over their radios too. Their training snapped into gear. Polite but firm instructions were given for the two protectees to get moving. Congress was in session and debates ongoing. That didn’t matter, not one bit. There were questions of concern and shouts of alarm. The agents did their jobs regardless. Both men were taken out of the building on Capitol Hill and towards where two incoming US Air Force helicopters were due to arrive after rushing here from Andrews AFB.

From the State Department and the Treasury Building, more Secret Service agents hustled Mondale and Bayh about to get them moving. More helicopters – the 89th Military Airlift Wing had a squadron of Hueys & Sea Kings – were on the way for the two of them. Again, there were many questions. There was no time for answers to be given, answers that the agents didn’t have anyway. These men were at the top of the presidential line of succession and the agents had their orders, standard operational procedure. Evacuation was to be done on receipt of a codeword. Explanations would be given by others.

Bentsen was very quickly inside the NMCC. If a nuclear weapon hit the Pentagon, the room offered no protection against that. A deep bunker beneath the building had been refused on cost grounds by President Johnson back in the Sixties. The head of his Secret Service detail wanted to take him to Raven Rock but was unable to force the issue. He didn’t do his job effectively in getting Bentsen out of such a place. Bentsen contacted the White House and demanded of the chief-of-staff that Kennedy leave there once he found out that the president remained. He was still in the Oval Office trying to talk to the Soviets! Was he an idiot? He should be on that helicopter which the US Marines had arriving on the White House Lawn… or at least in the bunker under the East Wing. Get him out, Bentsen shouted at the man on the other end of the phone, while also wondering what was wrong with Kennedy’s Secret Service detail in not doing that themselves. Into the NMCC, there came contact with the secretary of defence from military bases across the country. He turned his attention to that due to the urgency of the situation. He too had been alarmed at Shamir’s warning though had wanted to know more. He had no idea when the attack would come, what form it would take or even if it really was about to happen. There was no information from Israel on that nor any of the United States’ own on this. It could all be a mistake. NORAD headquarters beneath Cheyenne Mountain had no missiles or bombers on their radar screens. The NSA had no sign of an attack; neither did the DIA. There were no urgent messages coming in from aboard of aircraft in the skies nor submarines at sea. Silence, that was all that there was. Bentsen gave an alert order though. The Joint Chiefs – missing the Chairman and the US Air Force chief – pushed him for that, so did SAC’s commanding general who had raced to his aircraft at Offutt AFB (rather than stay in his bunker at that location) and was seeing that getting ready for lift-off. United States military forces, nuclear and conventional, were ordered to DEFCON 2… not DEFCON 1.


Kennedy was unable to contact neither the ambassador nor the Soviet general secretary. He tried to speak to Shamir again. The agents in the Oval Office eventually got him out of there. He hadn’t wanted to go. He’d been told that no missiles were coming in. There was still time to avert a war. It might not even be a nuclear one, it might not even be happening. The Secret Service had to manhandle him. These agents on his detail had an odd relationship with him where they were with him every day and ‘looked the other way’ so many times. They always did as they were told; their bosses were aware of this too and hadn’t stopped the behaviour where the president browbeat such men into submission. Not today though. Finally, they stood up to him and told what the president to do.

Marine One was outside. The engines of the VH-3 could be heard inside the building as Kennedy was eventually dragged out towards it. He asked after his wife and children. They were being taken care of he was told. An evacuation of staff was taking place inside from the West Wing while the president was outside about to enter the helicopter waiting for him. One of those staffers, who’d waited at her desk to be told what to do rather than panicking – someone had to keep up appearances –, looked at her watch as she finally stood up to join the others after locking her desk draw. The time read a few seconds after midday.

There was the brightest of flashes.



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; the 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.



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 those bursts of gunfire at times. 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.



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.



17th September 1984:

There had been difficulties in getting into contact with elements of the country’s strategic missile arsenal due to those commando saboteurs which had been hitting communications sites. Regardless, there was still the ability to get though due to the multiple means of connecting the National Command Authority to those at the firing stations through back-up and redundancy links. The Soviet strikes on command-&-control had caused problems but not as many as they thought that they would be able to do. In addition, attacks on the ground – even the nuclear blasts – hadn’t affected the lone Looking Glass aircraft up in the sky. It was from that platform (the only one left after Ellsworth and Offutt had been hit) that the orders from the new president were passed onwards to strike back in retaliation. A missile squadron in Montana got their orders to begin launching some of their Minuteman ICBMs towards distant targets.

Three missiles made the over-the-pole trip and headed towards Leningrad, the Soviet Union’s second city. Each missile had a trio of warheads and they were released when the nosecones opened up in space to fire them at specific points on the earth below. They were each independently targeted, aimed against several targets inside and around Leningrad: political sites and military bases. Eight exploded with seven of those on-target. The blast yield of each was three hundred and forty kilotons. These were airborne explosions to make the best use of the nuclear weapons being used. Leningrad ceased to exist afterwards. The casualties were extraordinary.

Also going over the North Pole, leaving Malmstrom AFB far behind, were another fifteen missiles heading towards the southern end of the Ural Mountains. One Minuteman completely failed to deploy its trio of warheads and another hadn’t made it fully into orbit. Those warheads successfully employed came down around the Kartaly missile field. The warheads were targeted against the seven buried launch control centres for the ICBMs of the 59th Missile Division. That military headquarters controlled forty-six R-36Ms, what NATO called SS-18 Satans, but – as was the case with the Soviet attack on Minot’s missile field – only the control points for several missiles rather than the silos themselves came under attack. These were ground bursts this time though with the maximum yield employed from the warheads. A couple of mis-detonations occurred and a few were far off-target, but the use of so many warheads made up for all of that. Those SS-18s were rated as a first-strike weapon and the United States didn’t have anything like them. The ones at Kartaly wouldn’t be flying after this attack.

Another two Minuteman missiles were fired southwards. Their journey was far shorter than those which went north. Five explosions took place in the sky above the general area of Mexico City. As was the case with Leningrad, the city was full of civilians who were killed in extraordinary numbers by these huge detonations. Revolutionary Mexico had played host to Soviet nuclear missiles fired against the United States and paid the ultimate price for that.

The United States had many more missiles. There were other Minuteman ICBMs under SAC command at Malmstrom and more spread across bases Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. The US Navy had its Poseidon- & Trident-armed missile submarines. Other nuclear weapons were in the inventory of the various branches of the US Armed Forces in the form of bombs, missiles and special artillery shells. These were spread all over the world. So much more destruction could have been caused than what was done with the attacks on Leningrad, Kartaly and Mexico City. However, the hope was that no more nuclear weapons needed to be used after this counter-strike.



17th September 1984:

Inside the sealed room within the Pentagon with Bentsen were three of the Joint Chiefs: the Army Chief-of-Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Marine Commandant. Glenn had no senior advisers with him aboard his aircraft though did have a pair of politicians travelling on what had began as a campaign tour: a congressman from Missouri and a senator from Wisconsin. Those five had an input into the discussions which took place between the secretary of defence and the new president on how to respond to the Soviet attack when it came to direct action and also the reply sent over the Hot-Line. The two who were with Glenn – who had begun the day enjoying the prestige of flying alongside him when he was the then vice president – had far more influence than those inside the NMCC at the Pentagon would have liked them to have. The senator had tried to talk Glenn out of hitting Leningrad (or any Soviet city) and argued that the United States should only hit pure military targets. The president hadn’t completely followed that advice given though had made sure that the actual targets for the warheads which hit that city, like those which blew up above Mexico City too, were buildings which were military facilities… with a warhead size of three hundred plus kilotons, that really didn’t matter that much but the point was to be made. As to the congressman, he had taken the opposite approach. He’d demanded that Glenn obliterate Moscow, Kiev, Gorky, Vladivostok and any further Soviet cities which he could think of afterwards. This basically meant kill every Soviet citizen and make sure that Russian was only spoken in hell afterwards. His ‘advice’ hadn’t been followed in any manner.

Bentsen was infuriated by the two of them on the other end of the radio link in how freely they gave their advice and also tried to silence him and the Joint Chiefs. However, the secretary of defence was aware that they were elected officials and, at the minute, the only confirmed survivors from Congress (though he knew full well that more would be located soon enough). He overheard the Marine Commandant whisper to his US Army colleague that despite the ravings of that congressman, at a time like this, he represented the thinking of the overwhelming majority of the American people when they had come under a surprise attack like they had. Later, the more measured thinking of the senator would come into play nationwide – or maybe not – yet that was then and not now. When it came to the Joint Chiefs, they were seeing the reports coming in that spoke of military strikes taking place abroad as well as everything that was going on at home. They had given their advice to both Glenn and Bentsen and that had been to hit the Soviets hard and put an end to this now.

The Marine Commandant also had voiced an opinion when it came to how to sign off that message sent to the Kremlin. It was one which that senator had disagreed but what everyone else had gone along with. The Soviets had sent their opening message to ‘President Bentsen’ and therefore believed that Glenn was dead. The initial thinking had been to respond with ‘President Glenn’ at the end of the reply sent to them. To the Marine Commandant, this was providing the other side with too much information in a wartime environment. His suggestion was to not put any name on the message. Confuse them, get them worrying and take advantage was his suggestion. Glenn, who knew how close he had come to being assassinated like Kennedy had just been, jumped at that opportunity. It was just one of the many instances of payback he was sending the way of Ustinov and his cabal of murderers over in the Soviet Union.


When the missiles from Montana flew, the reply to Ustinov was sent over the Hot-Line.

There was no apologetic tone, no excuse given and no wild claims made. The United States informed the Soviet Union that it had launched a nuclear attack of its own without specifying details. There was nothing said that this was the only one which would be made. No mention was made either about the attack on Mexico. All that the Soviets were told was that their country had been attacked and, mirroring their own, only ‘political & military’ targets had been selected for that attack. The counterstrike made had been done so that the Soviet Union would understand that any further nuclear strikes against America would be responded to in kind.

There wasn’t a long delay in the response which then came back. It was sent too before the Minuteman missiles would have started to explode over Leningrad and the Kartaly missile field. The second Soviet message wasn’t as well-composed as the first one was in the view of those who read it and had it read to them. There was a repeat of that accusation that the United States was planning an attack against the Soviet Union as well as other allegations of aggression throughout the world including what was called ‘coordinated economic warfare’. As before, dialogue was requested. A conflict had arisen between the two countries and it was one which the Soviet Union wanted to see brought to an end with talking. At the end of the message, there was mention made that nuclear attacks against the Soviet Union would ‘not be tolerated’.

Once the necessary time had passed to allow for the impacts to have occurred across in the Eurasian landmass of American nuclear weapons, Glenn authorised another reply. This time he added in things that Bentsen thought should have been sent the first time though Glenn had desired to keep that first message from the Pentagon on point. The Soviet attack was one against civilians no matter what had been said. It was an act of illegal aggression and violated international laws in the manner in which it had been undertaken without provocation nor warning. The gravest of all errors had been made by the Soviet Union in attacking the United States and those who would be punished by that would be innocents killed by the counterstrike delivered. Those accusations, the apparent grievances, were treated with the disgust they deserved: they were ignored. All that was demanded was that there be no more nuclear attacks or they would be met with return attacks on a similar scale.


Now there was a delay in the next Soviet response. It was correctly assumed that the Soviets weren’t expecting what they got. What Glenn, Bentsen and the others didn’t know was that Ustinov and the Soviet Defence Council had truly believed that there would be no American nuclear counterattack. They thought that their own strike would be the only nuclear attack made. It made sense to them in their understanding of their adversary who, once attacked, would be cowed at the horror of such a thing. Decades of American preparations were believed to be something that would be shoved aside when what was thought to be a crippling attack against United States nuclear force’s command-&-control worked in the manner foreseen. They had convinced themselves of this. They were sure of it. There would be no American return of fire if the United States was denied the ability to fight a full-scale nuclear war once damage had been done to them. What they hadn’t believed was possible was that their own attack would be met like it was with an equal one. They thought that the Americans would understand they couldn’t make a massive, over-the-top counterattack and thus do nothing. The psychological blow of the Soviet first strike was meant to work.

And it hadn’t. There was grave concern. The reports streaming in about Leningrad being wiped off the face of the earth were questioned. That the Americans had been able to do this when internal communications had been hit and when their political leadership had been reduced to their defence secretary in a building collapsing around him was… inconceivable. But the initial reports were confirmed. The city which was the home of the revolution in 1917, the one named after the nation’s founder, was gone. The missile field strike was important but nowhere near as significant as Leningrad’s destruction. Tit-for-tat it was though: Washington equalled Leningrad. Some backbone was eventually restored. Ustinov and the others – he wasn’t doing this all by himself – accepted that they were in this now and in it until the end. They had made an error in their thinking. It was a terrible error but nothing could be done about that now. There were no further nuclear attacks planned. The intention always was to strike once and then fight a conventional war. To keep attacking the United States with nuclear weapons would have only brought a nuclear attack in the end: a rouge one, not an organised attack, was what was foreseen and that would be one targeted against all Soviet cities not just the one. That was feared more because it would come at any time. It wouldn’t be something which could be controlled. Dealing with Bentsen after one attack and then doing what they planned to do was always the intention. Damage done to the Soviet Union was unexpected and devastating but there was no backing out of this for them. They had committed so much already. They were locked-in to the course of action underway. That was known before this all begun. Stopping now would do nothing to improve, and only fatally worsen, the situation which they were in which brought about this war being started.


The third Soviet message over the Hot-Line read as if the first and second hadn’t been said. It resembled them only with the continued reference to ‘President Bentsen’. There was the opening statement that the United States had committed a ‘terrible crime against the Soviet people’. Up next came what had always been planned to be said, another lie on the back of which so much was to be done. Military forces of the Soviet Union and its allies were moving into ‘border areas’ of the United States, and other ‘necessary places’, to establish a ‘security zone’. American nuclear attacks against those undertaking that would be met with ‘an equal reply with special weapons’. Allies of the United States worldwide were going to be ‘making the correct choice’ in not standing with America. Once the security zone was established, the Soviet Union would open negotiations to ‘realign the international order’. Should the United States choose to oppose this ‘necessary step’ with military forces, then they would be engaged in battle.

It read like a joke. A bad joke but still something not serious. It couldn’t be… but what if it was? Glenn, Bentsen and those aboard Air Force One & at the Pentagon couldn’t believe what they were reading. A security zone! Soviet and allied troops! From where? A reply was sent. Such an invasion would be opposed. Any foreign soldiers, be they Soviet or from another country, which arrived on American soil would be defeated and chased back to where they came from. Glenn signed this response as president. He gave up the charade of not allowing the Soviets to know exactly who they were dealing with.

Within moments came the fourth and final Soviet message. Once the task was achieved, talks between the Soviet Union and the United States could recommence. Until then, the establishment of that security zone was ‘already taking place’.

[James G]

17th September 1984:

The United States military alert level, known as the Defence Condition, had jumped from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 2 right before the first nuclear attacks began. It then went up again to DEFCON 1 when the country was hit in the manner it was. DEFCON 1 wasn’t just about nuclear forces. It was all elements of the US Armed Forces which moved to this alert level whether they be nuclear-capable units or not. The swing from peacetime status to full military readiness took place rapidly yet the training and preparation was there to do this. Information on what exactly was going on came slowly, painfully slow in places, but that didn’t matter. DEFCON 1 meant that everyone everywhere needed to jump to wartime posture. Military bases across the country saw the alert sounded. Personnel rushed about with questions in the mind of everyone but with the goal being to be ready to move to that high state of readiness. This included putting a whole load of aircraft in the sky. It wasn’t just SAC which did this. All elements of the US Armed Forces which started launching aircraft less they be attacked when on the ground. Up they went regardless of what exactly was going on. Many aircraft were armed though plenty more weren’t. Fuel was going to be an issue soon enough for many of them and there were coordination problems early on with communications patchy across the country due to a whole lot of saboteur activity… a lot of that concentrated across the western half of the country plus up in Alaska too.

American aircraft in those regions were soon alerted to hostile aircraft in the sky. These weren’t incoming nuclear bombers – what NORAD was watching for despite what was said on the Hot-Line – but something different. Many individual tracks were detected all over the place coming in from overseas and heading towards what was soon understood to be four different general areas: the top of the Alaskan Panhandle, south-central Colorado, central New Mexico and the coast of south Texas. What these aircraft were up to wasn’t at once obvious though it was soon enough after that message from the Soviets about their ‘security zone’ was understood. American aircraft in the sky anywhere near these incoming aircraft were directed to head towards them if they had the fuel to do so and the ammunition to make use of. Interceptors assigned for NORAD missions on continental air defence – there weren’t that many of them – were used where possible though their patrol areas weren’t near to the paths of incoming aircraft. This wasn’t bombers: those were troop transports heading in!


The Soviet armed forces had used paratroopers extensively during their twin invasions of Afghanistan and Iran back in 1980 and again earlier this year in Poland. Global military exercises between had again shown the value of using large numbers of paratroopers to secure airheads inside enemy territory where those forces could then operate from following initial entry.

There had always been the problem of not having enough transport aircraft yet while defence minister (and defence industry minister too) under Andropov, Ustinov had been able to secure funding for more in the form of heavy-lift aircraft to transport paratroopers and equipment. Still, there was never enough. More would always be needed than what was had. Many of the big Antonov-22s (including the newer -22M model) and Ilyushin-76s were in service and there had been increased production runs of the specialist Antonov-32s and Antonov-124s too. These transports were used alongside civilian aircraft to send airborne formations into the designated landing sites inside the United States. They were tasked to make several runs as well: whole formations weren’t being dropped at once for the transports to do nothing afterwards. Losses were expected. Soviet and allied fighters could be put into the sky but the transports were going into unfriendly skies where the Americans would always have the numbers. In addition, it was understood that once the first landings had been made, those coming in for a second time would truly be running the gauntlet of enemy action against them as their destination was known. The staff projections of how many aircraft would be lost when delivering the men of the Soviet Airborne Forces, plus some Cuban & Nicaraguan units, were one thing: reality was going to be something else.

Those big, expensive transports laden with men and equipment faced American air power. They had a mission to do, dropping their cargoes, and carried on with this. What saved the majority of them was that American air activity during the first flights in and out of the transports was rather uncoordinated. It wouldn’t be the second time around. Meanwhile, there were invading troops on the ground inside the United States.


The small airports at Haines and Skagway were the initial entry points for the 345th Guards Parachute Regiment, an independent unit of Soviet Airborne veterans of many fights through Afghanistan. The size of those small airports meant that the whole regiment would have to be air-dropped rather than a follow-up landing by the transport aircraft made once their airports were secured as was going to be the case elsewhere. That couldn’t be helped: Haines and Skagway were too small for the transports which made the trans-Pacific flights. Men, equipment and supplies were parachuted out of the back of the big jets which then started to fly back home ready to bring more: it would be a long wait. The landing sites were located somewhere that no one would seriously want to have to parachute into. This was the Alaskan Panhandle and the airports both lay next to wide bodies of water with mountains all around them. The weather was bad: it would get worse in the next few months. Haines and Skagway were geographically quite far apart as well. On a map they looked close together but for the paratroopers on the ground, they might as well have been on different continents. Pathfinders had marked the way and already been busy securing civilian light aircraft and small boats. This helped but only so much. A battalion of men was at each landing site – minus men killed during the jump – and they got to their tasks. Looking skywards and wondering when, maybe if, the next wave of transports bringing in the rest of the regiment wasn’t one of those assigned tasks.

The mission in the Alaskan Panhandle for the 345th Regiment was to establish blocking positions here and also across the border inside the Yukon Territory. The Canadian frontier was ‘just’ up the road from both Haines and Skagway. The paratroopers who’d been sent here were to advance to the border and over it to reach the Alaskan Highway which connected the mainland of the United States with Alaska. That connection was to be severed with Alaska left isolated. This mission had been dreamed up by those who didn’t take part in the jump nor were due to come in the second wave either. It wasn’t going to be easy to do. Those were the mission orders though. The Canadian town of Whitehorse was the priority with Haines Junction (that town in the Yukon and the similar-named one in Alaska were connected by a long, winding road) secondary. Locally-captured transport was to be used as much as possible, including vehicles alongside the light aircraft and boats, though the second wave of big transport aircraft were meant to be air-dropping light armoured vehicles when they made low-level flights above the captured airheads. The captured airports in the Alaskan Panhandle would at some point afterwards become combat bases with fighter aircraft based at them but for now they were just the entry points for the men moving up into Canada.

Those on the ground knew little beyond what they were told by their officers. Land, establish control and prepare to move out. That was what they were told. They had orders to shoot against all resistance to them and were warned that the local population would have access to weapons. This wasn’t Afghanistan but they could expect a fight on their hands to come from the civilian population. As to organised enemy resistance, there were no American nor Canadian forces near to where they landed nor along their projected routes of advance up through the mountain passes following the roads into the Yukon. It was going to quite the adventure for the 345th Regiment now that they were on the ground here in North America.


Soviet pathfinders directed the landings of paratroopers from the 76th Guards Airborne Division onto the edges of Kirtland AFB outside of Albuquerque. This big US Air Force facility stretched away in a southern & southeastern direction away from that city. The incoming paratroopers weren’t dropped onto the runways (which were shared with the civilian airport) but instead away from them across open ground. They had been brought all the way from Cuba and flown first over the sea, then above the north of Mexico before finally dropped when over New Mexico. One of the division’s regiments went in first, making combat jumps, with another regiment and divisional assets to be airlifted into the facility once it was captured: the peacetime-assigned third regiment had been detached away on a different mission.

American fighters interfered with both the approach of the incoming transports, the air-drop and then the egress of those transports heading back to Cuba. Casualties therefore occurred among the attackers before they could even get into a fight. Once on the ground, they formed up though with officers running around getting the men organised into columns to move on Kirtland proper. Also on the ground were armoured vehicles: BMD-1s and BTR-Ds. These led the attack made against what resistance came from US Air Force personnel at Kirtland. That resistance was strong but doomed from the outset. Those pathfinders which had come in first had been busy undermining that by making sure that when the main body of paratroopers came in, they were able to attack in a manner to overrun those here who suddenly found themselves in a battle which they never thought possible here in New Mexico. Where the defenders tried to stand, the attackers were guided around them while mortar fire rained down. The Americans had a few, a very few, light armoured vehicles of their own. The BMD-1s which the Soviets had were used to blow them apart as the BTR-Ds brought paratroopers forward to dismount behind the Americans. It was what the Soviets were trained for and what they were good at.

Kirtland was overrun and so too were the civilian airport facilities. There was also entry made into the site of the Sandia National Laboratories which were co-located at the site with a company of paratroopers followed by a detachment of GRU personnel who had also made the jump. There was damage done everywhere when the fighting had taken place. Standing instructions for those on the assault mission were to not destroy Kirtland but that was easier said than done. The Americans had been overcome yet it hadn’t been easy. During that, buildings had been set alight and some of the important infrastructure blown up. It could have been worse though. It wasn’t as if Kirtland was wired for demolition to deny it to an invader. The US Air Force security police numbered a company’s worth of men and while joined by other personnel with access to weaponry, they had been overcome soon enough. It had been a lethal yet short fight. Prisoners were taken, another mission order. There were quite a few of those and when resistance came from those who had laid down their arms, the men of the Soviet Airborne responded to that in an ‘efficient’ manner. There were civilians everywhere too and when they caused trouble, they too faced the harsh punishment which came with that. Kirtland had those runways which the paratroopers were here to take for further use by the rest of their division and then for later purposes too. What the facility also had was Sandia plus other ‘special sites’. The US Air Force had a training unit here of air-rescue aircraft & helicopters with the ones of those captured about to be made use of on a tactical level. However, Kirtland was home to much military research and development, a lot of which was secret. This was an intelligence treasure trove which had been captured here alongside a big airmobile hub for follow-up operations far behind what were soon to become the frontlines far off to the south.


Another Soviet airborne division, this one the 103rd Guards, was sent into the United States with the transports making the (shorter) flight from Cuba to South Texas. Two of the division’s regiments were used to make multiple landings around Corpus Christi. They were guided into their drop-zones by those pathfinders on the ground and those landing sites were multiple. Corpus Christi was surrounded by military and civilian facilities which the invasion plan called for to be made use for bringing in more forces as well as supporting the fighting too. The Corpus Christi operation was more important than the Alaskan Panhandle and Albuquerque missions. The 103rd Guards’ third regiment was meant to join the first pair along with the divisional assets soon enough at an accelerated rate of entry. The transports would land to deliver what they were bringing in during the second and third runs which they made into South Texas: they would have plenty of landing sites to make use of.

Paratroopers made landings near to – not directly atop of – a total of five opening airheads. Corpus Christi Airport and NAS Corpus Christi (the civilian airport and the US Navy airbase) were inside the small city while outside there came landings to seize the training bases at NAS Chase Field and NAS Kingsville plus the big auxiliary airfield at Orange Grove. The military bases outside of the city were especially valuable for the invasion plan due to their multiple runways; in addition, the NAS Corpus Christi itself had two more auxiliary strips at Cabaniss & Waldron which would be useful as well. The US Navy had a big presence around Corpus Christi with all of their airbases for their naval aviation training: the paratroopers with the Soviet Airborne were all over them. There were some mis-drops made with local wind conditions misunderstood and so in several instances the paratroopers were scattered. However, there were so many of them who landed in and around Corpus Christi that that didn’t cause too many problems. Each targeted airhead was subject to an assault made against it with columns formed up of men and air-dropped vehicles taking place. Resistance was met. The US Navy sites were training facilities and had only received partial alerts which came with the DEFCON 1 alert. They weren’t expecting what they faced. Still, they fought where they could and as best as they could. The assaults which they faced overwhelmed them though. Once those targeted sites were taken – at the civilian airport and the unmanned Orange Grove there was no one in the way – then the consolidation began of the whole area.

The national guard armoury in the city was taken. So too was the coast guard station. At each, shots were exchanged with those there who chose to fight and die. The column of paratroopers heading for the port facilities in the city got lost by going west from the airport rather than north after they didn’t correctly follow the guidance of the pathfinders and in doing so they ran into civilian gunfire. Texan civilians shot at the invaders suddenly all over their city and gunfire was returned against them. Outside the city, the pathfinders who’d marked the way at Chase Field successfully led the battalion of paratroopers who moved away from there (another battalion stayed behind: Chase Field was to be a forward defensive position facing north) down to the coast and to Port Aransas. The Port of Corpus Christi was to be used by ships coming from Cuba laden with Soviet forces arriving by sea but it was positioned back from the Gulf of Mexico with entry into the sheltered Corpus Christi Bay only through the shipping channel besides Port Aransas. That access to the sea was secured. The deep-water port of Corpus Christi was now fully in Soviet hands. The paratroopers had taken the whole city too… now they had to pacify it as more gunfire was directed against them.


The fourth air-drop was left to the Cubans and the Nicaraguans. It was rated the most dangerous by the Soviets and was given to their allies. The honour of undertaking the mission to establish blocking positions far ahead of where the main fighting would take place was left to the brave paratroopers from those two countries. They were given the task of landing up in the Rocky Mountains around Pueblo in Colorado.

The Cuban 2nd Airborne Brigade and the Nicaraguan 19th Parachute Regiment were sent into Colorado. Part of each formation was air-dropped to meet up with pathfinders and the rest of each unit would later be flown into to make landing at captured airheads. That initial drop suffered stronger American air interference than any of the Soviet assaults. The aircraft used were smaller and flew slower; they also had to go pretty far with therefore more of an opportunity for them to be engaged. The perfectly-sited landing zones marked weren’t always reached by those who survived the shooting down of many transport aircraft and thus they were scattered over a wide area, the Cubans especially. Considering that their mission was to get in the way of an anticipated advance by a US Army division surely soon to move south the next day, if not that night, this wasn’t good for the futures of the men involved. They were scattered like their weapons canisters and few air-dropped armoured vehicles were as well. Pueblo sat at a crossroads within the valley of the Arkansas River and around there the Cubans were meant to concentrate in number while away to the east, further down the valley, the Nicaraguans were meant to be established. Ground forces were meant to reach them all in five to seven days… an optimistic timeline if there ever was one. Until then, they were meant to stop an American attack from the north. Fort Carson wasn’t very far from where the Cubans were scattered and this was going to be quite the challenge.

The Cubans struggled to sort themselves out as the afternoon wore on. Radio signals were disrupted by the terrain. There was civilian resistance encountered too and while that was overcome through the liberal use of fire-power, it slowed them down. Faster work was done by the combat engineers given tasks inside Pueblo. Roads and rail-lines converged upon Pueblo and crossed the river: the bridges were wired for demolition first and then then engineers started deploying more explosives elsewhere ready to be blown during the attack when it came. The city’s outlying airport was reached too and taken over ready for use by when the transport aircraft returned to bring in more men. As to the Nicaraguans, they overran Pueblo Ordnance Depot. That was a major munitions storage site and taken intact. Physical links were established with Cuban defensive positions around Pueblo and the Nicaraguans moved into their flanking defensive position ready to support their Cuban camaradas when battle was met. There were still many missing Cubans – and some Nicaraguans too it must be said – spread out for miles in every direction and far away from Pueblo. Combat for all of them was to come sooner than expected.


The paratroopers were in. Losses had been taken and more would come, especially among those valuable transport aircraft. Regardless, at the beginning it appeared that success had been met everywhere with missions fulfilled. It was a good start to the invasion from the Soviet point of view… it wouldn’t soon be for their allies all by their lonesome up in Colorado nor within days those Soviet Airborne men advancing into Canada who wouldn’t get reinforced. Kirtland and Corpus Christi were both in Soviet hands and fully under control. Those operations were what really mattered.

To follow the paratroopers, there would come other invading forces. Soviet forces staging from Cuba wouldn’t start arriving until the next day and they needed more than just the one port inside Texas. Cuban, Nicaraguan and Guatemalan troops located in northern Mexico were still very far back from the border and wouldn’t be able to make crossing operations until tomorrow. They were moving forward now but weren’t yet ready to enter America despite moving fast now once out in the open. Therefore, to allow the invasion to meet success for the ground forces, the US-Mexican border needed breaking open. On its northern side, it was full of national guardsmen all around the crossing points which were to be used and also there was the need for that second Texan port to be taken. Furthermore, there were also US military bases in certain places and while the servicemen at them weren’t in an immediate position to defend the border, they soon would be if left alone! The paratroopers had opened the invasion; what came after them along the frontier would be the key to getting it truly underway. Light forces had been moved ahead under cover. They went into action.



17th September 1984:

Texan national guardsmen from their 2nd Brigade of the 49th Armored Division were spread along the northern side of the Lower Valley of the Rio Grande from Brownsville up to Falcon Reservoir. Their task wasn’t to guard the border to stop an attack coming over from Mexico. Instead, they were providing security around the refugee camps which had sprung up as well aiding the shelter of those tens of thousands of people who’d fled revolution and civil war in their country. The national guardsmen had first come to the border earlier in the year with their tanks and other heavy weapons but returned those soon enough. Their mission didn’t need such equipment. The state government in Austin wanted them to aid in the costly task of ensuring that anarchy didn’t come to the refugee camps and also that those in them had access to clean water, food, medical care and shelter from the elements; they did this alongside FEMA and state agencies. Naturally, there was some thinking and sketch planning about how the brigade could fight to defend Texas because the men who served were soldiers yet there was no real work done on that. They weren’t in a position to do so and the task they had was more than enough to keep them occupied. In addition, the Mexicans would never be stupid enough to try and come north and mess with Texas.

The Mexicans didn’t come north. Two brigades of Soviet troops did instead. These units had moved into Mexico in the past few weeks with the 7th Motorised Rifle Brigade being long-stationed in Cuba and the 39th Landing-assault Brigade usually garrisoned in the western part of the Ukraine both moving covertly into Mexico. They had been in hiding until this afternoon. Now they were out in the open, moving from positions just back from the border and into the attack. The 7th Brigade was on the left with the 39th Brigade on the right. Attachments had come to each from their peacetime organisation in the form of engineers and Spetsnaz detachments; brigades, instead a standard division, was used as well due to the complexity of the mission. They went into the attack to take control of the northern side of the river while eliminating all opposition which stood in their way. That control meant securing the crossings over the Rio Grande, the trio of civilian airports inside Texas and also the Port of Brownsville.

Warning came to the national guardsmen through their brigade headquarters from the Fifth United States Army based up in Fort San Houston in San Antonio rather than their divisional field base. There were communication difficulties with the 49th Division, those being commando actions. San Antonio had been hit too though with less Soviet success there. The warning contained the message that the border was about to be crossed by non-Mexican forces. It was short and brief. On the back of it came the Soviet attack. There was a mass of helicopters in the sky and then armoured vehicles, including a battalion of T-62 tanks, which smashed into them. The alert hadn’t given the national guardsmen any time nor anything like the information which they needed. Still, they fought back. They managed to shoot down several of the transport helicopters bringing airmobile troops into the airport at Harlingen and delay the assault there somewhat. In addition, when the tracked & wheeled armoured vehicles carrying the men of the 7th Brigade went across the river at the Reynosa-Hidalgo crossing, several were knocked out of action… unfortunately those Soviet tanks came across to and put an end to resistance from the volunteer part-time with their fire-power. The national guardsmen dented the attack in places yet couldn’t stop it. Both Soviet brigades got over the Rio Grande and started securing the whole area. They had those bridges intact – with more to quickly begin the construction of – and also the airports too which could handle big transport aircraft bringing in men from Cuba. The Port of Brownsville was taken as well with the facilities on the edge of that city as well as the shipping canal and Port Isabel on the coast. These excellent transport links here just inside the United States along with the fantastic roads too would all benefit Soviet needs far more than anything that could be found just back over the border inside Mexico.

The 7th Brigade moved onwards from its Hidalgo bridgehead, striking deeper and heading northwards. There was to be a link-up made with the paratroopers around Corpus Christi by nightfall. The 39th Brigade was more spread out and didn’t charge forwards. Instead, the task of these men inside South Texas was to crush pockets of disorganised resistance all over the place and round up prisoners. There was a lot of work for them to do. Their control over the airports allowed for the first flights to arrive coming from Cuba though also up from Mexico too. Fighting troops were on their way in but ahead of them were specialists from various different fields of engineering, communications and military intelligence. The Lower Valley was to be the scene of a major initial concentration of Soviet military forces for their operations inside America and the groundwork was underway to maintain and support that. The GRU was at first in charge of security though there also came KGB units as well: the latter would have different ideas of what security was than the GRU had.


Other Texan national guardsmen with another brigade from the 49th Division were located north of Falcon Reservoir all the way up the border as far as the Amistad Reservoir near the Big Bend. They had an identical mission to those to their south where and they also weren’t in a position to defend the border against a major armed attack. Mexicans didn’t cross the border to engage them around Laredo, Eagle Pass and Del Rio nor did any Soviet troops. Along this stretch of the Rio Grande, it was Cubans who came across instead. Those Cubans were from their 5th Reconnaissance Brigade, a formation converted last year from the basis of the disbanded 43rd Infantry Division. They came in helicopters (no where near as many as the Soviets had) as well as light armoured vehicles; others were on foot. The way was being opened for the Cuban Second Army to move into Texas from the Monterrey-Saltillo area with those heavy forces still some distance way but needing the way opened for them. That the brigade out ahead did. Again, the national guardsmen fought well but they weren’t in any position to repel that attack which came. Laughlin AFB near Del Rio was overrun so that it could become a Cuban airbase on American soil and the civilian airport at Laredo would assist with the forward movement of troops. The seized bridges over the Rio Grande were the real prizes for the Cubans though.

El Paso was the scene of another Soviet assault on the border using light forces. Here there was the use of their troops to open the way for the Nicaraguan First Army (which included Guatemalans) to get into New Mexico. Those heavy forces of the field army were moving northwards, due to arrive at dawn tomorrow, but for now the 66th Motorised Rifle Brigade as well as the 234th Guards Parachute Regiment – detached from its parent division sent to Albuquerque – crossed through the Pass of the North. El Paso was one hell of a fight. New Mexico national guardsmen were in the firing line around the city which the 66th Brigade (they’d been in Cuba all year) moved against and they weren’t the rollover which they could have been. As to the paratroopers, they were sent into action via helicopters and landed at both El Paso’s airport plus the neighbouring Biggs Army Airfield… which served Fort Bliss. Regular US Army troops based at Fort Bliss included the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment plus an assortment of air defence and support units. ‘Repel an armed cross-border incursion by forces unknown’ was the gist of the emergency message sent to Fort Bliss. Those there gave that a very good attempt. Biggs was retaken – and destroyed in the process – by the time darkness came. The Soviet paratroopers fell back towards the airport and were joined by the 66th Brigade who had some tanks with them who could engage the Cav’ units better. The 234th Regiment took extraordinary losses from what was an ill-prepared opponent who had problems of their own in manoeuvring and inability to use extensive firepower in an area full of friendly civilians yet had numbers on their side at the beginning. A pair of Nicaraguan motorised rifle divisions, complete with more tanks plus a lot of heavy guns, were to arrive in the morning and they would be needed for the Pass of the North had only been partially forced open. The numbers would be with them by that point.

US Marines around Yuma and Arizonan national guardsmen in the southwestern part of Arizona were engaged by another Soviet unit: the 38th Guards Landing-assault Brigade. The 38th Brigade was a heli-borne formation though had some of their own armoured vehicles as well which they used in a ground attack rather than having them air-lifted forward. Furthermore, attached to the brigade was a battalion of East German paratroopers used today in the airmobile role as well. Due to local geography of where the border ran, the Soviets and East Germans attacked in an eastwards direction when they assaulted MCAS Yuma plus the facilities available at the Yuma Army Proving Ground. The Marines fought hard and didn’t give up their base without a very bloody fight indeed. They extracted major casualties from the 38th Brigade before attempting to make a fighting withdrawal out of their lost airbase. Soviet light armour, plenty of their tracked BMD-1s and BTR-Ds, cut off a retreat eastwards after their dash up from San Luis and so the attempt was made for the Marines which were still able to fight to head northwards. Once again, they ran into trouble. The East Germans were staging from out of their captured airhead at Laguna Army Airfield and cut that escape route too. The town of Yuma as well as nearby communities became a battlefield instead. The Marines and the scattered national guardsmen were caught in the middle… so too were many civilians. Fighting continued through the hours of darkness. The airheads at Yuma and Laguna were in Soviet and East German hands but a major price had come in terms of their own casualties during their operations here.

The California Army National Guard had a brigade from their 40th Infantry Division inside the Imperial Valley north of Mexicali. The Cuban 4th Reconnaissance Brigade (again, a former infantry division converted into a new role) attacked there with support on the ground from some Revolutionary Mexico troops under local Cuban control. The US Navy training airbase NAS El Centro was assaulted by a company of Cubans in helicopters though the main effort was directed through the Mexicali-Calexico border crossing. Border Patrol agents were gunned down and over came the Cuban Army. They then spread out, heading for where national guardsmen could be found as well as linking up with the men at El Centro. The Imperial Valley was a fertile agricultural area below the Salton Sea surrounded by the Colorado Desert. The road and rail connections in this area were good and the terrain nice and flat. The Cubans moved fast while securing those transportation links including the small and barely-used Holtville Airport as well: that and El Centro would soon be home to Cuban combat aircraft. They took prisoners among those who surrendered after scattered fighting from a surprised opponent. The Mexicans who followed them didn’t take prisoners, especially among anyone not in uniform who looked vaguely Hispanic. They were ‘traitors to the Mexican revolution’… or just local civilians who had Hispanic background. The brigade commander, a career Cuban Army officer who had a dedication to Cuba’s own revolution, wasn’t prepared to put up with that because it was pure murder. Shooting the Mexicans was his first thought but he understood there would be recriminations personally for doing that. He had the Mexican detachments soon sent back over the border to ‘continue to secure Mexicali’ rather than see their presence anymore in Calexico. That unpleasantness aside, access to the Imperial Valley was now held open for the soon-arriving Cuban First Army to properly invade California through the back door.


Far away from the US-Mexican border, Soviet forces were making further inroads when it came to isolating and thus eliminating American forces in Alaska. Taking the whole state head-on with a full-scale invasion was rather the daunting task and would require a massive force to be involved when the defending forces which they would encounter were smaller but could make use of the terrain very well to fight. The Soviets wanted Alaska to be unavailable as a base of operations for activity against them. The best way to do that was to cut off those inside and make sure that the military bases there weren’t used for American strikes against the Soviet homeland. After a siege had taken place, then later the whole of Alaska would be moved against.

Soviet naval infantry – their marines – started landing through the Aleutians chain and also on Kodiak Island. The 55th Naval Infantry Division was involved in this, at the head of the Sixty–Seventh Army Corps which would command all forces (a later-arriving motorised rifle division plus those paratroopers already in) eventually tasked for the Alaska mission. Staged landings were to take place with the naval infantry like they were with the whole corps. Soviet amphibious assault capability was limited in terms of ships despite having many naval infantry troops under command throughout their armed forces. The Soviet Pacific Fleet was assembling many ships to lift most of the 55th Division to Alaska protected by a battle fleet – which would certainly get a battle with the US Navy indeed soon enough – but before then clandestine efforts were used to get the first of the naval infantry in where they would take airheads plus ports at lightly-defended sites.

Disguised civilian ships started depositing company-sized groups of naval infantry on Adak and Shemya Islands. NAS Adak used by the US Navy and the US Air Force’s Eareckson AFB were these targets in the Aleutian Islands. There were surprised defenders at these sites who got no warning of what was coming their way due to communications being cut right after the nuclear attack on the mainland had taken place some time beforehand. Supposedly-innocent ships came nearby and from them Soviet naval infantry made assaults against each. Adak and Eareckson were taken. Then there was the airport on Kodiak Island, closer to the Alaskan mainland. That was a civilian facility used by the Coast Guard too. Another ship was used to have naval infantry get close and then make an attack to overrun the targeted site. Kodiak would, like the other two captured sites spread along the Aleutian Islands chain, soon see more men flown in before combat aircraft would be based at them. The Soviet squeeze on Alaska could now begin.



17th September 1984:

As could be expected, the news that not only had the United States suffered a bolt from the blue (or should that be ‘red’?) nuclear strike but was also coming under invasion was quite the shock to service personnel across the nation. There was some disbelief too among some – surely this must be a joke? – yet the vast majority of that was quickly dismissed. Training and discipline kicked in. Much of the US Armed Forces had been at a higher state of alert before the sudden attack due to the on-off air intervention in Mexico, the stand-off with Cuba and the issue with North Korea looking likely to strike too. The dust hadn’t settled at home, physically nor metaphorically, but those in uniform got to the business of fighting the war which had bee forced upon them. Many staff officers were running around like headless chickens and there was a lot of problems with communications. However, the basic fact was that there was an invasion underway and it would be opposed. It was coming from Mexico where there were those Cuban and Nicaraguan troops which it had been said where in-place to ‘defend Mexico’ were the ones who would be moving north. Whether any Mexicans were involved was something nor yet known. As to the Soviets, their role was not yet understood: were they too involved in this invasion directly or just aiding it with fire-support? As the war’s first day wore onwards, there came some answers forthcoming alongside a lot of fighting.

How long this was all going to last was something that couldn’t yet be known though.


The skies over America were full of aircraft. Aircraft in the service of all branches of the US Armed Forces got airborne in response to the first nuclear attacks less they be caught on the ground in further attacks. Some of those had gone into action against transport aircraft where possible while others had circled around doing nothing. There were civilian aircraft in the skies as well, confusing the radar picture, before there was an emergency grounding of anything non-military. Military aircraft were eventually brought back down, either to their home bases or others, when no second wave of nuclear detonations occurred. Fuel was a massive concern and so too was the fact that so many didn’t have the ammunition to do anything. The initial panic with sending everyone up came to an end. Several more airbases throughout the western half of the country had been hit by commando actions like many SAC sites had though the damage in real terms was minimal beyond the confusion and a lot of dead bodies: aircraft losses weren’t significant. What was important was to get the mass of combat aircraft that the country had doing something effective. They could be sent into action over their own airspace with friendly forces and bases all over the place. What enemy they would face would be far from home and few in number. All of the advantages in the battle for the skies would be on the American’s side as long as they were able to sort themselves out. This was started. Intelligence information was patchy and a lot of reconnaissance needed doing. There also was the need for organised command for operations beyond the peacetime set-up. Still, there was the beginning of the process of getting all that started while at the same time there was also the ability to hit back in certain places even at such an early stage.

Where possible, and certainly as soon as possible, American combat aircraft would go into action on offensive missions beyond the country’s borders. There were many targets already selected for Avid Castle strikes through Mexico which hadn’t been approved; other attacks under the Dark Knight code-name for those against Cuba had been ‘delayed’ by Kennedy. Those could commence. The groundwork was done and once changes were made, in an ever-changing situation, they could get underway. Further work would be needed to follow them up but the necessary start could get underway quicker than might be thought because the initial preparation had been done pre-war. An invasion army would be moving north from Mexico and should be easy to spot from the air. That was to be blasted. As to Cuba, it was home to Cuban forces plus those Soviet deployed there which had been seen pre-war: again, they were all fair game now for air attacks.

As to missions over American skies, those were at the same time easier but, conversely, more difficult to undertake too at the beginning. Fighter sweeps could sent, especially along the border and around the reported sites of the airdrops of paratroopers, and along with them would be sent attack aircraft on tactical missions. There was no real time for major pre-strike reconnaissance over those areas and also worries about civilian casualties yet that was unavoidable. This had to be done, and done now. Reports were coming in that many airbases along the border areas – training facilities were aplenty there – were either confirmed to have been captured or under firm attack. The enemy would soon be trying to base fighters at them and they needed to be attacked straight away. What were called ‘frag orders’ were dispatched from headquarters down to combat units to begin this as the afternoon turned to the evening. Things remained a mess but this had to all get going. The US Air Force would be joined by the air elements of the US Navy and the US Marines in undertaking urgent air action. National guard units had received mobilisation orders and would soon be in support. A lot of answers to what was going on would come once the aircraft got into action. Enemy aircraft were all over the skies above America supporting troops on the ground: they all needed to feel the might of US air power.


After some debate, Bentsen and the Joint Chiefs left the Pentagon. There was a lot of radiation in the air outside due to the DC bombs but the wind was blowing the fallout the other way… further up the Eastern Seaboard. Exposure time would be brief and a couple of evacuation helicopters were sent for a dash flight to the Pentagon to grab those VIPs and a few others coming out with them. There were many people at the Pentagon who needed evacuation and others in dire need of medical attention, but at the moment the most urgent task was getting the secretary of defence and the service chiefs out. Chemical warfare gear was worn by those making the rescue and those being lifted out. A pair of helicopters made that evacuation, staying far away from DC as well as the scene of the attack on Langley as well which had obliterated the CIA headquarters. The skies on what should have been a bright afternoon were dark though there was light on the ground – a mix of yellows, oranges and reds – where fires burned. Those fires were seemingly everywhere. Americans were caught in the way of what came after the nuclear detonations.

Before leaving, orders had been dispatched from the Pentagon to follow-up the initial flash traffic which had gone out in the panic to US Armed Forces ground units. US Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) at Fort McPherson in Georgia would take under operational command the Fifth and Sixth Armies with those two headquarters being responsible for subordinate US Army, US Army Reserve, US Army National Guard and US Marines elements west of the Mississippi. East of the Mississippi, FORSCOM would have command over the First Army which again would control a mix of units standing and mobilising across the eastern half of the country. Many other headquarters needed forming and much work would need to be done in the coming days. Regardless, in the meantime, there was fighting take place and this basic arrangement would be followed at the start before it was expanded upon. The mission orders were to ‘repel and drive back border incursions’ with specific information being sent as soon as it became available. It was a mess. That much was true, yet these were the first hours of the war.

The US Navy had already begun surging ships and that continued. The Chief of Naval Operations was getting all sorts of reports of action overseas which the US Navy was seeing where some elements had come under attack and responded in self-defence. Others had gone into action once DEFCON 1 had been declared, attacking Soviet forces where they could as well as designated wartime targets of Soviet allies. There were communications problems with US-based radio transmitters and satellite-relay stations having been attacked but the messages were getting out where possible. That alert at home had seen urgent activity at naval stations across the United States, inland and on the coasts. There was an issue with damage caused by a commando attack at Alameda – coming from a submarine it seemed – and also incidents where ‘innocent’ civilian ships appeared to have been trying to lay mines near bases: one was sunk off Norfolk and another left a burning wreck near San Diego. Nonetheless, the US Navy was off to fight too. It was clear that they would have a major role in this war, maybe the biggest soon enough: a Soviet-led war in the Western Hemisphere, whether they took a leading part or a supporting role, would overall be one where control of the seas was paramount. Ships were being sent to sea with more to follow them.

America was at war.



17th September 1984:

Glenn and Bentsen weren’t the only senior Cabinet-level members of the US Government who had survived the Soviet attack. The Secretary of Commence was alive – he’d been on his way to Japan for an official visit and arrived there – while the Secretary of Education was located down in Louisiana. Both men were safe. So many more were missing, presumed dead. Kennedy had certainly been killed at the White House while Mondale and Bayh had been on their way to Andrews when the nuclear blasts had gone off above DC; there was no word on other Cabinet members. The Congressional leadership had been in the city as well along with the majority of senators and congressmen. One of the justices from the Supreme Court was confirmed to be alive and there was hope that another one (reported to have been on his way into Washington at the time) might be alive: the other seven were all gone. Heads of executive agencies of the federal government from the FBI, the CIA, FEMA, the Federal Reserve and so on were on the list of missing while their various headquarters buildings had been blown to bits. The decapitation of the top of the government wasn’t complete but it was pretty damn close to being so.

Bentsen arrived at Raven Rock and his focus was on military matters at a time like this. There was fighting at home and there was fighting overseas, a lot of both. Meanwhile, Glenn remained on Air Force One with the aircraft meeting a tanker sent by SAC when over Kentucky as the new president flew eastwards. He was heading for Wright-Patterson AFB in his native Ohio to change aircraft. There had been a desire for him to come further east to go to Mount Weather or to the Greenbriar facility where what members of Congress nationwide alive were supposed to head towards but Bentsen and the Joint Chiefs firmly suggested that that was a bad idea for the time being. The Soviets could make another nuclear strike. What they had said over the Hot-Line could just be a maskirovka. NORAD had run through all the data it had again and could see no sign of any missile tracks which had come in to destroy Kansas City and Offutt AFB. There was indication now that faint radar echoes off the Eastern Seaboard before Washington was obliterated could have been cruise missiles but even that was still unconfirmed: a couple of radar stations along the Atlantic coastline had gone off-line before the attack and they hadn’t been sending data then nor now to confirm that. In short, another nuclear attack could come with little or no warning. There might be some sort of pre-placed weapon near to either Mount Weather or the Greenbriar – that was the current thinking on Kansas City & Offutt – or a submarine lurking off the coast ready with cruise missiles to attack either should the Soviets find out Glenn reached either. There was so much unknown at the minute and a lot of concern. They had tried to kill him once and could easily have another go. For the time being, him being airborne remained a far better idea.

SAC had many of its bombers airborne and most of the ICBMs were on-line. There were submarines with Poseidon & Trident missiles at sea with which contact had been made even if that was patchy without the majority of the TACAMO aircraft. If the Soviets wanted to go a second round, the United States was able to do so. Glenn was in a position to order another strike against them though it would only be a retaliatory one. He had made that clear despite the urging of one of his ‘guests’, that congressman aboard Air Force One – who remained welded to the idea of effectively wiping the Soviet Union off the face of the earth – that the United States should finish what had begun with Leningrad and the Kartaly missile-field now that an invasion was underway. What was the point of having nuclear weapons if they couldn’t be used to defend one’s own soil from direct invasion? Glenn expressed his view that such a thing would mean the Soviets would do the same to America too and so wouldn’t order another strike, not even against Cuba when the congressman pushed for that as well. It just wasn’t going to happen, he wouldn’t do it.


From New York City, the deputy director of the FBI got in touch with Mount Weather first (he was at the FEMA regional office in Manhattan and Mount Weather was a FEMA site) and then was put in contact with the president when his call was relayed onwards. There had been several terrorist attacks in New York – the power to most of the Subway had been knocked out, the NYPD headquarters had been hit by a bomb blast, Gracie Mansion was on fire – and he was getting reports through the FBI field office that New York wasn’t alone in being struck like this: other cities had been hit by terrorists and/or commandos too. He was worried about when the news came to most of the public about the nuclear attack and also when it got dark too: there was going to be anarchy in many places. Mobilisation orders were going out everywhere to reserve and national guard units across the country but no one had told the American people what was really going on. The sirens had sounded nationwide and Glenn had made a short statement which had told people nothing of any substance. Rumours were spreading already. This was a dangerous situation. Why was the truth being hidden, he asked, when the best thing to do was to say what was going on, surely? Glenn told him of the need for the priority over military affairs at a time like this with information being held back. Respectfully, but firmly, the president was told that was the worst possible idea. There would come an immediate rally-around-the-flag effect with the truth, certainly bigger than anything seen before in American history. Of course, things could be left out when it came to the scale of the damage, yet the best thing to do now was to be honest of the overall situation. From what was being picked up infrequently in New York, media outlets were reporting snippets of wild stories and rumours across the South-West near where there was fighting. No one was controlling what they were saying.

Information control needed to be established. At the top of that needed to be the president. The radio broadcast relayed from Air Force One wouldn’t have been heard by everyone and it had sounded distorted from where it had been heard in New York. Get on television, Mister President, and address the American people!



17th September 1984:

The war’s first day was coming to an end. Daylight had faded through the eastern half of the country and darkness was coming to the west too. Through the night, as it had done all afternoon, the fighting continued regardless where the invasion remained underway in its early, opening stages. The Americans had their aircraft in the skies but so too did the Soviets and their Latin American allies. With the latter, they were moving fast to get established on the ground so to have more in the sky over the battlefields which had been created. This was no easy task. Many airbases and airfields had been taken though more remained to be overrun soon enough. Once that was done, combat aircraft could be brought in to operate from them. That all took time. Rough-field capabilities of the aircraft and planning to fly from such places was one thing; doing it was something else. The Americans were rapidly shaking off their shock and hitting back. On the ground they were in a mess and would be for some time, yet air power was something that they were always going to have an advantage in when above their own country. The western half of the United States was home to aircraft based at countless sites from all branches of the armed forces. The lack of urban crowding – as opposed to what there was in the eastern half of the nation – was one factor in that with the good weather another. In addition, when it came to the general military presence west of the Mississippi, history had dictated that the United States maintained military bases aplenty there. There were exercise areas all over the place with pilots and aircrew used to operating in such a region. This was their home-turf.

Combat took place in the dark skies. Some of it was planned with fighter sweeps and counter fight sweeps though the majority of the action in the sky was accidental. Aircraft on opposing sides came into contact with each other and fought when their primary tasks were either reconnaissance and ground attack instead. Plans went awry. Confidence of capability was shattered by reality and also a lot of bad luck. Offensive air missions went both ways, north as well as south, of the Rio Grande and the US-Mexican border. There was a lot going on.


The Cuban-Soviet bridgehead into the south of California and southwestern Arizona, from the Imperial Valley across to Yuma, was somewhere well known to both the US Navy and the US Marines, in particular their aviation assets. There was the Chocolate Mountain bomb range used by both smack bang in between as well as the captured NAS El Centro and MCAS Yuma being previously home to pilots. American aircrews didn’t need much in the way of navigation support to get there. They were sent against those captured sites but the general area too. Enemy troops were on the ground in addition to armoured vehicles and helicopters reported. Shoot ‘em up, such was the general order. Cuban MiGs were due to move up from Mexico to fly from both sites once hasty work had been done at each though before then those MiGs were flying from airstrips on the other side of the border. A whole Cuban field army, four complete divisions (brought forward in stages though), was due to begin arriving in this area at dawn tomorrow and those out ahead already over the border were meant to hold the way open for them. They came under American air attack. It was patchy and not fully coordinated but there was a lot of damage done. Overhead coverage in the form of any sort of concealment for those on the ground was zero. MiG-21 Fishbeds and MiG-23 Floggers were engaged by F-4s and newer FA-18s. The Cubans were providing top coverage but were chased all over the sky by an extraordinary number of American aircraft which also started dropping bombs and firing their cannons against targets on the ground. Far from the battlefield, I Marine Amphibious Force – which included air and ground assets (the 3rd Marine Air Wing and the 1st Marine Division) – had been stood up at Camp Pendleton. These air missions under their command in a tactical role were just the start of what would be a mission to put a stop to the invasion coming north. Each side was able to claim some kills or enemy aircraft, including those on the ground who had air defence weapons, but the Americans certainly had had plenty of early success and managed to shoot up invading forces pretty well.

The Cuban and Nicaraguan paratroopers through southern Colorado, centred on Pueblo, came under attack too. They were scattered and also very close to Fort Carson plus US Air Force bases not that far away either. It was their geographical spread which saved them a lot of casualties though. In places, the Americans used US Army helicopters out of Fort Carson to do a lot of damage and there were also incoming aircraft on strike missions too. They had no air cover of their own apart from man-portable SAMs and heavy machine guns. When found, they were attacked fiercely. The 4th Infantry Division was rapidly getting ready to leave Fort Carson, hopefully by first light tomorrow, and wanted the way ahead clear as best as possible and so there was a rush on to direct air attacks when the paratroopers could be found near to the roads running south. Other invaders didn’t face attack though. They were away from where the Americans concentrated their air attacks because they had yet to be spotted. This meant that they were left to continue to organise better following so many mis-drops over a wide area and also begin the process of ‘security’ through their occupied areas. That was brutal in-places, sloppy in others. Everything was a mess, especially when radio contact was lost with the Cuban 2nd Airborne Brigade field headquarters following a lucky strafing run by an AH-1 near to Pueblo against that. F-16s coming across from their Hill AFB base in Utah, sped through the sky searching for enemy fighters only to find none. Late in the night, they established better contact with the US Army than beforehand when a proper advance team out of Fort Carson with air-liaison capability came southwards. On the edge of Pueblo, near to the university campus and where Interstate-25 linked Fort Carson and Pueblo, the F-16s were brought down low and into an attack against the forward north-facing Cuban outpost. They blasted the Cubans apart with bomb runs and no Cuban SAM fire was returned: they shot through what supplies of missiles they had already. If only there had been more aircraft on-call, more could have been done. For now though, those Cubans underneath that barrage were slaughtered. The Nicaraguans to the east around the captured small airport, got their heads down when one of the F-16 flights (broken off from that bigger attack) came their way… and watched as the American bombs generally missed that airport’s main facilities but levelled neighbouring commercial premises. The Nicaraguans celebrated the Americans bad targeting before then commencing a thorough search for whomever must have been on the ground with a radio calling in that air strike. Anyone who looked like they might be responsible, in the wrong place at the wrong time, would do.

The Soviet paratroopers who had landed Kirtland weren’t intending to stay in-place there and wait for the ground forces to come and relieve them. The commander of the 76th Division had no intention of sitting still doing nothing, he also had little faith in the supposed ability of Nicaraguan tanks to get here as fast as they were meant to: the border was a long way off. He had two regiments of men and they were good soldiers. Some of the transport aircraft bringing in divisional assets as well as more of the armoured vehicles for his division didn’t make it but others did. There was the arrival too of helicopters: Mil-8s and Mil-24s. Only a few arrived by the end of the first day but that all that was needed. The GRU wanted a team of their men escorted by paratroopers up to Los Alamos – where the Americans had their nuclear research facility – and the Hips went that way with a company of paratroopers in the helicopters and another company to join them in trucks & a few BMD-1s in a ground convoy. As to the Hinds, they were used around the edges of Albuquerque in support of further missions for the paratroopers when the gunships blasted opposition which was materialising in the form of national guardsmen joined by armed civilians forming posses & militias. The actual city was quite large and wasn’t yet to be moved against to be wholly occupied but along its western side the Rio Grande ran. There were bridges there and also a newly-built private airport. They were to be taken and controlled, using as much force as possible to do that. What Hind gunships could do to exposed men armed only with rifles had been shown before in Afghanistan, Iran, Honduras and now New Mexico. As to Los Alamos, that was pretty far away and quite the journey for those involved in the heli-lift plus the ground convoy: both took time getting there after navigation problems though once they did, the GRU team set to work. In the sky above, there twice came American aircraft. The first time, a reconnaissance jet overflew the captured Kirtland. The next time, it was bombed. This was a small attack yet holed one of the runways in several places. Kirtland was to become a base for a regiment of Soviet Air Force Sukhoi-24s and those Fencers were due to next day after a long transit flight from Cuba via Mexico. A special team of airfield engineers had already arrived and started work patching up the damage to one of the two runways because before the Fencers, more transport flights were due in overnight. They got to work. Kirtland didn’t attract any more American attention after that; they were busy off to the south.

It had become the Battle of El Paso. It wasn’t meant to be one but that it was. The Soviets had intended to overwhelm El Paso quickly and efficiently. Access routes were meant to be taken ahead of the incoming Nicaraguan First Army – which would go through Albuquerque and up into Colorado – and the US Army presence around Fort Bliss smashed. The first part of that mission was a success; the second was looking like a failure. That regiment of paratroopers detached from their parent formation sent north of them saw its losses mount. The 234th Guards had lost well over half of its strength by the end of the day. The 66th Brigade made moved in to take over and drive back the Americans who defied all expectations and then went on the offensive! The Cav’ lived up to their reputation. Briggs Army Airfield had already been lost and then El Paso International Airport was fought over and left a ruin… both sides eventually pulled away from each other there after clashing to fight elsewhere around El Paso. Nicaraguan aircraft in the form of Sukhoi-22 Fitters showed up and were on the wrong end of US Army air defence assets pulled out of barracks and firing on them. A couple were knocked out of the sky and then the Fitters redirected their efforts elsewhere. The Americans pushed into the eastern side of the city through the darkness and chased back what paratroopers they encountered: their M-60 tanks made short work of BMD-1s, which it was soon discovered would blow up when hit in the rear (behind the troop compartment) where the thinly-armoured fuel tank was. Cav’ units were only stopped by the heavy weapons from the tanks and armoured vehicles which the 66th Brigade had brought with them. This included a battalion of T-64 tanks but also BMP-1s mounting missiles & guns. There were civilian casualties everywhere. Both sides inflicted them, neither on purpose. Civilians were all over the battlefield, a battlefield in the middle of their city. Some tried to join the fight and paid for that mistake all too often. Others fled or just tried to hide. Full-scale war was going on all around them though. To the west, on the other side of the Franklin Mountains, there were few Soviet forces there and they were unmolested by American troops. They had to deal with civilians as well: some who shot at them, others who fled as northwards along the interstate and any other road they could find. There were lines of stalled traffic very quickly, miles upon miles of jams caused by breakdowns or people abandoning cars when they heard shooting. There was a small airport over that way at Santa Teresa which the Soviets wanted: they couldn’t get near it. In addition, those roads which were jammed of civilian vehicles and soon enough crowds of people walking along them as they fled El Paso, were meant to be used by the Nicaraguans when they arrived. More aircraft came back to the El Paso area. The Fitters returned for a second time along with US Air Force jets coming out of New Mexico bases. Canon AFB & Holloman AFB were home to F-111s and F-15s, aircraft which had previously seen action over Mexico. The F-15s provided top cover, getting many of those Nicaraguan aircraft, while the F-111s made attack runs. The fighting inside El Paso was too confusing and there wasn’t yet proper coordination on the ground with the US Army to aid them there in that. Friendly fire was a concern. Everything south of the river was a free-fire zone though, in Ciudad Juárez and nearby. The F-111s came ready to blow up armour, that with armies from Latin America heading north, and couldn’t find much of that yet. What they did locate was a lot of troop concentrations – Mexicans – and lighter vehicles. They did their worst.

The Cubans were all over Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Laredo. They had the bridges, Laughlin AFB and also Laredo Airport in their hands. Where they were down along this stretch of the Rio Grande was far from activity elsewhere to the north of them and out of the way of where the fierce air action elsewhere. Regardless, the US Air Force had a presence in Texas and Laughlin – a training base – had gone silent. Several times that first night, RF-4s flew reconnaissance missions above the Cubans. They fired on those jets and brought down one… while there were claims that all three had been hit by over-eager SAM crews. Those other two got images of the Cuban presence on American soil in this bit of Texas. The intention of why they were there, despite being few in number, was clear: they were holding the way open for heavier forces. The RF-4s had come from Bergstrom AFB where there were Air Reserve F-4 based. Further reservists based at Carswell also flew more F-4s. The unarmed reconnaissance jets were due to be joined in the morning by well-armed strike aircraft who were going to be going after the bridges held over the Rio Grande. The last of those reconnaissance missions took place right before Cuban MiGs arrived at Laughlin. These Floggers started flying their own missions soon enough and didn’t stray far from the Rio Grande on the first night while their numbers were being built up ahead of planned air missions the next day into Texas proper. In the meantime, on the ground across the river, the Cubans weren’t alone for long. Some Mexican troops were brought over and tasked with ‘restoring order’ in the towns of Del Rio and Eagle Pass as well as the city of Laredo. There had been armed civilians taking shots at the limited number of Cubans who had arrived and also a streaming out of these urban areas by civilians. Just as had been the case when Mexicans had followed Cubans over into California earlier in the day, when they were dispatched into Texas, they brought chaos with them. Order wasn’t restored. Murders and rapes occurred. There was looting and arson. Some men mutinied, others deserted. These were men who were ill-treated and subject to harsh discipline. The vast majority had been forcibly conscripted, often among those who had been trying to get to America to avoid the civil war. Once inside Texas, those who didn’t run committed all sorts of outrages. The Cubans didn’t want them to do this and tried to stop them. Cuban and Mexican troops exchanged fire with the Mexicans coming off the worst of that in Del Rio and Eagle Pass. In Laredo, the Cubans got a rude surprise and lost a lot of men. They let the Mexicans run: run away and run riot. The bridges and airport there were open and secured from the rampage. The problem was now in the hands of Texan civilians.

Away from where the Cubans were, South Texas was a hive of Soviet military activity. There was a link-up made between the 7th Brigade coming north from the Lower Valley and the 103rd Division in the general Corpus Christi area. Where a crossroads lay at the town of Alice that occurred, with the tanks and armoured vehicles of the 7th Brigade then pressing onwards. They would go as far as north as George West and Beeville: more crossroads, located past Corpus Christi to establish forward defences. Several times, armoured columns from both formations (the paratroopers had their own vehicles and were moving around too) got lost. Civilians took shots at them in that darkness too. Welcome to Texas. The forward presence was all to protect what was going on behind those outposts up ahead. Into Corpus Christi and the Lower Valley there came the arrival of more and more Soviet transport aircraft making runs from Cuba into the captured airbases & airports, including some just back over the border at Matamoros and Reynosa as well. Combat aircraft also came in after making refuelling stops in the Yucatán Peninsula on the way. Not many on that first day, but some. The captured NAS Kingsville would first be hosting strike aircraft in the form of Fencers while MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters were going to be flying from NAS Corpus Christi and its two satellite airstrips. The Soviets rushed forward their aircraft. They wanted the Fulcrums to be flying as soon as possible. Ships coming from Cuba would need air cover. Some of those heavily-laden would be going to Tampico down in Mexico yet more were already on their way to Brownsville and Corpus Christi. The Soviet Army was yet to arrive in-strength inside the United States, yet when it did, its heavy forces would be coming through South Texas. The need for air cover was evident when another more of those RF-4s made reconnaissance runs over South Texas before the first of the Fulcrums were ready to fly. A few SAM launchers had been brought in with the first wave of the ongoing airlift and took out one of them but several others got through the giant gaps in air defence coverage which weren’t yet covered. The Americans were sure to have other reconnaissance aircraft whose flights were missed, that the Soviets knew. They might not yet have strike aircraft in position (geographically but also with some information on the ground) to start blasting them to bits but that was sure to change. Soviet forces were extending their control to hunt down American military personnel who got away from the initial fighting and more SAM launchers were rolling but the fighters were needed in the sky. What the Soviets didn’t know was that there was a wing of A-10s getting ready to (in stages) redeploy from their Louisiana base into Texas. They would have to have air cover before those A-10s, supported by F-15s from Florida moving west too, could get into action. The Fulcrums started flying just before midnight and would be busy tomorrow.

Up in the Alaskan Panhandle, Soviet paratroopers there found out that they were on their own for the time being. The second wave of transport aircraft didn’t show up. F-15s flying from the Alaskan mainland on NORAD tasks were directed towards a transport stream coming across the North Pacific. Ilyushin-76 Candids were stretched out with big gaps between individual aircraft but four of them were shot out of the sky: a major loss of aircraft and carried men. The others diverted to the captured airport at Kodiak, the Soviet-held Eareckson AFB in the Aleutians or returned back to their base in Kamchatka. For now, those paratroopers were stuck awaiting further orders. On Kodiak Island, Soviet control would be helped by the men and equipment arriving in two of the big transports. The naval infantry there had taken control of a small portion of the island and their commander knew he had a long wait until he was joined by more of his comrades: he brought the Soviet Airborne units under tactical command to help him defend what he had. One more Candid landed on Shemya Island though the naval infantry there didn’t need them. It would have been best if that aircraft had gone to Adak instead. The naval infantry on that little island were fast in trouble. The US Navy only flew P-3 maritime patrol aircraft from here but they had a big manpower presence to support that. One reinforced company of naval infantry – well-trained & well-equipped men – had gone in first from that ship which had brought them with the rest of their parent battalion meant to fly in later. They were defeated by those thousands of Americans based there. Defeated in not gaining control of NAS Adak and then afterwards overcome with the last men who weren’t dead forced to surrender. More men should have been sent in the first wave. A lot of things had gone wrong. The plan had anticipated that surprise would win out over numbers. In addition, what really didn’t help was the increasing presence of American aircraft ranging far out of Alaska which didn’t come near to Adak but which caused the diverting of combat aircraft meant to go via to Shemya to assist in the fight for Adak turning back to Kamchatka. Plenty of future planning depending upon Adak being the in the centre of a string of island airbases held from Shemya (where Eareckson was) to Adak and on to Kodiak. Adak wasn’t in Soviet hands now. More men should have been sent, it was a simple as that.



17th September 1984:

John Glenn gave his first televised address to the American people as president from Wright-Patterson AFB. What was later called the ‘Dayton Address’ (that small city in Glenn’s native Ohio lay next to the airbase) was made from what at the time was an undisclosed location. It was pre-recorded and broadcast soon enough though certainly wasn’t carried live over the networks. To some watching, Glenn looked frightened and shaken up and that would later tie in with the knowledge revealed some months later of how close he had come to nuclear assassination. That was a minority view though. He gave the impression to most who watched of a man gripped by determination and anger instead. Where his hands held the podium, that was said to be resolve. Where his voice was hoarse, that was said to be Glenn expressing the rage which he shared with the American people. There were only a few who had that view that this was a man pushed almost to the edge on a day like September 17th 1984 had become for him and the country which he found himself leading.

The Dayton Address informed the watching and listening public that the country had been the victim of a sudden, vicious and unprovoked attack. Nuclear weapons had been used against the country. There were invading troops who had breached the nation’s borders. President Kennedy had been slain when he was attempting to engage with the Soviet leadership at the moment of his demise. Before their attack, the Soviet Union had played the trick of opening the way for talks between the two nations to start a new, friendly chapter in relations. That new start had come with nuclear weapons. Civilians had been targeted with them. Men, women and children slaughtered without mercy in their homes, their places of work and also in schools & hospitals too. Washington had been struck with nuclear weapons, so too Kansas City. No preceding declaration of war had been made, only deception used to lull America into the supposed peaceful intent of the Soviet Union. Glenn spoke of how he had retaliated and in doing so made use of America’s own nuclear weapons: a moral blow had been struck but where and how he didn’t go into. The country was at war. This would be total war. He called upon the people to do everything to support their nation, their fellow countrymen and the armed forces at this time. Foreign forces would be driven from American soil. A war against the Soviet Union and those nations which stood with that country which had committed such a terrible act would be prosecuted to the full. Any further nations which wished to join with such a partner as the Soviet Union at a time like this, and also act against the United States, would meet the full weight of the United States vengeance as the Soviet Union had. Elsewhere around the world, other countries were joining with the United States in combatting the war of aggression launched by the Soviets: America had friend and allies and would fight with them. Finally, Glenn asked the American people to join with him in saying a prayer for the dead across their country and also those suffering at this time. He asked for their prayers for the nation at this time as well. He ended his speech by declaring that this war underway, one which America hadn’t wanted nor had started either, wouldn’t be one where anything less than total victory was one.

Glenn had come to Wright-Patterson initially to change aircraft from the particular VC-137 aircraft he was in to another: from a A model to a C model. The latter was what was usually Air Force One as opposed to his first aircraft which had started the day as Air Force Two. The VC-137C had been in Ohio for a maintenance inspection. It was available (the other one had been incinerated when on the ground at Andrews AFB) and so too were its excellent communications facilities. It was using them when Glenn’s day ended with a series of unpleasant surprises when it came to those allies around the world which he had spoken of when on the ground. Not all of them wanted to be allies – no, they just couldn’t be allies; apologies were given – at a time like this.

*

Kennedy at the White House nor Mondale at the State Department had been picking up the ‘phone. Both men were dead and both buildings were nothing but ashes. The remaining part of the US Government – and there wasn’t much left of that – knew that and so did the Soviets. Other countries and their national leaders didn’t know that nor exactly what had happened. Some had a general idea but others were clueless. The Soviet Union had started sending out urgent official diplomatic communiques to national capitals within minutes of the war starting. They had been attacked by the United States and had been given no choice but to strike back. If not support, then neutrality was asked for from many nations around the world. There were no open threats though plenty of veiled ones. Country-specific messages were sent to heads of government around the world saying that the Americans had struck first and been hit with a devastating counterblow against them. Just as Glenn said far later in the day, the messages which went out with Ustinov’s name on them spoke of how anyone who stood with the United States at a time like this when it had done what it had to the Soviet Union – these were sent before Leningrad was destroyed so gave no specifics –, would suffer the consequences of doing so. Stand with us, stand aside if you have to. Just don’t stand against us.

The Big Lie had been told. Ted Kennedy had apparently launched a first strike against the Soviet Union and it was one rapidly responded to with overwhelming force too… almost as if it had been expected. Ted Kennedy? C’mon! Who would truly think that that had really occurred?

The Soviet declaration of being the wronged party wasn’t something widely believed. Few national leaders, so very few, took the Soviets at their word on this. However, it made things easier for some to pretend to believe it though or even say that they were confused by what had gone on: the latter soon became an option for many when they thought of such an idea. There was a get-out clause issued to governments who didn’t want their nation to go to war, to join a global fight where it fast became clear that nuclear weapons had been used. Nations which took a neutralist stance in world affairs but also some which might have been expected to side with the United States, had been given an excuse not to. Initial reports, in reality a lack of any positive news, made it look like America was on its knees. Fear drove the decisions from country to country to step away from any fight, one which wasn’t theirs to start with. When it started to become clear that maybe the United States wasn’t finished, that still didn’t bring a reversal of early decisions from around the world. The die had already been cast on that matter. This fight wasn’t theirs. They wanted no part of it. The Soviets were highly suspected to be lying but who would seriously want to see them turn their attention next to their own country, especially if they were being left alone? Other countries bucked that trend. They were offered a way out and didn’t take it. There were those which knew that very soon they could be dragged in and attacked by the Soviets so now was the time to enter the conflict ahead of that first strike, to mitigate it and maybe even deter it. Others were outraged at what the Soviets had done where the Big Lie was seen though and a determination came to not let this go unheeded because they couldn’t allow the Soviet Union to follow this opening strike up with whatever came next. Then there were those countries which had leaders who were opportunistic and held long-standing grievances with the Soviet Union and some of its closest allies who decided that this was it, this was the time where so much was to be decided in their favour by fighting alongside the Americans whether they were wounded or not. What was missing among those who decided neutrality was best for them or that they would fight with the United States, was a rush of other nations to join with the Soviets beyond what could be regarded as the ‘usual suspects’. A few, a pitiful few did so, but the numbers stood in stark contrast to those who took other routes.


When no one had been picking up the ‘phone in Washington, decisions were being made. Glenn and Bentsen were caught up in first striking back against the Soviets before then moving to trying to find out what was going on with the ‘security zone’ being established, that beginning of an invasion. There was also the concern for the safety of what was left of the US Government too. Glenn’s first statement (not one which gave anyone who heard it any confidence) over the radio was put out and then later there came that second public address from Ohio. Communications for Bentsen from the Pentagon had been badly affected and he was then on the move to Raven Rock. From all around the globe, there came incoming reports of instances of combat taking place where United States forces, plus those of certain allies too, had taken place. US Pacific Command had urgent news from the Korean Peninsula and also from around Japan too. US Southern Command had their own terrible news from Guantanamo Bay, the Canal Zone and a whole load of other places in the Caribbean. US Atlantic Command was reporting on submarine attacks and naval air/missile strikes all over the place.

Then there had been US European Command, which was co-located as SHAPE in Mons. From that Belgium-based headquarters, there had come no reports of air attacks across from behind the Iron Curtain into West Germany nor an invasion underway. It was the early evening in Central Europe when the war began. The first thinking was that aircraft could start coming west along with missiles any minute with paratroopers to follow; a ground invasion would probably begin the next morning. US and NATO forces were ordered to assume combat positions to defend Western Europe, those being issued by the American general who held the role of SACEUR at his SHAPE headquarters. Standard operational procedure was for those alert orders to be followed by NATO allies. This was done, with only a few delays where ‘political guidance’ was sought. America’s NATO allies were prepared to defend their territory and that of their closest allies. No Soviet attack came west though. The hours ticked by and better preparations were made to repel that when it was sure to come. US forces based in Western Europe were given general defensive orders though there were also alert warnings sent to selective air units ready to make strikes going eastwards ahead of the Soviet attack. Those were getting ready. Then there came further ‘political guidance’ from several countries to their own armed forces, those within the NATO chain-of-command and not. SACEUR was informed that many countries – not all – were all saying that they were willing and prepared to act in only collective defence across Western Europe. No attack had come though. It became clear to SACEUR that something was afoot, something political had happened. The same things were being said, almost word for word, by political representatives from multiple governments. It wasn’t uniform, not everything was in on what had to be a joint decision taken at heads of government level, but it was widespread and mattered where it counted too. Both SACEUR and his British deputy – there was a West German deputy also, a man who was rather apologetic though not exactly forthcoming on what he was apologising for – were both fast in contact with their respective governments on this. Much of Western Europe was looking ready to sit this war out! The NATO treaty covered North America too but that seemed to have been forgotten. SACEUR raged but this was only something that could be solved by his president.

Britain, Canada, South Korea (which was being invaded from the very moment the war started in North America) and Japan were foremost in initially siding with the United States. Each of them had been attacked by Soviet forces and those of their allies. Within hours, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines sides with their American ally while Malaysia and Singapore respected their Five Power Defence Agreement treaty commitments in the Pacific (Brunei would quickly join them) due to North Korean actions far from the Korean Peninsula in South East Asia. Chile and Paraguay were both led by those strongmen who had fought against Cuba with a series of brutal proxy conflicts in Latin America through the past several years and they too declared that they were in a state of war with the Soviet Union. Israel had just lost Kennedy: that was how the death of the thirty-ninth American President as seen in Tel Aviv, as a mortal blow for Israel. Without Kennedy’s backing, Israel wouldn’t have been able to do what it had in Lebanon, to Saddam’s Iraq and to Gadhafi in Libya as well. Glenn wasn’t happy – he was pretty mad in fact – when Israel’s prime minister said that the country couldn’t fight alongside the United States. There was a heartfelt apology given on this matter, but ‘the third temple’ was at risk of obliteration should Israel go to war. This was a coded comment made before by Israel, back in 1973 during a different war. Shamir feared nuclear annihilation of his people. He was sorry. Israel would do more than any other neutral would but Israel couldn’t fight in this war. Turkey’s military government, one which had argued with Kennedy recently over so many different points of contention, was another which made a sincere apology for not standing with the United States at this time. Like Israel, Turkey wasn’t going to war. A lot of what Glenn should have said to Israel was said to Turkey instead. You’re on your own, Turkey was told, followed by some other choice remarks. Egypt, Thailand and countries in South America went down the same route. There was regret expressed, much sorrow for the situation which the United States was in, but this wasn’t their war to fight… not one where nuclear weapons were being used.


Then there was Western Europe. What happened wasn’t down to The Greens in West Germany. Bastian could shout all he wanted while in West Berlin and Fischer ran about trying to be important (he wasn’t allowed to play with the big boys) but what happened in West Germany, where the crescendo of neutrality and abandonment of the United States plus other NATO allies all began, was instead the work of the foreign minister: that man under the influence of the Stasi and thus the KGB at the end of it all. Fingers were pointed at The Greens at first; later it would become apparent that the Stasi had their man in Bonn do the real damage.

When the war started and no one would answer his calls going to Washington, Chancellor Vogel spoke instead to President Mitterrand. Mitterrand had left Paris but was set up with his government elsewhere, somewhere safe. He urged Vogel to do the same. France was at that point certain that Soviet messages asking for neutrality were a cover before an attack would come into West Germany, probably preceded by nuclear strikes: France was prepared to hit back. Vogel did that, taking the top tier of his government with him including his foreign minister to the federal bunker in the Rhineland. The Soviet attack didn’t come. Instead, there were messages direct to Vogel coming from Honecker. Germany, East and West, should stay out of this war between the Americans and the Soviets. East Germany was declaring its neutrality and no war against West Germany would be launched from East German territory. The foreign minister urged Vogel to do the same: declare West German neutrality and save Germany from nuclear war. Others in the bunker refused to go along with this. Vogel did so too… at first. It became clear that while they were moving to safety and then discussing what had come from East Berlin, there had been talks elsewhere in Western Europe. The French had been unable to talk to the Americans and neither had anyone else – the Belgians, the Danes, the Dutch and the Italians – apart from the British. British forces were soon to start joining the fight against the Soviets with plans being made for RAF aircraft in West Germany to strike at East Germany alongside more from the UK mainland plus what US Air Force aircraft were in Britain as well. No Soviet attack had come in Western Europe but going the other way would be an attack made by Britain and the United States. This was to be done under NATO command. No consultation had occurred though. They were doing it regardless. Western Europe would be at war within hours.

The West German foreign minister was listened to a second time around. West Germany was being offered a way to not be invaded and/or attacked with nuclear weapons. There would be recriminations from taking that offer. It came from Honecker too and it wasn’t as if East Germany would be doing this without Soviet permission. That was understood. Still… anything else rather than another war on German soil, this time with the ultimate weapons, was preferred. Vogel contacted Mitterrand first. He told him of the East German offer and that his government was going to accept it: he didn’t mention that half of his ministers in the bunker had resigned in protest. Mitterrand was asked what was the feeling of other nations across Western Europe. He said that he couldn’t speak for them, he could only speak for France. France didn’t want a part in this war. It would follow West Germany’s lead in staying out. France was the first but not the last to go down this route. If West Germany and then France were having to take the unfortunate but necessary decision to declare their neutrality due to the fear of what war would bring, one out of their control, then Belgium was going to have to as well. Luxembourg and the Netherlands did the same. Denmark and Italy did so as well. No one wanted to but they had the excuse of someone else doing it first. Portugal and Norway wavered on this. Their leaders saw the reasoning of neutrality. They also didn’t want to abandon their allies. They were going to have their minds made up for them by someone else though, whether to stay out or join in, soon enough.


Not having a secretary of state nor a State Department functioning, plus so much else going on, only compounded what happened next when those decision made in Western Europe, ones of fear, were finally revealed to Glenn and Bentsen. The British alerted them first to what the West Germans were doing though were slowed first by conversations with France. Thatcher and Mitterrand had a difficult conversation on this matter where each agreed that they had to do the best for their own people yet the British Government believed that France had made the wrong choice. Mitterrand said that France had to think of France before anyone else. There would be NO hostility from France towards Britain, nor America either. In fact, Mitterrand made assurances that it would make sure that West Germany ‘behaved’. Thatcher passed that on to Glenn when she spoke to him. She had words of sympathy for America losses – including the death of Glenn’s predecessor – and there was already a good relationship in-place between the two of them. Glenn listened to Thatcher. He assured her that the United States and Britain were firmly united and were in this together as he passed on sympathies too when he heard what had happened in Britain when the UK had been hit like it had as well. Then he spoke with Vogel. That conversation was one with raised voices and threats made. In a similar vein, there was a heated conversation with Italy’s Craxi. How could both countries abandon the United States? They were next on the Soviet’s list of countries to attack! When it came to Mitterrand, Glenn had been in Paris only last month and had had a long meeting with him. He thought he could talk him round. Mitterrand had made his choice, France’s choice on this. No Soviet attack had come into mainland Western Europe. If it did, then things would change but for now France couldn’t join this fight. You’re next, Glenn told Mitterrand. Mitterrand informed Glenn that France wasn’t turning against the United States. He would personally assure the United States that should the West Germans (or other European nations) come under pressure to try to intern any American forces in their country as per what might be expected of a neutral, he would stop that. There was neutrality and there was neutrality. France could offer help should America want to withdraw their forces from West Germany and elsewhere in mainland Western Europe.

Listening in, Bentsen didn’t like the way that conversation went. Glenn was bribed by Mitterrand. However, French neutrality was happening. If American forces in West Germany – plus those spread elsewhere in far smaller numbers though the Low Countries and Italy – weren’t going to fight there, they would be fighting at home. American forces would return, as soon as possible, with French help in that. After Glenn had finished his round of calls to Western Europe, more news come in. Norway and Portugal had come under direct Soviet attack: Norway in the very north of their country and the Portuguese with their Azores Islands. Bentsen wanted to go back to the French and talk to Mitterrand again. Glenn said that from what he knew of the French president, plus what he had just said, he wasn’t going to budge. If that news of those attacks had come earlier, maybe things might have been different. Not now. Bentsen would long believe that a mistake was made there. Glenn made that decision though. Furthermore, in the following hours, Spain, not a member of NATO – which now didn’t exist in any real form – joined the war too. There had been an attack on the US Navy base at Rota and Spanish civilians had been killed. Spain’s neighbour Portugal had been attacked and so had Spain’s ally the United States. Spain couldn’t sit by and let this happen. Spain would fight when others wouldn’t.

[James G]

Chapter Ten – Krasny Zvezda (Red Star)

18th–20th September 1984:

Operation Krasny Zvezda got fully underway on the war’s second day. Light forces assigned to the Red Star mission had crossed into America, now came the heaviness. In Texas, the Cuban Second Army went over the Rio Grande through the bridgeheads held open for them. This field army was based upon what was the peacetime Cuban V Corps and when first detected inside northern Mexico, it was declared by intelligence analysts in Washington – most of whom were now dead – to consist of two divisions in a defensive role. There were four divisions. They were now on the offensive. One armoured division, two mechanised divisions and one infantry division had closed up to the Rio Grande late yesterday and went across via the civilian bridges plus also the pontoon bridges also thrown over the river. They started moving before dawn and continued through the following days. Army-level assets came with them. There were all sorts of problems. Wielding a force this, concentrated like it was in a small area and in unfamiliar territory, was something that the Cubans had never done before. It was no easy task for them nor would it have been for any other army to be fair. There were navigation problems, communications issues and then enemy air interference. Cuban fighters were flying from the captured Laughlin AFB but there weren’t many of them. They were unable to effectively counter multiple flights of incoming F-4s which flew counter-air missions to engage them while also targeting the columns of vehicles – armoured and not – lining up to go over the bridges. Both sides lost aircraft: the Cubans had several MiG-23s shot down by the F-4s though those American fighters, flown by USAF Reserve aircrews, were engaged by missiles coming up from the ground. Around Laredo, the F-4s did the most damage on the first day and into the second too. After that, the Cuban air defence network was better established with more MiGs at Laughlin plus further ground defences too. However, major delays were caused to the crossing operation in Laredo. There was also the bombing of the captured civilian airport, which was full of Cuban non-combat aircraft. Still, the Cubans kept crossing. They pushed onwards. Civilian issues, people with guns who wanted to shoot at them direct or from hidden points, were another issue that was had to be overcome: with brute force and abundant firepower that was. As to their advance, they had many bridges operational at Laredo plus up at Del Rio and Eagle Pass. The Cuban Second Army, delayed and suffering from loses incurred from the air, got over into Texas proper as per ordered, just behind schedule. San Antonio was off in the distance, to the east. That was where the roads which ran from the bridges converged upon. It was there that they expected to fight with the Americans on the ground.

Coming over at Eagle Pass late on the first day – several hours behind schedule – was a column of vehicles crewed by Cuban artillery personnel. They manned a battery of R-17 missiles, better known by its NATO codename of SS-1B Scud. The battery was officially attached to the Cuban Second Army though was under the operational control of the Northern Front: an effective Army Group command with a Soviet general in-charge. The Northern Front ordered where the first Scuds were fired against that night. Six missiles were meant to be launched against military targets in and around San Antonio. One didn’t get off the ground and another went south to crash into the wilderness. The four others had reasonable accuracy. They were aimed at big targets where pin-point accuracy wasn’t necessary for the mission. Still, only two landed where they were meant to. Fort Sam Houston – a US Army command & administrative post – was hit by one while Kelly AFB was struck by another. The other pair of Scuds crashed into urban areas of San Antonio, which was already a city in chaos. Civilian casualties came from the Scud impacts. San Antonio had other military bases such as Lackland AFB which a-joined Kelly, Randolph AFB as well plus Camp Bulis which was a national guard post. The city was also a major transportation centre with roads and railways in addition to its civilian airport. Since the war’s first day, before the Cubans moved across into Texas, it had seen the war come to it when there had been a commando attack at Fort San Houston to try to eliminate the headquarters post of Fifth US Army first. Next, gunmen had shot up the airport in a terror attack designed to cause the panic, which it did, while there were explosions from planted bombs at Camp Stanley which was a big ammunition depot. Civilians had fled from San Antonio right away and they continued to. The Scuds only encouraged that. War was coming to the city and it was best to leave. There was a pull-out of certain military assets as well from San Antonio with the US Army moving out their headquarters personnel plus Kelly & Lackland – not in any way combat bases – seeing withdrawals made of key personnel who were not needed near to the frontlines which were expected to be soon outside the city. At Randolph, the F-4s flying from Bergstrom AFB up near Austin were making use of that airbase as a forward site but there was too a pull-out from there of the extensive USAF training establishment too: no-combat aircraft left to free-up space.

Those withdrawals came at the same time as the general San Antonio area, rather than the city itself, was being seen by American forces as where they would fight against the Cubans. The crossings over the Rio Grande continued and the Cuban strength was better identified with their three heavy divisions spotted coming towards San Antonio while their lighter fourth division stayed on the northern flank and also guarding the bridges too. The Cubans were to be engaged. Air attacks moved from the bridges to the open ground between the Rio Grande and the city. The F-4s were joined by a squadron of A-10s which were setting themselves up at Bergstrom though making use of Randolph as a forward site. The Twelfth Air Force was the higher headquarters for all US Air Force assets (plus aircraft of other services) deploying for South Texas combat and that command staff was at Bergstrom initially before moving northwards eventually to Carswell. Other aircraft were being attached with arrivals starting. There was a lot of chaos in organisation yet order was returning overall. The Cubans were to be engaged from the air by all sorts of American aircraft operating under a central banner so air activity could be effective rather than random. They themselves were spotted building up their own strength but were fast outnumbered in the sky. Within days, the number of available American combat aircraft for South Texas operations was four times that that the Cubans could field. In addition, many Cuban aircraft were still flying from locations in Mexico as they took time to get established at Laughlin and other very small captured sites which they were using. The Americans were on home ground and using that to their advantage. They increased their air operations. In the skies and on the ground, they attacked the Cubans where they found them. It was from the ground where the Cubans did best in defence rather than in the air as mobile air defences with their advancing army – sometimes moving at a snail’s pace – covered them better than any of their own MiGs really could when those aircraft were so outnumbered. They also hit back against the sites from where those American jets were coming from. Soviet air liaison officers with the Cubans, plus the Northern Front’s commanding general, told the Cubans that they would be stopped from getting to San Antonio if they carried on with their defensive only approach. Attack instead. Several attempts at air raids were launched on the second and third day of Krasny Zvezda to put bombs into Bergstrom and Randolph. The Cubans couldn’t get anywhere near the former but the latter was closer and they had help from the Soviets still setting up to the south of them in when it came to drawing off American fighters with Soviet fighters used. Randolph was bombed by half a dozen Sukhoi-22s making a low-level strike against it. They couldn’t miss it: the airbase was huge. That size limited the value of the bombs which fell from the Cuban attack-fighters though as the Americans there were spread out. Still, they did enough damage to put a dent in American air operations, even if it was a small one and for a limited time. A Scud attack came afterwards… where only one of the three missiles actually hit Randolph. That one missile air-burst with a big fragmentation warhead and killed & injured many of those who hadn’t got to cover in time when assisting with damage repair from the bomb attack. Randolph was a frontline wartime base subject to enemy attack, these things now had to be accepted as reality at military facilities inside the United States.

The Northern Front’s commander was following a set script when it came to the deployment of the Cubans out ahead into Texas. To the south of them, Soviet light forces were being followed by heavier forces arriving though it would be a week before major combat operations could be undertaken by them. The Cubans were to do the bulk of the fighting first. They were moved slowly towards San Antonio due to the size of the Cuban Second Army and the anticipation that it would be met in battle by the Americans charging forward to fight to defend that city from occupation. The Cubans were meant to engage them in battle. The US Army had their III Corps based at Fort Hood, in Central Texas, with two incomplete but still good divisions of first-rate troops. It was them who the Cubans were to fight: hopefully to win, at best fight them to a draw. Defeat wasn’t an option. Afterwards, the Soviets would have a clear way ahead of them. It was a good plan. Unfortunately, the Americans didn’t follow that script. Fifth Army’s commander was ordered to deploy the III Corps into battle in the San Antonio area, as expected Krasny Zvezda called for, though behind the city to the east and south of there and not to the west. III Corps was missing all sorts of additional components and couldn’t just charge out of Fort Hood and into battle like the US Cavalry of old. To do so would be an emotional decision and not a sound strategy. Pressure came from above, following attacks made against San Antonio, but the Fifth Army’s commander wouldn’t do it. The pair of divisions were each at two-third’s strength. The corps’ Cav’ regiment was fighting at El Paso along with most of the air defence assets. Artillery units were moving down from Oklahoma but not yet present. Service support attachments were all over the place. Further to all of that, the Interstate-35 corridor (that freeway plus addition roads following the same route) which ran down through Central Texas past Fort Hood towards San Antonio was jammed full of vehicles as Texans fled northwards in a blind panic. That was the quickest route south. It looked likely to be a disaster if it was attempted. Nonetheless, the III Corps wasn’t sitting on their behinds doing nothing. American troops from Fort Hood with the 1st Cavalry & 2nd Armored Divisions were off to war. They started moving out of their garrison though not in a mad rush. In addition, they wouldn’t be taking the fastest route south, right along the obvious route either, but rather moving elsewhere first. Political interference from on high still came with demands that the Cubans be met in battle and driven back at once, to ‘save’ San Antonio, but that wasn’t happening. It would be later than the Cubans and the Soviets believed that they would when the III Corps would move into action. South Texas wasn’t West Germany. Every hill, every stream and every ditch hadn’t be carefully planned to be fought over through the decades. There needed to be reconnaissance done first and a plan put together. The human tragedy of San Antonio, what had already happened, and what was coming, couldn’t be averted. At a time and place of its choosing, the US Army would take on the Cuban invaders. Soon, just not too soon.

The US Marines had a presence in Texas with reservists based in the state. There were further reservists through neighbouring states as well. On America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, plus in the Western Pacific, the US Marine Corps had regular forces though internally within the country they had sub-units of reservists all over the place with mobilisation stations and equipment storage spread out. Marine reservists had been mobilised and there had come the establishment of the 2nd Marine Brigade by September 20th. Two battalions of riflemen, an incomplete reconnaissance battalion, a pair of artillery battalions, supporting assets and also Marine Aviation – all of whom were reservists – formed the 2nd Brigade who were came under the overall command of the Fifth Army but, the US Marines being the US Marines with their history such as it was, had their own semi-independence when the 4th Marine Division (whose peacetime headquarters was in Louisiana where one of the rifle battalions had come from too) was activated to control them at a tactical level. Texan national guardsmen were assigned too, in a supporting role. The 2nd Brigade was an ad hoc force. Part of it was formed inside Texas around Houston with more rushed forward to join them. They came to fight to retake American soil in enemy hands with the motivation whipped up among them for them to do that… or be killed trying. Instead, they were given a defensive mission for the time being and that was to deploy around Victoria, a small city between Houston and Corpus Christi where roads converged. The 2nd Brigade began that deployment as soon as possible. In doing so, they came under attack. Those Soviet forces in South Texas were growing in strength every hour of every passing day that they were generally left alone while the Cubans got all of the attention with them advancing like they were. Ships were arriving in captured ports and transport aircraft were landing at those many airports. There were further combat aircraft that were transferred from Cuba, making a transit through Mexico, into captured airbases. Like the Cubans had difficulties at Laughlin, at the Soviet-held bases of NAS Corpus Christi and NAS Kingsville where they moved their combat aircraft to, the Soviets didn’t find things as easy as planned. One regiment of Sukhoi-24s was to be established at the former; a regiment of MiG-29s at the latter. The first aircraft were in on the war’s opening day. Flying aircraft from inside South Texas was more difficult than that though, especially high-performance multi-role aircraft like Fencers and Fulcrums. Refuelling, rearming, maintenance, damage-repair: the aircraft all needed that with the men and the equipment to do that. Everything took longer than expected. The operational procedures for doing this came from Soviet plans to do this in Western Europe in the event of war when captured airbases were taken to be used. In Western Europe, there would be a land connection to them. Corpus Christi and Kingsville were across the sea from Cuba. The attempt to undertake operations from them with the haste planned depended upon air transport of everything needed. Cuba was under attack from American air strikes starting on the war’s first night. Some transports didn’t make it to South Texas: either bombed on the ground in Cuba or shot down in Cuban skies. For the first few days when they were on American soil, Soviet air cover over South Texas was very limited. They got aircraft in but were unable to operate them properly. Those aircraft were used sparingly as the build-up continued around them which they were meant to be protecting. Using the Fulcrums to aid the Cubans in their bombing of Randolph drew away air cover and also cost the Soviets two of them, both shot down by American F-4s which missed the Cuban Su-22s but got the Fulcrums instead. A-10s were at Bergstrom and they weren’t solely focused on the Cubans west of San Antonio. There were a couple of air attacks made against the Soviet 7th Brigade around George West and then the Soviet Airborne unit at Beeville. They were the forward Soviet outposts. American reconnaissance activity was paying more and more attention to South Texas away from where the Cubans were. Then came those US Marines heading straight from them. That the 2nd Brigade was stopping at Victoria and in a defensive role wasn’t something known to the Soviets. It looked like an opening attack. The Fencers went into action, bombing the advancing US Marines on the road to Victoria. F-4s flown by US Marine aircrews engaged them. Both sides lost aircraft but the 2nd Brigade lost a lot of men too and halted not far from Houston. They had taken losses and were brought to a temporary stop on orders from above, not their own desire to halt.

Now, even more attention was thus to be directed towards the Soviets after this. They had several days of being almost unmolested when they poured into South Texas where they had cut communication from and others had the light shone on them. Now it was to be shone on the Soviets, long before they were ready to fight and while they were still vulnerable. Air defences in the form of many potent SAM systems had arrived but there were only so many of their Fulcrum fighters which they could operate, aircraft which had come off badly against F-4s already. The Americans were bringing those F-15s into Texas, something that Soviet radio interception intelligence – from forward units active inside the country and behind the frontlines too – detected and passed on warning about. New orders came from Harlingen, down in the Lower Valley where the Northern Front command post had been set up. The Cubans were to speed up their advance. They were to go around, not into San Antonio, and push on ahead. The reason for them to do this wasn’t given to them, it didn’t have to be. That was the order. Start moving quicker and find the Americans they were to do. In order to encourage that location of the enemy, to bring them to battle quicker, further Cuban air and missile attacks on San Antonio were ordered. The Soviets wanted attention off themselves for the time being. That wasn’t to be.



18th–20th September 1984:

America’s first victory in the war on the battlefield had come on Adak Island late on the war’s first day. The next victory came in the following days through southern Colorado. US Army forces moving down from Fort Carson, primarily the 4th Infantry Division heading for New Mexico, smashed through the Cuban paratroopers in and around Pueblo. US Air Force assistance had been helpful though the fighting was in the main done by the 4th Division itself where part of one of its brigades along with a large part of the divisional aviation assets did the job. The Cubans couldn’t stop them. What elements of the 2nd Airborne Brigade weren’t eliminated, fled the fight. The Nicaraguans were left out of this by where they were located. They managed to escape the onrush which came as the Americans moved out of their peacetime base and started to liberate occupied parts of their country near to that while on their way off to liberate other parts further away. Other Cubans nearby, those still scattered from the mis-drops when they had come to Colorado, linked up with the Nicaraguan 19th Parachute Regiment afterwards with a big concentration to the east of there though smaller groups left to the west. Through the centre the 4th Division had gone, moving southwards along the Interstate-25 corridor. There were Soviet paratroopers still in the Albuquerque area and then more Soviet troops, with Nicaraguans behind them, moving up through El Paso. New Mexico was to be the major battlefield for the big fight afterwards now that Pueblo was won. Some Cuban prisoners had been taken and they were shunted back into the rear towards Fort Carson. The injured were treated by medics and guarded well too like all of those taken for them had been some ugly incidents with false surrenders in the final fight for Pueblo. That town was a ruin. The fighting there had been brief but the Cubans hadn’t given in easy. They had been supposed to hold for longer and undertook demolitions to help them yet had been overwhelmed in the end. The Americans had hit them with tanks backed up by Cobra gunships: they was unable to counter that in the end. Into Pueblo alongside the 4th Division as it continued to transit through – the whole division was quite something to move – came men from the Colorado Army National Guard. Their task was to finish off what the regular soldiers had started and eliminate the last of the Cubans and Nicaraguans who hadn’t been rolled over. It was recognised as something which couldn’t be done fast and would be difficult, but it was to be done for the 4th Division was needed to be fighting away to the south. Those national guardsmen started talking to that task with relish. However, their opposition, beaten but not finished, made that difficult for them. They didn’t sit still waiting to die. Pueblo was a victory not finished and those left fighting after it was supposed to have already been won wanted to reverse that loss. The war continued in southern Colorado, long after it was meant to be over.

Down in El Paso, the Soviets were finishing off what they had started in trying to finally open up this entry route into the United States. The 66th Motorised Rifle Brigade had what was left of the 234th Guards Parachute Regiment folded into it (the Soviet Airborne were in a bad way, maybe more of a hinderance than any boost) and there also came increased air support with Soviet MiG-27s being worked their hardest: just part of a squadron from improvised airstrips south of the border. The Americans fighting around El Paso had taken their own serious losses and while not their fault, their fighting from a standing start out of their base in the manner which they had had cost them dear. This wasn’t a fight for which the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment – nor the 11th Air Defence Artillery Brigade fighting as infantry especially – was trained for where they stood still and fought in an urban area defensive mission. Civilian casualties in the city but also among military dependents were numerous with the latter rather bad for morale: some soldiers deserted to protect their families, drawing ire form everyone else when doing so. The Nicaraguans were bringing an army up towards El Paso. F-111s were still flying missions against them but onwards they came with a trio of heavy divisions spread out: one was heading for El Paso directly and one each either side. Orders came for a withdrawal to be made. The US Army would pull out of El Paso. These orders came from the III Corps far off in Central Texas who wanted what was left of their sub-units available and not destroyed in the fight which they were in. Such an order made sound military sense. It was also one which left those ordered to retreat furious. There were further desertions with individual soldiers leaving their units when no one could confirm that military dependants were getting out ahead of them: the Soviets would kill their families, many men were sure of that. The Soviets poured onwards, alerted by a communications intercept telling the 11th Brigade to pull out and corrected deducing that that formation wasn’t alone in doing so. The Nicaraguan 1st Motorised Rifle Division had meanwhile got over the Rio Grande south of El Paso at several points – out of the main firing line – and were initially sent to turn the American’s flank to pocket them, now they moved to cut off their retreat. They reached Homestead Meadows and cut the road running east. Shiny new T-72 tanks along with many other armoured vehicles poured through the outlying regions of Fort Bliss, through its training areas where equipment & munitions bunkers were spread out through the wilderness. The Americans had been meant to withdraw to the east. Military dependents were caught by the Nicaraguan advance plus also several columns of wounded US soldiers and also Soviet Airborne soldiers captured in battle. This Nicaraguan move caught the Americans off-guard, when they were fighting a rear-guard action against the advancing Soviets. They were caught in a trap. The Cav’ tried to fight their way out with their regiment’s commander abandoning the 11th Brigade and escaping up into the White Sands military area where there was space to operate. Friendly air support was coming into play when free of civilian areas. If the Cav’ could get away… but they couldn’t. With a final push, gutting most of the remaining armour of the 66th Brigade while doing so, the Americans were overcome before they could get out into the White Sands proper and the Cav’ defeated. The Soviets were then given a further order afterwards. Biggs Army Airfield and El Paso International Airport were a ruin: advance to White Sands Spaceport (built for NASA’s Shuttle), that huge undefended air facility up ahead which would be used by invading forces instead. Victory in El Paso opened the way for the Nicaraguans.

The fighting to the north in Colorado and to the south around El Paso left those Soviets in the middle almost unmolested. The 76th Guards Airborne Division (with only two of its three regiments due to the 234th Regiment being at El Paso) started expanding outwards from Kirtland AFB. Albuquerque was brought under indirect control with access out of there sealed and destruction caused inside to any scene of armed resistance. There was also control over a portion of the length of Interstate-25 as well. The Nicaraguan First Army was still a long way off and the Americans coming down from the north closer yet for now, due to lack of American attention the Soviets could expand themselves. The GRU-directed raid up to Los Alamos had been a success with the first helicopter link better established by a ground route secured. Civilian trucks were used to ship down prisoners and sensitive material pulled out of there. There was an airstrip at Los Alamos which proved invaluable to this effort. Huge space remained between the two locations and the link wasn’t wholly secure but what control there was was good enough. The 76th Division was waiting to be relieved by ground forces but kept busy in the meantime. Prisoners taken from Kirtland when it was first assaulted were put to work in helping dig improvised defences, those to help protect Soviet soldiers against the infrequent but deadly air attacks which had come. Those POWs had been cowed with examples made of those who objected to their treatment: there had been some shootings to silence the rest so there was no more talk of their ‘rights’. Civilians cause the Soviets more problems though. This wasn’t Texas but it was still the American West. Pre-war briefings had alerted the 76th Division to the number of weapons in private hands. They had been told. They were still taken by surprise at what they faced. Those civilians were organising too. The Soviets broke that up each time, using the firepower of their light armoured vehicles plus their helicopter gunships, but it kept on coming. The city of Albuquerque wasn’t the problem which was first feared but rather civilians from small towns and rural areas. Some of them were shot to set examples. That didn’t work, not at all. There was a KGB presence soon established after many of their personnel were brought in. They had their own ideas as to how to deal with partisans / guerrillas / terrorists – whatever the language used, it was just the same: civilians with guns – but the reality was different. Hostage-taking and shooting some of those when armed attacks occurred did nothing to stop the gunfire directed at Soviet troops, it just made it worse. Then, after a few days had passed, the Americans started increasing their air activity. The US Air Force (with attached Reserve & Air National Guard units) had Kirtland zeroed-in after reconnaissance had been done and the realisation of the concentration of enemy forces there on the edges of an urban area rather than inside it. F-4s, A-7s, F-16s and F-111s all flew attack missions starting at dawn on the 20th. The few Soviet fighters operating from Kirtland were overwhelmed. SAMs and anti-aircraft guns inflicted some kills but not enough. The bombs kept falling. An inbound An-22 transport loaded with a heavy load of ammunition for the fighters was shot out of the sky. The runways were bombed and so too was fuel storage. It was a bad day which only got worse when a pair of those F-16s came in fast and low just after dusk and parachute-retarded bombs fell in their wake. The weather was excellent with clear skies and little wind. Aided by that, the pair of fuel-air bombs worked very well indeed. Kirtland was closed to Soviet air activity after that and Soviet soldiers – plus American POWs who’d dived for cover too – left dead all over the place following the devastating air attack.

The main body of the Nicaraguan First Army was directed into New Mexico with that trio of divisions of theirs. Also attached was a separate regiment of Nicaraguans plus a Guatemalan infantry division as well to operate to the west. Most of Guatemala’s professional army, such as it was, was elsewhere: once again ‘liberating’ what was seen as rightful Guatemalan territory. What had been sent to Mexico first and then ordered alongside that Nicaraguan unit into Arizona – with some Mexicans attached – was the leftovers. There were Hondurans and Salvadorans recently incorporated into the Guatemalan Army alongside ordinary Guatemalans: all of these men from across Central America didn’t want to be here… wherever here was, for they didn’t know exactly where they were sent into. The only reason that the Guatemalans managed to get into Arizona was because no one stopped them. Arizona’s national guardsmen put up a fight and were defeated: they were spread thin and not positioned to halt an invasion like what came against them. Fire support with heavy guns, towed artillery pieces, opened up entry points for the Guatemalan division and the Nicaraguan regiment. They went across through Douglas, Naco and Nogales (the latter where the Nicaraguans moved). The orders were for the Guatemalans to get to Fort Huachuca and the Nicaraguans to reach Davis-Monthan AFB outside Tucson. There were Cuban liaison officers with the Guatemalans and also a smattering of training teams from Eastern Bloc countries who went with them as they pushed on Fort Huachuca. They had a devil of a time getting there but in the end they overcome getting lost, civilian opposition, desertions en masse and also some American air interference. That US Army base was no garrison for fighting men but rather a strategic communications and training facility. No troops from elsewhere were available to come and defend it, not with everything else going on. An evacuation was made of people and crucial material, one which was delayed but not stopped when the Soviets made a couple of air strikes against Libby Army Airfield. There was also armed opposition to the Guatemalans as they came towards Fort Huachuca though that was a delaying action across rough terrain. Numbers hampered the Americans, their few and the Guatemalan many, and in the end the fort was lost. The Guatemalans were left strung out across southern Arizona though and in the middle of nowhere when they achieved their objective of taking a facility evacuated and which had also seen demolitions undertaken as well. As to the Nicaraguans, they went up Interstate-19 and towards Tucson. They were a perfect target for a massed series of air attacks. Unfortunately, US air power was being directed elsewhere when it really mattered and the Nicaraguans moved onwards. They closed-in upon Davis-Monthan and the vast AMARC facility – all of those stored aircraft sitting out in the open – while the US Air Force screamed at the US Army to send troops. There were no troops for Fort Huachuca and certainly none for Davis-Monthan. The US Army Reserve had a battalion of tanks in Arizona but they were being sent to make a flank attack towards Yuma and the Soviets there; the US Air Force had many aircraft at Arizona airbases and so why couldn’t they be used? Recriminations would come later between the different US Armed Forces service branches. For the time being, the Nicaraguans moved onwards. They avoided Tucson itself – through did take the civilian airport – and headed for their objective. The regiment had a company of T-55 tanks, a battalion of infantry in BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers, a couple of battalions of infantry in trucks, a few batteries of towed heavy guns and not much else. They could have been stopped. They should have been stopped. They weren’t stopped. They reached the vital AMARC and took it from USAF security police units and a scratch force of Arizona national guardsmen. Of all the war’s early disasters for the Americans, AMARC’s loss was high on the list of most-damaging in the medium- & long-term.

East Germany was apparently neutral in the Third World War. There was a reinforced battalion of East German paratroopers who’d fought first at Laguna Army Airfield near Yuma and then afterwards were sent northwards from there who gave lie to that neutrality. They’d been inside the United States since the invasion started and continued to move forward. They used helicopters and trucks to move across the Yuma Proving Ground and after several days out of Laguna, they reached the Palo Verde Valley where Blythe was. They cut Southern California off from Arizona in doing so. A Cuban division was meant to be right behind them but was still stuck around Yuma where the Americans had their aircraft undertaking air strike after air strike so the East Germans were on their own. It was an outpost which they had established without meaning to. By their nature, outposts were always exposed to attack. Orders from the Soviet brigade which the East Germans were attached to when the Cubans didn’t show up said to dig-in and hold Blythe against any attack. They did that alongside a company of para-commandos with them, all watched over by a significant contingent of political officers from the PHV. Those personnel weren’t there to terrorise the local population or anything like that but to keep a watch over the fighting men for any signs of disloyalty. East Germany didn’t trust its fighting men, especially when so far from home. As to those paratroopers and their watchdogs, they were on the flank of the Cuban First Army which was to the southwest of them in the Imperial Valley. Three divisions of that field army – with the fourth at Yuma – had moved into California. They weren’t enjoying their time there. The Americans rained bombs from the air against them and shot out of the sky Cuban MiGs which tried to interfere. NAS El Centro was rendered useless by US Navy jets while the US Marines couldn’t get at their lost MCAS Yuma properly but they negated the effect of Cuban use with so many attacks. That fighter cover kept aircraft on attack missions – the US Air Force joined in too – unmolested in their repeated air strikes in the Imperial Valley. Cuban tanks, armoured vehicles, heavy artillery and especially their troops were struck at again and again. The Cuban divisions were pushed onwards, bunched up as they were, and could only be defended by SAMs and anti-aircraft fire. American jets and helicopters were hit by some of this fire. The Cubans reached Brawley and then the edges of the inland Salton Sea… at an outrageous cost. The schedule had slipped but they had advanced onwards. However, they were being penned into the Imperial Valley. To the west of them, California Army National Guard troops from what remained of their 40th Infantry Division was moving into place. Ahead to the north, on the other side of the Salton Sea, there were US Marines: lots of them with the 1st Marine Division already there. The Americans weren’t assuming defensive positions. They were getting ready to launch an offensive. California had been stripped of many forces pre-war to go to South Korea, but what was left was still plentiful when given this task when it came to the Cubans. They were in a small area where local geography boxed them in. The Americans had the air support. The Cubans were exposed to an attack, where they were in an open and (relatively) thinly-populated area. The Americans would do that soon, very soon. They just let the Cubans spread themselves out a little bit further and suffer more air attacks. The planned attack was to take place on the 21st.



18th–20th September 1984:

There had been losses incurred and a ‘setback’ – others would say a defeat – too when it came to Soviet operations in Alaska. The paratroopers on the ground in the Alaskan Panhandle weren’t going anywhere after their initial entry wasn’t reinforced. The American victory at Adak meant that there was an island of resistance where there should be none. The front commander believed himself lucky to not be relieved of his post afterwards. He knew that his forces had done well elsewhere, very well, and it was that which kept him in position. Orders from above came to tell him to finish what was started. Isolate American forces in Alaska and cut off a route of attack through there against the Rodina because the enemy was weak and exposed with only geography in their favour. No further delays were acceptable.


A significant portion of the Soviet Navy’s Pacific Fleet had been gathered pre-war at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Other ships from Vladivostok were sent on other operations out into the open waters of the Pacific – many in the coming weeks to end up at the bottom of the ocean – though those up in the north went out to sea through what were rather constricted waters in comparison to the ocean proper. Several convoys of transports, led by a few amphibious assault ships, were escorted by warships across the Bering Sea and staying within range of the air cover which came from the captured airbase on Shemya Island. The Soviets moved fast, as fast as the slowest ship in the convoys could make it anyway, and under that fighter cover. Those first few (of many planned) MiG-25s operating from Eareckson belonged to the Soviet Air Defence Forces and had their own tasks though they provided the protection needed for a short period. Adak was meant to house more of those fighters but instead there were no aircraft flying from there at all, Soviet nor Americans. The P-3s belonging to the US Navy had been lost in the fighting on the ground – RPGs and satchel charges had been used by the naval infantry defeated detachment – and so there came no reporting of the approach of some of the ships from the convoy towards Adak nor the passing of many more which carried on following the course of the island chain and heading for what fighter coverage was soon starting to be made available when the first of the MiG-25s from Kodiak were able to provide air cover too. The gap in the middle was crossed without any American air interference coming. It was to Kodiak were the main body of the ships were going, transporting much of the Soviet Navy’s 55th Naval Infantry Division with only part of that meant to go into action in the forced-entry role. American air attacks were expected at any moment but the ships kept going onwards. There was also a watch for submarines too. Again, none came to interfere with this first series of convoys. That wouldn’t be the case again.

The waters around Kodiak were where that division of Soviet marines were to stage from for their later roles though some ships within the convoys had broken off during the transit. A couple went to Shemya to deliver more men, supplies and equipment as well as beginning the process of taking apart the massive COBRA DANE radar for shipment off that island. There was a whole lot of work to be done with that yet much promise was foreseen when the secrets from it were due to be unlocked back home in the Soviet Union. A few more ships went to Adak: these were ones meant to bring in the follow-on forces to complete the first assault. The rest of the troops initially tasked for Adak were sent there and this was most of a battalion. However, they still would be outnumbered by how many Americans were on Adak in terms of all of those US Navy personnel who had supported the US Marines detachment in the fighting on the first day. Those non-combat personnel had been dismissed as irrelevant in the past but that was no longer the case.

Adak was gassed on the morning of September 19th. A flight of Tupolev-22M bombers, the big Backfires in Soviet Navy service, made an attack where they flew low over the airbase and the military harbour and released bombs. The pilots climbed sharply away afterwards and accelerated greatly. Their supersonic booms told those on the ground that something was up. Then the gas mixed with the air and started to concentrate. This was the first use of nerve gas in the war, something which had deliberately not happened already where such an important weapon in the Soviet arsenal hadn’t been used in a standoff with the Americans when it came to making use of weapons of mass destruction beyond the first use to open the war. Adak was gassed though where there was the liberal use of the nerve agent known as Soman (GD as known to NATO) at an out-of-the-way and isolated location where the intention was to cover up its use. Those in its path were at a chemical posture where they were wearing their main suits and carrying with them helmets and gloves. The chemical alarms went off with enough warning. Still, those on the ground at Adak died in great numbers and there were also others who were left gravely injured too. Not everyone had their personal protection fully on in time, sealed up and protecting themselves. Hundreds of casualties were spread across Adak. Soviet naval infantrymen turned up a couple of hours later. The first wave came in assault boats and a couple of transport helicopters. They were wearing their chemical warfare suits and had been told to keep them on at all times: nothing more than that. There were still Americans alive at Adak and many more than the Soviets expected. Infantry fighting brought damage to the chemical warfare suits worn by each side. GD was classified as a non-persistent gas and not an area-denial weapon. It was meant to disperse and lose lethality after a while. It did, just not fully. The lasting effects of the gas killed men who were fighting each other while meant to be protected against it. The Soviets had arrived in hell. The casualties which the Americans had taken beforehand were still all over the place. Nerve gas does horrible things to people. The fighting which took place was different to fights elsewhere due to the gas attack. Some Americans fought with everything they had, with brutality, to avenge the deaths which they had witnessed. Others just couldn’t bring themselves to take part in the fighting or do anything else either like a functioning human being. The sights which they had seen, the screams which they had heard… it had all been too much. The Soviets were affected as well though not as badly for they hadn’t seen the worst of what had happened. They took the airbase and secured the harbour for arriving ships. Then, afterwards, during the rounding up of prisoners and weapons, they started to become fully aware of everything around them including how many of their comrades were on the ground as well when their suits had been torn. Naval infantrymen joined their US Navy opponents in going into shock. Parties of men were organised to shoot the dying, to put them but also everyone else out of the misery. Burial parties were organised too where the dead were hastily pushed aside. The things that those who survived Adak, from both sides, saw would haunt them for a long time. War was one thing: that gas had been something else entirely… although it must be said that no one on Adak had seen the aftereffects of the nuclear attacks in both their countries.


Kodiak, where those ships brought most of the 55th Division to, was reached by the lead ships on the fourth day of the war. The fighter cover from the MiG-25s there protected the ships. Those Foxbats were quick to see action, being engaged by F-15s flying from Alaska and their air crews weren’t having a fun time at all when outnumbered and forced to retreat back through the skies. More fighters were due soon to come to Kodiak. In the meantime, the Foxbats kept the way open for transport aircraft which were making the island-hop through the Aleutians, to Kodiak and then onto the Alaskan Panhandle. Where those Soviet paratroopers were at Haines and Skagway they held open those two airports which were also to soon enough become fighter bases too. Establishing a fighter presence was taking longer than planned but transport aircraft were coming in and flying back out again with medium-sized Antonov-12 & -26 &-32 transports making that journey. They brought in fuel and weapons for the fighters when they turned up along with ground personnel. Air defence weapons came in as well with those quickly set up. The Americans had to get wise to the location of these twin airheads soon enough. In addition, troops came in too. Some of those missing 345th Regiment paratroopers which had been diverted to Kodiak were returned from there but there was also the process of bringing in the 11th Landing-assault Brigade, that airmobile unit waiting across in Kamchatka. The flights were made with a couple of aircraft lost to accidents as well over the water or on approach to Haines and Skagway. This was going to take a while though was helped when Adak was announced as taken… without those who hadn’t been there having any idea as to what had happened on that little island. Because the Haines-Skagway bridgehead hadn’t been closed when there had come that American fighter activity over the Gulf of Alaska, and that had eased off, the mission for the Soviet Airborne to go deep into the mainland from their coastal lodgement was still on. Madness it might be to some but the orders stood. The 345th Regiment (with a quarter of its pre-war strength lost before any battle) would go and reach the Alaskan Highway and cut off Alaska. Canada was that way, through the mountains, the paratroopers were instructed to get moving and do it now. They started advancing across the US-Canadian border.

The Americans were aware of the Soviet presence in the Aleutians, Kodiak and the Alaskan Panhandle. Information was sketchy and the intelligence picture far from complete but they knew that the Soviets had men there with more on the way. Aircraft and ships were spotted and attacks were made where possible though finding the enemy, especially their ships, wasn’t an easy thing to do with the presence of Soviet fighters. What was needed was reinforcements, urgent reinforcements. Alaska would be cut off and starved out otherwise. From the Soviet dispositions, that was clearly the intent. No help was available though. With Red Star taking place through the South-West, US Army Alaska and Alaskan Air Command were on their own. National guard units were incorporated into the defence and there was also the formation all over the place of independent militias through the vast expanse of that state. For the time being, those in Alaska were on their own.

What the Soviets were doing in Alaska was noted by the Canadians too. Canada was at war once since it started, following events in Ottawa and Halifax plus a determined but ultimately doomed effort by a Soviet commando team to get into CFB North Bay where NORAD’s secondary headquarters was. Canadian fighters were flying air defence missions for NORAD where they waited for Soviet bombers to come over the North Pole. Canadian warships & submarines were active already and would soon be making a big effort as part of a combined US-Canadian effort in the North Pacific when it came to Alaska. In the meantime, what parts of the Canadian Army were available for wartime operations were readied to see fighting. Canada was going to be bringing troops home from West Germany but there were others in Canada, spread throughout the country including out in the Prairies. Through Alberta, the Canadians were forming up their 1st Mechanised Brigade-Group and adding many attachments of reservists from across their western provinces. The Soviets were going into the Yukon, so too would be Canadian troops. Furthermore, into Alberta there was coming the first of (what would ultimately be only a small contingent in the end) British troops arriving to link up with men on pre-war exercises & stored equipment at the CFB Suffield training site. The Canadians and the British were off to fight in the northern expanses of Canada and near to Alaska. The Americans had to follow them, surely? They must have some troops from somewhere, yes?



18th–20th September 1984:

The thirty-fifth US president had helped get himself elected by making a big deal out of the threat posed by communism ninety miles off the Florida coast. His younger brother, the thirty-ninth president, had been in office when that threat had become very real indeed when Cuba had spread its influence, and soldiers too, all across Latin America (although that admittedly began under his predecessor). Both Kennedys who made it to the White House, JFK and Ted, had sought not to have Cuba define their presidencies. Each had overseen action taken against Cuba, action which was decried by critics as ineffective, but been wary of bringing about a wider war with Soviet Union over this. JFK had avoided that; Ted had failed to do so. The term ‘ninety miles’ had become symbolic when talking of Cuba. It was the distance between shores of the Cuban mainland and Key West. That little island lay at the bottom of the island chain stretching down away from the mainland with Key West at the end of the Florida Keys. Long preceding the Castros, Key West had been a military base and had been in the past compared to Gibraltar in the manner of where it sat alongside to and guarding entrance through such an important seaway as the Florida Straits. When the war with Castro’s Cuba began, Key West was home to a naval station used infrequently though a far busier naval air station. NAS Key West was actually not on that island but on neighbouring Boca Chica Key. It was a training facility and well-used. Many aircraft from there had been put into the air with great haste when DEFCON 1 followed the nuclear attack, including the US Navy’s A-4 Skyhawks assigned to the aggressor squadron which called Key West home. VF-45, known as the Blackbirds, had claimed several aerial victories on the war’s first day where they had taken out a pair of Cuban MiG-23s (not an easy feat) as well as a trio of unidentified bigger aircraft which had only been seen on radar screens and not visually identified: bombers, electronic warfare aircraft or even transports they might have been. The cost of tangling with the MiGs had been the loss of one A-4 and the serious damage done to another leading it to be written off after making an emergency landing. The Blackbirds had taken those losses but knew that they had done very well indeed. They were prepared to defend their base, plus fight in the defence of the rest of Florida too, once again. That they did.

The Cubans came back the next day. Unbeknown to VF-45, the squadron had driven off an airdrop over Key West of Cuban paratroopers. Those had been An-12 transports which they had hit and eliminated, aircraft carrying pathfinders and commandos ready to open the way for what was due to come afterwards. The mission to take Key West and establish a forward Cuban base there should have been cancelled afterwards. The Soviet commander in Cuba would have rather taken those Cuban paratroopers – the partially-built 7th Airborne Brigade – with him across to Texas following the shootdown and also not used any more aircraft of what he regarded as a folly. Fidel and Raúl Castro both would have none of that. General Yazov had no direct operational command over their paratroopers nor selective Cuban air units. Key West remaining in American hands would mean that Cuba would come under relentless air attacks but with it held by Cuba, the United States would be long distracted trying to take it back and therefore direct attention there. In addition, it would serve as a forward defensive position too, further limiting air attacks against Cuba. That made sense to the Castros. Something else of note in the desire to see Key West taken was that it would be under sole Cuban control. Cuban troops were taking part in occupying other parts of the United States but that was alongside Soviet forces. Key West would be theirs. Guantanamo Bay was another sole-Cuban operation but Key West was regarded as being just as important for that symbolic value of occupying American territory when after so long they had sat as occupiers of Cuban soil. Therefore, Cuban aircraft came back to the skies above the Florida Keys. Those A-4s were engaged again with Cuba filling the skies with their own fighters. The previous night had seen the first Operation Dark Knight air strikes take place over Cuba and a heck of a lot of damage done but the Castros would have Key West. VF-45 screamed for external help. They were aided only by a US Air Force radar on Cudjoe Key: not by fighters from Homestead AFB or other sites on the mainland who were busy elsewhere at the time. This wasn’t accidental. Cuban aircraft were busy elsewhere and making a big deal out of that at the crucial moment. Several A-4s were shot down and others driven off. The Blackbirds were good but they were overwhelmed. Right on the back of the fighter sweeps, where Cuba used its MiG-29s – those left after they had come under attack the night before – this time, low-flying transports arrived over NAS Key West and from out of their rear cargo doors dropped men making low-altitude jumps. Only one battalion of paratroopers was used with the 7th Brigade not having enough air transport to do any more. Those men who landed on Boca Chica Key went straight into the fight. US Navy personnel on the ground were dug-in with defensive positions set-up overnight. They would fight for the airbase and then fight across on Key West itself too. Like Guantanamo Bay, Key West would eventually be doomed though when no rescue came for beleaguered defenders. The Castros would have both their prizes.


Cuba was on the frontlines of the war – more than the Soviet Union and Nicaragua & other Central American nations – right from the start. Kennedy’s delayed air strikes were implemented by President Glenn. Dark Knight had a lot of planning done with it with forces moved into place ready to go but held back due to the promise of a diplomatic solution which had seen a nuclear attack instead. Neither Cuba nor the southeastern United States were affected by those and instead it was conventional fighting which took place. The Americans sent their aircraft pouring towards Cuba once the war was on with no restrictions on where they could strike across that island. The US Air Force led this effort as it was they who had the air strikes long planned out. Tactical Air Command was first to use its assigned fighter & strike aircraft over Cuba though they were quickly joined by SAC taking part too after a delay. There was a rush to drop bombs all over the island with so many places hit in a hurry. Whether this was the best strategy for the entire war actually being fought, one away from Cuba, was a question first not asked. Cuba was battered. When SAC entered the battle, they used cruise missiles as well as sending B-52s on bomb runs. Attacks were made in daylight and at night. Military facilities were at the top of the list though there were also strikes made against ‘regime targets’ as well, especially around Havana. Where the US Navy repeatedly asked for assistance when it came to Key West and were joined by the US Marines when it came to wanting air support for Guantanamo Bay, the US Air Force was apprehensive to do that when they had their focus to blasting bits of Cuba to ruin. That was seen as important, everything else was secondary.

Those air attacks upon Cuba were defended against. Cuba was full of Cuban and Soviet fighters as well as plenty of SAMs too. The island wasn’t just home to one of the leading socialist nations and thus always going to be defended, it was home to those Soviet forces moving across to Texas. Furthermore, reinforcements later coming from across the other side of the world would be moving through Cuba at a later stage too. Every bomb which hit Cuba’s airports and harbours put a dent into that. American fighters in the sky above Cuba also put military transport aircraft, aided by civilian airliners pressed into service, at risk. Cuba’s skies were the scene of many engagements. Missiles came up aplenty from the ground and they weren’t always too fussed when it came to which aircraft they struck. Havana was the main focus for the Americans with the Cuban capital being repeatedly struck itself as well as all around it. Elsewhere though, the Americans went after the Cuban ports of Muriel, Matanzas, Nueva Gerona, Cienfuegos and Manzanillo. Shipping using them and the infrastructure came under attack. Every air facility across the island, civilian and military, was on the target list for the Americans too. Aircraft were brought down above Cuba and over the nearby waters: those flown by the Americans, the Cubans and the Soviets. Ships were sunk at sea or set alight in port. Cuba was where America took out much of its early vengeance for the events of September 17th, later known as Red Dawn.

General Yazov had been refused permission to transfer any more than ten thousand Soviet personnel to Mexico before the war began. All of those were to have their presence hidden too. The rest of his forces were inside Cuba and waiting to move the very moment the war started. Those in Mexico were selected combat forces – those four light brigades used to open the way across the border – but also key logistics teams who would operate airports and harbours in Mexico near to that border as well as moving across into occupied parts of America too. They were joined straight away by others who went in after the paratroopers and airmobile forces who assaulted Texas. The task was to get what was in Cuba across the Gulf of Mexico. That the Americans would attack, in strength too, was anticipated. It was still a surprise how much damage they could do though. Yazov himself witnessed Cienfuegos hit by falling bombs from a cell of B-52s which he neither saw nor heard but whose weapons caused immense destruction there. Far more damage was done elsewhere. Regardless, the task was still to move across to Texas what he had in Cuba. The Eighth Tank Army and the Twenty–Fourth Air Army would go first followed by the Twenty–Eighth Combined Arms Army afterwards. To say this was remarkably difficult to do would be quite the understatement. It would have been far easier to have everything sent pre-war to Cuba instead deployed in Mexico. That hadn’t been the case though for such a presence, no matter how much maskirovka was used, all the deception and trickery in the world wouldn’t have worked. The Americans would have seen Krasny Zvezda coming. That was in the past now. What was important was getting out of Cuba what was on the island. To the ports of Corpus Christi, Brownsville and Tampico ships went with haste. Airports south of the Rio Grande and the far better ones north of that river were used. American interference came but the movements continued unabated. What Yazov worried over more that the air strikes made on Cuba, was whether the Americans would soon start blasting Corpus Christi and Brownsville. As the days went on they didn’t. He was certain that they would start to do so soon.



18th–20th September 1984:

Washington remained the capital of the United States. The fact that it was left a radioactive ruin after two nuclear detonations above it, plus another pair outside, didn’t change that in an official capacity. In reality though, what was left of the government was no longer calling Washington home. They were spread out elsewhere at emergency sites. Glenn was soon based at Mount Weather, the FEMA facility in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley though certainly wasn’t enjoying being stuck underground in that bunker. He left there several times in the war’s early days, making trips to Raven Rock and The Greenbrier – again places underground though – with the tightest of security in-place for his movements. It was at Raven Rock where Bentsen’s secondary Pentagon was set up, beneath the Blue Mountains in Pennsylvania. Congress was establishing itself underneath the exclusive hotel at White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia with the ‘Project Greek Island’ facility there at The Greenbrier put to use for what members were still alive. There were six senators and twenty-three representatives alive… from pre-war figures of one hundred of the former and four hundred & thirty-five of the latter. Such staggering losses of their numbers when Washington was obliterated mirrored what had happened to the highest level of other parts of the government. The Soviet attack had come at midday on a Monday when Congress was in session and even if everyone wasn’t directly on Capitol Hill, they were in the city. Those left alive had been elsewhere at the time of the surprise attack and were brought to West Virginia. A House Speaker was quickly elected among the almost two dozen representatives (who came from only ten of the fifty states) while from among the senators (from five states) they elected themselves a president pro tempore. If this hadn’t been wartime, the actions of the rump Congress in their first days would surely have been challenged by others. They didn’t have a quorum though that only mattered if one was called for: none of them did and avoided that constitutional entanglement. There were already many more of those on their plate as well as everything else going on but being isolated and not under scrutiny meant that they could do a lot, especially since it was wartime. When Glenn met with them, he was given a roasting by the congressmen especially when it came to what they knew about how the war was going at the minute with invading armies still on the march and it appeared that they weren’t being stopped in any way. They pushed him to appoint a vice president to their liking and not either of the two surviving Cabinet members in the form of the secretaries of commerce and education as he planned to. Furthermore, a new secretary of state should be selected by them too following what the president was told was the disaster when it came to America’s allies walking away and being allowed to get away with that. That rump Congress told Glenn that they believed that Moscow, Havana and Managua should now be glowing craters. They wanted Bentsen fired because under him an invasion of this magnitude had occurred. They wanted to supervision over the FBI-FEMA set-up which had metamorphosed in New York to become a shadow government. They wanted to know what exactly had occurred with that Israeli warning and who no one else had any idea of what was coming. Finally, they were setting up a joint committee to investigate the causes of the war and would act appropriately. At Raven Rock, getting a military briefing in person from Bentsen and the Joint Chiefs, Glenn had an unpleasant time but that was nothing in comparison to what he was on the receiving end of at The Greenbrier.

The nation’s capital wasn’t the only radioactive ruin. Andrews and Langley were wiped off the face of the earth too. Ellsworth and Offutt in the Mid-West plus Kansas City had been more nuclear targets. Then there were the North Dakota missile fields centred on Minot. Through Maryland and North Dakota, the radiation which came from the DC and Minot blasts was affecting both of those states when the wind blew fallout through them. It was far worse than what was seen in parts of Virginia, Omaha and what was left of the wider Kansas City area. Sirens had sounded and people had rushed to fallout shelters opened to them following civil defence guidelines. Not everyone had done so though plus there was fast the issue of many people leaving those locations. Anarchy had come in places, especially through heavily-populated places of Maryland like Baltimore and Annapolis. There had been a storm too which had brought with it black rain falling. People were dying everywhere with hundreds of thousands of others fleeing for their lives ahead of the radiation coming their way and also the chaos behind. Through North Dakota, those nuclear strikes had been in the main ground bursts… which had brought far more fallout that came from the airbursts over the DC area. What goes up, in the form of irradiated earth, must come back down. The big towns of Bismarck, Fargo and Grand Forks had seen fallout dumped upon them along with smaller towns and rural areas through the state. That radiation clouds were moving north and east though, into Canada and Minnesota. As with Maryland, initial deaths from the fallout weren’t so terrible but soon enough those affected were starting to suffer before they would soon enough die. Panic was rife as everyone in the way of the incoming fallout, or perceived that they were, fled in outright terror. Local authorities were overwhelmed and couldn’t cope. Millions were going to die in Maryland – probably further up the East Coast too – and through the upper Mid-West. Decades of planning for post-strike measures to deal with radiation, in far bigger nuclear strikes than had taken place, weren’t enough to deal with the reality of what came. Who really could have been prepared for what came though?

The ‘shadow government’ that some of those in their bunker in West Virginia were alarmed about was the emergency measures brought in nationwide – with Glenn’s signature authorising that – where there was cooperation between the FBI and FEMA over domestic security and disaster relief. The field offices of both organisations in New York had seen agreement to cement that late on the war’s first day though there had been a move out of there afterwards – in case a second nuclear attack targeted New York – and up to a US Army Reserve post in the Hudson Valley at Orangetown. That move was coordinated with Bentsen’s approval to give them somewhere to operate from since both federal agencies had lost their headquarters in DC. It was only temporary. There was nothing shadowy about what they were doing, not as far as they nor Glenn & Bentsen were concerned anyway. Everything was legal and proper. These were extraordinary times and extraordinary measures were needed, measures given presidential approval. To save those who could be saved from the fallout meant that FEMA would have to make hard choices. There was also the issue of refugees, those affected by & fleeing from the radiation of so many nuclear detonation in addition to others nationwide making themselves internal refugees where they fled from the war coming their way through the South-West. When it came to the FBI, they were dealing with a major national emergency when it came to security. Enemy commando attacks had occurred nationwide which the military was stretched to deal with but there had also been terrorist attacks all over the place conducted by domestic and foreign extremists. The New York attacks had been undertaken by Palestinians associated with Libya: Israel was sticking to its word on support for the US by having quickly provided lots of background help on getting to the bottom of that… doing themselves a big favour in the meantime too there. There had come hate crimes against those of Middle Eastern appearance afterwards, joining those launched by criminals – so-called patriots and vigilantes – against Hispanics too leading to some terrible instances: the FBI was meant to be addressing that. The McCarran Act, a 1950 piece of legislation which was still federal law despite many years of protest & weakening, had come into effect. The FBI was making arrests and detaining those regarded as subversives nationwide. There would be recriminations when it came to those who they locked up and others shot when trying to run. Additionally, the FBI was looking at some of the refugee camps near the Mexican border for further signs of hidden foreign agents. There were remaining camps in areas when invading forces hadn’t moved into through California and Texas; other camps had already been entered by Mexican Revolutionary units with massacres apparently taking place yet the FBI nor anyone else could do anything about that. Another security issue where the FBI was trying to get atop of was the reports of missing important people nationwide who it appeared had been kidnapped by the KGB or their proxies just before the outbreak of war. There had been what were now realised as poisoning of some people but these suspected kidnappings included two members of Congress who hadn’t been killed in Washington nor were at The Greenbrier: a congressman from Texas and a congresswoman from California. Had they been taken to therefore later show up reading from a KGB-supplied script declaring a revolutionary government? It was possible. The FBI was working on that theory because news had come in from aboard of similar things happening in other nations.

Glenn’s military briefing at Raven Rock went into depth on what he was already aware of when it came to the war being fought not just at home but abroad too. Good news wasn’t plentiful in that. The Soviet-led war on American soil was clearly far beyond any sort of security zone like they declared they were launching. That was a load of ******* anyway. Nonetheless, their actions proved the lie. It was in New Mexico and Colorado which showed that, where they and the Cubans had put paratroopers up the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. Before politics, Glenn was a Marine aviator with aerial kills to his name over Korea and he’d retired as a colonel. He didn’t need general’s stars nor having done extensive staff work to see what that was all about. There was a corridor being established for troops to advance northwards to split the western half of the country in two. He wasn’t so sure about the assurance that Nicaraguan troops were identified as taking part as the main ground unit there – surely Soviets or even Cubans should be involved? – but agreed that this was what they were up to when told. More than South Texas or anywhere else, he directed Bentsen to have full attention paid to that for the time being. The implications from that instruction (which was agreed with too by those at Raven Rock) would be important later but not understood for some time. Other issues of concern were the enemy victories won in the West, past the Rockies. A fierce dispute had arisen over inter-service cooperation. Bentsen wanted to push through an emergency shakeup even before the AMARC debacle and was granted approval after that loss. Theatre commands with full joint service coordination & supervision would be established. This would mean a shakeup too with the Joint Chiefs but the three of the five Joint Chiefs (the two others were the dead pre-war Chairman & the US Air Force chief who had resigned on the eve of war) who were at Raven Rock stood behind it following all that had gone on. Whether what was agreed between them and Glenn & Bentsen would work out in the field was something else but it had begun. It was going to be a mess yet it had to be done. Reservists and national guardsmen nationwide had been called out and there was already an unprecedented rush of volunteers descending upon recruiting stations alongside the conscription announced. The news on this was good yet still, it wasn’t going to be easy going turning civilians into soldiers at a time like this with the country in the state it was in. From overseas, Soviet activity in the North Atlantic was gone over and there was little good news. It was the same with the North Korean invasion of South Korea where US forces were caught up in that and in a lot of trouble; joined as well by those in the Caribbean in the firing line. Orders were given from the president on these matters. Finally, there was the issue of what elements of the US military overseas who were not in those theatres of war. American forces already had their orders to come home from Western Europe. They were needed this side of the Atlantic. How long was that going to take, Glenn asked. The answer which came wasn’t good.



21st–25th September 1984:

A concern expressed pre-war during the planning for the invasion by the Soviet Army’s senior officers, the marshals and full generals with Stavka, was that the Americans might play it smart in Texas. When the invasion got underway and their national guardsmen on the border were wiped out, the regular units of the US Army might retreat deep into the interior and establish defensive positions. Their forces at Fort Hood weren’t large but could be reinforced in time if they established a defensive line. The Colorado River, running from the Edwards Plateau down past Austin and to the Gulf of Mexico, looked like a good position; there was the possibility that a more-forward line on the Guadalupe River might be an alternative. In the face of that, Krasny Zvezda could be forestalled when its aim was to have the Cubans ‘handle’ the US III Corps out of Fort Hood in the general San Antonio area and for afterwards the late-arriving Soviet Eighth Tank Army to then rush forward through undefended territory. Even when outnumbered, should the Americans get set-up then there would be difficulty in overcoming them as they could keep reinforcing and faster than the Soviet Army could. That concern was tempered though by the knowledge of the US Army that it wasn’t a defensive-orientated force, especially not the III Corps with them having long-trained for a NATO mission (in West Germany it must be said) of a counterattack. The political factor was something else too: withdrawing like that would leave San Antonio – a major city – to the mercy of the invader along with a lot of America soil. That surely wouldn’t be something allowed to happen.

At first, that whole worse case scenario looked possible. The III Corps didn’t come racing down out of Fort Hood along the Interstate-35 corridor to ‘save’ San Antonio and intercept the Cuban Second Army. Soviet orders had the Cubans increase speed towards San Antonio and fire further Scud missiles at that city to try to encourage the Americans onwards. Soviet reconnaissance efforts were increased through the extra use of their radio-intercept & scouting teams spread through South Texas (with orders to avoid detection on the ground) and also air cover. A lone Sukhoi-17MR flew over the interstate north of San Antonio and didn’t see the Americans coming south; they saw all of those civilian vehicles going north though, on both sides of the road. Some officers were already rehearsing their excuses for when the blame game started. However, another reconnaissance flight sent westwards of that road corridor, and very lucky indeed to escape a pair of F-4s which gave chase, saw something else which was afterwards confirmed by one of those silent scouting teams spread all over the place. The Americans were being sneaky. The III Corps was on the move. They were crossing the Texas Hill Country and coming south towards San Antonio what was in effect through the back door. While political unacceptable to say aloud, when showed the intelligence summary, the Soviet front commander down at Harlingen believed that this was pretty smart as well as something he would have done in their position. It would have been better for the Americans to retreat, to trade space for time, but this was the next best thing to that. They were going to turn the Cuban’s flank should they get away with it. They were moving fast and coming on strong. The Cubans were already on the outskirts of San Antonio and had entered the abandoned US Air Force sites at Brooks, Kelly and Lackland already. The Cubans were extending themselves over a wide area. It would have worked. The Counterattack Corps was living up to its name… but the game had been given away.

The III Corps reached the edge of Texas Hill Country late on the 22nd where the Balcones Escarpment was. Below were the beginnings of the Gulf Plains and the roads which the Cubans had used to approach San Antonio from the Rio Grande. Air interference for the American advance to contact had been light, very light, yet the US Air Force had assured the US Army that they would sweep the skies of enemy aircraft and done just that. Everything looked perfect for an attack. Fifth Army headquarters gave the go ahead and down the III Corps went in the early hours with the 1st Cavalry Division on the left (closer to San Antonio) and the 2nd Armored Division on the right. They would swing around in an anti-clockwise manoeuvre tearing through the rear of the Cubans, shooting up their supply units and engage combat forces from behind. Victory in that looked very possible. Afterwards, the III Corps would then go south and take on what Soviet forces had managed to arrive in Texas already.


The Cuban 52nd Infantry Division was strung out through the rear, moving towards San Antonio before the Americans were spotted. It could have been moved out of the way or at least better prepared to weather the storm coming its way. Orders from Harlingen were for them to stay where they were and fight in-place. The Americans tore into them in a fight in the darkness, where they certainly had the upper hand. Most of the 52nd Division was wiped out. Its men died for a reason though. They kept the Americans busy and there was a firm denial of any sub-unit at all to withdraw from the battle they were in, including all of those anti-tank units which the division had. Cuban helicopters showed up with Hinds making an appearance but not to save those men; instead they were used to try to shape the battlefield ahead of the incoming tanks. Cuba’s 78th Armored Division arrived by the time daylight came, as the Americans were finished with the infantry and moving onwards. They went head-on into a clash with the 1st Cavalry fighting along Highway-90 and a Texan town which happened to be called Castroville. The same Cubans tanks had breezed through here the day before and the town hadn’t really seen the face of war. It did when the Cubans and Americans really went at it, with each focused there due to its position at a bend on the Medina River rather than anything else including its name. The Cuban counterstrike was checked there. An entire regiment of their tanks were lost in less than ten minutes. That regiment had sent its T-62s towards American M-1s which had far better range (and accuracy) with their guns than the Cubans could ever hope to have. The rest of the 78th Division started beating a fast retreat until orders came from above to hold and turn back around! Aircraft filled the skies above and initially engaged each other in combat therefore giving little attention to the fight on the ground where the Americans started to chase the Cubans. They got a little carried away with both brigades moving too quick and with too much confidence. Rockets from Cuban multiple-barrelled launchers were fired at them and did little to those Americans tanks though massacred civilians throughout Castroville when they hit there. Everything seemed ready for the 78th Division to be wiped out. Then more aircraft appeared in the sky, these getting under the fighters up above. American A-10s and Soviet Sukhoi-25s were both in the sky, attacking tanks and armoured vehicles on the ground with several instances from both sides of friendly fire due to mis-identification taking place. What both types of aircraft could do when they caught their prey in their sights was just as anticipated in terms of destruction, but it wasn’t enough to truly influence the ground battle in a real way. The Cubans took this opportunity of confusion coming from outside interference to go back on the attack with the two other regiments, these better-equipped than the first, opening fire with their T-72s. They scored hits on the American tanks and also hit plenty of the lightly-armoured M-113 infantry vehicles too, setting them alight with oftentimes infantry not quick enough to dismount. The 1st Cavalry held back the attack, blowing up T-72s too, yet their losses were now stacking up. They had been brought to a halt when faced with far better enemy fire than before and also not in the right place to fight. Both brigades of the 1st Cavalry were fully-engaged in a fight with two Cuban regiments in a battle which neither side was winning.

The 2nd Armored raced towards the battle, bringing its M-60s away from where it had been fighting Cuban infantry and anti-tank teams who’d stubbornly held on around the town of Hondo. III Corps had been waiting on the 1st Cavalry to finish off the Castroville fight so they could move on: there were known to be more Cuban forces in the area, at least one more division, probably two. Once the 78th Division was eliminated, both American divisions were to drive onwards with their mission. In frustration – making one heck of a mistake – the corps commander committed almost all of his forces at once. One of the brigades from Hondo went into battle near Castroville and aimed to finish off the Cubans there. They could have done so had they not themselves then been hit on the flank. Warning had been sent to them: aircraft had spotted the incoming lead regiment of the 70th Mechanised Division. The message hadn’t been able to be passed on though. Radio interference swamped the area from powerful external sources – affecting the Cubans in the fight too due to its strength – and the 2nd Armored didn’t get the shout of alarm about their southern flank. The Cuban thrust wasn’t as powerful as they hoped with their tanks and missile-carriers not ripping the heart out of the Americans yet it did enough damage to stop them due to the surprise factor. More aircraft kept joining the fight and in the daylight which had come had better visibility for them yet also left them open to all of the SAMs coming up from the ground (hitting American and Cuban/Soviet aircraft alike). Artillery and rockets were blasting everything in sight. Infantry were fighting among the tanks and dying in huge numbers. Mines were being scattered by guns and aircraft everywhere. The Castroville-Hondo fight had turned into a stalemate with neither side able to fully advance. The Americans had lost their advantage of surprise and manoeuvrability while the Cubans still had other forces (the rest of the 70th Division plus the 50th Mechanised Division too) to bring to the fight.

The III Corps started to withdraw. Their commander received an order from above to make a ‘tactical retreat’ back to the high ground from down which they had come. Artillery from up above, what had come down from Oklahoma and raced through Texas, covered their withdrawal. The 1st Cavalry pulled back first with the 2nd Armored moving next. The mission had been a failure because the Cubans had been in position to defend against the attack and not taken by surprise. Faced with that, and staggering loses, there was no choice. That retreat was contested and it was also confusing for some units were left behind. The airwaves were jammed continuously with American aircraft searching for that jamming equipment – mobile transmitters of that size shouldn’t have been that hard to find – but took loses from SAM-launchers all over the Cuban rear. The Cubans had a lot of those; the Americans wished they had more during their withdrawal when they came under repeated air attack from aircraft and helicopters which got in under the fighters above. Most of the 1st Cavalry got away. Only about half of the 2nd Armored did. The Cuban 70th Division was tasked to go after them leaving their 50th & 78th Divisions (the former which had seen no action and the latter which had seen a lot) down on the lowlands. The Cubans now had their own trouble moving up the Balcones Escarpment and then into Texas Hill Country. American rear-guard action took its toll on them but so did air attacks as well. Letting the Americans go would have been easier but wasn’t what the orders were. In their retreat, the Americans were all over the place with confusion in places leaving support elements exposed to marauding Cubans units where some of them broke free of ambushes and air strikes. Their actions would break the 70th Division over the next few days as it was ordered to do so much and there was American air attacks to stop fuel and ammunition coming forward. However, so too was the capability of the III Corps to fight again as well with that destroyed for the foreseeable future. Half of the III Corps was either lost or rendered combat ineffective; a figure repeated with the Cuban Second Army as well.

What Cubans remained moved to take control of San Antonio. They left behind a battlefield with thousands dead – more Cubans than Americans – along a stretch of Highway-90. The Cubans extended their presence first to the international airport and then sweeping around both sides of the city to seal it off. Like the military bases on the western side, Randolph AFB on the eastern side was then taken. The Americans had pulled their aircraft out of there and conducted demolitions, scattering plenty of minefields too. Civilian gunfire came around the edges of the city and the Cubans, in no mood to play nice, answered with fire from tank cannons and also artillery. They also found that both Interstate-35 heading northeast and Interstate-10 running east away from san Antonio towards Austin and Houston respectively were just as blocked as air reconnaissance said they were. All of those civilian vehicles were stuck denying any access to those excellent road links with civilians having abandoned their cars. Those roads weren’t going to be used for any further Cuban advances. Meanwhile, South Texas was regarded by both the Cubans and the Soviets as no longer under threat from the US Army. The Cubans had done the job assigned to them which, while at a great cost, was what was wanted overall. No further American ground forces short of those US Marines who’d come to a stop in front of Houston were in sight. Maybe the Soviets should have looked a little harder though… the Fifth Army had been using the III Corps as only the western half of an attempted pincer move.



21st–25th September 1984:

Ellington Field ANGB up near Houston joined Bergstrom AFB outside Austin as hives over US air activity. From the two of them, the US Air Force, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard aircraft were flying all over South Texas. Aircraft from both were tasked in support of the III Corps in the Castroville-Hondo fight against the Cubans but also to interdict Soviet activity everywhere below San Antonio too. The Americans were very busy in the skies conducting fighter sweeps, going after transport aircraft incoming from Cuba and also making attacks against the Rio Grande bridges plus where the Soviets were flying from when they could. Twelfth Air Force had more assets spread elsewhere back through Texas and into Louisiana as well as Oklahoma yet Bergstrom and Ellington Field were their frontline stations in the air war. The Fifth Army requested air support and that was given to them. At the same time, the US Air Force still had its own priorities as well. Problems with inter-service cooperation were still present despite the initial strong connection in Texas and now Raven Rock stamping their feet demanding everything run smoothly. Years of rivalry and bad feeling were never going to just evaporate. The US Army wanted jets over their tanks and that was given where possible though there were still those bridges to be bombed and MiGs to be shot out of the sky too, which the US Air Force wanted to do more than anything else. That they did. They filled the skies over South Texas with their jets, keeping the Soviets away from their bases as well. MiG kills came aplenty and the Rio Grande was a favoured target for bombs. The Soviets had taken those US Navy airbases all around Corpus Christi to fly from: NAS Chase Field was clobbered – though the F-16s did hit far more of the training jets left behind there than MiGs – and quite a bit of damage was also done to NAS Kingsville, admittedly at a high cost. Texas’ two Air National Guard F-4 squadrons, one home-based at Ellington Field and the other which had been forced to abandon Kelly AFB, were in the sky and going into action alongside their regular colleagues. Their losses racked up due to the pilots pushing them pretty far south and most of those came from SAMs. It was SAMs which were more of a problem for the Americans and their air activity more than enemy fighters. The Soviets had shipped many of them in. There were tactical ones and increasingly strategic ones, including the very best that they had in the form of the SA-12. One of those had shown up in Mexico right before the balloon went up; several systems were now in Texas. This was the Soviet Army’s premier air defence weapon – air denial might be a better term – and while it might not have had great success against American aircraft coming in low, its high-altitude performance in addition to the range was excellent. Combatting the SA-12 was soon high on the list of priorities for the US Air Force.

Corpus Christi and Brownsville both had SA-12s set up to defend them. The launchers were mobile vehicles and so were the associated radar vehicles & command trailers. Finding the elements of the air defence network had to be done before those could be destroyed. The Soviets were using all sorts of deception to hide them. They were also defending their strategic SAMs with tactical SAMs, as found out by the loss of a pair of F-16s on consecutive days searching low and ready to show the Soviet what Iron Hand was all about. Where were the dedicated Wild Weasel aircraft whose task this should have been? One wing was pre-war based in West Germany and the other had been deployed in late August from its California base to the Korean Peninsula. The Wild Weasels were missed over Texas. Maybe the Soviets had got lucky with what they did but maybe it had been an ambush, a clever lure coordinated by a propeller-driven aircraft often circling above South Texas and flying from Matamoros Airport over in Mexico. That aircraft was identified as an electronic warfare version of the Ilyushin-18 Coot. The Texan national guardsmen in their Phantoms wanted to shoot it down but instead a flight of F-15s were given that mission. They got past the Soviet fighter screen by taking the long way around: going over the Edwards Plateau, above the Rio Grande (a border can be crossed both ways), shedding their drop tanks in Mexican skies and then coming at that aircraft from behind back over Texas. Down that aircraft went along with its MiG-23 escorts as well. A near-immediate effect was felt when it came to the electronic picture, one more than believed would come. That aircraft had been up to a lot but was now just a smear on the ground in the Lower Valley. Operation Phoenix had been the name of that small but vital mission, something celebrated afterwards for the success it brought. The Americans were sure that afterwards they managed to if not destroy then at least do a lot of damage to the air defences around Corpus Christi when their next air attack went that way to hit what SAM systems could be found plus get at NAS Corpus Christi and the city’s airport as well. A trio of Soviet transports were lined up on the ground at the airport, just begging for the bombs which fell upon them. Your wish is granted, courtesy of the US Air Force! Nonetheless, there was still the arrival into Texas afterwards of more SAMs and more fighters making use of captured airbases. The air war being fought wasn’t going to be won in just the one victory like that. The Soviets were managing to increase their air operations as they became fully-established in Texas and the Americans just couldn’t have everything their own way. There was also the concern over the security of the airbases which they were operating from. Soviet forces on the ground in Texas, which seemed to have been content to have remained idle after their advances on the war’s first day and let the Cubans do all the fighting, then started moving again. How much air support did the US Army want? They could suddenly have as much as they wanted following the loss of Randolph AFB – being used as a forward site – and then the movements of enemy armour going northeast.


The entry into South Texas by Soviet forces had been commanded by the Fifteenth Guards Airborne Corps, a wartime formation established to supervise the border crossing. Once the Eighth Tank Army arrived from Cuba, the Fifteenth Corps was meant to disband with its assets attached to that field army as well as elsewhere through the joint Cuban-Soviet Northern Front. There was an airborne division under command along with an airmobile brigade and a motorised rifle brigade all waiting for heavy divisions of the Soviet Army to get into Texas and start moving. While waiting, the Fifteenth Corps wasn’t to be idle and was to conduct ‘aggressive reconnaissance’ instead. That was done, especially since there were delays with the Eighth Tank Army getting across the Gulf of Mexico. Those US Marines bombed when moving down from Houston had halted outside of Rosenberg, with the Brazos River behind them. Between that small brigade and the Soviet outposts north of Corpus Christi there were no major American forces. River bridges and harbour facilities there were many of; American troops there were only scattered special forces detachments that the GRU units at Fifteen Corps HQ in Alice were getting signs of. They were wiring those places for demolition ahead of air-drops of explosives. The whole area was rife with Green Berets ready to blow things up but not yet doing so. Civilian militia were organising while many more civilians streamed in the direction of Houston. The US Army was nowhere to be seen. Aggressive reconnaissance was decided to be done, that way rather than up towards San Antonio after the Cubans dealt with what was there. Port Lavaca and Point Comfort – small but useful harbour facilities – were within reach and so too were bridges over the San Antonio, Guadalupe and Lavaca Rivers. Spetsnaz units out ahead, which had been engaging American forces, were alerted to step up their actions ahead of what the Fifteenth Corps sent their way. All of that vital infrastructure should have been blown by now, the Soviets believed, and if it wasn’t then they were going to take it. It would help speed up the war by taking it.

The 7th Motorised Rifle Brigade and the 350th Guards Parachute Regiment were sent forward. The former had made that breath-taking advance coming into Texas from over the Rio Grande – Reynosa to George West in under twelve hours – while the latter had been the 103rd Guards Airborne Division’s third regiment follow-up and had yet to see combat. The paratroopers had their armoured vehicles with them and were to the right, closer to the coast, of the 7th Brigade who were further inland. Go no further than the Colorado River was the order because otherwise American air activity that close to Ellington Field was believed to be capable of destroying two units which weren’t meant to be lost in such a fashion. The air defence network was going to struggle to cover then going that far, any further would be impossible. The two formations started moving at dawn on the 23rd. They headed northeast not knowing that the US Marines at Rosenberg were no longer staying there in defence nor all alone either.

The 5th Infantry Division, the left-hand pincer of the US III Corps’ attack into South Texas, was moving southwest while the 1st Cavalry & 2nd Armored Division came unstuck over near San Antonio. The Marine reservists of their 2nd Brigade was attached to the division to act as its third brigade: there wasn’t one assigned in peacetime and the Louisiana national guardsmen who should have formed that had been taking too long to get moving. The Americans got sufficient warning of the Soviets coming towards them though without knowing the intent of their opponents. That didn’t matter. The 5th Infantry Division sought to engage them and did so in the early afternoon. The fight took place between the towns of Edna and Victoria. The 7th Brigade did far better in it than their Soviet Airborne comrades. The 350th Regiment took terrible losses when the professional US Army got at them from distance and then let the US Marines finish them off. As to the Soviet Army, that brigade beat a rapid retreat when its lead elements were hit at extraordinary range by accurate American tank fire. Part of the brigade was left on the wrong side of the Guadalupe River while the rest managed a lucky escape as they blew those bridges which they had only just taken. The Americans were fast to set up their own crossings and pour across the river to give chase. The panicked retreat was something special to see, especially from above as aircraft from both sides were all over the battlefield. If it was running back west as fast as possible, it was Soviet. If it was charging forward that way, it was American. The Soviets withdrew back past Victoria. The 5th Division wanted to follow, to finish what had been started. Orders came from the Fifth Army, not their III Corps command, to halt. That order was protested in very strong terms. Why the **** not!? III Corps’ eastern pincer had just started making their own retreat, back up into Texas Hill Country after the Highway-90 fight. The 5th Division was driving head-on into the viper’s nest without support if it continued. It would be lost if it carried on charging forwards like it was.

The US Army division was left frustrated and impotent, looking at the possibility of having to withdraw itself due to having gone so far forward already. As to the US Marines which had come with them, they were too busy to be concerned about matters like that for now. The 350th Regiment had lost the vast majority of its armoured vehicles, all those BMD-1s & BTR-Ds hit by shells from M-60s, but the paratroopers had been fast to dismount. They engaged the marine reservists who came at them and carried on fighting even when they were shelled by heavy guns and then attacked from above by armed helicopters. They made a tactical retreat off the battlefield, moving towards the sea but making their opponents pay for every inch of ground. The two different sets of dismounted troops fought throughout the evening and into the night. The Soviets had wanted Port Lavaca and Point Comfort and they got there. The marine reservists split their centre and forced the two parts of the dwindling 350th Regiment back towards those harbours. Aircraft flown by US Marines showed up and then so did some A-10s flown by the US Air Force who engaged infantry like they did tanks: with everything they had. The Soviet Airborne fought to the bitter end. Those at Point Comfort were overcome in the early hours; those at Port Lavaca by dawn. The harbours would be denied to both sides when the Green Berets who’d been at each had been unable to save the Soviets from then destroying most of the infrastructure before they were finished off. Afterwards, having won a hard victory and trying to put themselves back together, the marine reservists were told what the soldiers at Victoria had already been informed of: due to loses elsewhere, they were withdrawing.



21st–25th September 1984:

For what had seemed like an eternity, the soldiers of the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky had been sitting on their behinds doing nothing while their country was invaded. They believed that they should have been straight into the fight. Texas first, and then over the border into Mexico the Screaming Eagles should go. The division was ready within days – fully-mobilised with missing personnel returning with haste – but remained at their home base while elsewhere there was fighting ongoing. Hurry up and wait it had been, hurry up and wait. Finally, after four days of that long wait, the Screaming Eagles were given orders to move. Part of the 101st Air Assault went to Texas but to northern Texas; that was a staging point for some while the lead elements of the rest of the division went into New Mexico where they were all to soon enough see action. The cross-country move was made by air. Military transports were used though in the main it was civilian airlift capability put to use. The airliners were flying for the country now, moving fighting men and equipment around instead of tourists and long-distance commuters. Fort Campbell had its own airfield capable of handling the big jets which came to move the Screaming Eagles; there was use made too of Nashville’s big civilian airport not that far away down in Tennessee. The 101st Air Assault went to Reese AFB near Lubbock and also to Roswell Airport: the latter which had been the SAC facility of Walker AFB before being closed in the late Sixties. The Screaming Eagles were air assault troops and they went west with their helicopters as well as light vehicles. The helicopters were airlifted rather than self-deployed and that slowed things down but New Mexico was pretty far off despite being ‘just’ a few states away. The heat of the South-West was noticed by the men the moment when they arrived though there was a lot for them to do more than just notice that. Roswell was close to where the invader could be found and at Reese – a training base being vacated by the peacetime units based there – would be pretty busy despite being in the rear.

The 101st Air Assault moved west as part of the US Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps though the division was the only major peacetime-assigned combat formation which went with the corps headquarters and other units. What was left of the 82nd Airborne Division after pre-war deployments of one third to South Korea and another third to Panama, was sent to Central Texas; the 24th Infantry Division had a new assignment to the V Corps moving from Dixie towards East Texas. The 101st Air Assault wouldn’t be alone though. The Screaming Eagles were to be joined by other US Army divisions attached to the XVIII Corps for the New Mexico mission as directed by the president himself. That mission for the three divisions – the 1st Infantry from out of Kansas and the 4th Infantry already in New Mexico after leaving Colorado – was to stop the Nicaraguans who were pouring into New Mexico from reaching Albuquerque and establishing firm control up the eastern side of the Rockies. Once free of El Paso but finding that Interstate-25 running north was blocked – it was completely impassable – the Nicaraguans had spread out in their advance. One of their own divisions (not highly-rated in terms of capability despite heavy equipment as far as the Americans were concerned) was in eastern New Mexico, another had followed what was left of the Soviet forces which had broken open El Paso and started crossing the White Sands and the third had struck east through the Texan Panhandle before entering southeastern New Mexico. The advances made by the Nicaraguans had all been near unopposed apart from air interdiction. As to those air strikes, the ability to do that had taken a hit when Holloman AFB in the White Sands had to be abandoned due to the Nicaraguans closing in. Hasty but effective demolitions had been done after the wing of F-15s based there had flown off to join the F-111s which they had been flying with at their base near Clovis. Cannon AFB was jammed full of combat aircraft now. Holloman had been denied to the invader to use (for several weeks at least, maybe longer) but there were Soviet tactical fighters flying from White Sands Space Harbor: those lengthy runways out in the open.

The Nicaraguans on the right and those with the Soviets up the middle around Alamogordo were those who were first engaged by the Screaming Eagles when they arrived in New Mexico. Quickly, helicopters from Roswell were ranging south and west of there. Attack and scouting helicopters went first into battle while behind them came transport helicopters dropping off the ground forces There was air cover from out of Cannon and also Reese too where that Texan airbase was home to arriving air national guard units from several states. The Screaming Eagles took the fight to the enemy and didn’t hold back. They made use of the local geography well. The Nicaraguans which had made it as far as Carlsbad and looked likely to turn to follow the Pecos River northwards up to Roswell. This was the first danger addressed. The 101st Air Assault lacked an armoured component though there was control of the air which was used for mobility. Raiding teams were everywhere throughout the latter part of the first weekend spent in the fight and the Nicaraguans were brought to a grinding halt. They were stretched out over an immense area with their supplies for their tanks and armoured vehicles focused on using one road. The Nicaraguans came to a stop just short of Carlsbad due to vehicles on that road being blown up aplenty. As to the White Sands area, the Nicaraguans in that valley were on the other side of the Sacramento Mountains: where the Mescalero Apache Reservation was among the Lincoln National Forest. There were passes through those mountains but ones which couldn’t be easily used when there were American aircraft and helicopters in the skies. The Nicaraguans were going north anyway. When the Screaming Eagles started making attacks across from Roswell, there was surprise from the Nicaraguans. Their movement through the White Sands was heavily disrupted by an unexpected threat. They had SAMs and anti-aircraft guns but really needed fighter cover. The Soviets out in the open at the Space Harbor were sitting ducks when on the ground and outnumbered when in the air. There was surprise when Soviet engineers were very quickly seen doing major work at Holloman – mines had been scattered everywhere – but they too were on the receiving end of the 101st Air Assault who conducted a heli-borne raid there with soldiers put on the ground to kill mine-clearing engineers and also evacuate several hundred American POWs found there who had been forced to search for mines… with the predicable results of that. Not everything went the Americans way. They did bring two Nicaraguan divisions to a halt and did them immense damage in doing so. However, relying on helicopters in what was fast becoming a very unfriendly environment for helicopters cost them men. Blackhawks, Cobras and Hueys all faced attack from the ground every time that the Nicaraguans could. As to Roswell, there was initially no capability to attack it from the air. Scud missiles were shot towards it instead, with the usual accuracy problems meaning that most missed and some of those came down in the town of Roswell. Then, Soviet aircraft started to show up at the wrecked air facilities around El Paso after several days of major clearance work done there. The international airport and Biggs Army Airfield had been written off for the foreseeable future as Holloman had been in the view of the Americans; the Soviets didn’t agree. In New Mexico, the Nicaraguans had seen their advance stopped and the Screaming Eagles had done very well, but this fight to stop them linking up with Albuquerque wasn’t over yet.


The US XVIII Corps had those two heavy divisions closing in upon Albuquerque. The Soviet airhead there with the lone division of paratroopers – and the Soviet Airborne’s 76th Division was at two-third’s strength – sat right at that interstate crossroad where east-west connections through New Mexico (and the Rockies too) ran. Kirtland had been closed for two days after hit being those fuel-air bombs. Casualties were massive and so was infrastructure damage. A follow-up fire had raged where aviation fuel had gone up. Strong winds had driven that fire away from the main air facilities, which were in a bad way but could be fixed, and instead towards the Sandia National Laboratories: that intelligence goldmine which the GRU was still taking apart. Sandia had been gutted. Who, the GRU had demanded, had decided to hide all that fuel nearby? The Soviet Airborne and Soviet Air Force commanders had blamed one another. Less than an hour after being reopened to flight activity yet only with one runway operational, Kirtland had been bombed again. Arc Light the Americans called it: a B-52 strike. There was a wing of those bombers which had left their Grand Forks AFB home in North Dakota ahead of the fallout coming their way and the SAC aircraft had flown to Buckley ANGB near Denver. Despite still on a nuclear-posture, and against their will, SAC had begun commencing limited B-52 strikes due to political orders/interference from on high. What hit Kirtland wasn’t ‘limited’ to those on the end of it, not by a long-shot. The blast waves from the falling bombs, lined-up perfectly for maximum weapons-effects, put out some of the last of the fires at Sandia. The Soviets could only be thankful for that, nothing more. Kirtland was closed once again. Furthermore, forty-five minutes later, another trio of B-52s made a follow-up strike to finish what they started and also kill members of recovery teams exposed out in the open.

Kirtland was where transport flights of weapons and equipment was being flown into; what few combat aircraft that there were plus the 76th Division’s helicopters were elsewhere following the earlier attention which the captured airbase had attracted. Those small civilian airports were stretched from Albuquerque to Santa Fe to Los Alamos. The fighters were few and had limited ammunition & fuel. The helicopters were always busy as they escorted ground convoys across a wide area of occupation – too wide for the Soviet Airborne to control – where there was all that civilian resistance and a sure sign of activity by Green Berets which had been dropping in on intelligence-gathering & raiding missions. The 76th Division had no hope of stopping the incoming ground attack which the US Army was sending their way, especially since it came from two directions and faster than expected. The 4th Infantry was meant to be stopped from coming down from Colorado by the Cubans & Nicaraguans around Pueblo. The 1st Infantry should have been in Texas by now. Two divisions (the 1st Infantry had a brigade missing though; it was in West Germany) against one where that one wasn’t in a good defensive position was bad news. The Soviet Airborne had only a small armoured component of their light tracked vehicles and were missing most of their heavy anti-tank guns when the aircraft bringing them had failed to reach Kirtland. The Americans would have hundreds of tanks with them; more than the dismounted paratroopers carrying shoulder-mounted weapons could deal with over a big area like where they were spread.

The 76th Division started making a series of tactical withdrawals, back towards Albuquerque itself. This left them more bunched up in the face of American air attacks though that danger was deemed less than being spread out facing a ground assault. Los Alamos, where the GRU were like they had been all over Sandia, was outside that defensive perimeter. It was exposed enough as it was without the 4th Infantry coming on fast like they were. No one was happy to make the retreat from there but it was done on higher orders. Decisions were made on what, plus who (prisoners – civilian workers – had been taken), was valuable and what would have to be left behind. Los Alamos was put to the torch when there weren’t enough explosives. There were also firing squads, a lot of those were active. If we can’t have it, you can’t have it! The Soviet Airborne fell back. On came the Americans, set to reach Albuquerque long before those Nicaraguans being taken to task far off to the south.

Far to the north of them, in the south of Colorado around Pueblo (but not in that town itself), there remained fighting spread over a wide area. The US Army out of Fort Carson had charged through and onwards but the mopping up being done by the national guardsmen wasn’t effective enough. The Cubans and Nicaraguans were scattered too wide to be effective themselves at first in stopping the 4th Infantry. However, that spread then helped when they faced lighter units who sought to finally eliminate them. The Colorado Army National Guard shouldn’t have been given this mission and wouldn’t have been if the truth over the numbers of Nicaraguans especially been known. Joined by what Cubans there were both east and west of Pueblo, the Nicaraguans fought onwards. They retook lost ground. They hit the airport being used for helicopter support by the national guardsmen. They started striking the supply columns coming south supporting the 4th Infantry. Everyone – including their own side – had written the Colorado airhead off, apart from those who were fighting there.



21st–25th September 1984:

The US Navy was removing its aircraft from the fighting taking place in southern California and southwestern Arizona. They had been taking part since the very start, engaging in a furious fight to defend US soil from Cuban forces – supported by smaller Soviets and even smaller East German elements – and done very well indeed in that. Flying from bases across California, those aircraft came from carrier-assigned units and training establishments (including the first unit of new FA-18s, aircraft which would soon be making their first at-sea deployment after being battle-tested over California): their flights from the ground rather than a carrier allowed them to carry a heavier payload than if they were at sea. They were being withdrawn to go fight elsewhere, across the Pacific to the west around Korea & Japan as well as near Alaska up in the north. The Soviets were under the mistaken belief that they could repeat successes in the Atlantic across in the Pacific. The US Navy was out to prove them wrong and show them who owned that bigger ocean. The US Marines had their own aircraft alongside the US Navy over the battlefield and they stayed in-place, reinforced in part too. To replace what was pulled out of the fighting, it was the US Air Force which moved in when the naval aviators departed. Finally, they had sorted themselves out west of the Rockies. What had been an ad hoc set up at Nellis AFB near Las Vegas became a proper command arrangement when the Ninth Air Force headquarters arrived from off in distant South Carolina to move to Nevada and take charge in an effective manner. Aircraft with the US Marines remained semi-independent, supporting their men on the ground, though their activities, like those of US Air Force units spread all across the West, were ran through a centralised command now. The Ninth Air Force joined the Sixth US Army in what had become Western Command, a joint command covering multiple states and the fighting taking place through the border region but also in the rear where there remained an active commando threat (one diminishing but still dangerous). With or without the US Navy jets, there was still a war to fight. The US Air Force had brought in further forces and so too had there been the addition to the Sixth Army of many national guard units for combat in the skies and on the ground too. Western Command was growing in strength every day though there still remained critical shortages in places.

I Marine Amphibious Force (I MAF) was engaged in direct combat starting on the 22nd when its 1st Marine Division, joined by the 40th Infantry Division – California’s national guardsmen – went on the offensive into the Imperial Valley. The Cubans had their First Army in there, what had been so thoroughly pounded from the air, and they were fought now on the ground. I MAF put the squeeze on them and had air support directed behind them too, along the US-Mexican border to increase that. The Cubans fought well but they couldn’t hold back the 1st Marines which came at them with tanks, helicopters and plenty of eager marine riflemen. They were pushed back from near to the Salton Sea and deep into the Imperial Valley. Brawley was retaken on the 23rd and the advance continued down towards Imperial first and then to El Centro. The national guardsmen came in from the flank, across the Anza-Borrego wilderness, and it was hard going for them yet there was a push onwards as morale was good: there was a desire to get revenge for what had happened to their fellow national guardsmen in the Imperial Valley who’d been caught unawares and massacred on invasion day. I MAF soon found that it needed more tanks. Air support was great, so too was the plentiful artillery brought in, but tanks were needed. The southern half of the valley was crammed full of Cuban armour and also dug-in improvised defences. Another Cuban division, this one an infantry unit, had arrived and they were established in defence back through which what remained of the trio of mobile divisions had withdrawn through in a haste to get back to the Mexicali-Calexico area. The US Marines and the California Army National Guard had rather a lot, but they needed more. Retaking the smashed-up NAS El Centro on the 24th showed the need for those further tanks: it changed hands three times in one evening. They wouldn’t be charging forward anymore into the complex interlocking fields of fire which the Cubans had set up, but instead used to get around the last of the Cubans and outflank them outside of the valley rather than inside it where they had been going head-on into more than expected resistance. The three battalions (two regular; one reserve) of M-60s had been used to force the Cubans back and were slowly withdrawn from the fight when this became apparent. The Cubans were going to be far harder to finally overcome than initially believed and so the tanks would be used in another manner rather than in direct support for advancing marine riflemen. What the I MAF had done after a long weekend of fighting was remove the Cubans as an invasion force; what was needed now was to eliminate them entirely. More of the 40th Infantry entered the Imperial Valley (which did have their own tanks) as the 1st Marines started to pull out now that they had driven the Cubans most of the way back. With that done, now was the time to be clever and get rid of them for good: by taking the fight over the border behind them.

The I US Corps consisted of regular US Army forces in the West with national guard attachments from Oregon and Washington state. The 9th Infantry Division had come down from Fort Lewis along with the 41st & 81st Infantry Brigades (two pre-war part-mobilised units). They had tanks, plenty of them, but went into Arizona instead of to southern California. To join them afterwards but before then coming across from Fort Irwin and the US Army’s training centre, there were more regular forces and these were using the temporary designation of OPFOR Group. They usually played the opposing force at Fort Irwin but they were no longer playing when they approached the Parker and Palo Verde Valleys within the Colorado River where there were those Soviet and East German light troops. The East Germans had moved up from Yuma days beforehand and had been meant to have been followed by that Cuban division which was then re-tasked to go to the Imperial Valley. Instead, the Soviet 38th Guards Brigade joined with the East German paratroopers and took them back under operational command. Where they were might have at first seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and thus unimportant, but it really wasn’t. They continued to move further northwards every day and cutting the connections between California and Arizona as they did so. The I Corps was making entry into Arizona in that direction – ahead of the leap-frogging airmobile forces south of them – and thus their supply lines would be later in danger if those enemy on their flank were left in-place. The OPFOR Group, equivalent in size to a small brigade following additions made before leaving Fort Irwin, slammed into the Soviets first. The 38th Brigade was taken apart. A guards unit the brigade was: that mattered for nothing when faced with regular army but exceedingly well-trained men on the attack who had good air cover and also who caught the Soviets by surprise too in how fast they came at them. Around Parker and Poston, both little towns where the Soviets were with their helicopters and supposed to be protecting the establishment of small airstrips for combat aircraft to use, the OPFOR Group ran rampage. The Soviets were killed where they stood or ran for their lives out into the surrounding deserts outside the green and fertile valley among them. A comprehensive victory was won here, one won by a unit which still didn’t have a ‘proper’ designation (there’d been too much debate about that and Sixth Army HQ had ordered them to go fight rather than dispute what they could be called). As to the East Germans, they missed that storm. The Soviets had moved ahead of them and when OPFOR Group had finished with the 38th Brigade they turned south at first to go down to Blythe. The East Germans made ‘tactical withdrawals’ back from the airport and the interstate crossing over the Colorado River – blowing the latter up to deny it to the Americans – into the small town and set up an all-round defence while the Americans were busy to the north of them. Still, the OPFOR Group was due to come southwards but before they could, they were needed in Arizona. The US Air Force was assigned to take care of the East Germans for there was only a battalion of them who were now left in the middle of nowhere while there was a greater need for American troops in Arizona.

Arizona was meant to be a side-show for the Soviet-led invasion. It was entered by Guatemalan troops with Nicaraguan attachments while the Soviets, the Cubans and most Nicaraguans went either to California, New Mexico or Texas. Surprisingly, plenty of success was had there. Luck had something to do with it; lack of initial American organised opposition was the main issue. After the exceeding successful advances made in the opening stages of the invasion – looking at distances covered on the maps rather than the actual quality of the attacking forces –, the Americans were forced to turn their attention there. The I US Corps was sent to Arizona following how first Fort Huachuca was taken by the Guatemalans and then the Nicaraguans overran David-Monthan AFB along with the neighbouring AMARC facility. Control was established throughout southeastern Arizona primarily though the concern was that a recently-detected concentration of follow-on Nicaraguan forces (several divisions worth) spotted south of the border would go into Arizona to reinforce that success. The Americans deceived themselves on this; there was no Soviet deception with this interpretation of what the Nicaraguans moving up through Chihuahua were doing, they were going into New Mexico with the belief that they hadn’t been detected. Inside the Guatemalan area of control, which extended to the edge of the city of Tucson, there was a lot of chaos as well. Guerrilla forces were springing up everywhere: all unorganised without central control but with lethality oftentimes. There had been that incident near Nogales where one of those Revolutionary Mexican units following the Nicaraguans had been ambushed and seen complete and utter destruction to them followed by a column of buses arranged by civilians then taking it upon themselves to evacuate the refugee camp which the Mexicans were meant to go in and ‘pacify’. At Bisbee, order among Guatemalan troops there at a stop along their supply lines had been completely lost. They had looted the town then put it to the torch before fighting each other: the Guatemalans had incorporated forced ‘volunteers’ from El Salvador and Honduras into their army sent up into the United States while keeping their best troops for a second go at Belize. Desertions among the Guatemalans and what few Mexican forces were sent over the border (the latter for cross-border security, nothing more) were immense with the men running at every opportunity. Yet, the area of occupation which they appeared to have under control was large and events inside were not known from without beyond some scattered reports. The fear was that Tucson would be taken and there would be an advance up towards Phoenix by that Nicaraguan field army supposedly soon to enter Arizona. Around that bigger city, the US Air Force had several airbases (Gila Bend AFB & Luke AFB) and they were part of the growing Ninth Air Force presence in the West. Phoenix was a major communications centre too: if they were to take it, the Nicaraguans & Guatemalans would probably be reinforced by Soviet forces soon afterwards for it would be rather important to hold as a base of operations. That was why the I Corps came into Arizona with the 9th Infantry out front and the two national guard brigades following them plus the OPFOR Group soon to follow too. They entered Arizona through the northwest and kept on going. American civilians self-evacuating headed the other way yet car-horns were beeped at the passing columns of American troops led by tanks. It looked like the modern-day Cav’ was coming to save the day. Phoenix was passed by and they headed down to Tucson, spreading out as they did and meeting the first enemy outposts. Guatemalan MiGs – not flown by Guatemalans at all but trainers from many different countries – came out of the captured Libby Army Airfield to meet the threat and were knocked down by F-15s and F-16s all over the sky. The airport outside Tucson where there were Nicaraguan helicopters was retaken. Towards Davis-Monthan and AMARC then the Americans went. Air reconnaissance said that there were foreign military personnel all over that site and the (correct) assumption was that those were Soviet and Cuban intelligence officers. No aircraft had yet to be flown out of the storage site. Maybe AMARC could be retaken… No, that wasn’t to be. As was the case elsewhere, here in Arizona it was a matter of destroy it rather than lose it. Explosions ripped through the parked aircraft as the Americans closed in. A lot of explosives were used, more than enough in fact to make buildings shake in Tucson as blast followed blast. When the engineers ran out of satchel charges, a senior Soviet liaison officer override the command for Nicaraguan artillery to carry on firing on the approaching Americans and destroy as much of AMARC as possible instead. The Americans wouldn’t have what they came for.

Tucson was saved from the horrors of occupation and the Nicaraguans, plus elements of the Guatemalans as well, got a pasting. A brilliant victory was won in Arizona as the invaders were pushed back just like they had been in California too. It looked entirely possible that the newly-established Western Command would liberate almost everywhere in California and Arizona by the end of the month. Air reconnaissance started seeing more Cuban troops coming up through Sonora and attacks began against them when they were in Mexico. It was projected that they would come into Arizona instead of what was previously believed to be an attempt by the Nicaraguans in Chihuahua to do so: updated intelligence showed the Nicaraguans certainly going towards New Mexico. That was something for the set-up Texas Command (Fifth US Army and Twelfth Air Force) to deal with. However, these oncoming Cubans looked like another field army of several small divisions like the ones which had entered California had been. These Cubans were coming for Arizona. It was something which was a concern and wouldn’t be a walkover but could be handled. There was a chance that the Cubans could be engaged on Mexican territory too. Things were looking up when it came to the West. It was believed that the storm could be turned back following victory after victory with more of those to come. What small forces were with Western Command – especially when it came to ground units – had done far better than those elsewhere in beating back the invasion. Such was what came from the Western Command’s commanding officer, a US Air Force senior general appointed by the reorganised Joint Chiefs at Raven Rock and who’d established himself at MCB Barstow, a US Marines base in California pending setting his headquarters up somewhere else. He hadn’t been anywhere near the frontlines. He’d seen the reports of the invaders beaten back and was waiting for final defeat of them to come while reporting up the chain of command that that was almost done. He was eager to make sure that he was reporting victory. There was a forgetfulness even a week later of what had just occurred when the invasion had started with a bolt from the blue attack: there shouldn’t have been such a disregard for recent events. Reconnaissance images and intelligence information pouring into Barstow was being looked at for the positive bits, not the unexplained nor un-positive. The Cubans in the Imperial Valley weren’t finished and neither were the Guatemalans & Nicaraguans in southeastern Arizona: they weren’t beaten back over the border until they were. As to the Cubans coming up through Mexico, small forces reportedly, that had been said before about those which had gone into California when they were down-rated in size and capability in intelligence summaries before the war. The war wasn’t over here nor anywhere near close to being finished despite the sudden, foolish optimism of coming full victory against enemy forces – rightly or wrongly; it depended upon which – all rated as ripe for defeat.

[James G]

26th–31st September 1984:

South Texas had been under foreign occupation for more than a week, since that fateful afternoon when Cuban and Soviet forces had gone over the border from Mexico. The frontlines of the war, such as they were, had moved far away and were now in Central & Eastern Texas. San Antonio and everywhere below there was occupied territory. There was plenty of military activity due to the arrival of further forces coming in from abroad while at the same time the ‘security situation’ across South Texas was something of great importance to the occupiers too. There were hundreds of thousands of Americans who were caught behind those frontlines. They hadn’t been able to get away like so many others did or had made the mistake of staying when opportunity to leave had come to them; that mistake was costly. Tight discipline was supposed to be maintained by combat troops in Cuban and Soviet uniform with no contact between them and American civilians meant to be undertaken apart from in exception circumstances. Maintaining order in the area under occupation was the duty of security units brought in specially to undertake that. There were vices which could corrupt fighting men and those in combat-support roles; opportunities to cause trouble would be aplenty too. Regular military personnel were thus kept away from those civilians. Instead, it was the responsibility of teams of carefully selected KGB and DGI officers (including many mobilised reservists) to ensure security. Their priority task, above everything else, was countering resistance to the occupation and the use of South Texas for military forces here in America to fight. That resistance was expected upon arrival and was anticipated to come in many forms, not just the American national obsession with personal firearms. Some reconnaissance work had been done by a few personnel ahead of the attack yet what was found by the majority of those sent in was quite the surprise. South Texas was just going to be uncontrollable.

Countering resistance mean stopping active and passive interference with military operations from civilians. It meant too making sure that the flame of organised partisan & guerrilla warfare was extinguished right away from those who tried to lead opposition to those occupying South Texas. People control was sought and that wasn’t subtle. There were other places were that might work, but not here. Intimidation and open threats were used instead of propaganda or deception. Upon arrival of the security units after military units had passed ahead of them, there was a focus to shut down the movement of civilians and then start registering them. Police stations and offices of the IRS saw men arrive and start shouting orders (not always in the best of English) for lists to be created. Those who raised a fist or a voice were taken away and shot. Local police forces and the tax authorities had the information which was needed. Where people lived, what their occupation was and whether they were going to be trouble. Homes were visited with searches made for people at the top of each list. There were some special cases identified pre-war – local leaders, activists and senior retired or reserve military personnel – who were at the very top but then downwards the occupiers conducted a hunt for those who were to be detained. These were the leaders of the community and they would be taken into custody. Some were killed quickly while others were held as hostages so that the rest of those in the occupation area would behave. Public announcements were made. People were to turn up at work and do their work. Children would go to school. Those who didn’t work would stay in their homes. Only for purposes of work would people leave their homes at first and then afterwards there would be visits allowed to be made to food distribution points. Social events and religious services were cancelled. Unauthorised leaving of homes between dusk and dawn wasn’t allowed. All personal firearms were to be handed into collection points. Travel in personal vehicles no matter what the reason was banned: public transport was running or the use of your two feet was allowed. Food and medicine could only be sought from the recognised distribution points and would be rationed. Electricity would not be running overnight. There was no telephone connection available and the mail service was cancelled. Sales of vehicle fuel, alcohol and ‘deviant material’ was banned. Anyone with medical training was to report at once to certain points; others with any previous military experience was to report to other locations.

The craziness of these restrictions became apparent from the very first day. They were unworkable though those enforcing them gave no leeway to any deviation from them. There were people who couldn’t go to their places of work because they were unable to travel there or there were soldiers there (who were doing different tasks from the security units). Civilians had to visit relatives elsewhere who were ill and depended upon them. The rationing of food was set up according to what was printed on a list, not what the situation on the ground was. In the small towns, let along the big ones, then San Antonio afterwards, the civilian population was unable to follow these alien concepts nor willing to either. Hostages held were shot faster than more could be selected. There was criminality committed alongside what were acts of sabotage against the infrastructure. Local cooperation from some officials (those who were willing to do what must be done to help their fellow citizens; those who would be derided as traitors straight away) who were forced into ‘Committees for Public Safety’ fell apart at once when the occupiers started shooting people for making errors when trying to follow these restrictions, let alone doing anything deliberate to antagonise the occupiers as so many others were. Cuban and Soviet military personnel who were meant to be staying away from the civilians didn’t: not when there were opportunities to steal and commit acts of violence. The insanity of the occupation rules only pushed forward what was going to come anyway. Anyone, even people who just wanted to get on with their lives when around them the world had gone crazy, pushed back against this. There began the third wave of shootings in response: the first had been identified targets of political opposition and the second had been those hostages. Now the occupation entered its most brutal stage, especially around San Antonio where what had failed elsewhere was attempted there in a city of that size and which had already seen the face of war. More and more people were shot. Paperwork wasn’t always done on who was shot and why and the bodies weren’t carefully buried anymore. There was gunfire everywhere. Members of those security units encountered terrible ends in some cases: ‘people’s justice’ extended to perceived traitors too. Civilians either stayed in their homes or were out trying to fight back to defend their communities. South Texas was up in arms with that flame of resistance fully burning now.


POWs had been taken across South Texas since the war had begun. There were national guardsmen captured on the border and others in the rear. US Air Force personnel were taken prisoner and so too were US Navy aviators from the many training airbases around Corpus Christi. Captured US Army soldiers taken in the fighting outside San Antonio joined them soon enough and so too did what downed aircrews were recovered from aircraft and helicopters. Few of these POWs had surrendered without incident. They had seen others with them shot and been beaten themselves. Female military personnel had had been victims of sexual violence as well. Prisoners were valuable, standing orders for the Cubans and Soviets were, and so they were taken alive generally apart from those wounded (almost always shot) or hadn’t wanted to come peacefully. These POWs weren’t treated according to international regulations. They weren’t shipped off to Mexico or Cuba as many thought that they would be too. Instead, they were put to work. There were dangerous tasks which were assigned to them in clearing mines and unexploded ordnance as well as some backbreaking physical work. Resistance was cut short with firing squads. Escape attempts were plotted and a few of them succeeded. Those who were left behind afterwards suffered for those who got away. The captured prisoners were in for a torrid time as this continued unabated.

Between the frontlines, there were parts of Texas were the Americans had withdrawn organised military forces from and the Cubans & Soviets hadn’t pushed their troops into yet. Civilians streamed out of this area, terrified of suffering the same fate as what was said of those who didn’t get away. They were heading towards FEMA camps set up in other parts of Texas though oftentimes going elsewhere, anywhere else. In what could be called no man’s land, there was fighting taking place regardless of the absence of heavy forces from either side. Guerrillas were active and it must be said that not all of them were noble with honest intentions – war can bring out the worst in people – where looting occurred and there were acts of violence against the helpless by some of the on the wrong side of resistance. That shouldn’t have taken away from the value of patriotic volunteers wanting to do their bit, so many of them, though it naturally would. Special forces teams and reconnaissance units were active as well. They clashed with each other at times while on other occasions purposely hide from the other. The Cubans and the Soviets had brought in their men and the Americans were funnelling in theirs too. There were scouting missions, sniping at enemy personnel, attacks made against helicopters by men armed with missiles and mines laid. American Green Berets – regulars joined by reservists – conducted demolitions in places while the Soviets held onto infrastructure ahead of it being blown up. Raiding operations took place against airbases on the edges of those frontlines: Randolph held by the Cubans and Bergstrom which remained in American hands. Prisoners were taken with the Cubans hunting for select people fleeing the occupation zone behind who might be of interest, the Soviets trying to grab American scouts and the Americans going after downed enemy aircrews looking for the information which they could provide. This went on across an area of Texas stretching from the Interstate-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio in the west across to the east to the Gulf of Mexico between Houston and Victoria. Those in this no man’s land had no idea of how long the shadowboxing between the armies outside it would take place and were all trying to do something to influence that coming fight without knowing when against it would begin.


The stand-off, that shadowboxing, took an awful long time to end. The American-Cuban clash along Highway-90 west of San Antonio and the follow-up American-Soviet fight near Victoria afterwards saw both sides pull away from each other. Neither realised how badly beat-up the other was as they focused upon their own losses. Political and staff recriminations came once the killing was over with each battle and there were reorganisations made. In addition, what caused the delay of several days before they would all return to the fight, was the incoming of reinforcements to each side afterwards which were regarded as needed before any fresh attack could be made. The Soviets poured men into South Texas while convinced at any moment the Americans would attack upon realising how weak they had left the Cubans. The US Army set about funnelling men into Central & Eastern Texas from across the United States and get them there before the Soviets (who they were convinced were stronger than they were) could join with the Cubans to make a fresh attack. Reconnaissance efforts by each side gained some information though there were missing pieces to the puzzle as well. This led to there being a lot of wrong analysis. Opportunities were missed.

The Fifth US Army more than doubled in size through the last week of September. There had come reinforcements moving in with haste and also organisation changes made. The III Corps had seen the 2nd Armored Division declared combat ineffective when withdrawing and what was left was merged into the 1st Cavalry Division. There had been howls of complaints from that former division’s headquarters staff yet the latter division needed what was given unwillingly to bring it up to strength. South of Austin (from where the Texas state government had departed: what a morale booster!) the 1st Cavalry was redeployed to with behind it the 82nd Airborne Division… which had just the one combat brigade. III Corps retained command over the 5th Infantry Division which moved into the Colorado River area to the left of the 1st Cavalry. Joined by lots of artillery, engineers and further supporting units, the III Corps wouldn’t be defending the Colorado River as a defensive line but rather fighting in front of it. The Cubans down around San Antonio looked likely to advance this way and they were whom the III Corps was to stop. Complicating the defensive plan for a mobile battle was the position of Bergstrom south of the river. The US Air Force would have to leave there should the need arise and that was made clear in no uncertain terms for the US Army wasn’t about to try and make any form of last-stand near to it or in it should the worst happen. The Colorado River ran towards the sea and also along its course was the V Corps: the 3rd Armored & 24th Infantry Divisions joined by an ad hoc division (called the 39th Infantry but not truly organised capable of fighting as a complete whole) of national guardsmen from Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. The national guardsmen were motivated and reasonably well-equipped but there was some concern over whether they would be able to do everything that would be demanded of them, duke it out with the Soviets in a real battle, should that come. They were here though. Acting as a reserve and located around Houston, was the 4th Marine Division. Those reservists, including the marine riflemen who had fought at the Edna-Victoria engagement, had come from across the country and poured into the Houston area. A whole battalion, one mobilised back in Massachusetts yet with men from across New England, was kept assigned for a separate task though. They were to provide security for combat engineers who’d been busy pre-scouting a lot of the infrastructure around Houston. There was the city’s airport and then Ellington Field ANGB as well. Port facilities through Galveston Bay were looked at through the lens of what might have to be blown up less it be taken intact if the Soviets won a victory. The Johnson Space Centre was in Houston too: personnel and equipment were leaving as a pre-emptive measure but key parts of that site would be destroyed if necessary to deny it to the Soviets. Finally, off in West Texas, and yet to see any real action apart from being struck at by commandos and run around all over the place, was a brigade of Texan national guardsmen. The 49th Armored Division had lost its other two on the war’s first day. That third brigade had seen its heavy equipment funnelled towards it while it withdrew back from exposed forward position, abandoning a border over an area not crossed. They were spread out and seemingly forgotten about, covering a flank through which the enemy couldn’t and wouldn’t make use of… not anytime soon anyway. Six divisions and two bits of divisions reported to the Fifth Army. They were all ready to fight and some were already veterans. Their position was generally defensive yet that didn’t mean that that was all that they could do.

Facing them across that no man’s land, the Cubans hadn’t been reinforced. What was left of two full divisions and the bits of another two formed their Second Army. This was a battered force. They hadn’t been beaten and arguably had won the Battle of San Antonio but that wasn’t how those Cubans there thought about the fighting along Highway-90 and the subsequent failed attempt to chase & catch the Americans who had gotten away afterwards. Losses had been immense and crippling in places. If ordered to attack again, the Second Army could but another fight like the one where they had destroyed an American division by staying still and returning fire would be the end of them. Mobility should have been their real potential yet that was denied to the Cubans following their victory. American aircraft had taken their time to be effective in cutting the Cuban’s supply lines back to Mexico but that had finally been achieved. Fuel and ammunition was bottlenecked around the Rio Grande crossings…and those trapped convoys were perfect targets for more incoming air attacks. Playing their unwitting role in the shadowboxing before the second big fight in Texas took place was all that the Cubans could do for now. If only the Americans had known how effective their air strikes had been, they could have ignored the Cubans for the time being. The Soviets knew and that was what mattered. That was why they had accelerated their movements of troops into Texas. Immense strain was put on the ships and aircraft, the harbours and the airports, to get the Eighth Tank Army across from Texas to meet a schedule which had slipped yet couldn’t be allowed to fall any further behind. American attacks came but weren’t concentrated enough. South Texas, plus bits of Mexico just across the border, saw increased arrivals. There were ships and aircraft which didn’t make it carrying cargo and men. Improvisation occurred once the Eighth Tank Army received an order to start forming up properly and heading northwards. What should have been four divisions was three after temporary mergers. Artillery, rocket units and helicopters were numerous yet still not all that should have come across from Cuba. No American submarines had showed up and the danger had been aircraft. It hadn’t been enough to stop the Soviets from reaching Texas. Now they were ready to see if what was ahead of them in terms of American troops would be able to stop them. Soviet light units already in Texas joined with the Eighth Tank Army when the orders came to attack starting on the 1st of October in the lower reaches of the Colorado River. Towards Houston the Soviets would go.



26th–31st September 1984:

There was no shadowboxing between opposing armies in New Mexico. Across the state, multiple engagements were taking place on the ground and in the air through the last days of September. Each side was actually trying to do exactly the same as the other in their actions undertaken: win before the other side could reinforce with more men. Win now or face stalemate were the only options with the latter sought by neither. Around Albuquerque, the Americans aimed to overcome the Soviet Airborne spread around that city from their base at Kirtland AFB before the Nicaraguans could come and save their bacon. In central New Mexico, the Americans aimed to cut off those Nicaraguans which were advancing and also forestall others whom had been halted from getting going again. The Soviets wanted to hold on in Albuquerque and were relying upon the Nicaraguans blasting their way through American opposition, not just knocking them out of the way to fall back into defensive positions where others could later join them. Everything was being thrown at the fight and that rush would lead to mistakes, victories and defeats.

That contraction of the perimeter which the 76th Guards Airborne Division had previously held saved them from certain defeat. The pulling back closer to Albuquerque and the smashed airhead that they had arrived through meant that their defence could be concentrated better. When the Americans came at them, the Soviet Airborne only had to face one division aiming to overcome them, not two as initially had been the case: another factor which saved them from being overrun. The 1st Infantry Division was redirected southwards and while the 4th Infantry Division kept on coming, the 76th Division only had one threat axis to focus on instead of two. The Americans hurt the paratroopers and did them a lot of damage. They were in a hurry to do the job and used extensive firepower, lots of it, ahead of them with their own artillery and helicopters as well as air support coming from all sorts of aircraft. A feint was made to the east, to suggest that the main effort would come through the mountains which bordered the city in that direction yet the main effort came from the north following the course of Interstate-25 straight down the Rio Grande valley. One brigade was out ahead with two more following, each with a mixture of tanks and mechanised infantry forming their strength. The Americans avoided coming through the city and rolled down that valley and engaged Soviet units all the way. Without much armour of their own, and what they had faced quick destruction, the paratroopers fought on foot with man-portable heavy weapons. Ambushes were sprung as the Americans came onwards and there were multiple sniping attacks – with RPGs and ATGMs used to do that – from the side too. Slow them down, the Soviet Airborne were ordered to do, and that they did. They tried their best to escape from American counterfire and knew that with the city at their back, where there were still all of those American civilians, that should be limited in its scale somewhat. Breaking contact was sometimes successful for the Soviets, other times not. Battered, the Americans drove onwards and made a stop-start approach. The divisional commander was furious at the slow pace of his lead brigade and acted out of impatience when he brought his second brigade forward, looping around further westwards though barren open ground. This manoeuvre was detected and didn’t come in unexpected as intended. That second American brigade ran into the same problems as the first as it tried to smash through a flexible defence. The Americans were held up and lost men. The Soviets lost more and also had to keep retreating: eventually they would have no more ground to fall back into. The fighting moved closer to Kirtland. Soviet artillery near there was silenced by American guns in quick counterbattery fire when it revealed itself. Despite the hold up, the Americans looked ready to win. The 4th Infantry’s reserve was soon to be released, making another looping attack to turn the Soviet’s flank again and that final time they would have been successful: almost all of the 76th Division was committed and had no more reserves of their own. Then the Nicaraguans showed up. There was a full division of them, not coming up directly from the south and through the Rio Grande valley where the Americans were moving to intercept them, but after having travelled through western parts of New Mexico over the last week and having had a devil of a time getting to Albuquerque when the direct route was blocked. Warning was sent late but not too late to the 4th Infantry of what was coming their way. Rather than deliver the coup de grace to the Soviets, they had to turn and face the Nicaraguan attack. The US Air Force let the US Army down by failing to deliver on promises of air support (the Twelfth Air Force saw things a different way when it came to promises) and that affected the fight outside of Albuquerque. American helicopters aiming to conduct reconnaissance in the absence of aircraft above faced SAM after SAM lofted towards them. The Nicaraguans, their 3rd Motorised Rifle Division, were better soldiers than believed too. They weren’t the ragtag force which they were dismissed by many as being. The 4th Infantry came at them piecemeal and fought a good battle to bring the Nicaraguans to a halt yet couldn’t defeat them. Outside the city, each force brought the other to a standstill. The Nicaraguans had made it to Albuquerque and stopped the Soviet Airborne from being overcome. They had also stopped the 4th Infantry cold too.

Into the fighting for the White Sands the 1st Infantry Division had gone when the XVIII US Corps had ordered them southwards to find the Nicaraguans. That they did, just not those whom they had been sent looking for. The Nicaraguan First Army had its 2nd Motorised Rifle Division in there trying to shake off the constant attacks over the Sacramento Mountains from the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division. The Nicaraguans were making a flank attack with one of their regiments to go around the northern end of those mountains and come down towards the 101st Air Assault on the other side and hit them unexpectedly. They were caught while doing so by the Americans, on the ground and from the air. That regiment was taken apart. All of work by Cuban and Eastern Bloc training teams to build Nicaragua an army had paid off elsewhere but not when a unit like this was caught out in the open. The Battle of Carrizozo was a disaster for the Nicaraguans: all of the Soviet-built tanks, correct regimental organisation and political officers in the world didn’t save them from an unfortunate meeting with the Americans where they were smashed apart by the 1st Infantry doing what it was trained for and what it would show that it excelled at. The 1st Infantry drove onwards after that fight, reaching the Socorro–San Pedro area where they were meant to find the Nicaraguan 3rd Division; the 2nd Division’s one regiment had been a lucky encounter. There were no Nicaraguans were there was supposed to be. They should have been there but they were by that point approaching Albuquerque. New Mexico was big. The state was huge and somewhere where it was easy to get lost (the Nicaraguans had many navigation problems) as well as easy to lose track of an opponent. The US Army would rage at the US Air Force afterwards for missing the Nicaraguan move up through western New Mexico but they had been unable to find them themselves. Socorro–San Pedro was a washout for the 1st Infantry. The XVIII Corps issued new orders: go southwards once again and finish off the Nicaraguan 2nd Division spread between Alamogordo and El Paso. That they did, tearing into the Nicaraguans there and forcing them back, very far back indeed and right past Alamogordo. There the 1st Infantry was ordered to stop when in the middle of its advance. This was because the 101st Air Assault had been given a new mission and ultimately failed in that.

That new mission was Carlsbad. It was the earlier advance towards that town, in southeastern New Mexico along the Pecos River, where the Nicaraguan 1st Motorised Rifle Division had been brought to a halt when the 101st Air Assault first arrived in New Mexico. They had focused upon the closer threat to them in the White Sands with their raiding and ambushes with a defendable mountain range in front of them though kept a watchful eye on their own flank. It was towards Carlsbad where the Nicaraguans started moving towards again. They would want to roll up to Roswell afterwards, from where the XVIII Corps had its centralised forward command & supply base in New Mexico. The Americans engaged the Nicaraguans through more heliborne raids and air strikes but they kept on coming, shaking off loses and driven onwards. Their mobile SAMs were busy and there was a heck of a lot of anti-aircraft fire which joined the fired missiles to take down as many American helicopters as possible. One regiment moved away from the main body of the division and to the east, distracting the Americans who worried over what it was up to. What was correctly assumed was the intent to make a dash forward on the flank; what wasn’t known was the Nicaraguans got lost and their seemingly cunning behaviour was actually confusion. The rest of the Nicaraguan 1st Division reached Carlsbad and then moved onwards to take Artesia next. They were closing in upon Roswell. American aircraft showed up, far too late as far as those on the ground were concerned, and they found the Nicaraguans spread about all over the place and not bunched up like hoped for: helicopter attacks by the 101st Air Assault had led to great dispersion in movement. They couldn’t be stopped. They were coming towards Roswell. More aircraft joined the fight – those redirected from Albuquerque – and caused delays yet the huge base of operations around Roswell Airport was faced with a ground attack. National guardsmen with tanks, coming in from across the Great Plains and being attached to the XVIII Corps, were too far away and it was tanks that were needed if Roswell as to be defended. It couldn’t be and so had to be abandoned. When the decision was made, it was rather late. Men and much equipment was pulled out yet what was unable to be withdrawn from Roswell in time was so much recently arrived ammunition and other stores that couldn’t leave with the Americans who were going north and east. How the Nicaraguans would have loved to capture all of that for they would have made good use of what was there. Instead, Roswell Airport and the storage sites all around it were blown up in their faces.

The Soviet Airborne had been pushed to the verge of defeat and was left almost beaten before last-minute salvation had come. Kirtland was still in their hands yet quite useless as had taken too much damage from air attacks. The Nicaraguans were spread all over New Mexico from Albuquerque to Alamogordo to Roswell and had taken major casualties in doing what they had while also seeing their centre collapse like it had. As to the Americans, they had failed to retake Kirtland and lost Roswell while at the same time showing that when they were able to effectively get at the Nicaraguans, with the right forces in the right circumstances, they were able to win overwhelming victories. New Mexico was a mess for both sides. The second week of the war, especially the weekend at the end of that, had seen those fighting in New Mexico claim success in places yet suffer what was seen as humiliation in others. The follow-up fighting across the state in the coming weeks, when October came around, would be affected by what happened at the end of September on the edges of New Mexico. To the south, the Nicaraguan Second Army (with Guatemalans attached too) was approaching El Paso and ready to come northwards. To the east, the 35th Infantry Division with its national guardsmen would show up late yet be welcome and provide the Americans with much-needed reinforcements of their own. And off to the north, Pueblo was captured for a second time by those Nicaraguan & Cuban paratroopers who refused to be beaten as they held onto their little bit of Colorado: they cut the supply lines coming down from Fort Carson and beyond (more national guard units from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming were meant to be on their way) for the XVIII Corps’ fight in New Mexico.



26th–31st September 1984:

The Cubans weren’t about to reinforce failure. It had been done before and would be done again, but others elsewhere: not by the parts of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces sent to take part in the war inside the United States. Cuba didn’t have the men to waste. Neither was there a desire to see the ‘setback’ in California turn to a ‘defeat’. The Western Front was led by a Cuban general (with a Soviet Army officer as his first deputy) and he had personal instructions from the Castro Brothers on what was and what wasn’t to occur with Cuba’s army. Such instructions didn’t contradict with the official doctrine for the joint war plan yet if they had, the ones from Havana would take precedence. Orders from the Western Front HQ came for the Cuban Third Army to advance into southwestern Arizona, not into southern California. Ninety thousand Cuban soldiers in total were driven onwards through the heat of the barren Sonoran Desert and through the falling bombs from skies full of American aircraft which were unable to be stopped from getting at them. There were delays incurred by those falling bombs. Units did get lost. Resistance on the ground was heavier than expected when encountered. Regardless, the Third Army drove onwards through late September and into the gap that there was between American forces. On their flanks, the Cuban First Army in the Imperial Valley had suffered that setback there while to the east the Americans had recently ravaged the Nicaraguans & Guatemalans. Setbacks had been for others: they were going through Arizona and into California without being stopped.

Air attacks were made against the Americans on the ground ahead where they were flying from with some degree of success. Cuban aircraft were joined by Soviet aircraft in attempting to make raids against airbases (permanent and temporary) with small, low-level actions undertaken. Attacks against Gila Bend AFB & Williams AFB got through; those against Kingman Airport, Luke AFB and Phoenix Airport failed. More luck was had on the ground with electronic reconnaissance teams – again the Soviets providing much assistance to the Cubans – identifying and pinpointing American command posts for attack. The 41st Infantry Brigade was an Oregon Army National Guard unit far from home with its men right on the frontlines of the incoming Cuban ground attack; their HQ was hit by a Cuban commando team with the military policemen there just not up to task and then a massacre taking place of staff & communications personnel. When it came to the US Army’s 9th Infantry Division, who would be on the flank of the Cuban Third Army, their mobile HQ was detected when on the move as security with that was being coordinated too openly over the airwaves. A flight of Soviet Hind gunships went after the column when on the move and began their attack. Unplanned was the appearance of American fighters in the form of California Air National Guard F-4Cs not coming to rescue those on the ground but just passing by when the Hinds were spotted below. They broke off their return flight back to California from an anti-air patrol over Arizona to bring down two of those gunships but failed to get the other two which, to escape certain destruction, simply landed at the crucial moment before the Phantoms had to fly off due to lack of fuel. That air battle, jets-v-helicopters, occurred after most of the 9th Infantry’s HQ had been so thoroughly shot-up by rockets and gunfire from those Hinds. Other headquarters, those of the 81st Infantry Brigade (Washington Army National Guard), the OPFOR Group and the I US Corps escaped detection but those hunting for them remained doing so with the aim of destroying them and killing those at each.

Two of the Cuban infantry divisions broke away from the main body of the Third Army advance to engage with the Americans spread through Arizona. There were extra attachments of anti-tank units with them though they really could have benefitted more from more anti-aircraft support in terms of guns and SAMs. The Americans blasted them from above. They did their job though, soaking up American fire and also attention. The I Corps struggled to have the 41st Brigade get at those Cubans and when it came to the 9th Infantry, that division’s brigades were individually tasked by the corps headquarters until proper command could be established with their parent command. The rest of the American ground forces in Arizona were in the wrong place and the left wing of the Third Army drove onwards, turning towards California. This was no easy feat. The three other divisions – including the last of Cuba’s heavy units available for deployment overseas – were able to use roads which the Americans had used military police to keep open and clear yet the Colorado River barred their way. Near Blythe, the East Germans had blown up that civilian crossing and then US Army engineers destroyed the improvised crossing which they had set up; the Parker crossing further upstream was also destroyed ahead of them, this time by an American air strike. Entry into California was meant to be made through a narrow front as the Third Army stopped going north and turned west so that air defence could be concentrated better. There were further air attacks made towards American airbases, this time ranging into California as well as commando attacks on some of them too (not much success was had) but what was really needed was to get at the Americans in the sky. They had limited ground forces available yet plenty of air power. Airborne radar aircraft, complete with onboard battle staff, in the form of E-3 Sentry’s were lining-up aircraft coming in. MCAS Yuma was a ruin and incapable of hosting major air operations. The Western Front had to rely on smaller captured facilities such as Laguna & Libby Army Airfields – along with the partially-usable and recently-captured Ajo Airport – for their own aircraft. Several regiments of Cuban and Soviet aircraft were flying from these locations though none was at full strength. Those aircraft were needed in the skies and were sent up to challenge the Americans in experiences which were certainly no fun for those involved. Soviet MiG-29 Fulcrums flying from Laguna were assigned the last of going after those E-3s, one which was always on station in the skies above the very bottom of Nevada. The first attack failed. So did the second. The third got through, again with losses taken to the Fulcrums, yet they managed to fire off their missiles to hit and bring down the E-3 targeted. Another one lifted off from Nellis AFB straight away and the gap in coverage in terms of time was small. That was made use of as best as possible. There was disruption to American air operations and more fighters were released among them to try to bring as many of them down as possible before they could come near the engineers throwing bridges over the river. The value of those E-3 attacks – the two failures and the one costly success – would be questioned. Most American aircraft were brought down by SAMs. The US Marines had shifted their anti-SAM operations away from the Imperial Valley as the Cubans approached their own flank but that wasn’t enough. More and more missiles were lofted into the sky as the Third Army got further air defence units forward. They managed to open some bridges over the Colorado River.

The 3rd Armored & 80th Mechanised Divisions, led by the 8th Reconnaissance Brigade, started moving onwards with another infantry division covering their rear. Supply trucks moved behind the mass of tanks and armoured vehicles with more to follow. It was those that the OPFOR Group came after. That regimental-sized formation who’d won that fight at Parker against Soviet airmobile troops the week before then had been sent deep into Arizona had been turned back around and came towards the Colorado River. Cuban reconnaissance efforts missed them. The radio-discipline they maintained was taught to others yet not always practised when it really should have been. No mistake like that was present when the US Army unit crossed through Arizona off-road in an overnight advance and then came at the Cuban 27th Infantry Division near to Quartzsite. Cuban T-55 tanks were gone through like their guns were peashooters. Onwards the OPFOR Group went, bypassing the majority of the Cuban screening forces after shooting-up their tanks, with a drive towards the river crossings where all of those supply trucks could be found. They ran into an anti-tank unit through, big guns positioned on high and under cover. Well-aimed shots came down upon the American tanks and infantry carriers below. The OPFOR Group took horrible losses but fought to manoeuvre their way out of the fire. They went into a minefield scattered by artillery yet still moved onwards, determined to get at the prizes by the river. Cuban infantry turned up and the OPFOR Group were taken under fire by them. Their strength had been in fighting on the move yet the terrain which they found themselves in short of the river and with all those damn anti-tank guns up on high was no good for them. They withdrew away northwards, a fighting withdrawal made across the course of Interstate-10 where they went through Cuban infantry trying to come towards them and then moved off into the wilderness. A quarter of their strength was gone but they weren’t finished for good. They just moved off for now.

The Cubans were out in the open through Riverside County. They’d gone through the green Pala Verde Valley and back into the desert again. The way ahead of them was open on the ground though the skies were still full of American aircraft which wouldn’t give up. BRDM scout cars followed by tracked BRMs pushed onwards following the course of Interstate-10 with the 80th Division close behind those ahead in the reconnaissance role; the 3rd Division was trailing back behind. They had an excellent road link to follow through the desert with there being signposts guiding them far better than any map could. The Coachella Valley was right ahead, just keep following the road running west, said those signs. Los Angeles was that way too. US Marines disengaging from what should have been the final move to finish off the Cuban First Army cut off what had been an unchecked Cuban advance all the way to the Pacific. Most of the 5th Marine Brigade got in the way, along with Marine tanks, and took the brunt of the attack from the Cuban 80th Division. The Cubans attempted to spread out, to get through, but the US Marines wouldn’t let them pass; the rest of the 1st Marine Division would be cut off to their south if they gave ground, maybe California’s 40th Infantry Division too. The 80th Division was held, the 3rd Division came forward, going ahead despite increasing American air attacks that came on the face of extraordinary air defensive fire. Cuban and Soviet fighters couldn’t get near that battle and, in all honestly, were lucky that they didn’t: SAMs were going after anything in the sky. That second Cuban division was spotted breaking away and tracked by incoming aircraft but there was no one on the ground to stop them. Cuban tanks went away from the battle with US Marines and headed towards Desert Hot Springs first yet turned instead to get into the Coachella Valley at the top. Along the course of the interstate within the valley, there were American trucks laden with supplies which were shot up when orders were to capture them if possible: gunfire had come from crews against infantry departing from BMPs and heading towards them. Palm Springs Airport saw T-72s race onto it as national guard helicopters lifted off in a hurry rather than be caught on the ground. What was most important was the San Gorgonio Pass. Cuban tanks reached there and shut off any hope of escape to those trapped south of them through the Coachella & Imperial Valleys. There were no more American troops of substantial number on the West Coast. There had been those which had gone to South Korea pre-war and then those cut off now in southern California or in the preceding days out in Arizona. Short of air power, and the Cuban’s own long supply lines, there really was nothing left in the way between the Cubans and the Pacific… where Los Angeles was.



Late September 1984:

USS Enterprise, one of the Pacific Fleet’s several carriers, used her air wing to strike far and wide across the Aleutian Islands before turning attention towards Kodiak. Soviet fighters from those island bases which they held had as little luck as big maritime bombers coming out of Kamchatka in stopping the air strikes nor getting anywhere near the Enterprise. SAMs and submarines had more success. Five US Navy aircraft were lost to missiles and another two badly damaged; a pair of the Enterprise’s escorts were sunk by torpedo attacks from an unseen attacker. The carrier was stalked by that one submarine for almost a week and this affected flight operations. Eventually though, there was a showdown between the two and the Soviet Navy came off worse in that with it’s submarine being finally located and sunk itself, joining its earlier victims on the seabed. Also on the sea bottom elsewhere in the Pacific was another American carrier which had been lost earlier in the war while a further one had been left afloat but a flaming wreck: as it had been for the whole country, September 17th had been a very bad day for the US Navy. The Enterprise wouldn’t be joining them. It wasn’t as if the Soviets weren’t trying. Hours after that submarine was finally killed, there came another attempted raid from out of Kamchatka with more missile-bombers focused on the immediate area where the Enterprise had been when that submarine was dispatched: it had sent off a message before its demise. Like the preceding attacks, this one failed to locate the carrier. Sailors are superstitious. No one wanted to say aloud that the Enterprise was a lucky ship for fear of jinxing that, but everyone knew that she was.

The carrier’s presence opened up the air corridor. She was in the Gulf of Alaska and with her air wing active in the skies, the US Air Force up in Alaska had support on-hand to deal with enemy aircraft in the Aleutians and across in the Alaskan Panhandle. Aircraft flew into Alaska through the air corridor which included both the above sea and overland (through Canada) routes. There were combat aircraft sent to reinforce Alaskan Air Command and going with them were military transports plus civilian airlines making back-&-forth journeys. Fuel & ammunition went in along with US Air Force personnel to man & support those aircraft. Out came casualties, POWs (Soviet airmen mainly; a few captured commandos) and military dependents. When it came to troop reinforcements going to Alaska, what was sent satisfied no one: not those in Alaska who regarded who was sent as too few nor those sending them who worried they would eventually be lost so therefore should have been sent elsewhere instead. The 205th Infantry Brigade, a US Army Reserve light formation, went to Alaska along with a lot of Green Berets. Their mission was to join those already there in defending Alaska pending the later arrival of further relief coming through Canada in the form of a joint Canadian-UK force which was at first meant followed by a division of national guardsmen out of the Mid-West but the 38th Infantry Division was later redirected elsewhere. The Soviets had naval infantry across the Aleutians whose transport in the form of aircraft and ships had just taken major loses with the Enterprise’s air wing doing as it did. Even if those losses were overstated, what was sent to join what was already in-place in Alaska could hold out for some time. In addition, as the China Crisis turned to the China War which it became, it was clear that for the foreseeable future, the Soviets weren’t going to be sending more troops across the North Pacific.

That was the situation when it came to the state of the US Armed Forces in Alaska but it was a different matter with civilians. There was no organised evacuation of civilians from Alaska as some had been calling for. Those airliners removed people from hospitals and others regarded as vulnerable, flying them down to either Canada or the US Pacific North-West, but hundreds of thousands of people weren’t being pulled out of America’s forty-ninth state. There had been political debate over doing that yet it wasn’t to be. The Enterprise couldn’t stay in the Gulf of Alaska for good. With the Pacific Fleet short of two other carriers due to enemy action, she was needed elsewhere. Fighting in Canada’s interior had opened up the air route there soon enough. Further air strikes were made to the east to assist that before the carrier then moved onwards. There was a naval war still raging across the Western Pacific and the Enterprise moved off to join that.


Those final US Navy air attacks took place across the top of the Alaskan Panhandle where the Soviets had established themselves around Haines and Skagway. The Enterprise lost another two aircraft with a third making a crash landing (the pilot of the A-7 Corsair escaping alive, just) at Juneau Airport where there were Indiana Air National Guard had fighters present. Haines was hit far harder than Skagway was and the Soviets hadn’t been given any warning of what was incoming. The Americans had used the coverage of the mountain valleys to approach from several directions at once to deliver time-on-target bomb attacks. Haines was knocked out for the time being with Skagway left badly damaged. Soviet air operations took a major setback, added to when those F-4s now a long way from Indiana then made a series of attacks later to hit recovery efforts. Their cluster bombs caused immense casualties among engineers – skilled personnel not easily replaceable – and work crews at both sites.

Away from the coastal airheads, Soviet troops were inside the Yukon. They had gone over the Canadian border and faced a torrid time in making their twin attacks towards Haines Junction and Whitehorse with the intention of severing the Alaskan Highway. Haines Junction was reached before the end of the month; Whitehorse was just too far away. Those who’d planned the operation weren’t those up in the mountains following winding roads where there were attacks all around them from above. Canadian troops left in Canada had been lowly-rated in Soviet intelligence summaries with the belief that their best troops were in West Germany and would be stuck there for the foreseeable future. The Canadian Airborne Regiment, joined by detachments of Canadian Rangers, were active across the Yukon first. They fought to defend their country and gave a good show for themselves in slowing down the Soviet paratroopers and airmobile troops. The delays they imposed, and the casualties, allowed the 1st Mechanised Brigade–Group to reach Whitehorse. The British would be following as soon as possible, but for now, the 1st Brigade was able to hold Whitehorse. Canadian aircraft arrived to operate from the airport there while south of the town, Canadian troops held the Soviets back from getting to the Alaskan Highway nor reaching the town either. The 11th Landing-assault Brigade had been given this task and they were stopped short before being pushed back once the Canadians unleashed some armour upon them. The 1st Brigade didn’t have tanks but they still had light armoured vehicles and were supported by on-hand air power. The Soviets fell backwards.

Throughout the rear of the 11th Brigade, and along the course of the advance taken by the Soviet Airborne – the 345th Guards Parachute Regiment –, they remained under attack. Sniping, deliberate rockfalls and the placement of mines through ‘swept’ areas continued. Patrols were run by each side with brutal clashes taking place where each side showed no mercy due to the treatment each was receiving from the other away from what frontlines there were. When Haines Junction was taken, there came gunfire from there against the 345th Regiment and that wasn’t from Canadian soldiers. The Yukon was home to First Nations people – ‘Red Indians’ to the Soviets – and they had not reacted to the invasion of where they called home as the Soviets had expected them to be. The KGB had made that mistake but weren’t about to see it ignored. These people were here to be liberated and if that liberation meant them losing their lives, then so be it. When the little town was taken, all civilian prisoners taken were labelled as partisans and lined up to be shot. Four hundred would die. Less than a quarter had had anything to do with the resistance that had been overcome. That was how it was going to be in this war here, just like it was elsewhere.



Late September 1984:

At the Federal Building in El Paso, the historic US Courthouse, there came a stage-managed event where the ‘Committee for Peace’ was presented to selected elements of the world media (the list was very selective) to publicise their call for an end to the war. A group of American nationals presented as notables and voices of reason called for the United States to cease combat operations and open negotiations when it came to bringing the war to a close. There were politicians as part of the committee, figures from academia and also well-known activists. The gathering of such people was unprecedented and saw the coming together of those who were known to be ideological opponents previously. Twenty-one members formed the committee though there were five key figures at the heart of it who spoke with the journalists who’d come to El Paso. No mention was made of them being under any form of duress and there were no foreign soldiers at the event pointing guns anywhere towards them. The image shown was meant to be one of willing people wanting to see an end to the war inside their country. They informed those who’d come to see them that the war had been started by the United States and it should be the United States which ended it. A change of government was needed for that to happen, once the fighting had been ordered to cease and the security zone established to bring that about. Peace, that was what they wanted, what all of the American people wanted. An hour later, the Federal Building was blown apart in what the media – who’d been ‘lucky enough’ to be evacuated form there along with the Committee for Peace – was told was an American air strike; like the preceding event, that too was a big fat lie. The KGB had the Soviet Air Force bomb it once they had their people clear and the cameras were nearby when an air raid siren sounded. Look at all of the civilian casualties the Americans have caused! Look at how nearly that could have been you!

The bombing ended the first act of show being put on. The Committee for Peace would later start to present evidence to the media, when gathered at a hotel in the city as the second act started, when it showed how the United States had started this war by attacking the Soviet Union with their nuclear strike against Leningrad. As part of that, there had been a conspiracy at the heart of the US Government where Vice President Glenn had ordered the nuclear destruction of Washington to kill President Kennedy (and most of the federal government) so that he could seize power. Glenn and a group of generals were behind the war, a thoroughly evil cabal. Documents were provided to the media which proved this and there also came testimony from three of the key figures in the committee to that affect. Both missing members of Congress which the FBI already strongly suspected had been kidnapped right before hostilities commenced were alongside Kennedy’s former chief-of-staff: a man who’d been with him through his first three years in the White House but left back in February this year. They spoke of Glenn’s power grab where the war he had launched to cement that and spoke too of the martyrdom of the blameless Kennedy along with so many innocent Americans. If only the conspiracy had been detected in time, this war could have been stopped before it killed so many. It hadn’t been, but with the knowledge now, there was a chance that the American people would listen and understand just what had happened where they had been duped and so many of their fellow citizens all killed like they had for a lie. Denouncements came of Glenn from others in El Paso and they revealed other so-called secrets as well about events pre-war, all juicy plots, plans and conspiracies which supporting evidence was given alongside. This war must end, so said the Committee for Peace, and there should be no more fighting against ‘Internationalist’ forces moving in to try and secure peace for not just America and the Western Hemisphere but the whole world too.


The first part of the El Paso charade was seen by many Americans in its initial broadcast with the second act seen by far fewer. Those at Mount Weather, Raven Rock and The Greenbrier saw the whole thing. The Californian congresswoman and the Texan congressman, both missing from their homes and thus the rump Congress, were now confirmed to be in Soviet custody. Each had young children (one for the former, two for the latter) who were also missing, presumably with the KGB and thus assumed to being held to secure the full cooperation of their parents. When it came to the further committee members, there had been suspicions when it came to some of those that they too might have been kidnapped (family members included) yet the appearance of such a range of people was surprising. The KGB had chosen a cross-section of notables for their purposes. Some might have gone willingly though the chances of that weren’t very high, unless they were duped. The committee members came from across the country and also Americans in self-exile aboard in Cuba or living elsewhere in the world. The accusation against Glenn was the most surprising thing of it all when it was aimed at the American people: the Big Lie of an American first strike had been spread worldwide so it probably shouldn’t have been. There had come hints that the Soviets might try to put together an alternate government though it was suspected that that would have a full-on communist / liberation of the people angle. This conspiracy-spreading was something different. The claims that then El Paso was bombed so quickly like it was also shocked those surviving members of the US government for it presented something new for the Soviets in their propaganda war. Such ‘American’ attacks, physical actions or claims of them happening, were going to continue. The Committee for Peace would pop up again soon, all tightly-controlled by KGB personnel among them who scripted every word they said.

The destruction of Washington had seen the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) headquarters destroyed with most of the senior management there. This was an independent agency of the government which was being put back together like others were – the CIA, the FBI and so on – but something which wasn’t easy to do. When the Soviets had hi-jacked the television signal to get their coverage of El Paso out, the FCC was pretty much unable to do anything to respond to what was being sent out to millions of Americans primarily through the western half of the country. Urgent instructions from Raven Rock had the military start jamming the signal so that the second half of the broadcast was unable to get through to most of those who had seen the first half. The FCC was also struggling elsewhere where it come to the task set to them to monitor the media’s activities as the war got underway. They were given what many regarded as an impossible task. Still, the FCC tried where they aimed to get the civilian media to self-censor themselves where necessary and work with the military in other instances. There was a lot of patriotism quickly on display from the media where any hint of attacking the government at a time like this, especially in its conduct of the war, was rejected from being aired. Stupidity came instead of deliberately doing the Soviet’s work for them. Some journalists got too close to the fighting and ended up dead although some went missing too, presumed snatched to be used by the KGB. There were other journalists who said too much, gave away things that they didn’t realise they weren’t supposed to say. False information was given out where the media repeated things that they had been told after deciding themselves that it had nothing to do with giving away any secrets: they were making up their own rules and causing damage without knowing they were nor directly meaning to. Eventually that had to be stopped. Glenn signed an executive order giving the US Armed Forces sweeping powers of censorship and side-lining the FCC in doing so. It looked like a power grab to many as the government took control of information. If this hadn’t been wartime, the legal challenges would have been aplenty and been successful too. It wasn’t though. US Army Counterintelligence oversaw the immediate cessation of a lot of what was going out over the airwaves unless it was on message. There would be complaints over some of their activities yet it was them who made sure that all elements of the media started using the uniform terms ‘Free America’ and ‘Occupied America’. This quickly showed its real value in the propaganda war underway with good long-erm effects. The smearing of those at El Paso where they were all deemed to be traitors wasn’t so much of a glorious success due to the belief later that the truth should have been told about how many of the Committee for Peace ended up there or at least the truth bent the other way to say that all of them were forced to be there rather than just some. The decision was made though to smear them all as betraying their country and once done it was done.

Military support was also given to the recovering FBI in their implementation of the McCarran Act: an executive order here was forbidden by law and Congress had to authorise military police units to help the FBI rather than Glenn. The numbers of those being held in detention was growing before El Paso and increased afterwards. The definition of a subversive was starting to be applied a bit easily. Anti-war rallies were organised not by those in league with the Soviets but by those opposed to armed conflict. At a time like this, with the country reeling from nuclear attacks and being invaded, there were still those who came out to oppose war, any war. The organisers of such were arrested and the marches were broken up. Accusations came of racism in other arrests where African-American and Hispanics were detained as subversives. The charge of racism was denied and the airing of such claims was extremely limited as control of the media was established. There was concern starting to be expressed from some at The Greenbrier that maybe things had gone too far… The arrests continued regardless. The United States wasn’t turning into a totalitarian state yet some claimed that it was. Others shouted that it should be. Lock ‘em all up, there came the chants of certain extremists, when talking about anyone who expressed the most minor of objections to practically anything to do with how the war was being fought at the front and in the rear. Objections from some union officials of the demands made upon workers in industrial facilities being switched to wartime production in terms of hours and pay saw calls made for them to be locked up too. Not all of the union officials were truly representing their members while others were pushing for reasonable concessions for hard work being done. It was a complicated situation. To solve that, a couple of union bigshots, bigmouths, were arrested for charges unrelated to their expressed demands but their detentions didn’t look good. Everything was all legal though. It was just the same as the imposition of martial law when New York, other big cities and also Maryland saw outbreaks of rioting and criminality taking place. That had to be put down and was done with violence used as a last resort yet when it was, it was with success.

This war was going to be a long war. The idea of turning back Cuban and Latin American forces staging from Mexico, with limited Soviet support, making border incursions met eventual reality of a full-scale invasion underway. The commitment being shown by the Soviets and their allies to this war became more apparent as the first two weeks of the war went on. Initial optimism that despite some American setbacks elsewhere, the war would be quickly won was shown to be false after San Antonio and then later Southern California. There was a shift from making fighting the war an equal priority alongside other key matters – the economy and re-establishing a working government – to making it the priority with everything else secondary. This came on the back of appointments made to the vacant positions of the vice presidency and the secretary of state with Howard Baker and Adlai Stevenson III taking those. Baker was the former Senate Majority Leader who had resigned from that role in 1981 and then his Senate seat in 1982 all as fall-out for his failed vice presidential run alongside Reagan against Kennedy and Glenn. He’d denied the charge of financial irregularities (the campaign had been dirty) but stood aside to leave the Senate and join one of those think-tanks in Washington which had caused Kennedy all that grief – but not enough – before the war came when warning of the Soviet danger. Jack Kemp had been making use of Baker as an advisor in his presidential run for this November and it was while he was at Baker’s Tennessee home that Kemp had fallen ill in the days leading up to the war. Kemp’s death by a poisonous substance that the FBI were still clueless as to what it was all about had saved Baker from being in Washington. His experience and his position as a long-serving respected senator (that scandal in ’82 aside) saw his name pushed as the Republican who should serve alongside the Democrat Glenn at a time where the country needed a lack of partisanship at the top. As to Stevenson, his appointment was a fudge when the past senator from Illinois was chosen when others were vetoed. Stevenson promised much when it came to the country’s international relations and had been making waves before the war opposing Kennedy’s foreign policy. Whether he could deliver on those promises was something different.


Within days of the war starting, Britain had flown troops of theirs across the Atlantic and into Canada. They had linked-up with stored equipment in Alberta at their training site and set off following the Canadian Army northwards. Admittedly, the British contribution in terms of numbers of men had been low and they had flown ‘light’ – which would cause them problems later – but they had reacted faster than the United States could in moving troops across the North Atlantic. Even the Western European countries seemed to be doing better than the Americans when they started to organise the movement out of the United States of what military forces they had in the country – training units – alongside their civilians back home. Again, the numbers weren’t huge, but they were doing what it appeared that the United States wasn’t doing: making use airlift capabilities across the Atlantic better than the Americans could. This was all about appearances though. The British and Western Europe were doing this yet so too was the United States. The American just made less of a show of it by not acting with outrageous haste in making such movements. What was moving across the ocean in terms of men and equipment was coming home and started doing so almost at once. It also dwarfed in scale those being made by others. There was also a war ongoing within the country with logistical assets assigned internally with cross-country movement of forces taking place alongside the overseas effort. Hundreds of thousands of American service personnel, plus all their equipment, were coming home from Europe.

There were elements of the US Armed Forces spread from Britain to Italy to the Low Countries to Spain and to West Germany. The US Army and the US Air Force had significant presences with the US Navy and US Marines having a far smaller footprint across the North Atlantic. Britain wanted the majority of the US Air Force based in the UK to stay and when Spain entered the war (which no one had foreseen) they too wanted what aircraft were based in their country to not leave either. As to the other nations, their neutrality was proclaimed as necessary and not hostile towards the United States. Betrayal came the counter-claim though that wasn’t directed so much at France, who stood with those countries, yet the French president was first to promise help just short of war to the Americans and backed that up by actions with a wealth of intelligence support and then assistance in helping the US Seventh Army in West Germany leave via France. That movement of the numerous forces out of West Germany going via France was what took the most time and gave the impression of things taking so long. Such a viewpoint missed the fact that from elsewhere, there came a vast withdrawal of American forces out of Europe ahead of that biggest force.

Britain was home to five wings of combat aircraft from the US Air Force. The two wings of F-111s and the pair of A-10 wings flew back to the United States in ferry flights. This was no easy feat due to certain islands in the North Atlantic being unavailable but Madeira, the Canaries and Bermuda were open to assist and so too were facilities in the Irish Republic some time later as well. The aircraft were just part of the transfer: personnel and equipment were going too. As to that F-16 wing (transferred out of West Germany last year), they stayed for the time being fighting the war on the eastern side of the ocean which the F-111s were needed in yet they were sent home. There was a squadron of F-15s in the Netherlands: they went home too, aircraft and personnel. Britain and Italy both had support personnel for the US Air Force beyond combat aircraft; there were also non-combat aircraft in Britain. All would return to the United States. The wing of F-16s in Spain were needed at home more than in Europe – the US Navy was just as unhappy about this due to events in the Med. as the Spanish were – and they too made the trans-Atlantic transfer. Then there was West Germany: three combat wings and a major support network of aircraft and personnel. The F-15s at Bitburg stayed and flew air defence missions covering the withdrawal from any potential Soviet attack as the tension between Bonn and Moscow intensified due to lack of West German interment of American forces; the F-4 wings from Ramstein and Spangdahlem went home to fight the war in North America. Those F-15s were to eventually move to Britain in the end but until then they carried on flying over West Germany and the North Sea as well for the time being. Like all American forces in West Germany, they weren’t there due to West German permission but because there was the legal right to occupy the country following World War Two. Diplomatic wrangles went on with regard to that. West Berlin was the source of another major dispute of words rather than bullets.

The US Army had removed some forces from West Germany before the war started. The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the Forward Brigade (part of the 2nd Armored Division; that being destroyed in Texas) were in Britain. Personnel were airlifted home along with dependents and shipping was arranged to have the mass of equipment sent afterwards to be used by others. Inside West Germany, a brigade of the 1st Infantry Division (the rest of the division soon fighting in New Mexico) had been readying to redeploy out of the country before pre-war tension kept them in-place. Like the units in Britain, the men now flew home with the equipment to follow later via ships. These early transfers of more than ten thousand combat troops went alongside the emptying of Western Europe of many non-combat personnel of the Seventh Army along with more dependents – wives and children – in airlifts. There remained the aircraft to transfer everyone though with the hundreds upon hundreds of civilian airliners now under US Government control. The personnel of a trio of divisions in West Germany, plus attachments, could all be flown out rather quickly. Instead, the decision was made, one which faced that strong opposition at home, was to conduct a staged withdrawal out of West Germany less the Soviets come over the border. This wasn’t due to a concern over West Germany but more so that in doing that without being opposed, all of the immense stocks of equipment and supplies would be left undefended. There were POMCUS sites too, all which the US Army wanted to strip bare and see everything taken home. That was why the majority of the Seventh Army was pulled out slowly and through France towards their Atlantic ports. Should the men have gone in a hurry, what would they be equipped with at home with when they left everything behind?

What had gone home first either took what they needed to operate with them – the US Air Force elements did that – or when it came to the smaller US Army units, were sent to some of the big garrisons in the eastern half of the United States to be equipped there – not easy, it wasn’t as if there were POMCUS sites in the US – allowing their own equipment to be used as later replacements. Through Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia and Georgia, the II US Corps was being formed. There were national guardsmen (Pennsylvania’s 28th Infantry Division) along with US Army Reserve and regular US Army training units which those trio of smaller combat units making the transfer from Europe joined with. They were forming a counterattack force, three division’s worth, and not being rushed straight to the frontlines but being fully-equipped and worked up first. Secretary of Defence Bentsen had resisted calls to send those who formed the II Corps to the front piecemeal over the demands of others that they do so and Glenn supported him in this especially when it became apparent of the earlier desperate moves of troops all over the place having not as much success as possible. There were other national guardsmen working up through the Mid-West, the North East and down into the South East too. It would take another month for the Seventh Army to come home from Europe but before then, those already at home were supposed to go into the fight first. While they were getting ready, and fighting took place elsewhere nationwide with the Soviet’s Krasny Zvezda ongoing, through other parts of the globe the world was on fire.

[James G]

Chapter Eleven – World On Fire

Mid to late September 1984: The Caribbean and Latin America

By the watch of the senior Soviet military officer in the country, Panama attacked the Canal Zone just short of four minutes early. That was contested by his hosts. They were on schedule according to the plan of attack. When pressed on that, the Panamanians said that, in fact, they were eighty years late. Panama’s action to take what was rightfully hers was anything but early. Noriega’s Panama was the only non-communist nation to enter the war against the United States at the start of the conflict. The primary reason was the utmost intention to restore what territory Panama regarded as their own. That was why Panama was in this war: to take the Canal Zone away from the Americans. Diplomacy had failed and an opportunity came in the form of foreign support. There was wariness in Noriega at the start yet the Castros and the Ortegas had convinced him that this would be his only chance to achieve what he wanted. Noriega signed-up for what would be his, and his country’s, ultimate doom: taking part in the surprise attack against the United States alongside the Soviets, the Cubans and the others in Latin America as well as outside.

The opening attack was made with artillery and heavy mortar strikes alongside commando assaults. Infantry, supported by light armour, moved in afterwards. The Atlantico and Pacifico Divisions (masses of ill-trained soldiers by with plenty of weaponry) made twin attacks at both ends of the Canal Zone. They went forward into the Canal Zone from outside to take on the American defenders and liberate that region which split their country in two. Taking the Panama Canal was just as important as that liberation of territory. Panama wanted it intact; Noriega’s friends from abroad wanted it taken as well. Panamanian special forces were joined by Cuban & Nicaraguan commandos when they struck ahead of the big infantry advances. The trio of locks were what was important and each was hit with big assaults conducted from within and without. American garrisons where there were US Army and US Air Force elements were assaulted with the aim of eliminating those inside them before they could mount any effective defence… and blow up the locks. It was one hell of a fight. Staged tension to draw American attention towards Panama before the war had seen the arrival of United States reinforcements to the Canal Zone: more than Panama wanted to see but not enough for the Soviet’s intentions. There was a readiness on the part of the Americans to fight. They were hit with far bigger forces than expected yet weren’t engaged like helpless babies. At the northern and southern ends of the Canal Zone, cut in half by Panamanian presence in the middle, the Americans fought back. They wouldn’t give in despite overwhelming numbers due to the assurance that soon, very soon, relief was coming their way. Orders were for the locks to be wired for demolition but not blown unless the Canal Zone was to be lost. The Gatun Locks had fallen into Panamanian hands right at the beginning due to a very fortunate series of mishaps going the Panamanian’s way but the Petro Miguel and Miraflores Locks were held by the Americans over the bodies of a lot of dead commandos. From Colon on the shores of the Caribbean, the Atlantico Division overwhelmed the smaller American forces near that city and extended control from the Gatun Locks to Fort Davis first then onto Fort Sherman and finally Fort Gulick: the last being the infamous School of the Americas. Each installation was overrun while the Americans fought between them but were pushed back and back. There then came the landing in Colon of Soviet troops two days later, a small brigade arriving by sea from Grenada of Soviet airmobile troops who fought as infantry alongside the Panamanians. The northern end of the Canal Zone fell with about a quarter of US troops in the country lost there: dead or prisoner.

Things were different in the south. Where the military installations were near the Pacific coast, the Panamanians with the Pacifico Division were unable to reach those locks near to Panama City. They also faced a strong country attack back towards their capital. Panama City was counter-shelled and raided by American paratroopers in light vehicles. On their way back out, the Bridge of the Americas, the only fixed crossing between the waterway which cut the Western Hemisphere in half, was blown by the Americans to deny further Panamanian use and secure their position. Fort Clayton was eventually taken but the trio of bases to the west of Panama City – Fort Amador, Fort Kobbe and Howard AFB – had seen the biggest concentration of American forces pre-war. There was the majority of the 193rd Infantry Brigade there along with the Devil Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. Air support from Howard was eventually lost due to Panamanian shelling – mortars, a lot of them, and joined by rockets too – but the US Air Force personnel joined in what became a last stand. It wasn’t supposed to be a last stand. There were meant to be reinforcements. They just were unable to come to Panama. Delay met delay. Eventually there came cancellation of a relief. Those fighting in Panama did so for six days before they were told that there was no one coming to save them and push the Panamanians back, Panamanians which got over towards them. Intelligence came about the Soviets moving southwards and that through Costa Rica there were Nicaraguans on their way too. Soviet aircraft out of Colon blasted the defenders from above. As to the canal infrastructure, the lead Soviet elements were driven back from taking the Pedro Miguel Locks but more men came onwards, joined by Panamanians pushed forwards by Noriega no matter what the cost. It was on September 23rd when the demolitions commenced. Finely-places charges smashed apart the Panama Canal as a useful waterway. The locks at Pedro Miguel and the Miraflores were blown to smithereens; so too was much of Howard’s remaining infrastructure plus the facilities at the small Rodman naval station. Divers went into the water afterwards to lay special anti-personnel mines to delay recovery efforts. A major Soviet attack came afterwards, forcing the Americans back from where they had blown those locks and soon with their backs to the sea. They were shelled and had no air cover but still they fought, for another three terrible days where they suffered immensely caught like they were. Eventually, with the best done that was possible, and the men furious at no relief having come, they surrendered on the 27th. Casualties were horrendous with the wounded in the Howard Pocket nearly outnumbering the unwounded: there was no ability to treat them effectively. Those and the failure for relief to come saw permission granted to give in. The commander of the US Army South – such a grand title for what little force there was left – at first refused to surrender his men to the Panamanians and opted to surrender to the Soviets: it was they who had eventually beaten his men and the belief was that despite the fact that they were Soviets, his men would face better treatment (a relative term) at their hands than at that of the Panamanians. The Soviets would have none of it. There were instructions that they had of their own when it came to any surrender: it was to be made to Panama.

Noriega had the Panamanian media present when the last of the Americans surrendered, like he had them when the Gatun Locks were taken and afterwards when he took a personal tour of the battered School of the Americas. He had revelled in the glory then but not after the American attacks against Panama City and then when they blew the other canal locks. He let a flunky deal with the American commanding general, a lowly major took the surrender of a man who greatly outranked him. Prisoners were led away. Their captivity wouldn’t be pleasant though the fears of a massacre were unfounded. Noriega had the Canal Zone and the Soviets had the Panama Canal. Good for them: there wasn’t much for either of them to use in each. Noriega also had another problem. He had the Soviets in his country. Did he really believe that they would eventually willingly leave?

*

The Second Belize War was far shorter than the first. It lasted eleven days. This time, Guatemala emerged successful where it took control of the independent country which they claimed was rightful territory of theirs occupied by British Imperialists and Belizean counterrevolutionaries. This second conflict was far simpler than the first. There was no daring coastal assault nor any complicated planning. A simple, massed assault went over the border with Belmopan advanced upon first before the Guatemalans kept on driving towards the sea and Belize City. British Forces Belize and the Belize Defence Force did their best. Like the Americans in Panama, they were on their own and were first promised reinforcements but none were eventually able to come due to events elsewhere in the region and also beyond. The Guatemalans used artillery and tanks plus a lot of infantry. They refused to stop. When one regiment was held up, another pushed on through or it around after those ahead had soaked up bullets. The pair of divisional headquarters didn’t function as such and instead the corps commander – a competent enough man but supported by a Cuban staff – just pushed units forward. The British had their unfinished big airbase near Belize City and from there, RAF Harriers (which didn’t need much fixed infrastructure) raided his headquarters. There were other British actions like this when they made sudden lethal strikes outwards. Still, Guatemalan troops pushed onwards. British infantry and the Gurkhas with them withdrew and withdrew. They kept on falling back towards the sea. Eventually they ran out of room to manoeuvre. Belizean soldiers all around them fought and died for their country just as bravely as their comrades had done in 1982. It didn’t matter. The end came near to the landing sites of those Royal Marines in the first war. The British had twice the number of troops here this time than before and the Belizeans were better organised. The Guatemalans had quadrupled their numbers from two years before and increased their firepower to an even greater degree as well. Man-for-man, they were out-soldiered but they were pushed on relentlessly with no let-up. Surrender came and it was all over. Guarantees were given on the treatment of prisoners and those would be respected… when it came to British & Gurkha soldiers. The Guatemalans lied when it came to the Belizeans. Thousands of captured soldiers, along with thousands more civilians of the little country, would be massacred afterwards as Belize was brutally absorbed into Guatemala.

Guantanamo Bay was the third defeat suffered in the region. US Navy personnel and the US Marines present lasted a far shorter period of time than those defenders of the Canal Zone and Belize. There came shelling first, heavy Cuban artillery being used in abundance, to cover sappers clearing paths through Cuban minefields and then into those planted by the Americans around the base. Snipers cut down many of those engineers but more came. They opened up paths for Cuban tanks. Old T-55s were used and the Americans hit many of those yet the ones which survived crashed through the defences, defences studied for several decades so that they one day could be overcome. The Cubans used air power and rockets to strike behind the frontlines to kill those inside the base and destroy everything useful for the Americans in the final battle. All that they did was provide ruins for the Americans to fight in. It became hand-to-hand in the end, when the perimeter was broken open and Cuban infantry followed their tanks. The opposing troops fought where they could see the white’s of the eyes of the other. Tactical retreats were made and then localised counterattacks followed. Hundreds of men would die for a few yards of ground. It went on for four days. Then it was over. Cuba had Guantanamo Bay back late on September 20th. Its surviving defenders were marched off into captivity while the stench of death was all that remained in what Cuba said had been an outpost of imperialism. Guantanamo Bay had been a naval base for the Americans: it was just a destroyed bit of Cuban soil when finally taken. Both Castro Brothers went there (separately) for the propaganda shots but it was no good to anyone in the state it was left in. Garrison troops were sent in and they didn’t enjoy their time there among the rotting corpses.

The Cubans used a former infantry division as a reconfigured marine brigade for operations staged out of Grenada to take over islands throughout the Lesser Antilles. The Grenada garrison was only a few thousand men strong and they sure were busy. Their operations all weren’t conducted at once: they were spread over a week and a half. The 9th Marine Brigade met little opposition but was given quite the task and it was a logistical strain and a half to achieve all that was desired. If those in those islands had had the capacity to resist, then the Cubans would have found this impossible. There was no armed resistance through, only outside interference. The first landing was in Barbados where a surprise arrival of Cuban troops from a freighter was supported by a civilian airliner landing full of more men. Less then three hundred Cuban soldiers took over the island with Barbados’ government being taken wholly by surprise and unable to react. The Cubans just showed up and took over the airport plus the big port facilities. A few days later, it was almost the same with the independent island nations of St Lucia and St Vincent & the Grenadines. Cuban troops this time came on the back of demands made upon those governments not to resist: they had no soldiers to fight the Cubans which came by air and sea – a few hundred men at each again – within the hour and before any reply was drafted. France had troops on Martinique and sent some from there up to the nearby Guadeloupe (another one of their sovereign islands) first before effectively doing just what the Cubans had done had taking over the airport and main harbour on Dominica. If the two had clashed, France and Cuba, the Cubans were in the position to win but that wasn’t their intention. Dominica was saved from the presence of Cuban troops supposed to be ‘invited in’. The Cubans went elsewhere, striking northwards next. Antigua & Barbuda plus St Kitts & Nevis – again, tiny island nations with no armed forces – saw Cuban troops soon show up after demands were made on their governments for ‘regional security’. Then it was the island dependencies of Britain and the United States to the north of them. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and the US Virgin Islands were all undefended and there were Cuban troops in them soon enough. Puerto Rico, an armed camp full of eager national guardsmen ready to fight, was left alone: it was too big of a challenge to take on and the Cubans would have met defeat there unless there were a lot more of them. From Puerto Rico, American A-7 fighter-bombers shot-up the Vieques landing force (and national guardsmen were then moved there) yet St Croix and St Thomas were lost because permission wasn’t granted for the 92nd Infantry Brigade to move ahead of US Marines in support: those US Marines were left tied up defending Florida against an invasion which wasn’t coming. There was a reason for this being done and it wasn’t a land grab on the part of the Castros. Those islands had airports and harbours on this side of the Atlantic. They were undefended and valuable. They were now in Cuban hands and to be used by aircraft and ships coming across the Atlantic.

Jamaica was threatened with war by Cuba if it aided the British in Belize in any way. Costa Rica saw Nicaraguan troops move through their country towards Panama (arriving too late for the fight) and was unable to oppose this. Small Cuban special forces detachments moved into the British-administered Caymans and the Turks & Caicos Islands near to Cuba where they fought isolated detachments of British troops far from home and all alone when Cuba had regional dominance. The Dutch and the French had their island possessions left un-attacked but there was no doubt that should the Cubans have attacked them, they would have been lost too. Through South America, only Chile and Paraguay went to war directly against the Cubans and their Soviet backers. Both countries were far away from the war which was fought and won in Central America plus the Caribbean. Between them, other South American nations refused to enter the fight – on either side – but spend the first few weeks of the global conflict focused internally. There were things which hadn’t been done by Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and the others went Kennedy was in the White House due to his action against others who had cracked down hard against internal resistance in the years leading up to the war. These countries professed support for the American’s plight but took their opportunity where they killed thousands of guerrillas, real and suspected, in major military operations soaked in blood. Communists and anyone else who had survived Operation Condor and South America’s dirty war for fear of American sanctions now faced death. Their own foreign backers from Cuba and Nicaragua didn’t lift a finger to help them.



Mid to late September 1984: Canada and North Atlantic

Canada entered the war when it was struck at just as its southern neighbour was in a surprise attack. Nuclear detonations didn’t occur in Canada nor was it subject to an invasion, but parts of the country resembled a war zone due to events that continued past the war’s first day. Ottawa, the nation’s capital, saw terrorist attacks take place by the KGB using proxies. They made an unsuccessful attempt to kill Prime Minister Mulroney on his first day in office with a bomb but did assassinate the Chief of the Defence Staff, Canada’s most senior military officer. There were shootings made on Parliament Hill and then a vehicle-borne bomb attack to follow those. Arson and further explosions (smaller than before) rocked the city over the following days. Troops assisted the police in hunting for cells of terrorists who tried to drive the whole country to distraction by killing what became softer and softer targets each time yet with the casualties mounting among civilians. Many of those trying to maintain the fight in Ottawa eventually found themselves on the wrong end of Canadian military bullets; others ended up arrested and subject to interrogation – some of that controversial in later years in how it took place – to uncover their networks. The naval base at Halifax was another target for several attacks with the GRU active here with their own Spetsnaz commandos busy at first using motor-launches to fire RPGs into the sides of several ships at the outbreak of war and then making use of midget submersibles to lay naval mines. Once things had thought to have quietened down, the Spetsnaz returned several days later with mortar attacks from inside the grounds of commercial premises supposedly swept and declared secure. The mortar rounds did little physical damage, but the distraction was quite something as a major commitment of men was needed to conduct secondary sweeps at a distance around the naval base… some of those troops assisting fell victim to ambushes and booby-traps. Some of the Spetsnaz did get away, returning to hideouts far away but others did not with them being killed or, in a very cases, captured when wounded. CFB North Bay and then afterwards CFB Cold Lake, other Canadian military bases saw one-time commando attacks. At NORAD’s secondary headquarters, that assault when war came was met with bloody failure (the men were carrying gas which they unable to use). Out in Alberta, the airbase at Cold Lake was hit several days into the war when security was meant to be high and the base’s defenders ready. They failed to stop infiltrators getting in and attacking aircraft but also personnel too. If Halifax had been embarrassing for the Canadian Forces, then Cold Lake was a humiliation: the attack there shouldn’t have got through.

The scale of Soviet military activity inside Canada didn’t die down. There were commandos in hiding across the nation, with different groups lying in wait for a substantial period of time, long after the war started, before going into action. Canada wasn’t ready for this but then no country would have been. The transportation network suffered from a series of small but effective attacks away from the big, attention-grabbing actions. Rail links running westwards across the Prairies were hit multiple times through open rural locations with patrols unable to cover such huge ground. Canada had mobilised its reserves but they were taking time to get organised. During that, plus the scale of the areas they needed to cover for internal defence against foreign soldiers, meant that the Soviets kept attacking. There was a return to gunfire and explosions in Ottawa during the war’s second week: again, when everything was meant to be secure. Military targets were this time hit by the Spetsnaz who were now active in Canada’s capital. Canada was forced to pull troops meant to be moving west into Ottawa to hunt for a disproportionally smaller number of men. News from across the Atlantic said this was happening there too so the Canadians weren’t alone. They did their best and eventually ‘secured’ Ottawa for a second time. They hadn’t caught all those whom they hunted though, there were always places to hide for those long-prepared to go to ground. Attacks on rail lines and the power supplies to them continued as well through the provinces in the west of the country. Canada was trying to move men and equipment via them but couldn’t do so. There were military units going to the Yukon up near Alaska yet also medical teams heading for the areas of Canada being drenched in fallout from the Soviet nuclear strikes in North Dakota. Whether affecting the second was part of the Soviet plan was unknown. It happened regardless. More use was made of roads in the end than the rail-lines which were just open targets for attacks.

Canada wasn’t having a good war at home. Overseas, Canada joined Britain and the United States in pulling military forces out of West Germany and starting to bring them home. Canadian warships set sail out into the Atlantic and the Pacific while there were movements of aircraft at both the eastern and western ends of the country. The latter was to do with the fighting around Alaska which spilled over into Canadian territory. The former was with regard to the situation on Iceland.


The Soviets took control of Iceland at the war’s start by the use of less than five hundred men and two ships. Deception was key to the mission because small forces were used and any big attack, even one with overwhelming force, would be opposed and leave what was wanted in Iceland facing possible destruction rather than being captured completely intact. It was what should have been done in Panama, it was later said, to take the canal there rather than see it destroyed by using Soviet commandoes rather than Panamanian infantry. On Iceland, Keflavik Airbase was seized without demolitions when its few American defenders taken by surprise like the whole country was. That was what the Soviets came to Iceland for: that one airbase so they could use it and the Americans couldn’t.

The opening move was made in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. The two Soviet ships had both arrived in the morning and neither was a warship. One was an old Baltic ferry supposedly on its way to be scrapped on the other side of the Atlantic – from Finland to Canada the ferry was going – and the other was a Soviet registered freighter making a stop for fuel. Neither were supposed to be unthreatening. Iceland’s coastguard (their only armed forces) paid attention to the freighter but not the vehicle ferry which had Greek owners apparently. Upon a satellite signal, both ships came alive when Soviet Naval Infantry poured out of them. Troops came out of the freighter and the ferry had it’s previously-sealed bow doors blow open with small amounts of explosives allowing the flooding of its vehicle deck in shallow waters. The Naval Infantry were soon all over Reykjavik. They took control of the institutions of government and also the American embassy where the few US Marines guarding that building were unable to use their radios to contact their fellow American military personnel at Keflavik. Land-line communications were cut too. GRU personnel had been all over the small city in peacetime on reconnaissance in this friendly open country which was a NATO nation but had no military nor intelligence agency beyond the local police. Those military spooks accompanied detachments of Naval Infantry in doing what they did in Iceland’s capital to silence the country’s connections with the outside world while in the harbour, naval engineers got the vehicles out of the ferry: four light tanks, four tracked armoured vehicles and eight wheeled armoured vehicles. One of the PT-76s sunk in shallow water (killing its crew) and two of the BTR-60s refused to motor off away from the harbour due to engine troubles. The other vehicles, including all of the MT-LBs, left Reykjavik for their destination of Keflavik. Who needs assault hovercraft from a barge carrier!?

That assault there was something that the US Air Force and US Navy personnel couldn’t stop. There were security police units but they faced around vehicles mounting weapons including the trio of PT-76s with their cannons. Keflavik was a military base and also a civilian airport too. The Soviets used that to their advantage as their Naval Infantry soldiers within the armoured vehicles plus those following in some coaches & buses taken over went into Keflavik through civilian access points. The surprised Americans hesitated when there were civilians in the way. The Soviets did not. The Naval Infantry raced across the wide expanse of the airbase. They went for the security force’s headquarters post and flight operations too. American aircraft in-sight were shot-up, so too anyone armed who tried to engage them. Firefights ripped through Keflavik. The Naval Infantry were good soldiers but they fought an opponent who gave it the best that they could when caught so unawares. Still, the assault worked. Keflavik was taken and little physical damage was done in the end. None of the F-4s flying from here got off the ground and an aloft US Navy P-3 (others were destroyed on the ground) was left without a home to go too once it became clear that the Soviets had Reykjavik Airport as well. Soviet transport aircraft flew in later that night bringing in more Naval Infantry to secure what was taken as well as the first men to make Keflavik a fully-functioning base for naval air operations over the North Atlantic. Within days, the first of those flight operations would begin.

Lajes Field in the Azores faced a similar assault to take that Portuguese facility which the Americans also had use of. There were Naval Infantry who came from supposedly innocent and unthreatening ships – this time one each in Angra do Heroísmo and Praia da Vitória – to unload men and a few armoured vehicles to complete an over-ground assault rather than an airborne or seaborne assault. The Portuguese had troops on the island of Terceira though. These were reservists who weren’t mobilised at the moment of assault yet who were capable of fighting once they got their hands upon some weapons. The Soviets thought they had control over the armories but a little bit of luck and a lot of cunning saw that control fail at one site. Rifles were made available to what men were involved in this effort to fight back, to fight for Portuguese territory from a very unwelcome invader. Guerilla warfare on an island as small as Terceira was going to be difficult yet unlike Iceland, Terceira was part of an island chain. On other nearby islands throughout the Azores, the Portuguese quickly moved troops and aircraft too coming across from the mainland. There were a couple of warships which made fast sailings to the Azores. Portugal moved to smother Lajes Field before the Soviets could get it fully operational. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t without a lot of death and destruction taking place. Both sides took losses. The Soviets had Lajes Field and wouldn’t be dislodged from there yet the Portuguese made it almost impossible for them to put it to full use. There was also the matter of a lack of Soviet reinforcements coming to relieve those in the Azores via the Mediterranean within the allotted timeframe. A week at most, probably less had been the plan. After two weeks, there was still no Soviet reinforcement. Spain threw a spanner in the works there with its refusal to be neutral in the face of extraordinary Soviet threats and sweeteners coming hand-in-hand. Portuguese A-7 fighter-bombers were soon flying from small civilian airports on other islands and there was the entry of special forces teams made around Terceira on raiding missions. Like Keflavik, and those islands in the Caribbean, Lajes Field was part of a bigger plan. The Third Battle of the North Atlantic was raging and the few Soviet forces in the Azores were unable to play their role in that.


The US Navy’s Second (Atlantic) Fleet went into the war with a total of eight aircraft carriers as its primary fighting strength, on paper that was. Two were unavailable due to medium- & long-term major work being done upon them and another pair were in the Mediterranean. Of the remaining four, one was at sea when the war began and every effort was made to get the three others to see fast enough to join it.

USS Nimitz was that at-sea carrier. She’d come out of Norfolk at the beginning of the weekend before the war and headed southwards towards Cuba ready to take part in what was meant to be the US Navy’s contribution to avenge the shoot-down of American fighters off the Florida coast. The outbreak of war saw the Nimitz diverted out into the North Atlantic proper instead – the US Air Force said that they could ‘handle’ the Cubans – and dispatched to head towards Europe as a general direction first before then a specific tasking was given of Iceland. Intelligence reports said that Iceland was Soviet-held with fighters at Keflavik while it was also being used to stage maritime reconnaissance aircraft which were being used out over the sea to target other US Navy ships as well as those of America’s wartime allies.

The Nimitz went towards Iceland and met with battle short of that island. Soviet reconnaissance aircraft operating from Keflavik were used to track her so she could be targeted by their maritime bombers based back in the Soviet Union itself. The first attempted attack failed when F-14s from the Nimitz killed several of the reconnaissance aircraft in careful ambushes. A second try was made but this time the reconnaissance aircraft couldn’t locate the Americans who made excellent use of a passing storm system to hide from them and get very close to Iceland and make ready for an air strike on the war’s fifth day against Keflavik. It was a case of third time lucky for the Soviets. They had more aircraft in the sky and smaller ones too with the Nimitz closer to Iceland, aircraft which had better speed to evade American attention. The carrier was accurately tracked. In come those missile-bombers again and they launched from several hundred miles away. There was a dance of the vampires. The Nimitz avoided most of the attack but not all of it and was hit for six. Half a dozen huge cruise missiles managed to strike her with two of those having dud warheads yet each still whacking one heck of punch due to the force of the impacts and the explosions of missile-fuel. Fires followed the explosions which tore through the Nimitz. Thousands were killed or suffered terrible wounds: a third of her crew were casualties. Damage-control was effective and the Nimitz wasn’t going to be lost: she just couldn’t operate what aircraft remained aboard. The Nimitz, along with what other ships in her battle group had survived (others hadn’t), headed for British waters afterwards and were directed towards Belfast… which would set off a chain of events in the following week unforeseen by everyone.

From Norfolk, the three other Atlantic Fleet carriers departed with separate sailings made over a period of time. USS Independence first, then USS Coral Sea followed lastly by USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Them, their escorts and other warships all went through coastal waters which the Soviets had tried to mine but ultimately failed to do so with enough effectiveness. Some ships were sunk but the intention to blockade Norfolk with randomly-laid minefields and then the use of submarine attacks failed. The US Navy cleared those waters, their waters. They used land-based aircraft joining the ships and submarines involved, raking up three confirmed kills of Soviet submarines in those waters offshore. Independence turned for the Caribbean. There was Cuba that way and also all those islands which Cuba had taken control of. What was needed alongside the Independence was a second carrier though, one to assist in forcing passage towards the Gulf of Mexico past Cuba to get at Soviet shipping which the US Air Force had said it could handle but pointedly failed to do. A second carrier there would be missed. The Coral Sea and the Eisenhower both went east though, not south. They operated together, each with large air wings available with reserve air units attached to them. Their battleground was the North Atlantic. There were Soviet merchant ships (identities disguised as neutrals), submarines and also aircraft which the air wings from the carriers would join with the rest of the Atlantic Fleet in engaging. This was America’s ocean, such was the intent in sending the pair of carriers out, and there were allies on both sides of it whom they would fight alongside. They started racking up kills. A couple of escorts were lost to submarine attacks yet the carriers moved fast and all defensive measures – active and passive – were made use of. The Coral Sea and the Eisenhower aimed to cut off the Soviets in North America from reinforcement from home. There were major Soviet naval task forces stuck in the Baltic and in the Med. but others were out in the Norwegian Sea being aided by aircraft from Iceland. The carriers turned that way, aiming to reach those waters – and linking up with the Royal Navy too –, by the beginning of October. Real sea power was coming the Soviet’s way.



Mid to late September 1984: Britain (one of two)

Upon the commencement of war, the KGB used a trio of dupes, three angry young Britons fighting against imperialism, to attempt to assassinate the heir to the British throne, the Prince of Wales. The morale of the British people, their national will, was supposed to be crippled in despondency and fear by this attack and others. What the KGB did was cause the opposite of what was intended though. They only roused the anger of the British people and made sure that there was a national will to fight instead. That came about because the proxies which the KGB put to use killed the wrong targets. They were given every assistance in trailing Prince Charles right up until the moment of attack and provided with the tools which they would need. Instead, because they were only amateur but dangerous fools, the dupes missed him and instead killed his wife and her new-born baby. The Princess of Wales was dead and so too was the unnamed baby girl born the day before. Her, her husband and their second child (the eldest was elsewhere at the time) had been at St. Mary’s Hospital in London when the evacuation alert came. The KGB hadn’t planned for the attack to happen there yet that was where Prince Charles was at the allotted time and he was being rushed away by his own security team just like his wife and child were by specialist police officers assigned to them. In the confusion, one of the assassins threw their rucksack bomb under the wrong car. The bomb went off and both Princesses, mother and child, were killed. Prince Charles witnessed their deaths from the other vehicle. Princess Diana was the most famous woman in the world and she was dead, murdered with her new-born in her arms outside the maternity wing of a Central London hospital. The KGB would regret this but so too would other Soviet nationals – captured spies, downed aircrews and GRU commandos – soon enough. The British Government at first kept the news under wraps but after two days let the people know just what had happened. The country was already at war, another victim of a surprise attack, yet this event – neither the government nor the public knew the circumstances of the mix-up – united a nation in rage and the desire for revenge.

The killing of those two royals came in the minutes after five o’clock in the evening, UK time. Other terrorist actions rocked London at the same time. There was a bomb at a mainline train terminus and another in the ticket hall of an Underground station. Rush hour was starting and commuters were targeted by those bombs at the packed Charing Cross and Tottenham Court Road. Once again, fools were used: British nationals duped into aiding the Soviets in their intention to bring chaos to the capital. Then there was the attack on Whitehall. A lorry was driven at high speed along that street lined with ministerial buildings and which had Downing Street running off it. The lorry carried a rather big bomb and was meant to be driven through the gates – or at least into them anyway – to the little road down which the residence of the British Prime Minister. This was timed to begin at five minutes after five: believed to be the right time for when an evacuation was getting started of high-level government figures. Those two in the passenger cab were a few minutes late (London traffic) and also just didn’t have it in them to do as they were meant to. They had been assured that the plan would work, that they could crash through a make a run for it in time before the bomb went off but they knew that the bomb was on a timer and they were late. Their commitment was there, just not their willingness to die. They crashed the van into barrier away from the main gate, scattering police officers and pedestrians alike, and then jumped out each with an AK-47 in-hand. The two of them were anarchists, those dedicated to the overthrowing of the British state. Their friend from ‘Russia’ who had aided their attack was someone who had convinced them that despite his country’s own politics, he said he was with them. He wasn’t with them on Whitehall: he’d made his escape already and gone into hiding. They were quickly taken under fire and pinned down. Armed policemen from Downing Street and then MOD Police from over at the Ministry of Defence Main Building across on the other side of Whitehall pinned them down, wounding both. They tried to get away and fired their assault rifles wildly. Bullets hit civilians all over the place including those among the stopped traffic. The gunfight went on for three minutes. Then the bomb went off. The Cabinet Office and Foreign Office buildings, on the corners of where Whitehall met Downing Street, took the blunt of that explosion. Fifty-six were left dead in the end, including the two terrorists. That number didn’t include any senior members of the government.

The government wasn’t concentrated in Downing Street when war came to London. Ministers were in different parts of the city and the nation. The Prime Minister, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary were all safety evacuated from Downing Street and Whitehall buildings following emergency procedures which the KGB couldn’t get inside information on to exploit beforehand. That wasn’t the case with two other senior ministers: the Home Secretary and the Northern Ireland Secretary. Both of them had security details with a member among each who the KGB had previously gotten to via blackmail in the case of the former and bribery with the latter. Their evacuation routines had been given away. A remote-controlled car bomb killed the Home Secretary. His vehicle had been swept and was secure but when his convoy raced past a parked vehicle through London’s streets minutes away from the Home Office, there was a blast from a shaped-charge warhead to destroy the vehicle he was in: he died alongside four with him plus a trio of civilians caught up in the mess too. The Northern Ireland Secretary escaped assassination… only just. He was shot at while in Belfast with high-powered sniper rifles used from vantage points while he was in what should have been a kill-box below. The gunmen weren’t as good as they thought they were and he was pushed into his protected vehicle and driven away. Those who betrayed these two ministers wouldn’t survive the day. The KGB got rid of them both, eager not to see them caught and interrogated.


The attacks in London – plus the shooting in Belfast – came right before conventional military attacks were undertaken against Britain. The country went to war in the skies and across the seas near and far. At home, the domestic situation mirrored what occurred in Canada. The KGB had been behind the opening high-profile attacks and would aim to kill more people and set off further bombs, using their throwaway dupes to do so, but the war was really brought to Britain by the GRU using their Spetsnaz. The British Armed Forces were to be tried down as best as possible at home. Commando attacks took place across the country. There were attacks on military targets and civilian infrastructure used to support the war which Britain had found itself involved in. This went on while the country was still reeling from the first day’s strikes and also in the midst of both a mobilisation of reservists as well as Transition to War (TtW). TtW meant that the country saw restrictions on civilian movement, public services and tight security. There were problems with this domestically where opposition from ordinary members of the public was increased by some silly measures implemented in haste from existing TtW plans. These were there to aid the ability of Britain to keep on functioning in wartime whether that war be nuclear or conventional. They were drawn up by those who did so with the best of intentions. Those best intentions met reality. The security threat was very real though and Spetsnaz were active in many areas of the country. There had to be the controls introduced on movements and so much more because of them. Explosions at powerplants, armed raids against military sites (in isolated areas) and the shootings & kidnappings of government & military figures continued. Coastal harbours were hit, so were inland railway links. Civilian airports under military control – those including Heathrow which was being made use of by the Americans who were moving troops & military dependents – came under attack and so did factories for military purposes. Bombing raids on Britain like there had been in World War Two were absent in the Third World War yet civilians still lost their lives across the nation. Hunting down those commando teams was difficult and a costly exercise too.

A national government was formed. The royals were evacuated – some to Windsor; other to country hideaways – but the Queen stayed in London. The government did too where members of opposition parties joined with the governing party for the duration of the war. Thatcher brought Kinnock, Jenkins and Steel into the national government and the three party leaders were joined by Hattersley too (the shadow chancellor replacing the deceased Brittan as home secretary) where they would all act for the good of the country. A war cabinet was formed with daily meetings surrounded by tight security. At all times, one member of the war cabinet, and sometimes two of them, were physically not with the war cabinet and below ground far away from London. There was the expectation that with the war having begun with the use of nuclear weapons, those would be used again. A fear was there that Britain would be targeted by the Soviets, possibly in a fashion to strike a blow to the Americans by hitting their closest ally. Detailed preparations were made for British nuclear retaliation against such a possible strike with a designated survivor authorising that if the war cabinet was gone. The days went by and no nuclear attack came: still, Britain waited for it. That feeling that the end would come with a nuclear strike was one shared by many nationwide too. The national government had a terrible time leading a country at war. Rioting, criminality and general public unrest in certain areas broke out. The security issue was another major issue. London was hit again a week into the war. Bombs went off and they targeted civilians rather than the government. There were explosions in the following days elsewhere: in Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow. Terror cells hiding and waiting came out to plan bombs and then there were follow-up gun attacks hitting the emergency services too. Those undertaking these attacks either escaped, were killed or were captured. With regards to those taken prisoner, when interrogated, there was surprise at the expressed motivations of them when their politics met the reality of working for the Soviet Union. The two didn’t fit together yet they were acting hand-in-hand. These dupes really had been duped. When assured that they would be the first to be shot by the KGB should the Soviet Army ever show up to ‘liberate the workers’, they would refuse to believe that. They were killing civilians like they were to prepare the way for ‘revolution’ and that would be one supported by Soviet tanks. Well… they were traitors and would get their just deserts.

The killings of the royals upset the British public. There was a rush to sign up ahead of the limited conscription which Britain brought in by volunteers who wanted to join the reservists in being mobilised to fight. That fight was overseas though and one which therefore saw the mobilisation start small and build-up rather than be rushed. There were people who protested against the difficulties of TtW when it came to the closure of transport & communications links, electricity blackouts and the bringing in of rationing but then there were far many more millions who had been inflamed to do their bit after the royals and other attacks on Britain domestically. The Soviet nuclear strike on America plus the British Armed Forces being attacked only added to that. The nationalistic outpouring of patriotism was encouraged by the government along with the desire for revenge against the Soviets and their allies. This was something that the GRU feared would happen in their (ignored) assessment of why it was a bad idea to go after the Prince of Wales in the first place. Of particular note among that anger which was whipped up into a fervour through government control of the media was an ugly incident when a downed Soviet pilot – his MiG-25 had been on a low-level reconnaissance mission over East Anglia – was butchered by a mob when he was caught after a foot chase. They killed him for ‘killing Di and the baby’, hanging him from a tree and trying to set him on fire too. Other Soviet aviators were saved from similar fates by Home Service Force (a home guard force raised in recent years and fast expanded upon national mobilisation) but in that incident, those volunteer soldiers had simply moved to secure the aircraft wreckage rather than save his life. The fervour did help in other ways though with reports made to the authorities of all sorts of suspicious activities by outsiders by a public eager to aid the war effort. Most of that was fluff though it wasn’t in the case of a sighting of a Spetsnaz team which led to them being engaged and killed. Nor was it a case of the overeager when MI-5 officers followed a SAS detachment to raid an old rural farm where several missing members of the Soviet Embassy who’d left there in the hours before the war started were located hiding out.

Those Soviets from the embassy were moved under guard to join others like them (diplomats from several countries which Britain was at war with) yet as foreign nationals they kept away from those being detained at two other sites nationwide. On the grounds of the closed Keele and Lancaster Universities – shut like schools were under TtW; many children were happy! –, there were detention facilities where subversives real and suspected were held. Conditions at both were soon cramped and further sites would be later selected, again in rural areas. There were a lot of people locked up. A few were genuine adherents to the Soviet cause though most weren’t. There were political figures (no sitting MPs) and well-known activists who espoused a wide range of views from across the political spectrum. Troublemakers they were all deemed, those who would endanger public order in wartime. There were quite a few people who shouldn’t have been there yet they were held alongside those who many Britons wouldn’t have minded seeing hung. Soldiers guarded the external fencing set-up while inside both military intelligence officers and MI-5 personnel were talking with those being held… with that talking sometime going beyond just words when the hunt came for those behind the second wave of bombings nationwide against civilian targets.

This was Britain’s war on the home-front. There was war going on externally as well which the country was also fighting.



Mid to late September 1984: Britain (two of two)

The first two weeks of the war for Britain saw the nation’s military forces stretched beyond capacity into what would soon be regarded as overextension. There was too much attempted, too much done and too many commitments met. This was a situation which was unavoidable in some aspects though not in all. Britain found itself just like the United States did: under attack and with few allies. What allies it had, Britain tried to support as well for they were in trouble and their fall would only worsen the situation which Britain was in. Mistakes were made by the government and the military alike. There was a lot of confidence, some of that stemming from the overwhelming victory won two years before against Guatemala, that all that was tried would be successful soon enough too: unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. This wasn’t a war which Britain wasn’t prepared to fight. It was one that they were in though.

What became the Second Battle of Britain was a conflict defined by geography. Britain’s geographic position and the geography of neutrality when former allies refused to honour NATO treaty commitments in some ways protected Britain yet in other ways hindered the war which was being fought. That war came to Britain when the Soviets began their air attacks against the country and was also active in the seas around the nation. There were strikes made against military and civilian targets across the country. The Soviets had to get to Britain first though and that was no easy task. In return, Britain hit back against the Soviets rather than playing the sole role of passive defender. Alongside that battle, geography affected the choices made by both Britain and the Soviet Union when it came to their military actions elsewhere near to Britain. Iceland had been overrun and the Soviets moved into northern parts of Norway too: Britain responded to this by fighting them there to the north. Away to the south, the small Soviet presence in the Azores was soon smothered by the Portuguese, but Britain first intended to play a major role in that before the ‘threat’ to Gibraltar came about and that was more of a priority. Either side of Britain, to the east and the west, there were again theatres of war with the Soviets being active in further instances of fighting where again geography with the tight confines of the Baltic Exits and the open expanses of the North Atlantic which came into play.

Britain’s aircraft and ships were busy. They were dispatched into combat zones at all points of the compass and around the British Isles themselves. Troop commitments overseas began as well from a small start to something which grew fast yet wasn’t too much. There was a pull-out which began from West Germany and Britain was instrumental in officially bringing East Germany into the war. The neutrality of several neighbouring nations was tested and abused. So much conflict occurred in such a short space of time and the strain which that was going to cause became apparent soon enough when it became clearer that this war wasn’t going to be a short one and it was one which the difficulties experienced already were only the start of.


By taking Reykjavik and the Keflavik, the Soviets had effective control of Iceland. They brought their aircraft into there to use Iceland as a base for North Atlantic operations. Striking at the US Navy was one factor in that yet by making use of Iceland, this put their forces deployed there or making use of Iceland as a springboard in a position to aid in the war being fought against Britain. It was the same with Norway. The Soviets sent their Naval Infantry to several locations on the Norwegian coast – Tromso, Andoya, Narvik and Bodo – in opening surprise attacks with small numbers and rapidly reinforced them. The Norwegians fought back yet needed help. The Soviets started using those airheads in Norway like they did with what they had in Iceland to make attacks against Britain from the north. The Norwegian Sea saw the arrival of parts of the Soviet Northern Fleet. They sent their warships around the North Cape and into battle first with the Norwegians and then Royal Navy submarines. RAF aircraft engaged the Soviet ships as well while a British surface fleet was forming up as well. The northern mission was extended into Norway itself. There were air strikes flown by Tornados against the captured Norwegian airheads and then a troop commitment to Norway as well. Mo i Rana and Trondheim became the British airheads in Norway which were where the Norwegians were linked-up with to oppose further Soviet activity down the Norwegian coast. The Norwegians had forces cut off in the north, those behind the Soviet forward positions, and the Norwegians wanted help in assisting them: Britain refused there due to the inability to do so yet it was something seriously considered initially. What was needed was more available air and naval forces in the north. The Soviets were bringing in more of their own and Britain did the same. Then Orland Airbase was taken. This was a disaster for both Britain and Norway as it left Trondheim at the mercy of the Soviets and cut off the British and Norwegian forces inland away from the coastal airbase. The Trondheim Pocket was formed with the Royal Marines having the 3rd Commando Brigade and the British Army having the 19th Infantry Brigade inside there. They were pulled out in the end, withdrawing through the mountains (the coastal option being out) and being harassed while do so by Soviet aircraft. Where was the RAF? The troops on the ground blamed the RAF for their many loses from air attacks. The RAF, like the Royal Navy, was nearby but engaged in battles with the Soviets which raged further southwards. Losses continued to mount for both sides at sea and the Northern Fleet was rather more active than beforehand, especially once there was air cover from Orland (followed later by having control of the airbase at Vaernes operational too) for the Soviets. They forced the British backwards as the war physically came closer to Britain each day.

The Baltic Exits were in theory closed off as an avenue as attack against Britain but also for Britain to strike against the Soviets too when the countries around them declared their neutrality. Norway was in the war but back from the where air and naval access through them could come: Denmark, Sweden and West Germany lay alongside the Baltic Exits and were all refusing to take part in the war. West German neutrality was something not as clear-cut as that of its Baltic neighbours though. Soviet demands upon Bonn that West Germany intern all foreign military forces on its soil from countries engaged in war were not acted upon. Britain joined the United States and Canada in starting to remove their forces out of West Germany. Once it became apparent that this was happening, the Soviets started to violate West German airspace. They did so in the north, around Schleswig-Holstein and where the Baltic Exits were. Aircraft flew out of Poland and across West Germany into the North Sea. The RAF engaged some of them yet others managed to get past them to strike at Britain or Royal Navy ships in the North Sea. Danish and Swedish military broadcasts occurred where there were transmissions made over the radio in English and not encoded between military units in those neutral nations informing one another about what Soviet aircraft were where and everything about their flights. This caused quite the diplomatic fracas with the Soviets demanding that STOP while Copenhagen and Stockholm played dumb. As to West Germany, Bonn made repeated attempts to see a cessation of Soviet airspace violations but only using diplomacy rather than any military force. The RAF put Phantom fighters – ones recently withdrawn from West German bases back to Britain – over Schleswig-Holstein and ambushed several Soviet aircraft heading towards the North Sea when the West Germans refused to. This forward defence turned into offensive action when reconnaissance in the eastern Baltic showed the Soviets forming up their Baltic Fleet and also saw that the Soviets were using East German airbases along the coast to aid their air efforts too. East Germany wasn’t behaving like a neutral. A political decision among the British War Cabinet was made (on the same day as the one ordering the withdrawal from Trondheim) to strike at the Soviet fleet and also at those East German airbases. The Soviets were clearly going to try to force their way through the Baltic Exits and this was to be interdicted. RAF losses in what was deemed Operation Portland were significant and of little appreciable gain. More was achieved by the mining undertaken in the Skagerrak, the body of water between Norway and Denmark at the edge of the Baltic Exits. The Norwegians assisted in this while the Danes and Swedes complained bitterly when they found out: they were maritime trading nations and those waters were now extremely dangerous for their shipping. However, Britain feared that the Baltic Fleet would come out eventually and join with the Northern Fleet so that had to be forestalled. That concern was rightly justified, such was the Soviet intention. They were unable to stop the mining done and this threw a spanner into the works for their plans. They weren’t going to be stopped here though and a new course of action was decided upon to take place the following month.

The Royal Navy had two aircraft carriers in service at the beginning of the war along with an older, third one in reserve. There were more than fifty major warships and three dozen plus submarines. The North Atlantic was the main area of planned wartime operations for these fleet combatants with the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic Exits and elsewhere all secondary. Out into the North Atlantic the Royal Navy went, in hurried departures of vessels when they were immediately available to do so. Britain’s trans-Atlantic links were important and anti-submarine work was done. The air threat to the Royal Navy’s ships, as exemplified by what happened to the Americans, came from the Soviets making use of Iceland. HMS Illustrious and the HMS Invincible afterwards used their Sea Harriers to defend against this, to protect the submarine-hunters. The Soviets threw a missile attack against them. They managed to get a track on the Invincible and there came a massed attack similar to the one which knocked out the USS Nimitz. Invincible didn’t live up to her name. She was lost with others in that strike, a moral blow for the Royal Navy which had already faced loses to submarines with missiles of their own as well as torpedoes. When ships were sunk or set alight, those who served upon them were killed like the vessels were. The North Atlantic became a graveyard for the Royal Navy and the men who served within. They managed to destroy many Soviet submarines and, alongside the RAF, take out enemy aircraft yet the loss of the Invincible really hurt. Illustrious came very close to being hit in a repeat attack too, one which instead saw three of its escorts hit by multiple missile strikes. From hundreds of miles away those cruise missiles were fired when Sea Harriers failed to get at the scouting aircraft guiding those attacks in. Britain didn’t have the ships to lose. HMS Hermes, the third carrier, was meant to come out into the North Atlantic but was redirected to northern waters when she was available: the US Navy was sending its two carriers and the Royal Navy was eager to see them arrive to link up with the Hermes and other ships in the Norwegian Sea. More Soviet submarines arrived in the North Atlantic and Soviet Naval Aviation air loses weren’t significant enough for them to scale back their operations. They too were waiting for the US Navy to show up.

Events in the Mediterranean going their way – clashes with the Americans, neutrality of many countries and the participation of others – saw Soviet naval forces from their Black Sea Fleet move across the Med. in a westward direction. They had a Mediterranean Fleet in effect and one which had air cover too. That force closed in upon the Straits of Gibraltar. The Americans and the Spanish both had air and naval forces blocking the restricted entrance to the North Atlantic. In what was recognised afterwards as quite the mistake, a clear example of overextension, a decision was taken that British forces should be dispatched to the region. Gibraltar was in theory at threat from a landing of Soviet Naval Infantry or maybe paratroopers transiting via Libya, yet there were significant American and Spanish forces there. Regardless, the danger of Gibraltar being taken saw not only the transfer of mission from British forces heading to the Azores but the reinforcement of that expeditionary group too. Difficulties with Spain over sovereignty of Gibraltar cropped up among all of this leading to the Americans to point out that neither London nor Madrid would want the Soviets to have The Rock, would they? The RAF and the Royal Navy played a small but significant role in the Battle of the Gibraltar Straits against the Soviets while British troops in Gibraltar were uninvolved and not needed. Gibraltar was a distraction which the British Armed Forces didn’t need. They should have gone to the Azores. The Portuguese did well there but couldn’t finish what they started. In time, the error made with dire concern over the perceived danger of losing Gibraltar and therefore pushing aside the Azores mission would become apparent. London would regret that decision and there would be a blame game.

Mainland Britain was hit with bombs and missiles from attacking Soviet aircraft coming from the north and east. The first attacks came straight on the back of the terror attacks made in London and there was the initial fear that they could have been nuclear when the cruise missiles came in. No nuclear attacks, nor ones with chemical weapons, were made during the Second Battle of Britain though there was a response ready should that change. Soviet targets in their own country plus in Eastern Europe (maybe Keflavik too) would have received British nuclear retaliation should Britain have been directly attacked on home soil with either. Britain didn’t have gas, just thermonuclear weapons. That stand-off when it came to such a red line was a side issue to the conventional attacks. The Soviets slammed cruise missiles into Britain, including many older and obsolete ones too alongside the newer and more precise ones. Those missiles were sometime knocked out of the sky but in the majority of cases not. Nationwide, the country was repeatedly by these. There came bombs too. Fewer of these were delivered to target as the RAF was able to get at approaching bombers better than aircraft firing cruise missiles. However, when the bombs came, the attacks weren’t made in the area bombing fashion of the last war but rather with ‘spectacular’ strikes. Heavyweight conventional bombs weighing eleven, even twenty thousand pounds (FAB-5000 & FAB-9000 weapons respectively) were thrown at Britain in toss bombing attacks by high-speed bombers. The attacks were few but quite destructive when successful… or even not successful in terms of accuracy as bombs that size do a heck of a lot of damage. These attacks on military and civilian targets – the latter airports, harbours and power generation rather than any real urban locations – went alongside a whole range of coastal activities around Britain. Soviet submarines were active in laying mines and torpedoing ships; they dropped off commando teams in-places as well. There were air attacks made against shipping by Soviet aircraft where the majority of Soviet success was made by distance attacks rather than getting close. British waters were a war zone, an undeclared one for the sake of Soviet diplomatic efforts to keep most of Western Europe neutral, but still a dangerous place for military vessels yet also civilian ships too. Civilian shipping started staying away.


British casualties at home and abroad were staggering. A nuclear attack would have been worse, but the deaths and injures were still immense. On land in Norway, in the seas around Britain and in the skies too there came loses taken alongside those in Britain itself. Ammunition expenditure was beyond any projections and there was an issue with fuel supplies too when attacks were made on what ships came into British waters; North Sea oil & gas was shut down due to military strikes only adding to the problem when it came to fuel. The Americans were pulling their peacetime-deployed military forces out of Britain and also using Britain as a transit station for air flights to add to what they were removing from West Germany too. Britain was doing the same when it came to the British Army and RAF presence in West Germany as well. This was all quite the undertaking. It was done when that fighting was taking place elsewhere too, only adding to the level of military activity which the country was involved in.

The overextension of British military capability went beyond the edges of Europe. There was that rush deployment to Canada of troops to Alberta which was something that had to be cut back to a trickle soon after it started. Britain had to keep what it had at home because overseas missions were costly. Troops on the ground in central Norway were joined by others who were sent to southern Norway less the Soviets try to open the Baltic Exits using their own. There was that deployment of men to Gibraltar. Yet another set of military commitments were at home. There was the anti-commando role – where the Soviets successfully tied up far more men than they used – and also the situation in Ulster as well. Britain had the troops for far more fighting. They had all those men being withdrawn from West Germany and there had been a complete call-up of reserves alongside selective conscription introduced. Such personnel – serving, reservists and new recruits – were numerous and available. What wasn’t were vast stocks of aircraft and ships plus the ammunition for them to use. Combined with domestic troubles, and the Soviets keeping the attacks coming, let alone the overcommitment made through many different regions, this was what was causing Britain trouble early in the war and would only continue as the conflict did. It was too, including across the Irish Sea.



Mid to late September 1984: Ireland, north and south

The violent situation in Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, was something that the Soviet Union had long had an interest in. Britain was engaged in a conflict there which was both a political and military distraction for the country as well as a source of tension with the Irish Republic, disagreement with the United States and oftentimes seeing Britain at the wrong end of world opinion. The opportunities for direct interference, to mould and shape events to suit Soviet interests, appeared to be ripe for the picking. However, the situation wasn’t a clear-cut as divide between one side and the other. Adventurous plans made in the Lubyanka by the KGB faced the reality that nothing with Ulster was simple. Moreover, the British were judged as quite likely to detect Soviet interference and react accordingly in the strongest terms. To be caught interfering would cause the Soviet Union more harm than any good could come out of playing any major role there. That being said, Northern Ireland was still somewhere of interest for the KGB and when he was KGB Chairman, Andropov had sent arms to one of the smaller terror groups before later, as Soviet General Secretary, making sure that Libyan – and later North Korean – sources of arms went to Ulster. The transfer of weapons was covered up deftly. Politically, the motives and aims of the biggest Republican group in Northern Ireland, that being the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), were at odds with the Soviet Union. The second largest group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), shared some of the same ideological ideas as those espoused by Soviet propaganda yet there was no real alliance between the KGB and the INLA. It was they who had received those arms sent but they were regarded in the Lubyanka as untrustworthy and unreliable. The PIRA was the group which the KGB would like to see have more successes: their hierarchy was quite rightly fearful that exposure of any contact with the KGB would see a drying up of support from the United States.

Then Kennedy got himself elected. Andropov had moved away from any schemes when it came to interference, even second-hand, in Northern Ireland. The American president could do more good for Soviet interests there than the KGB could. He watched the dramatic tiff between Washington and London take place and had hoped that something more could come out of it. Kennedy didn’t live up to expectations though and neither did Thatcher either: she hadn’t done anything too foolish when Andropov hoped that she would have done to exasperate the situation with Kennedy’s affection for all things Irish and thus his idiotic approach when it came to Ulster. When the dispute over the hunger strikes of INLA and PIRA prisoners died down, Kennedy moved onwards to upsetting other allies instead of the British. Andropov had his own distractions yet his successor at the KGB, Chairman Chebrikov, had decided to start a new chapter in Soviet involvement in Northern Ireland. Using the proxy of Libya once again, the INLA were set a shipment of weapons. This was nothing too dramatic but it helped re-establish links severed. As to the PIRA, they were shopping all over the world for their own weapons. Some came from America, others from across Western Europe and more stolen directly from the British. Contact was opened up through some of their arms suppliers and the KGB when the PIRA tried to diversify sources by going elsewhere in the Middle East to Lebanon and the Palestinians there. Kennedy was seen by some – certainly not all – in the PIRA leadership as having betrayed Ireland by how he had promised so much and then failed to deliver. The KGB moved to exploit that perception of betrayal. They found themselves a way into the PIRA and exploited that.

As war approached, one which the KGB knew was coming but the INLA nor the PIRA had any idea about, Soviet involvement in Northern Ireland increased even further. The INLA received a shipment of weapons from Libya ahead of schedule and on ‘good faith’ terms: long before payment was due. The schism in the PIRA when it came to Kennedy saw the KGB move even closer to the faction which they were working with and supply them too with arms which they didn’t have to pay for nor declare to the rest of their organisation either. Into Northern Ireland in the days leading up to war came KGB personnel as well as a pair of small GRU Spetsnaz teams. Neither the INLA nor the PIRA was told about the Soviet commandos brought into Ulster and misunderstood why the KGB was risking undercover officers like they were too. The outbreak of war explained everything. The Spetsnaz attacked British military bases in Northern Ireland and also were responsible for reconnaissance ahead of cruise missile attacks. The KGB made their failed attempt on the life of the Northern Ireland Secretary and afterwards they provided shelter for other agents who were setting up to use Ulster as a base of operations for future activity. This was all done under the noses of the INLA and the PIRA. They weren’t informed what was going on and their opinion wasn’t sought. Splits emerged within the INLA over this and there were further issues within the PIRA as a whole when it came to how the Third World War had come to Northern Ireland. They were far from pleased to see Soviet missiles slam into Ulster because the accuracy of them was far from perfect… civilians died, Protestants and Catholics alike with no discrimination shown by those explosions. The Soviets were urging both groups to start attacking the British and to go all out. The British were soon to lose this war, the KGB said, as the INLA & PIRA could play their part in that victory so that afterwards liberation would come for Ulster.

The Republic of Ireland was caught up in the war too, wholly unexpectedly. The government in Dublin had no intention of abandoning long-standing neutrality to enter a conflict such as the one which broke out yet they were slowly dragged in. Ireland was furious at the loss of life suffered in Washington when its embassy was caught in those nuclear blasts there which also took the life of the foreign minister who was visiting the United States at the time. Kennedy was a friend of Ireland and his murder – there was no other way to put that – was an affront to Ireland. There was too the use of Irish passports, ones fraudulently obtained, by KGB personnel as well as their proxy terrorists that were used to help them kill civilians in many countries. Soviet intelligence activities out of their embassy were outrageous and formal complaints were treated with contempt. Several Irish ships and foreign ships heading for Irish waters, crossing the Irish Sea, were hit by Soviet mines, missiles and torpedoes. At Shannon Airport, a Soviet Naval Aviation aircraft, one of their big maritime patrol aircraft, made an emergency landing after being engaged by the British. It was interned along with its crew. Soviet diplomats from the embassy wanted the aircrew handed over to them and responded aggressively when that was refused. Ireland was ignored as anything significant by the Soviet Union and her neutrality was being raped. To follow all of this up came events in Ulster. Dublin was made aware of the GRU and KGB presence in Northern Ireland and passed this onto London: everything with that transfer of information from the PIRA to Dublin and onto London was unofficial. The Inter-Irish Border was an emotional matter for Ireland and those who lived the other side of it – whatever their religion – were seen as Irish in spirit if not legally. They were losing their lives in crossfire though the greatest loss of life didn’t come until the Port of Belfast was attacked on September 27th. That smashed-up American aircraft carrier had just made port and was offloading casualties while all around her there were military facilities plus civilian infrastructure being used for the war effort by the British. Technically, the Port of Belfast was a legitimate military target for the Soviets to hit. Hit it they did, with a lot of weapons. Casualties were immense and stretched into the city when many cruise missiles went awry and slammed into urban areas of Belfast. The Soviets hadn’t had this much ‘success’ anywhere else in their air attacks against Britain and were quite proud of what they achieved. Ironically, that carrier escaped unharmed despite being the focus of the attack with everything else but the USS Nimitz blasted to ruin. Individually, everything done – apart from the attack on Belfast – was enough for Ireland to break her neutrality. When put together, including the hundreds upon hundreds of casualties in Belfast among civilians, this caused a decision to be made in Dublin. War was declared upon the Soviet Union by the Republic of Ireland two days later. This wasn’t a decision taken lightly and one which Ireland knew was going to cause pain for the country and her people but enough was enough.

Enough was enough was a viewpoint shared by the INLA and the PIRA as well. Soviet attacks pre-Belfast saw British military personnel killed alongside Ulster civilians. The larger KGB presence with the INLA told them C’est la guerre while the smaller team of liaison officers with the PIRA was a little more apologetic but said that in war people are killed and there was a greater cause here. Dublin’s declaration of war saw certain Irish Republican figures deem those to the south as ‘West Brits’ – an insult – yet to others it gave them the excuse to turn against the Soviets who were in Northern Ireland. This would put them on the same side as the British, yes, but they were also on the same side as the United States and the Irish Republic as well. There was the shooting of several INLA men by their own side, those closest to the Soviet viewpoint of a Marxist revolution eventually coming to Ireland (not something which was wholescale KGB policy but used for dealings with the INLA), and once that house-cleaning was done, the INLA unleashed their gunmen. They engaged the Spetsnaz team which they knew about at their hideout and killed them, taking casualties themselves while doing so. As to the KGB men, they were executed and their bodies dumped in public with signs hung around their necks written in Gaelic. ‘Killer de mhuintir na hÉireann’: Killer of the Irish people. The PIRA disposed of the KGB personnel they were in contact with using far less publicity and as to the Spetsnaz team, they passed that information onto the British Army and let them handle them… deciding that it would be best to see both kill each other. There was no official ceasefire in Ulster. The Troubles still technically continued. As to acts of Republican terrorism, there were no major bomb attacks nor shootings though. The INLA started an internal civil war while the PIRA reconciled itself where those who had been working with the Soviets made up with those who had always said it was a bad idea; this didn’t mean that everything was forgotten but for now it was pushed aside. Dreams of World War Three bringing about liberation from British rule, reunification with Ireland and a people’s revolution had met the cold hard reality of war. For some, it was a case of ‘better the devil you know’. The Soviets had shown their true colours to both the terror groups in Ulster and the Irish Government as well. How London would have enjoyed saying ‘we told you so’, but they were too busy at the moment.

[James G]

Mid to late September 1984: Western Europe

The firing plot for the American nuclear strike on Leningrad included two targets on the Karelia Isthmus. Both military bases there were struck with nuclear hellfire like Leningrad was and other military sites in the general Leningrad area too. These were all air-bursts with hundreds of kilotons of explosive force used. The fallout from each of those blasts was still substantial despite the lack of ground bursts. This all occurred on the borders of Finland and, as could be expected, the Finns were not best pleased. Panic hit Finland in response. There was afterwards the fear that further nuclear strikes would come again near to Finland or that explosions elsewhere within the Soviet Union would send fallout Finland’s way as well. The weather was monitored and fallout patterns predicted. In the end, Finland suffered from low levels of radiation though that was understood after the fact, not at the time. As to the war which followed, Finland wanted nothing to do with that. Finland wasn’t a member of NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. What happened with other countries was unfortunate yet Finland had to look after herself. Norway was invaded by the Soviet Union and again that was a matter which Finland didn’t want to get involved in. However, the Soviet Union saw things differently. Moscow made demands upon Helsinki. Those were eventually acquiesced to under the threat of the Soviet Union forcing the issue using troops. There was access granted through Finnish Lapland for Soviet aircraft as well as the use of the Finnish rain network in the north. Finnish territory wasn’t used to invade Norway directly, but to support the follow-up stages where what Norwegian forces had been cut off in the initial invasion were dealt with by the Soviets. It was a testing time for Finland. They were all alone and threatened by their neighbour. No one was able to come to Finland’s aid if the country refused Soviet demands and they were thus granted. Finland sought to avoid becoming a vassal or worse, yet Soviet forces made use of their country. Sweden also neighboured Norway but not the Soviet Union. No demands were made upon Sweden to assist in the effort made to conqueror Norway. In Stockholm, the government prepared for war to come their way and mobilised the Swedish Armed Forces waiting for the Soviets to turn their attention to Sweden next. There were some minor airspace violations and also partial infringements of Swedish territorial waters. Moscow was testing them, the Swedes decided, to see how they would react. A strong reaction came though one which was proportional. Warnings were made in the open and Sweden showed its willingness to fight if it had to by moving aircraft and warships. The Soviets didn’t press the issue. Still, the Swedes were waiting for when they finally did. No one in Stockholm thought that any good for Sweden would come out of a war with the Soviets and it wasn’t one asked for. War didn’t come to Sweden like it didn’t to Finland either yet no one could be sure that it wouldn’t soon enough.

Denmark used the ‘German excuse’ as other countries did when NATO commitments weren’t honoured at the outbreak of war. If West Germany wasn’t fighting, neither were they. Cowardice was the opinion of many; the sensible thing to do in such a situation said others. This contrasting view of the decision made in Copenhagen not to fight when West Germany wasn’t being invaded, nor their own country, caused division in Denmark like it did across Western Europe through other countries which had done the same thing. The arguments for entering the war were that this wasn’t a war that Denmark should sit out when their northern neighbour Norway had been invaded and their fellow NATO ‘allies’ like Britain, Canada, Portugal and the United States had all been attacked like they had. Denmark should sit this one out, came the other viewpoint, because it was a war which had seen the use of nuclear weapons and there was no attack made upon Denmark itself. There was a crisis in government with ministers resigning and the same with senior officials. The Danish Queen stepped in ahead of a fall of the government and intervened by meeting with high-level political figures and urging for the formation of a national government. Even without war coming directly to Denmark, it was recognised that Denmark would be affected by this conflict. That Denmark was. Denmark was a maritime trading nation yet the seas around the country became dangerous. There were the sinkings of several ships which the Soviets at once accused the British of doing to frame the Soviet Union and force Denmark into the war. That was baloney and the prime minister – who remained in post but with a far different make-up in his government – knew that: the ships sunk and the lives lost had been Soviet efforts at intimidation. It was after this that the Danish Armed Forces were instructed to make those radio broadcasts, which the Swedes afterwards copied, about the movements of Soviet aircraft & ships. Denmark had territories distant from the mainland: the Faroe Islands and Greenland. To each of those, there was the dispatching of reinforcements for defensive purposes. In doing so, the Danes sent aircraft and ships of their own across the war zone where Britain and the Soviet Union were fighting. There were some close calls but no military casualties inflicted. The Faroes became an armed camp while at isolated spots along the coast of Greenland, near air facilities and harbours, there was a Danish military presence. The Americans wanted to make use of those air facilities in Greenland and were politely refused permission. The Soviets wanted American activities at Thule to cease and the over-the-pole radars to cease operations. Denmark refused to close the station, claiming that it had been taken into Danish custody – a lie – and would stay operational. Like its Baltic neighbour Sweden, Denmark feared war coming to them yet there were red lines which Denmark was refusing to see crossed. It was a dangerous game, one which would be going on for a long time too.

The Low Countries – Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – joined with the Danes in blaming West Germany neutrality for their own. Their abandonment of NATO obligations was excused away by copying the lead set in their neighbour to the east. Each of them faced extraordinary criticism from former allies who were now at war. Nonetheless, the Low Countries wanted to stay out. They too feared nuclear weapons being used against them and there were no Soviet tanks rolling across the North German Plain. The Belgians and the Dutch each had troops in West Germany and they stayed there. This was a decision made when France made it clear that her soldiers would remain and, in fact, be reinforced as well. The Low Countries didn’t flood West Germany with their own forces though they did keep their armed forces on the highest state of alert just short of full mobilisation. West German neutrality entered shaky ground as the war went on and there was that concern that the wrong decision had been made. The Soviets just might invade. That fear was one expressed by the heads of the three government together and in their collective talks with the French as well leading to the role played by the Low Countries alongside France when it came to West Germany before the end of the month. In the meantime, American military forces within the Low Countries (there weren’t that many and the majority of those being service support units) left, heading south into France and eventually towards the Atlantic ports. This included the emptying of the POMCUS sites on Belgian and Dutch soil, an undertaking achieved with the full cooperation of the governments in Brussels and The Hague. As to the British, they started moving their forces out of West Germany not through France but instead through the Low Countries. An agreement with London was made on this. The Soviets issued threats where they stated that the neutrality of the Low Countries wasn’t an honest one. Brussels was more alarmed than The Hague was on this matter and, despite furious British protests, cut back the evacuation quite significantly. The Dutch carried on. Security was immense during this as either a so-called terrorist attack was anticipated – one only to look across into West Germany – or maybe ‘an accident’ with a Soviet submarine. Such events didn’t occur though. The Soviet threats had nothing behind them: they were too busy elsewhere and also wanted to keep the majority of the Continent in its neutral state.

Italian neutrality was challenged from within, not without. There were terrorist incidents in the country which weren’t directed from aboard. Domestic political violence occurred where various right-wing groups – those which had been the focus of the Gladio revelations – attempted to change the course of Italy’s neutrality. They were challenged by the state with left-wing armed groups trying to make their presence felt too…not in support of the Soviet Union either, but for their own ends. Bombings and shootings occurred in Italy, through the north of the country and in Rome as well. The Italian government cracked down hard and used troops to support the Carabinieri. Prime Minister Craxi was the target of an attempted assassination which left him badly wounded yet he (stubbornly) refused to step down from office when there came strong political opposition to the failure to control the violence hitting the nation. His opponents were also outraged by what happened with Malta right under the noses of the Italian Armed Forces: Craxi hadn’t given orders for an intervention there. From his hospital bed, he did send troops against the terror groups though and gave them orders to crack down hard. That they did. Those who took up arms against the state felt the full force of it. There were many unpleasant instances which took place and were subsequently covered up. This was done to avoid the possibility of civil war taking place and was successful. If it hadn’t been, one only had to look at what was happening in Greece.

President Mitterrand’s promises of continued friendship shown towards both the United Kingdom and the United States were at first met with scepticism by some due to France’s declared neutrality. France kept its word though. Neutrality didn’t mean hostility towards Britain and America, just a set of circumstances having occurred where France didn’t feel it was able to participate in this war without nuclear warfare coming to the French people. There was a wealth of intelligence sharing which was made and then there was that help with the transfer out of West Germany and into France of American military forces. France made sure that the roads were kept open and that the rail-lines were functioning too. French military special forces (not the civilian ones) were used to eliminate such terror groups like Action Directe when they rose their ugly head attempting to strike at the Americans moving through France. There were also the actions inside France, and into West Germany too, of French intelligence operatives who seized and detained individuals which France considered to be willing or unwilling supporters of Soviet interests: their detention was in many cases illegal unless France was in a state of war but it happened regardless. France doubled its troop commitment into West Germany as well with the trip-wire force there strengthened through central and southern parts of the country. If France had to fight a Soviet invasion of West Germany, the country was going to be in trouble even with those additional numbers of men on the ground. They were sent though. In other activities, France took the lead in an initial Belgian initiative when it came to pan-European cooperation once NATO was doomed. Outside of Paris, at the Château de Rambouillet, heads of government met (Craxi had to send his foreign minister) to discuss economic and security measures to be brought in while war raged all around them. This was difficult and not all aims were achieved but it was better than nothing. None were participants in the war yet it was going to affect them all. The EEC overnight became a far more important establishment than it had ever been beforehand.

West Germany was hit with violence when the Red Army Faction made terror attacks following the beginnings of the movement out of the country of American, British and Canadian forces. It was those leaving the country who were targeted. There were questions asked by others as to why the Red Army Faction would want to delay that – it was what they wanted after all – but the actions of that group were never always fully explainable. West German authorities managed to stop several attacks and the Americans used wartime rules-of-engagement when necessary as well. Still, some attacks got through. West Germans themselves were leaving the country. Not many, maybe ten thousand by the end of the month, yet something that was of note. Those who departed from their native country went to others such as France and the Low Countries or even further. These were people who feared that the neutrality of their country would leave it open to eventually coming under Soviet Domination and for them personally, that wouldn’t be the best of outcomes due to the politics. They and the foreign soldiers departing as well were leaving behind a country which staggered from political crisis to political crisis. The government was all over the place and there came the sudden illness of Chancellor Vogel which turned fatal. What killed him was something that couldn’t be explained. It was a poison which no one in the West had yet the capability to detect. Regardless, it was clearly an assassination. There was no possibility that it was anything but coincidental or something that could be explained away. The man who attempted to replace him, the foreign minister and Stasi plant, tried to blame the CIA for this with some ‘evidence’ which fell into his lap. It was he who had pushed for West Germany neutrality and won that argument back on September 17th. His final move to take charge of the country saw a near universal refusal of anyone willing to serve alongside him in any government. There was a vacuum in leadership post-Vogel. The country’s president – normally a ceremonial post but with reserve powers for times of crisis – stepped in and was trying to form a new government when Britain launched its Operation Portland. Bombs fell upon East Germany from RAF Tornados and within hours there came a formal announcement from East Berlin that East Germany was at war. It had already been said inside West Germany and from without that East German neutrality was a fraud though the Portland bombing attack upset many senior West German political figures who were soon to join the new government: British actions had occurred without telling them (the Tornados had flown through West German airspace) and put their country in danger. At the same time, those French activities to detain certain people were partially revealed when something went wrong with an operation in the city of Mainz and there were deaths which occurred in crossfire. It looked like French terrorism on West German soil, especially when they effectively kidnapped two politicians from The Greens. Paris denied everything. When it came to the Portland bombings and the Mainz Incident, West Germany took longer to form a new government. That they did, eventually, and there was a delegation sent to sign the Rambouillet Accords when it came to European wartime cooperation. West Germany got a raw deal out of Rambouillet though: they came late to the party. In addition, the new government in Bonn had no idea about discussions which had taken place at the château outside France’s capital (an official residence of France’s presidents) where there been preliminary plans drawn up as to how to deal with West Germany if it had moved towards coming under Soviet influence. France – with the support of its allies – had been prepared to go further then snatching those politicians from The Greens and also ‘disappearing’ the former foreign minister: they would have sent paratroopers to Bonn and been supported by those ground forces sent in. Such plans were put on hold when West Germany sorted itself out with new leadership but they weren’t shelved because who knew what the future held for West Germany and Western Europe beyond?



Mid to late September 1984: The Mediterranean and Southern Europe

Opening the war in the Mediterranean had come a complicated attack by Soviet forces against the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet. Flying from both Libya and Bulgaria, missile-carrying bombers launched their payloads upon the carriers USS John F. Kennedy and USS Saratoga. These air attacks were coordinated with missile firings coming from a surface flotilla targeting the Kennedy – which the bombers from Bulgaria (flying above Greece) went against – and a submarine launching upon the Saratoga too. Everything was meant to happen all at once with scouting aircraft passing on reconnaissance gained by them and beacon broadcasts from Soviet spy trawlers – those infernal AIG ships which followed US Navy carriers all over the globe – right at the correct moment of attack. This was a sneak attack made in peacetime… well, just when the nuclear attacks went in across in North America. Nonetheless, while the US Navy was officially operating its pair of carriers, plus assorted battlegroups too, in peacetime mode the two of them were on a heightened state of alert. The Saratoga was coming to relieve the Kennedy after the latter had been engaged in earlier months in combat against the Libyans and a high-tension stand-off had been underway since then. As to the Saratoga, once entering the Mediterranean and heading eastwards, she had become part of SIOP: the Single Integrated Operational Plan which Kennedy was part of where carriers in the Med. were part of the United States’ nuclear triad. SIOP for both carriers meant that they were a higher alert state than when elsewhere regardless of the issue with the Libya. Furthermore, when it came to Soviet aircraft in Libya and the Soviet Navy’s 5th Eskadra, neither was thought of as having innocent intentions and were known about. The missile-bombers in Bulgaria and submarine stalking the Saratoga from afar had been something taken note of as well despite Soviet efforts to hide them. There was an understanding that the Sixth Fleet was in harm’s way beforehand so defensive measures were in-place. Still, the attack came fast and the Soviets threw everything they had it. They didn’t escape unscathed. That noisy submarine which launched on the Saratoga with a barrage of missiles was afterwards tracked down and killed and many aircraft were shot out of the sky by Kennedy’s alert airborne fighters. Missiles raced in upon the pair of carriers – the Saratoga in the Tyrrhenian Sea (she’d just completed a port visit to Naples) and the Kennedy in the eastern Med. to the south of Crete – and there were a lot of those in the sky. The 5th Eskadra especially used its warships to fire off many of theirs. The Saratoga took damage from a trio of missile strikes and was left badly damaged; the Kennedy was sunk when hit a total of nine times including by two which had dud warheads. Other loses occurred among supporting ships, especially the amphibious ships carrying US Marines near to the Kennedy too. Casualties were horrendous. Following up the initial strikes came further attacks upon the stricken two elements of the Sixth Fleet throughout the evening and the night of the first day. The Kennedy was lost and so too were the majority of her battlegroup. The Saratoga was wounded and flight operations were impossible in her state. She ran; officially, the carrier made a tactical withdrawal and headed northwards less those aircraft flying from Libya return unchallenged.

The humiliation for the US Navy came when the surviving ships in the eastern Med., which were laden with casualties and not in a good way, came under air attack once again. This time it wasn’t Tu-22M Backfire bombers flying from distant Bulgaria but Yak-38 Forger jump-jets flying from the Soviet carrier Kiev. Only SAMs from the US Navy ships could protect them against these aircraft as the Kennedy had been lost with most of her air wing on deck and those aloft being unavailable afterwards. The Soviet Navy hadn’t taken the whole of the Med., but was sure acting like it had. That carrier – a Northern Fleet vessel which had been in the Black Sea a week before the war and was meant to be returning home – had come down through the Turkish Straits alongside Soviet warships. There were soon more on their way. The Soviets reinforced their 5th Eskadra and made it a Mediterranean Fleet. Two days in, a US Navy submarine which had been unable to stop the massacre of already shot-up surface ships from joining the Kennedy in being eliminated struck back and struck back good. USS Dallas had failed to get at the Kiev but she put a torpedo into the wake of the Slava instead and left that missile-cruiser crippled in the water. The Slava was the flagship of the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet and still had half of her missile arsenal after firing the other half against the Kennedy. She was now going nowhere apart from being taken tow and heading for Crete. There was the Kiev and other warships but the Soviets would miss the Slava. They threw everything at finding the Dallas yet couldn’t find her. The Soviets moved on. Two US Navy warships had made it Israeli waters and were rated as no longer a threat due to their shot-up state. The rest of the Americans could be found to the west and so the Mediterranean Fleet went that way. They sailed past Malta, where the Libyans were present, and onwards through the Sicilian Strait. The Italian Navy watched them go past and the Soviets correctly assumed that they were passing information to the Americans. The Saratoga was sought for battle… once she could be found.

Soon enough, Dallas made her return to the fight. An attempt to get the Slava before it could reach Crete failed due to heavy anti-submarine efforts but instead the Dallas took out a supply ship and a tanker who were caught unawares. Killing baby seals it was. The real prizes had gone west though and the submarine chased them, getting another kill in the Sicilian Strait where one of the escorting frigates for the Mediterranean Fleet had her back broken in a perfect torpedo strike where she sunk in under a minute. Soviet aircraft out of Libya hunted for the Dallas but just couldn’t find her. The Dallas made it to the western Med. in time for the second major naval clash in these waters of the war, this taking place eight days after the sneak attack as the Soviets closed in upon the Gibraltar Straits. The Mediterranean Fleet was going west, to open up that access to the Atlantic. There were missile-bombers & reconnaissance aircraft operating out Libya and the Libyans had some fighters on Malta yet the Soviets had inadequate air cover. Air operations from the Saratoga were meant to have been impossible from what intelligence reports said and that same intelligence said that the stricken carrier had already cleared the Gibraltar Straits heading for the open ocean. Chase was to be given. There were meant to be a few US Navy warships blocking the way and joined by some Spanish vessels too. It was supposed to be easy. The Soviets blundered into a trap. The Saratoga had a part-functioning air wing and was off on their flank, behind the Balearic Islands, while ahead the Spanish were waiting. The Dallas wasn’t the only submarine in these waters either. September 25th saw the end of the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet as they were caught in an ambush themselves. Those little Forgers nor the Libyan fighters (who turned up late and were all over the sky) could stop the massed attack which came when the Americans and the Spanish turned their attention on the Soviet warships which just waltzed towards them expecting a victory. The Kiev went down to a Spanish torpedo strike and the Spanish would also claim two more ships; the US Navy sunk fourteen ships in the main engagement and got another three which made a run for it aiming to reach neutral Algerian waters (Dallas got one of those; four kills and one damage made her an ace, yes?). None of this made up for the Kennedy nor the other ships lost, nor did it change the fact that thousands of US Navy sailors were dead either. Still, there would be no breakout from the Mediterranean of Soviet naval forces: what little they had left was back on the other side of the Med. and when able, the Sixth Fleet was going back that way. When that was to be was a question that there was yet to be an answer to though. Malta blocked the way and the Soviets were moving further aircraft in before ships from the Black Sea could get there. The war in the Med. was far from over.


The naval war fought across the Mediterranean took place where there were nations which entered the war and others which stayed out. It affected countries through Southern Europe and into the Med. Basin despite the wishes of so many to stay out of this conflict.

Libya willingly entered the war and Colonel Gadhafi boasted afterwards of his role in sinking the Kennedy; Libyan forces had no role to play in that. The role which Libya did play was to provide basing for the Soviets to fly aircraft from as part of the initial attacks made against the Americans and then afterwards. Libyan troops also arrived on Malta three days into the war. They came in commercial ships – escorted by many Soviet ‘advisors’ – and right under the noses of the Italian Air Force which didn’t get permission to open fire. The Libyans took over the country. Prime Minister Mintoff supposedly invited them in to help secure the peace. Mintoff didn’t do so willingly: his youngest daughter was in Soviet hands (kidnapped in the days before the war) and she wasn’t released when promised either. He had no power afterwards anyway. The Soviets in Malta alongside the Libyans took control of the island nation’s airport and harbours while Gadhafi also had men surround the Italian military personnel stationed on Malta in their barracks; there weren’t that many of them and they had orders from home to not fight but to defend themselves if attacked. This led to quite the stand-off there but also when it came to relations between an Italy hit by domestic violence and a Libya standing with the ‘victorious’ Soviet Union. Gadhafi boasted of an end to imperialism in Malta and came to the island to watched Mintoff resign from office. A people’s republic was being set up on the island.

Turkish neutrality didn’t mean that the Turkish Straits had to be left open. Turkey could have shut them to nations engaged in warfare and wanting to use them to move warships through. Turkey didn’t though and the waterway connecting the Black Sea with the Med. was busy. What did Turkey get in exchange? Being wholly left alone by the Soviet Union and its allies which near-surrounded the country (Bulgaria, Iran, Iraq and Syria as well as the Soviet Union itself). That Soviet diplomatic coup in getting Turkish acquiescence to provide them with unblocked access to the Med. came with Soviet support for Turkey to ‘correct’ the situation on Cyprus at leisure too. There was no alliance between Ankara and Moscow and the appearance of unfriendly relations was kept, but when Turkey was ready, there would be no objections for the Turks to move forward in Cyprus and overrun the Greek Cypriots. Greece would be unable to do anything to stop this. The country had severed its ties with NATO and then Western Europe several years past. When war started elsewhere, crashing what was left of the Greek economy, those at home took the opportunity to strike. Greeks fought Greeks with those on the left and the right attacking each other and forces of the state in the middle. Papandreou couldn’t stop this violence and the state fell into a state of near civil war in places. This occurred on the mainland but also on Crete. There were traitors to the Greek state on Crete and they declared a breakaway republic. It was one unrecognised by all but one taken advantage of when Soviet warships were apparently invited to make use of Souda Bay. What Turkey had been saying for years on this came true though, as before, Soviet ships making use of the naval base on Crete went through Turkish waters first. Turkey had also been a conduit for weapons sent to Greek armed groups pre-war too. Destabilising Greece through its economic woes and now when it was undergoing civil war had been in Turkish interests yet they would have to deal with the long-term consequences of that even if Turkey did not yet realise it.

Spain’s entry into the war had come about due to events in the war’s first few hours in the Gulf of Cadiz, on the Atlantic side of the Gibraltar Straits. There was a Spanish Navy base at San Fernando and a US Navy facility at Rota. Each saw major activity once the shooting started with both navies – Spain’s at that point neutral – sending ships to sea less they be caught in a nuclear strike against them. There was a Soviet submarine waiting for the Americans. The sonar operator aboard got tracks on several targets identified as US Navy warships and the captain started opening fire with missiles first and aiming to finish off as many as possible afterwards with torpedoes. The Spanish Navy operated Knox-class frigates (ones built in Spain) like the US Navy did. One of those was set alight from a missile hit. To follow this up, in what looked like a deliberate strike against Spain, that same ship was torpedoed before the Americans were eventually able to sink that submarine and put her remains on the ocean floor. Those dead Soviets believed they had gotten a good kill on that one ship along with several others; overconfidence in how many vessels they hit, plus their own ability to hide afterwards, saw their doom. An accidental missile strike was bad enough but a follow-up attack on the same ship convinced Spain that the action was done purposely. How could the same mistake be made twice? News of a Soviet landing in the Portuguese-owned Azores came on the back of the sinking of their warship saw a decision made in Madrid to enter the war. Spanish entry threw everyone. Portugal had expected their neighbour to go neutral as so did the Americans and the British. This assumption was the same in Moscow. The sinking of that Spanish ship wasn’t known about and the Soviet’s approaches afterwards to get Spain to reverse this decision were made without that knowledge. They didn’t want Spain in the war and expended effort to get them to not back up their words with action ahead of the next time there was a clash between their armed forces in that September 25th naval action which Spain played such a vital role. Spain was hardly a major threat to the Soviet Union but it did wholly mess with their plans for the Mediterranean region. Once battle came, everything changed and Soviet diplomatic contacts were cut off. Punishment then came to Spain when Backfire bombers flying from Libya made a raid against Cartagena – another Spanish naval base – and Spanish ships were open targets for attack wherever they were encountered. Soviet beliefs on the position that the socialist government in Madrid would take in wartime were shown to be false here and such beliefs when it came to other countries elsewhere in the world would be similarly challenged: Ireland was one example but there were other countries worldwide too which didn’t act as anticipated.



Mid to late September 1984: The USSR and Southern Europe

If the obliteration of Leningrad upset the Finns, it devastated the Soviets. They hadn’t expected it. There was no belief in them that the Americans would return fire with nuclear weapons and even if they did, if there had been a small chance that they would instead of talking, then there was no expectation that a Soviet city would be targeted never mind such as important one as Leningrad. The whole reading of the situation when the attack against the United States commenced was that the surviving secretary of defence, trapped inside the Pentagon, wouldn’t do such a thing. It hadn’t been Bentsen that they were dealing with though – would he or wouldn’t he have struck back? – and instead it was the vice president. Glenn had escaped from the nuclear assassination attempted against him and showed the Soviet Union that when it came to nuclear war, it was an eye for an eye. Washington had equalled Leningrad.

The thermonuclear blasts had occurred inside and outside of the city named after the nation’s founder. Two had occurred above Leningrad directly – both targeted upon the peacetime headquarters building of the Leningrad Military District – and six more through the Leningrad Oblast with one of those a long way off target (the remains of a ninth warhead had tumbled into the Arctic Ocean leaving a radioactive mess but no detonation). A pair of military bases in Karelia, three more to the south of the city and Kotlin Island had been selected for destruction by the Americans. Leningrad was gone, wiped off the face of the earth along with those who lived there. The city which had survived nearly nine hundred days of siege in World War Two had lasted less than an hour in World War Three. This attack had serious repercussions. It was the Soviet Union’s second city and a centre of industry, administration, transport and communications. A giant hole was knocked in the state’s control over the nation when Leningrad was hit. The elimination of Kronstadt – the historic naval base on Kotlin Island – came with the wiping out of several army garrisons, an airbase and the shipyard at Vyborg. The military loses wouldn’t cripple the Soviet Union yet they were nothing to dismiss especially the destruction done to Kronstadt where the majority of vessels in port had sailed from in the hours leading up to the war but the facility was gone for good. Fallout from the multiple air-bursts in the night-time sky came at once and then afterwards there was the loss of public order over a very wide area. The security situation in the days and weeks following the attack was immensely serious. Anarchy broke out with deadly rioting (for food, for medical care, for help) alongside those who died horrible deaths. The fear of radiation caused others to flee. They disobeyed orders from the authorities to stay put and fled instead. Those people had to be stopped and force was needed, deadly force. They would bring irradiated particles with them wherever they went but also spread news of what had happened with them too. Controlling the fallout – literal and metaphoric – from Leningrad was quite the challenge. Then there was the Kartaly missile field attack as well, where far more destruction was done by the many more explosions of American nuclear weapons in ground-bursts. The radioactive fallout from Kartaly was far worse than from Leningrad. Fewer people died initially in this strike at the southern end of the Urals though when the fallout was blown away afterwards the death toll would rise dramatically when civil defence measures failed and anarchy reigned.

The attacks on Leningrad and Kartaly, with their aftereffects too, put a major dent in Soviet domestic wartime activities. The country was at war and it was supposed to be transforming itself internally to fight that war. Mobilisation of reservists for the military and security forces took place and there was a switch in the industrial & agricultural sectors planned out. The state faced huge challenges in overcoming these. It was up to the challenge in many ways though certainly not in all. The leadership under Ustinov – who wasn’t a well man – believed that victory was soon to be theirs. They issued orders to meet those domestic challenges and the sternest of measures were employed at their behest. Food riots: shoot those who protest. Workers who were striking: shoot them. Those who won’t report for mobilisation: have them shot. The Defence Council, not the full Politburo, was making those decisions. Protest came from within the second body where what were called mistakes were criticised: the seeds of a brewing coup d’état were declared detected and KGB Chairman Fedorchuk put that down. There had been no coup planned nor even contemplated but the shootings happened when the so-called evidence was presented. The Defence Council wouldn’t be questioned and those suspected enemies were killed before they got the chance to become full enemies. This was all hushed up and a good enough job was done for the time being in keeping that quiet… of course such news was going to leak in the end though. What the Defence Council focused on was the war which the country had started and would finish. Troops were mobilised and the process of sending them overseas to join those already in war far away was underway. It was a war fought all over the globe. Problems cropped up and orders were issued to address those. There were those nations which wouldn’t behave as they were meant to, whose leadership refused to do as they were told. Small countries like Ireland and Spain were examples of these but then there were others too such as the Soviet Union’s neighbour to the east. The China Crisis begun and the Defence Council regarded themselves as being forced into preparing for what would soon enough become the China War. Chinese intransigence, China’s refusal to know its place, China’s daring would be something which they would pay for.


East German neutrality lasted a full week. It was all a façade and something which was surprising for those who had it done in how long it went on for. The only reason why East Germany had started the war supposedly neutral was to keep the West Germans out of the conflict. The thinking was that West Germany’s neutrality would stay permanent and remain so despite what happened with East Germany. Letting East Germany be the victim of an attack was part of that. That Britain struck at East Germany rather than the Americans was a surprise but not a disaster by any means. East Germany’s role in the war for Soviet purposes was minimal and not important overall. West Germany neutrality was what mattered and once that victory was won there in getting them to abandon their allies, then a major geo-political victory was won. East Germany would provide troops for the war overseas too. A small number but not something insignificant. Long before the country went to war officially, it had a battalion of paratroopers fighting in Arizona while a full division of motorised rifle troops was heading eastwards into the Soviet Union heading for the Black Sea. Just one, not two as first planned, air regiments of fighter-bombers would be joining those troops in making the long trip to North America.

Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria were each sending a near identical-sized troop commitment to support the war in North America: close to thirty thousand men from each of those three countries as well. It was more than a symbolic commitment as those Eastern European troops would be fighting when they (eventually) reached the United States yet under full Soviet command with not even the pretence of national independence when in combat. These Warsaw Pact countries were at war with America, Britain and the few other countries which were soon being called the Allies straight away. They were supporting their Soviet big brother and fighting for an internationalist cause to defend the Mexican Revolution against American Imperialism etc etc. Poland was different. No Polish troops were off to war abroad, none at all. The country remained occupied by Soviet forces – the Czechoslovaks and East Germans had departed – since the intervention there, again an internationalist cause, earlier in the year. Broadcasts from propaganda outlets in the West had called upon the Polish people to revolt and some had tried. That had been a failed attempt. Poland was under full Soviet control. Not only were there soldiers there but the KGB was all over the country. The Polish state had very little independence left and what there was did as it was told in declaring war while also fully supporting the occupation and thus the crushing of the attempts at resistance. The killing continued in Poland.

Through the Balkan countries which had communist governments, those other nations apart from Bulgaria remained neutral in the war. Romania under Ceaușescu didn’t enter the war because its leader didn’t want to. Neither did the Soviet Union want to see Romania at war either for the neutrality of the country as a conduit for many things was favourable… plus the Romanians weren’t worth the trouble either for Moscow. Yugoslavia was on its sixth leader since Tito had died with the collective leadership in Belgrade rotating a head every year among the different ethnic groups of the country. Andropov had built some greater Soviet influence in Yugoslavia post-Tito yet Ustinov hadn’t cultivated that to any great deal during his time in the Kremlin with everything else happening. Like Romania, Yugoslavia stayed neutral. Its neutrality was helpful too, even more than Romanian neutrality because Yugoslavia was a maritime trading nation with an extensive merchant fleet. The Soviets wanted to keep both Romania and Yugoslavia out of this war.


Inside Eastern Europe, in the middle of East Germany, was West Berlin. To that island beacon of capitalism in the midst of a dark sea of communism, no war came.

Everyone inside West Berlin expected war though. From the very start, despite East German neutrality, the war was anticipated to come to the western half of the divided city. If not East German troops, then Soviet soldiers were expected to come through the Berlin Wall and overrun the city. West Berlin was home to garrisons of troops from Britain, France and the United States while West Germany only had a police force present because technically, West Berlin wasn’t part of their country despite it being their biggest city in terms of population. Those troop deployments from the West were highly-visible and not hidden away. Outside, Warsaw Pact forces were always believed to be ready to overrun the city and defeat them once World War Three came. Panic hit West Berliners when the war started. There was a belief that the Soviets were coming to rape Berlin once again and when they didn’t, then it must mean that instead of Soviet soldiers, Soviet nuclear bombs would be coming instead. For reasons of ‘safety and security’, East Germany shut off the fixed road & rail links to the West; they didn’t however shut the air corridors. West Berliners couldn’t get out by air though and were stuck in their city awaiting the end. News from sources in the West which they heard spoke of neutrality in West Germany and fighting in America; what was heard from the East said that America had started a war and that German neutrality – both East and West – was the only way that the German people could avoid nuclear holocaust. Then East Germany went to war.

Outside of West Berlin, the East Germans had one full-strength division which had manoeuvred into attack positions and the Soviets had a further two. These movements were visible due to intercepted communications and what was seen from the air. The French Sector of West Berlin was in the northwest while the British and American Sectors were (respectively) in the west and southwest. It was in theory possible for British and American forces in West Berlin to be engaged and overrun while the French were left alone. That was something which was prepared for in West Berlin by the newly-established joint UK-US operational command. They were outnumbered and surrounded but had orders to fight if attacked. No attack came, even when East Germany entered the war. Paris let Moscow know that an attack on West Berlin would bring France into the war. That wasn’t what forestalled any attack though. Instead, it was the desire on the part of the Soviets to keep West Germany neutral which stopped their soldiers from going into West Berlin: France’s threats weren’t believed to have any weight behind them especially as they weren’t going to be attacked. Without war, there was still that chaos in West Berlin from the civilian population which took some time to die down. The city’s authorities took a fortnight to bring things under control yet eventually they did. The rail links were opened up first, then the road access too after a delay. Food and fuel came into the city. People were allowed to leave to head to West Germany. The days passed and war didn’t come.

What this left were thousands of British and American soldiers stuck inside West Berlin. No reinforcement came their way nor were they pulled out. They stayed in-place. There was a supply link which was used via the French military but it hardly made up for the peacetime situation. Questions were being asked in West Berlin and also back in the home countries of the men from the two garrisons as to whether they should stay. The presence was a drain and they were fighting men doing nothing when there was a war going on elsewhere. The symbolic presence in West Berlin was something of note, yes, but was it worth it? The troops stayed while the politicians pondered over what to do with them.



Mid to late September 1984: The Middle East and South East Asia

The Suez Canal was open to shipping of any and all flags as long as the vessels weren’t warships as defined by Egypt. It was announced as a blanket policy from Cairo: the international waterway which ran through the country would remain open though not to be used for purposes of war. That access granted to all meant that Suez was being used for the purposes of war though. Ships on war missions which were laden with men, military equipment and war supplies were flowing through. That traffic was going southwards and picking up every day. Few of the ships were registered Soviet vessels but they were serving Soviet interests as they headed for war zones far away while going through Suez.

On either side of the canal, the Egyptians (to the west) and the Israelis (in Sinai to the east) watched this traffic. The armies of both watched the other too. Kennedy might have been dead but the sort-of peace agreement which had had struck between the two held. Both remained neutral in the ongoing global conflict while other countries through the region had gone to war. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and South Yemen were all at war with the United States and its allies; America’s usual ally in the region in the form of Israel stayed neutral for fear of entry bringing about a full-scale regional war. In doing so, Israel had risked America’s wrath but was sailing through that storm well enough. Israel was keeping its word in supplying intelligence to the United States including the activity in the Suez Canal as well as interfering behind the scenes elsewhere in Moscow’s schemes through the region. This was all done for the security of Israel, with everything else secondary, yet Israel made sure that the Americans were aware they would have been even better friends if the situation was different. In fact, the message was that Israeli neutrality benefitted the United States by being able to offer more than it could in terms of support than if the country had been at war. Much of the top level of the Israeli Lobby in the United States was gone and those left were having the work cut out for them in their efforts.

Iraqi and Iranian coordination saw the two of them extend the military influence of these Soviet allies far away from the Persian Gulf and out into the Arabian Sea. The Iraqis had the Gulf sewn up and so the Iranians joined with a few Soviet forces – those operating from Bandar Abbas – in pushing far out to sea. There was access too for the Iranians from South Yemen where their aircraft and ships were able to refuel. The Iranians were using the F-14 Tomcats to fly combat patrols right out over the Indian Ocean and covering Soviet naval activity in securing access to the oil of the Middle East as well as aiding in the effort to keep the Red Sea exits (leading down from Suez) open too. There had been some clashes with had taken place across the water against small American, Australian and British forces. The Iranians had performed well, doing as they were instructed to under Soviet command. Iran had come a long way since the Soviet intervention in late 1979.


North Korea struck in South East Asia several days after beginning their liberation of the Korean Peninsula. Australia and New Zealand were at war with the Soviet Union and had declared an intent to start moving military forces to South Korea to help the embattled defenders there. Those opening moves from the Australians were being made by their peacetime deployed military forces based in Malaysia who were being redeployed up to the Korean Peninsula. There were combat aircraft and troops at RMAF Butterworth and it was there were North Korean commandos struck. Australian and Malaysian deaths occurred during this where the North Korean attack had very limited success in relation to the response which they brought. Alongside Malaysia, Singapore joined the war against North Korea afterwards. Those two countries were part of the Five Powers Defence Agreements quasi-alliance alongside Australia, Britain and New Zealand and when the North Koreans attacked, they joined together with their commonwealth allies in entering the conflict which was supposed to be far away but which had struck close to home. Butterworth wasn’t the only place in the wider region where North Korea acted in such a manner but it was the one with the most consequences.

Vietnam was dragged into the war by her Soviet allies and not with full acquiescence from the government in Hanoi. Flying from Cam Ranh Bay, Soviet aircraft fired cruise missiles at American bases in the Philippines to open the war. A counterstrike came afterwards, one directed back at that Soviet base in Vietnam and it was one which brought about defensive action made in Vietnamese skies by the Vietnamese themselves. Once again, Vietnam was at war with the United States though this time it was official. Moreover, in the following weeks, the Soviets dragged Vietnam into their conflict with China too. It was another war which Vietnam didn’t want to be involved in but it was to be the one which they got.



Mid to late September 1984: The Pacific

The opening of the war in the Pacific was in the same manner as it had been in the Mediterranean: a Soviet surprise attack on the US Navy. There were three carrier groups at sea and the Soviets aimed to knock out each of these by eliminating the capital ships of the Americans. It would have been a better move to try to kill US Navy submarines straight away for those were going to cause the Soviets far more problems yet the orders came from politicians who had a different thinking to naval strategists. American carriers ranged all over the world and were a source of might for the United States. Destroy them and kill the thousands of sailors aboard each, so the thinking ran, and a massive propaganda blow would be struck.

Two submarine attacks, one on the war’s first day and the next the following day, aimed to knock out USS Kitty Hawk and her battle group. Each attack failed. The Soviets lost both submarines in the western Pacific which went after the Kitty Hawk with the first falling victim to air-dropped torpedoes from a helicopter before she could launch her own torpedoes while the second was destroyed before it could fire off a barrage of cruise missiles when a Japanese P-2 Neptune dropped several depth charges atop her. USS Midway wasn’t so fortunate. She was attacked within minutes of the war starting when a flight of Tu-22s flow low and fast towards her after getting inside her aloft fighter cover. The F-4s which flew from the Midway (she couldn’t operate the bigger F-14s) had been spoofed away; more F-4s were just getting ready for an emergency launch once confirmation came that that America was at war but before then, those Blinders were inbound as they came over the Sea of Japan. Defensive surface-to-air missiles from several ships were fired at them and hits were achieved taking out three of the seven Blinders before launches were made and another one was downed afterwards. However, the Midway was quickly hit by supersonic anti-ship missiles which exploded upon impact. The carrier burnt herself out in the following hours after the fires took a-hold of the whole ship.

The third carrier was USS Carl Vinson. Like the Midway, she had been near to the Korean Peninsula yet the reaction from her crew was very quick. Her F-14s didn’t fall for the bait presented of supposedly a flight of aircraft coming over North Korea and ranging down above the Yellow Sea towards her but rather concentrated first on the others flying above the Tsushima Strait first. Tu-22M bombers, a flight of Backfires carrying missiles, were shot down and then there came the Yellow Sea engagement of Blinders afterwards. A repeat of the Midway wouldn’t happen with the Vinson. She headed southwards and behind her there was only one sunken ship: that being a Soviet spy ship, one of their AGI trawlers, which had acted as a beacon for the failed incoming missile attack before being blasted apart by naval gunfire from two destroyers slamming over forty shells into her. That night, the Soviets went after the Vinson again. Her escorts were hunting a submarine contact and the carrier was diverted away from danger yet that submarine was a Lira-class vessel, a submarine which had the NATO designation of an Alfa. This was a Soviet Northern Fleet vessel detached to the Soviet Pacific Fleet and undertaking the interceptor role for which she was optimised for though this time against a carrier rather than a ballistic missile submarine. The Alfa made a high-speed dash and fired a trio of torpedoes towards the Vinson. These weren’t ordinary torpedoes. They were VA-111s, rocket-powered supercavitating torpedoes. Magic bullets they were, wunderwaffe even. The VA-111 was designed for a nuclear payload though those fired were carrying conventional warheads and this affected performance as it was still a weapon in the testing phase. The first torpedo spun wildly out of control moments after launch and hit the ocean floor. The second hit one of the Vinson’s escorts when it should have slammed into the carrier; the third struck home. It rammed into the Vinson at a speed of two hundred knots, faster than any other naval weapon bar missiles. The speed of the impact more than the small warhead caused the most damage when the Vinson was struck in the stern. Propulsion was lost and widespread destruction was caused. That Alfa got away though didn’t return in the following days when the Vinson was taken under tow to Japan heading for Kagoshima. The US Navy hunted mercilessly for the submarine which had disabled their carrier but couldn’t find her when she sat still and silent near the bottom. There were more of those rocket torpedoes aboard though using them again would mean that the Alfa would have to leave her hiding spot and risk detection in waters which the Americans and their allies had dominance through.


The Pacific was America’s ocean. The destruction of one American carrier and the disabling of another didn’t meant that the US Navy was finished. Even if the Soviets had hit all three that they had gone after, the Americans still had more. In addition, the US Navy wasn’t just carriers but other warships, submarines and naval air power too. Then there were the navies of its allies in the war with traditional Pacific allies being far more dependable than former allies from Western Europe. Japan had quite the navy – officially known as the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force but in reality a navy – and there were the smaller navies of Canada, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand too. The Soviets had to fight the Americans and their allies throughout the Pacific with their own allies, the reluctant Vietnamese and the eager North Koreans, not being naval powers of any note. Bases for the Soviet’s opponents to use, ports and air facilities, were spread across the Pacific. The mission set for the Soviet Navy, supported by the Soviet Air Force yet only in part, was to fight and engage the Americans and their allies to keep them well away from Soviet soil. Support for the North Koreans was another task, so too was the far more challenging cross-ocean operation in Alaska. Offensive action was demanded for Soviet forces though, following the initial high-profile attacks where it was claimed that two American carriers had been sunk, the Soviets adopted a defensive posture in the Pacific where the naval staff managed to have one over on the politicians who believed that what was being done was offensive. The Soviet Navy was out with ships and submarines at sea with air missions were taking place too but it really was a defensive posture employed. The Pacific Fleet was split up all over the place with operations underway all around Korea & in Japanese waters, more off the Soviet coast and then the Alaska commitment. It was all too much.

The US Navy was stung by the loss of the Midway and the crippling of the Vinson. The Kitty Hawk was left alone in the Western Pacific until she could be joined by other carriers coming from home. Until then, the aircraft which flew from her fought alongside the smaller ships of the US Navy, the Japanese and the South Koreans too. There were sinkings made and aircraft shot down. The Soviets pushed their submarines and aircraft out far though kept their ships closer to home where they were better-protected. The Americans went after them regardless of that protection which the Soviets believed they had. From Subic Bay in the Philippines and from Pearl Harbor, reinforcements arrived to join the battle underway where the waters on the Pacific side of Japan were cleared of enemy vessels first along with access to South Korea from the south and west made secure. The Sea of Japan and waters north of there were more of a challenge. Japan was fully-committed to the war after entering it within hours of it starting and the Japanese were an excellent ally to have. They had some problems at the outbreak of war yet their air and naval forces were of high quality. Japan was one big aircraft carrier too, an unsinkable one.

Away to the south, Taiwan stayed neutral in the ongoing fight though Taiwanese neutrality was not exactly honest. China was placated with the non-country not being officially involved yet the Chinese had no idea just how much Taiwan was involved in the conflict. North Koreans commandos struck in Malaysia at RMAF Butterworth and small detachments of their men coming from commercial shipping (ships registered all over the world) struck elsewhere such as Guam and in the Philippines too. Their strikes could be viewed as nuisance attacks due to the limited capability they had but they were still disruptive rather than seriously destructive. North Korean fast missile boats, joined by Soviet ships too, had more success around South Korea rather than further commando attacks made afar.

The opening naval action was followed up by limited (by deadly) further instances of combat in the following weeks heading towards the end of September. Bigger battles were coming though before then the opposing sides brought more forces into play. The Soviets got their full fleet out where as many vessels were put to sea as possible and aircraft were deployed as far forward as possible. They brought out older ships from the reserve and made use of civilian shipping as well, especially for the support of North Korea and the Alaska runs through the Bering Sea. To the US Navy, each and every ship the Soviets sent to sea was just another target. The Seventh Fleet was fully assembling and the Americans watched as the Soviets split themselves into three parts due to geography and the lack of will – there was no other way to put it – to go out into the Pacific proper. One Soviet surface flotilla was in the Sea of Japan, another in the Sea of Okhotsk behind the Kuriles and the third in the Bering Sea. Air cover from land facilities (theirs pre-war or captured ones in the Aleutians) was being used to protect each as well as the mining of channels between islands and land masses. The Americans, joined by allied forces, went after them.


Kitty Hawk’s air wing – joined by aircraft which had been on the Vinson (some flying from the carrier; others from land) – was supported by the Japanese in striking through the Sea of Japan. News from South Korea about the fighting on land was bad, very bad indeed, but there was a naval war being fought over the a-joining waters where Soviet and North Korean naval forces were pushed further and further northwards back closer to their bases. This didn’t help much in South Korea but it did in Japan. Losses on both sides occurred yet it was the Soviets who withdrew and that withdrawal was one which saw them running from American & Japanese submarines set loose to sink anything in sight. Missile attacks came towards the Kitty Hawk again with Backfires making strikes where they fired from distance waves of cruise missiles. The carrier was hit by a lone missile in one of those strikes but the damage wasn’t fatal. Many of the Soviet reconnaissance aircraft were shot down before they would get a track on the Americans and the Japanese played a big role in that, including managing to get their F-4s into an ambush position against one of the failed strikes where half a dozen Backfires were brought down. The fighting here in the Sea of Japan (the Kitty Hawk stayed outside of those waters themselves) was going to be going on for a while.

Soviet forward naval presence in the Sea of Okhotsk was built around a battle group where the Pacific Fleet had many of its big ships. There was the carrier Novorossiysk and the brand-new battlecruiser Frunze (the latter rushed into service) accompanied by cruiser, destroyers and frigates. There were aircraft flying from the Kuriles and Sakhalin Island as well. Targets, so saw the US Navy, many targets. Two carriers had raced across the Pacific with USS Constellation and USS Ranger having coming from San Diego and lancing towards the Sea of Okhotsk. Some of the aircraft which flew from them had taken part in the fighting over land against the Cubans in southern California but in the western Pacific they faced a different enemy. Combat was met in the skies as the month ended with the land-based air presence engaged first before in October moves would be properly made through the Kuriles to get at those ships on the other side who were seeking safety there. If the Americans could bring the Soviets out into open water, that would be excellent though it was realised that the Pacific Fleet was going to make it difficult. Therefore difficult it would have to be.

The USS Enterprise, fresh from her Gulf of Alaska mission, broke into the Bering Sea through the eastern end of the Aleutian Islands. Soviet intelligence summaries had said that the Enterprise would stay outside and that the US Navy was fearful of the challenges posed in such waters especially since there were aircraft flying from the captured Adak & Shemya Islands. That was a costly miscalculation. Once through, Enterprise’s air wing went into action and shot up a convoy of ships heading for Kodiak Island where bombs and Harpoon missiles destroyed that supply convoy. Adak was raided next with bombs raining down upon the captured airbase. Eareckson on Shemya was next though before then the Soviets got a submarine to get among the Americans and hit a pair of the Enterprise’s escorts before her that attacker was sunk herself. Within hours, flying from distant Kamchatka came a Backfire strike: the submarine had got off a scouting report and only struck out when perceived to be under attack itself (that wasn’t the case). Enterprise’s F-14s got one of the reconnaissance aircraft guiding in the missile strike but missed another one which popped up and got off an ‘accurate’ location report. Vampires were in the sky. The Americans hit plenty of those inbound missiles but many more got through. They hit nothing but empty water when they arrived though. The Soviets had been deceived and been chasing electronic ghosts created just for that purpose. Enterprise’s strike on Shemya was then cancelled when it appeared that the Soviets believed she was sunk. She had to be sunk: they’d sent eighty plus cruise missiles her way. That was a terrible error to make. The Pacific Fleet pushed the Bering Sea battle group onwards to help eliminate any surviving ships who had been left without air cover. The Minsk was present, the carrier which was the sister ship to the Kiev which had done the same thing in the Med. after the USS John F. Kennedy was destroyed. Unlike the Kiev was eventually, she wouldn’t be sunk when the Americans sprung their ambush but the Minsk was still hit with four Harpoons when the Enterprise’s air wing got in close to her and those other warships present. Soviet fighters were knocked out of the sky as American air power was unleashed. Back to Petropavlovsk the Soviets would go afterwards, chased by the Enterprise and into the waiting arms of a pair US Navy submarines fast heading to cut them off on their approach to the ‘safety’ of home. The Bering Sea was cleared of Soviet warships and those men fighting in Alaska & Canada were left on their own.



Mid to late September 1984: Korea, north and south

Nuclear weapons were used during the Second Korean War. The escalation to such use of those particular weapons of mass destruction came following the employment of nerve gas first and it was responded to with a thermonuclear attack: a limited one, if there could be such a thing. Gas and then nukes changed the whole course of the war on the Korean Peninsula.

The North Koreans struck across the DMZ to ‘liberate’ South Korea at the outbreak of war elsewhere in the world. There was some Soviet support for the North Koreans but, generally, they were on their own. They fought the Americans alongside the South Koreans and were ready to fight troops from Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia at a later stage too. Kim Il-sung fought continuously for independence in his country’s war with Soviet advice rejected but constant demands for unquestioned support in terms of fire power and resupply. He made the unilateral decision to escalate and when retaliation came, Kim was the one who saw his country have that inflicted upon it while the Soviets stepped aside. Naturally, Kim escaped personally from what came. He sent his country to war and the death and destruction which came with it. That occurred both sides of the DMZ and in abundance.


The attack coming from the north achieved tactical surprise in places though neither operational nor strategic surprise. The strike was one which was anticipated due to the months of preceding tension and military activity. All the North Koreans could do was to pour more men southwards than their opponents could stop. That they did. The North Koreans kept on coming with more and more of their army moving southwards past the DMZ and through the upper reaches of South Korea. Day after day, night after night, they advanced. Whole attacking units were wiped out yet their destruction opened the way for follow-up forces to move through weakened opponents. American and South Korean forces kept falling backwards while suffering terrible loses. They couldn’t stop the North Koreans from taking more ground. Geography dictated the main North Korean advance where the mountainous terrain of the peninsula channelled their army. This was on (their) left on the western side: to the east of Seoul. It was through here where they fought the Americans and the majority of the South Korean Third Army first before being hit with a major counterattack by the South Korean Second Army. That counterattack rocked the North Koreans and their men died in their tens of thousands, but more were pushed forward afterwards. They ended up splitting their opponent’s centre and opening up a gap to push past Seoul – not through it – but then go around it from behind and head towards the sea to envelope it. The Seoul Pocket was formed, including Incheon and a large area as far out as Gimpo and Suwon at the beginning. There were US Marines in there from the 3rd Marine Division along with a lot of South Korean troops, men who dug-in to defend the country’s capital after being surrounded. Further American forces, what remained of three beat-up divisions from the IX US Corps, retreated with the bulk of South Korea’s mobile forces from their Second & Third Army’s further down the western side of the country. They kept on falling back, avoiding North Korean efforts to if not roll right over them, then encircle them in further pockets. This pushed them further and further way from the Seoul Pocket every day. Over in the east, the First Army was at first successful in holding the North Koreans back yet they too were soon forced to start retreating when the invaders were in the mountains in the centre of the country and struck at their landward flank, one which was lengthened daily by losses in the west. South Korea was prised open and the North Koreans kept on reinforcing.

Everything was tried to stop the North Koreans from coming onwards and taking over more of South Korea. American and South Korean air power was used tactically and strategically to try to stop that. The lack of US Navy carrier support was an issue in limiting that – three were meant to have been available for a Korean-only conflict but with a world war, none were – and so too were the repeated attacks on airbases in South Korea as well as across in Japan. The US Air Force lost Osan AB after the Seoul Pocket was formed and North Korean tanks moved south from the Suwon area, though it was North Korean commando attacks supported by Soviet air strikes which aimed to put a stop to the air support given to the defence of South Korea. When in the skies, the North Koreans were unable to challenge their opponents but things were different when they could hit American & South Korean aircraft on the ground. Soviet attacks using missiles struck through western and southern Japan as well with these crippling rear area bases supporting the air war. That war over Japan and up into the Sea of Japan – part of the wider war through the western half of the Pacific – negatively effected the fight on the Korean Peninsula for both sides. It hurt North Korean & Soviet naval efforts to protect resupply to North Korea yet also saw air & naval forces which should have been employed in the defence of South Korea used elsewhere. Then, of course, there was the war which the Americans were fighting at home which meant they couldn’t sent any major reinforcements to South Korea. There was the feeling among those Americans fighting the Second Korean War, from top to bottom, that eventually they were going to be pulled out and returned via Japan back to the United States. Both the South Koreans and the Japanese believed that too. How could America fight this war here when they were so embattled at home? The North Koreans and the Soviets were counting on that too.

In the areas overran, those civilians who were unable to leave in time or had chosen to stay, came under North Korean occupation. The fighting men of North Korea’s armies drove onwards but behind them came the ‘security’ units. South Korea was being liberated from imperialism and fascism, Kim had repeatedly declared, though there were no bombastic radio announcements about the mass killings which took place through the countryside, the towns and into the cities. It was quite barbaric yet effective too as there was no civilian resistance which rose up against the North Koreans through their rear areas. Huge massacres took place too among prisoners taken. South Korean officers and NCOs were shot en masse with the conscripts soon to form a slave labour army. There were South Koreans who served in the US Army, thousands of them known as KATUSAs. Such a posting was prestigious for South Korean conscripts because it came them a future as well as an escape from the often harsh environment of the South Korean Army. All and every KATUSA taken into North Korean custody was shot with no exceptions made: Kim had proclaimed such people traitors to all Koreans. American prisoners taken did not have an easy time in custody. They were beaten and many were killed. Such deaths weren’t a deliberate policy though for they were regarded by Kim, plus the Soviets too when they made their opinion on that clear as a condition of resupply for his armies, as valuable for the future: America would do a lot, give up plenty, to see the release of them at some point in the future. They were put to work in the meantime in brutal conditions where they cleared rubble, dug trenches and such like. Escapes were made among some men and there was also the freeing of almost four hundred such prisoners when South Korean marines with tank support from inside the Seoul Pocket made a major breakout across a wide section of the frontlines to overrun North Korean artillery positions. The Seoul Pocket was something that Kim personally took supervision over – commanding the operation from his travelling armoured train up in North Korea, not anywhere near the frontlines – and he wanted to see it eliminated. The pocket was being heavily shelled with big guns, heavy mortars and a whole lot of rockets. There were several localised breakouts made to smash into forward artillery positions and also air & naval evacuations made out of Seoul. The pocket was holding though conditions inside among the civilians caught up there not good with shortages of food and available medical care. North Korean artillery slowly and methodically smashed every structure in-sight one after the other as they edged forward taking more ground daily. The Seoul Pocket couldn’t hold forever.

The main North Korean effort continued to go down the western side of South Korea. The region of Chungnam became the centre of the fighting by late September. Around the city of Cheongju, the South Koreans formed a big salient which the North Koreans were forced to avoid if they wanted to keep going south yet which fast resulted in a threat to their flank in continuing their advance. This was done deliberately by their opponents with the main body of American and South Korean forces being able to fall further back away to the south while the North Koreans were distracted by Cheongju. That plan worked and the North Koreans were slowed. There was a defensive line being set up, running from the sea to the mountains with Taejon behind that. The (reasonably) narrow frontage and the mass of South Korean defenders were aiming to bring the North Koreans to a stop when they were very far from their start lines and when they were harried from Cheongju too. It was a good plan and one with a high chance of success. Then the North Koreans hit Cheongju with gas. Pre-war intelligence summaries in the West had downplayed Kim’s arsenal of gas but they were wrong. Cheongju was smothering in it where tens of thousands, soldiers and civilians alike, were killed. The next day, gas was used again with another mass attack made towards Taejon where there were equally massive numbers of casualties including many American military personnel there. Air reconnaissance showed similar North Korean preparations – understood after the fact when it came to Cheongju and Taejon but before the next time – being made for a chemical strike on Seoul. The Americans had gas of their own. Stocks of nerve agents had been removed from South Korea in the mid-Seventies and sent to Johnson Atoll out in the Pacific. Only some of that had been returned since war erupted though there was more back in the United States. Direct eye-for-an-eye retaliation with gas wasn’t favoured though not in South Korea nor back home. American loses to that gas in Taejon and projected deaths in a Seoul attack scenario brought forth a decision to in fact escalate. The decision was made at the top of the Glenn Administration which were looking to do more than just make an ‘appropriate response’.


American tactical nuclear strikes took place across both Koreas. Small warheads were used in South Korea to target North Korean chemical artillery units – confirmed and suspected – with a total of seventeen (of eighteen planned) blasts taking place with the biggest being fifteen kilotons. Two further strikes on September 29th occurred in North Korea with one destroying Kaesong and the other obliterating Wonsan with each of those having twice the power of the biggest blast south of the DMZ. Kaesong and Wonsan had both been hit previously by conventional air attacks but these missile strikes were something else. Kaesong would no longer be supporting the North Korean Army’s drive southwards and Wonsan would no longer be functioning as a supply port.

The nuclear strikes were controversial. The South Koreans were far from happy at seeing their country become a nuclear battlefield even with small warheads used and the destruction of so many chemical weapons units which the North Koreans had been using against them… their unhappiness didn’t stop a series of fierce counterattacks on the ground post-strike though to take back territory from the shocked North Koreans. At home, President Glenn got it in the neck from those opposed to using such weapons – in particular against Wonsan where the Soviets had ships – for fear of the Soviets making their own nuclear attacks elsewhere and there also came opposition for not going further with the nuclear attacks. Why not Pyongyang? Why not Havana and Managua? Why not Moscow? Things were far more complicated than that though with the United States and the Soviet Union pointing all those nuclear weapons at each other and each already having used them before. The nuclear strikes on the Korean Peninsula were part of a grand global strategy yet at the same time meant to be localised as well. They shocked the North Koreans and Kim had an ‘emotional incident’ within his bunker when he was informed that the Soviets weren’t about to retaliate on behalf of his nation. There were those in the Soviet Union among Ustinov’s Defence Council who wanted him to order nuclear strikes – through South Korea and Japan in direct response but also elsewhere in the world – yet he held back too. Like the United States, the war’s opening nuclear attacks had brought all of that fallout and the resulting chaos which came with that. Ustinov was sure that more nuclear attacks would bring only more – Leningrad had changed everything –, not a cessation to them nor was he prepared to give Kim the vengeance he demanded. The Second Korean War had already brought about the China Crisis and that, with its own nuclear dimension, was only exasperated following the nuclear strikes through both Koreas. More of the world was about to catch fire in the following days as the China War came about.



Mid to late September 1984: China (one of two)

The Soviet leadership didn’t want a war with China. Already fighting the United States alongside Britain, Canada, Japan and anyone else who got involved (as they did) was enough of a challenge. Going to war with the Chinese as well would be Hitler levels of stupidity and something which was decided would be fatal for the Soviet Union. Ustinov and his comrades on the Defence Council had made the firm decision pre-war that there would be no conflict with China. Considering this supposedly firm commitment, and the fact that Moscow was writing the script, for war with China to come within weeks of the start of the global conflict which the Soviets started and aimed to fully control was an absolute failure of leadership and one of the gravest mistakes ever made by the Soviet Union.

Deng was sent an emissary from Ustinov straight away where the Soviet Union informed China that there was no wish for war between the two countries, only peace. In fact, Moscow wanted to strengthen ties with Beijing after many years of strain now that the world order had changed. America would soon be beaten and the two leading communist nations should put their troubles behind them and work together. Chinese neutrality in the Soviet-US war was valued, Ustinov had Deng informed, though should China wish to enter the war against the United States, then that would be welcomed too. Hong Kong was free for China to reclaim, as well was Taiwan: Soviet support for the restoration of rightful Chinese territories would be unfaltering. Regardless of whether it entered the war against what the Soviets said were enemies of the both of them, China was offered quite the place in the new global order by Moscow, one which would soon be completed once the Americans were defeated.

There was a delay from Deng before he responded. China’s paramount ruler took a pause to see how things played out. He watched the Soviets with their global attack take place where many successes were achieved though also some failures as well. Information was gathered from abroad of exactly what had occurred in the lead-up to war where revelations were made post-attack of hidden events pre-attack. The deception used against the Americans where they were tricked diplomatically became apparent and from what could be gained from out of Latin America (China’s intelligence reach was limited there) said that a lot of military deception with a Soviet maskirovka had been put into place. The Americans were courting China at this time and provided some information on that, warning Deng that the Soviets had deceived them and their dead president: China would very soon be in for the same treatment. Those warnings were supported by what NSA stations located in western China – hidden communications interception sites – were reporting when it came to Soviet military activity across the Sino-Soviet border: what the Americans gained in raw intelligence, the Chinese had access to and their summaries matched that of the Americans when it came to the immense mobilisation inside the Soviet Union. The question was whether that army being raised due to be sent overseas to North America or to be used in Asia.

The Soviets queried the delay. Deng responded when he was ready, not beforehand. China would remain neutral in the war between the Soviets and the West, he told Ustinov, and would expect that its neutrality be respected. China was fully sovereign and would remain so. Concern was expressed over the military build-up on China’s border and the Soviets were told that that build-up would be matched by Chinese partial mobilisation as well so that there could be ‘no misunderstandings’. This warning from Deng was received in Moscow and not taken in positive fashion by the Defence Council. They let historical animosity and also personal feelings when it came to Deng play into how they responded. Ustinov himself took the threat of China mobilising very seriously and believed that they were deliberately trying to hamper Soviet preparations to send a couple of field armies across to Alaska from the Soviet Far East by readying their troops into attack positions, not defensive ones as Deng said. Soviet reconnaissance spotted Chinese troop movements which intelligence briefings to the Defence Council presented as offensive. The Chinese Army might be technologically backwards, but there sure was a lot of manpower that they had especially once they started mobilising. Then there too were the satellite pictures plus human intelligence (the KGB had Chinese spies working for them) which reported on Chinese nuclear readiness. The Chinese had a small nuclear arsenal yet what there was was being redeployed and spread out. Those missiles of theirs were pointed northwards and their bombers had the range to strike far into the Soviet Union too.

The Soviet reply was very different from the first message sent and begun what was called the China Crisis between Moscow and Beijing. China was being unfriendly. China spoke of neutrality yet wasn’t being honest in its intentions. China had those American monitoring stations (the Soviets knew about them) inside their country. Was China aware that the Taiwanese were working with the Americans too in their fight against the Soviet Union? Was China planning as well to ally with the United States? Deng responded far faster this time around. What China did inside its own borders was its own business and it was the business of China what happened with both Hong Kong and Taiwan, not anyone else’s. Deng told Ustinov that China didn’t want to fight anybody and only wanted to maintain its neutrality in this time of global war. His country also wouldn’t be told what to do though nor bullied or intimidated. However, there was a proposal for future possible friendship put forward, one which if agreement could be reached, China might decide to enter the ongoing global war at a later stage. When the Defence Council read this list of effective demands, one of their number compared Deng’s behaviour to that of Franco at Hendaye… unwillingly comparing Ustinov to Hitler by making such a comparison. Deng was demanding that Soviet troops leave Mongolia and that there was a complete Soviet pull out from Vietnam as well. If such things were done, then China possibly might be the ally that the Soviet Union wanted China to be. These were Deng’s ‘impossible demands’, ones made that he knew full well that the Soviet Union couldn’t accede to.

No message was sent back immediately afterwards as this time there was a delay from Moscow. They were busy arguing over how to respond. Deng’s demands stood no chance of being accepted, not now nor in the future. The Soviet Union didn’t need China to enter the war on their side and only wanted neutrality. Deng’s demands left the situation as it was with China playing no part in this war. That was fine, so be it. However, Chinese military activity and nuclear preparations continued. As to nukes, Soviet intelligence estimates on Chinese warheads went from three hundred to five hundred (the GRU and the KGB had different views there); the Americans believed there to be no more than two hundred. Whichever of those numbers the total was, there were a substantial threat to the Soviet Union and should there be any evidence they were about to be used, the Defence Council was ready to eliminate them… eliminate them alongside whichever bits of China and its people were in the way. Chinese conventional military forces were another matter. The small, unfrightening Chinese Navy – the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to give it its full and ridiculous name – was at sea off China’s coast but didn’t have the capability to in any way threaten Soviet interests. Their Army and Air Force were different. The equipment was old but still deadly and numerous. Then there were the numbers of Chinese soldiers which were quite alarming. Where China was moving these to was something else. All along the border with the Soviet Union there were soon Chinese land & air forces – it was a very long border and this included the Chinese-Mongolian border in Soviet thinking – and there was an additional deployment of Chinese forces to the frontier with North Korea too. This wasn’t 1950: the Chinese weren’t sending a ‘volunteer’ army there to go to the aid of North Korea. Instead, the majority of Chinese forces in that area were positioned in what the Soviets decided was a blocking position between Soviet and North Korean territory.

Soviet paranoia had a lot to do with how it viewed what Deng was doing but their paranoia was correct when it came to those particular movements of troops and aircraft. Chinese forces established a blocking position indeed, one on their own territory so that their sovereignty wouldn’t be violated nor neutrality infringed. The Second Korean War had seen North Korea come under American air attack yet the wider Pacific War had seen American – and Japanese – military activity through the Sea of Japan as well. The result was that very quickly, North Korean resupply from the Soviet Union was near cut off. There was a tiny land connection between those two nations on China’s border and the Soviets were making use of the port of Wonsan, but the supply lines were imperilled. Deng believed that soon enough, the Soviets would want first air and then ground access through China to get to North Korea. He wouldn’t allow that and should the Soviets consider trying to force the issue, they would be blocked from doing so when they understood his intention to fully defend China’s sovereignty.

Deng wasn’t a soothsayer; he just had access to enough accurate intelligence to tell him beforehand how things would eventually end up when it came to North Korea and the Soviet Union. That the Americans and the Japanese allies would establish a greater presence in the Sea of Japan when they got their act together was clear as day to China, especially when they had been tipped off by the Americans about USS Kitty Hawk moving up the East China Sea – thus closer to the Sea of Japan – so as to avoid any misunderstandings between the US Navy and the PLAN. As to the fate of the Friendship Bridge over the Tumen River, the rail crossing and only link over the eleven mile long Soviet-North Korean frontier, Deng didn’t know that the Americans would successfully manage to bring that down with a (costly) F-111 attack but it was an exposed point and Chinese military intelligence had highlighted its importance as when eventually hit, that would change things greatly. Furthermore, when it came to the port of Wonsan, China had no idea that it would be obliterated in nuclear fire by the Americans: Deng hadn’t believed that Glenn would use nuclear weapons in the divided Koreas and was actually rather upset that they had done so on the edges of China. The individual actions weren’t all foreseen, but the result was. The Americans severed physical links between North Korea and the Soviet Union. Deng anticipated that the Soviets would want access through China and he was prepared to face down any threat because he had his forces in place to stop that there plus any move made elsewhere to try and exert pressure on his country. He fully believed that the China Crisis wouldn’t become the China War because there was nothing that the Soviets could do about the fate of their ally in Pyongyang. In addition, why would they care about the eventual fate of Kim’s nasty little regime when they had a bigger war to fight? The Soviets would cast them adrift, such was the thinking of China’s leader, and China would stay out of this war. That was how things were meant to go.

Deng was wrong though, dead wrong. The use of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula had changed the whole dynamics of the ongoing war there and everywhere else. The war was coming to China.



Late September 1984: China (two of two)

Official diplomatic requests were sent to China the day before the first North Korean gas attack from both Moscow and Pyongyang requesting the use of Chinese airspace for resupply flights to North Korea. That joint message hadn’t been answered before Cheongju was gassed and there was no response too before the same was done to Taejon. Deng didn’t send a direct answer and instead ordered the increase of flights by Chinese fighters across northeastern China while making sure that ground-based air defences had firm orders to open fire on ‘foreign’ intruders. Aware of what happened to Kennedy and the United States back on September 17th, Deng made sure that leadership of his country wouldn’t be taken out in a surprise attack. He and his entourage left Beijing for an undisclosed location while both the Chinese Politburo and the Central Military Committee were also sent to safety. Military headquarters in the form of those of the military regions were also dispersed away from peacetime locations to field sites. As best as possible, Chinese nuclear forces had already been dispatched from peacetime sites as well. These evacuations were done with haste yet planned for beforehand. The gas attacks brought American nuclear strikes on the Korean Peninsula. They were small and spread throughout through none of them had or would have any effect upon China. Deng wasn’t informed beforehand though once the information came in that they had happened, he anticipated that the Soviets would use nuclear weapons in South Korea or maybe across in Japan. A second round of nuclear exchanges beyond those on the war’s first day was what was expected to occur and this time China’s leader believed that his country would be drawn in. He was wrong there but correct in that as well.

Kaesong and Wonsan were blown apart in North Korea and the two of them were major supply points for North Korea and its armies fighting in South Korea. Straight afterwards, when the Soviets refused to do as Kim Il-sung wanted and hit back at the Americans with their nuclear weapons, there came an increase in US Air Force & US Navy air activity over the Sea of Japan along the eastern side of the two Koreas. North Korea was being cut off completely from its Soviet backers and at that point, Deng decided that the time was right to tell the Soviets – he ignored Kim – that there could be no access for their aircraft through Chinese airspace and certainly not any land access either. The use of nuclear weapons showed the danger to everyone and he urged Ustinov to consider ‘rethinking’ this war. Deng’s behaviour was interpreted the wrong way in Moscow. The Defence Council had no wish for another American nuclear strike on their country due to the continuing horror being unleashed by fallout and weren’t going to see a repeat of that. The American nuclear strikes had come right before Deng had sent his reply where he refused the reasonable request made of China and also telling them that they had made a mistake in going to war (such was how they saw Deng’s remarks). What it looked like was that he had coordinated his actions with the Americans and this belief was the ‘supported’ by communications intercepted – but not decoded – between the Chinese and the Americans beforehand and afterwards. The Chinese were working with the Americans! This was just the start of that, Ustinov and those with him believed, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time. A decision was thus taken by the Defence Council which would reverse all previous thinking when it came to keeping China out of this war.


People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) J-8 fighters shot down a single Soviet transport aircraft heading towards North Korea and flying just inside Chinese airspace on the morning of September 30th. Radio warnings had been issued and they were ignored. The aircraft was sent tumbling in pieces towards the ground. The interception was monitored by the Soviets who had previously sent a message direct to the Shenyang Military Region field headquarters – they knew its dispersal point – telling them everything about the flight of that aircraft. Flying from back inside Soviet airspace, Soviet interceptors fired off long-range missiles that took down that pair of J-8s which were over in Chinese airspace straight after the transport was shot down. Once again, a message was sent via military channels though this one was meant to be passed onwards to Deng too. China was told to open up its airspace to Soviet aircraft and not shoot down any more transports. That military headquarters began packing up and starting to move to a secondary site with the message for Deng not sent onwards. There were no orders for such communications to take place with the leadership, especially not ones directed by the Soviets so they could get a line on Deng’s location.

The Soviets and the PLAAF took shots at each other throughout the rest of the day. More and more aircraft were dragged into the air battle which commenced along an ever-lengthening sector of the border above the course of the Amur River stretching from Mongolia to North Korea. Soviet transport aircraft, which was what all this was meant to be about, were missing from the fighting which took place. The Chinese came off worse. The Soviets had far better aircraft, but moreover, their command-&-control was better than the Chinese. The First Air Army and the Eleventh Air Defence Army had both already seen action against the Americans and the Japanese – and continued to do so – whittling down their strength but the Chinese were manageable at the time being. Soviet air operations moved across the border and into Chinese airspace to take the fight there rather than see it occur in Soviet skies. Aerial combat came with ground strikes too against Chinese airbases, missile sites and ground control stations being targeted. Those two Soviet commands had been reinforced pre-war from units within the Soviet interior and they had a good first day. The Chinese did have a lot of aircraft but they couldn’t influence the battle which the Soviets were winning. Regardless of victories won in the skies, there came no transport flights down to North Korea for the time being.

At dawn the next morning, Soviet offensive air missions ceased. The PLAAF had been defeated and shown to have been defeated too. The second factor was more important than the first. More messages had been sent to Deng through the day before and continued once the Soviets withdrew from a battle they had instigated and one which they had won. There was a wealth of intelligence which the Soviets had on where Deng but also others in the Chinese leadership could be found hiding. Messages were sent to these locations, aiming to make China understand that the Soviets had the upper hand here too. The gist of them were for China to open its skies to Soviet aircraft. Stop opposing us, China was told, or suffer what Japan has received in devastating air attacks. That pause was meant to give the Chinese the time to think and to give them too the opportunity to concede. Deng did neither. Despite their weakened state, PLAAF forces were ordered to make air attacks over the border and into not just the Soviet Union but into Mongolia and Vietnam too. The attacks into Soviet territory were also to take place beyond the Amur area as well, away from where the Soviets had concentrated their air strength. Once it got dark, the Chinese started their air attacks. The Soviets intercepted many communications saw much of what was coming though not all of it. Fighters met fighters in the sky. Missiles came up as well. The fighting restarted for control of the skies.


The night of September 31st / October 1st saw the China War begin. Deng hadn’t backed down. The air strike which he ordered was weak in the end though bombs were put into Soviet military bases inside their own territory as well as in Mongolia. Chinese aircraft numbers had been knocked right down but they could still get strikes through. China’s armies started moving as well, towards the border ready to meet an incoming invasion head-on. Ustinov and his comrades had miscalculated once again. They were now at war with China. Soviet armies through the Central Asian, Siberian, Trans-Baikal & Far Eastern Military Districts along with the Group of Forces in Mongolia were given their own orders. The fighting in the skies would quickly have a ground component to it as well.

What was missing from the expectations of many was a nuclear dimension to the war. There were no nuclear attacks by either side when it started. Both the Chinese and the Soviets had such weapons, the latter far more than the former and already having used them already in the previous weeks though elsewhere. This war was conventional: no gas, no nukes. Would it, could it, stay that way though?

That night, when the real fighting got going between the Chinese and the Soviets, something else occurred and of more significance than anything else since the war begun. Ustinov, an old and ill man, dropped dead from a heart attack while among his Defence Council comrades discussing the war across the globe which he had instigated. The Soviet Union would need a new leader.


[End of Part IV]

[James G]

[Part V]


Chapter Twelve – Breakout

Early October 1984:

Since the moment that the war came to the United States where invading troops were on its soil, there had been the reluctance from American military forces to use their heavy firepower to strike at their enemies when there were civilians present. Orders from above to do so, to launch an artillery barrage or to drop bombs from aircraft upon areas where there were civilians present, were made though the men on the sharp end so often hesitated. A few more moments were given for civilians to get clear or the order was directly refused: such was the way of things. This had been expected by the planners of Krasny Zvezda and advantage was to be taken though the scale of its occurrence and how long it lasted wasn’t anticipated. Again and again, the Americans lost ground or saw defeats incurred due to this unwillingness to kill their own civilians. In fact, more civilian lives were endangered by its alarming frequency. At times, the Soviets and their allies took direct advantage by moving forces through civilian areas on purpose and using the people nearby as effective human shields though that wasn’t done for long when civilians showed themselves to not be helpless sheep. Moreover though, doing that only showed things down anyway so it was rarely done. What happened in most instances was that those invading the United States and rolling forward cutting of civilians who weren’t evacuated in time just kept going expecting that the Americans would open fire with their heavy weapons soon enough either when they were clear of those civilians or someone on the other side just got on with things, put thoughts of those civilians aside, and opened fire with all that they had. The scale of reluctance slowed down as the reality of war kicked in yet it still was happening: there were American military personnel who might have yesterday opened fire upon civilian areas but today refused to. Madness it was and that madness continued. Such things happened at a tactical level and also at a strategic level as well. The port facilities at Brownsville and Corpus Christi in South Texas should have been flattened long ago with the heaviest of weapons employed. They hadn’t been and there were civilians still all around the harbours through which the Soviets had funnelled in an army (using civilian airports as well) from across in Cuba. Soviet air defences were present and there were attacks made at sea but no bombing raids had occurred. That was until the early hours of October 1st.

The flattening of Brownsville and Corpus Christi commenced. Most of the B-1A bombers which the USAF had pre-war, the few SAC aircraft which had been brought into service under Ford before the programme came to an inglorious halt at the start of Kennedy’s presidency, had been lost at Ellsworth AFB when that airbase was blown apart at the very start of the war. There were only a couple left, ones which had been at Edwards AFB for testing purposes and not atomised. SAC still didn’t want them and hadn’t minded releasing them to the Twelfth Air Force. They were put to good use now. Two pairs struck the ports in South Texas making fast, very fast, passes low above the harbour areas while dropping bombs. They had penetrated enemy air defences and got in unmolested. SAC believed that such missions over the Soviet Union would see them blown out of the sky; they successfully made their bomb runs over South Texas. Each dropped eighty plus Mk82 bombs, 500lb high-explosive weapons, after coming in from over the sea and then made sharp turns to get back out over the Gulf of Mexico straight afterwards. The Port of Brownsville and the Port of Corpus Christi were left in ruins afterwards with cranes down, warehouses on fire and several ships struck when in port. Some bombs had been airburst where they had rained lethal shrapnel down though most had contact burst with anything which they touched. The targeting was reasonably good because the B-1s had managed to successfully get in and stay away from the urban areas directly; even if they had been forced off course, on this mission the aircrews were given firm orders to release their bombs regardless of the effect that might have for activity was also concentrated away from the harbours themselves even in the early hours. Bombs fell knocking out each though there was widespread collateral damage and civilians were killed in the air strikes.


However, the Soviets had already managed to get a field army into Texas. The destruction back at their ports of entry would hurt them and hurt them good, but for now, the Eighth Tank Army was in an attack position and far away from the ports which it had come through. It was ordered forward, along with other Soviet elements and supporting Cuban forces of the Northern Front. Hours later, they commenced a breakout from the edges of their already extensive bridgehead inside the Lone Star State.

Preceded by a short but concentrated artillery barrage, using multiple-barrelled rocket-launchers (a whole regiment of BM-27s was employed) as well as heavy guns, the Eighth Tank Army struck into the Gulf Coast region. Two motorised rifle divisions, the 128th Guards on the left and the 24th on the right, moved in a northeastern direction with the 10th Guards Tank Division following behind them. They crashed through that no man’s land between them and the Americans and slammed into national guardsmen dug-in along the course of the Colorado River. Those men from Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma which formed the ad hoc 39th Infantry Division were positioned to defend the approaches to Houston and behind them was the rest of the US V Corps ready to also stop the Soviets from reaching that city. However, the Eighth Tank Army wasn’t going there: it had another objective. The Northern Front unleashed what was left of the Cuban Second Army – which had roughly fifty-five to sixty percent of its pre-war strength – at the same time to begin their flank attack up towards Austin, engaging American forces there and keeping them busy. Another attack was made on the other flank where the Soviet Fifteenth Guards Airborne Corps, those who had kicked in the door into Texas, made an assault towards Houston by striking up along the coast. The main focus was with the Eighth Tank Army though. They got the majority of the air support which was directed for the fight and it was their task to win the Battle for Texas by beating the US Army in a head-on clash.


Interstate-10 & -35 running out of San Antonio were blocked by all of those abandoned vehicles and the Americans were well-aware that those routes were impassable for the Cubans to use. The Cubans didn’t use those roads. They followed the I-35 Corridor northwards, below the edges of the Edwards Plateau which was up above, but stayed off that main road. There were still blockages by further abandoned vehicles on the smaller roads and a lot of deliberate destructions caused elsewhere yet the Cubans moved onwards regardless. They had the objective of reaching Austin, overrunning Bergstrom AFB and getting over the Colorado River there and that was what they did. The Cubans met the 1st Cavalry Division in battle again, first around New Braunfels and then around San Marcos. The 1st Cavalry fought a battle of manoeuvre against numerically superior forces who kept on coming as they headed northwards. What was left of the defeated 2nd Armored Division had been folded into the 1st Cavalry though the damage from the first encounter between the two sides the previous week was still there among the Americans. The Cubans wouldn’t be stopped. They kept advancing and while hurt whilst doing so, moved closer to Austin.

The 1st Cavalry was part of the III US Corps but the 5th Infantry Division had been diverted away to assist the V Corps and that just left a brigade of paratroopers back around Austin rather than any significant corps reserve force. A withdrawal it was, but a fighting withdrawal. The Cubans paid for their advance with the 50th Division being ripped apart. There days in, the 78th Division was committed into the battle once the other one was gutted. They forced a crossing over the San Marcos River east of the town with the same name and finally opened up something of a gap before the Americans could react enough to sort-of plug that as part of their general retreat. Lost in the melee along the San Marcos was the majority of the 2nd Armored elements which had been swallowed up by the 1st Cavalry. The Cubans pushed closer to Austin and tried to cut off the Americans before they could get over the Colorado River outside of that city of go through it where the rest of the III Corps was. The final hurrah for the Cubans became a grind though. They were slowed right down in the face of American air power suddenly turned on them when it had been weaker before; Texas Command had switched some of that westwards, not for long, but for long enough to do plenty of damage. The 1st Cavalry got to the river and over it before the Cubans could catch them. Defending what was the Austin Line, based upon the Colorado River but with the abandoned Bergstrom on the wrong side of that, were those paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division (just one brigade; the rest of the division either stuck in the fight against North Korea or lost in Panama) and a lot of Texan national guardsmen. The Austin Line was a solid position defended by dug-in defenders. The Colorado River had been crossed downstream but around Austin, it functioned as a blocking point stopping any further Cuban access up the I-35 Corridor. The Cubans had got as far as tasked, on schedule too, yet at quite the cost. They were incapable of going any further for the time being, maybe for good.

Houston was somewhere that the Americans believed that the Soviets would want to capture and they were ready to defend it. The V Corps was outside while in & around the city were Texan national guardsmen and other volunteer units organised into a militia along with US Marines from their IV Marine Amphibious Force. The beat-up 7th Motorised Rifle Brigade pushed from Victoria back towards Houston once again (second time lucky?) while around Galveston and Texas City a massed helicopter assault started. The 39th Landing-assault Brigade, the airmobile unit which had taken over the Lower Valley on invasion day in that surprise assault, aimed to repeat that success between Houston and the sea. This time they were far better opposed than when they first saw action down at Brownsville. The whole Galveston Bay area was a hive of American military activity and while they weren’t expected the skies to be full of assault transport helicopters escorted by gunships, the US Marines fought back. These were reservists from the 25th Marine Regiment, brought down from the US North-East to join the 4th Marine Division. Battle-tested they weren’t yet they still could fight. Texas City was successfully retaken after the Soviets had partial control over the waterfront for less than a day. Galveston remained in the hands of the 39th Brigade but what they control over was fast a ruin. In the waters of Galveston Bay itself, there was a battleship: once the USS Texas. This was a veteran of the last two world wars and a museum piece since 1948. How the US Marines on land would have appreciated the fire from her fourteen-inch guns! Naval gunfire support was unavailable though with the battleship not being in service (her in-service namesake was a US Pacific Fleet cruiser) and instead was a part of the seaborne evacuation taking place from Galveston Bay of important assets such as herself less they fall into Soviet hands. The battleship was under tow while other ships were using their own power to get out where they carried cargoes from NASA’s Houston site. Bolivar Roads – the exit from Galveston Bay through the shipping channel – was passed through by the Texas as well as other ships heading towards Louisiana because the Soviets were pinned down where they were by the 25th Marines and incapable of stopping that evacuation.

The rest of their parent division, the 24th Marines (which had mobilised across the Mid-West) and the 2nd Marine Brigade which had already seen action outside the city before retreating back, didn’t do so well when the Soviets brought forward more forces. The 7th Brigade was able to close-up towards Houston pushing back the 2nd Brigade outside when the 103rd Guards Airborne Division – which had the battle honour of ‘Corpus Christi’ – struck at Hobby Airport. This was Houston’s secondary commercial airport and into there a battalion of Soviet Airborne were dropped as the lead element of the 103rd Division. They overrun the facility which was being used by helicopters for the IV MAF and then a follow-up battalion brought in afterwards advanced the short distance down to Ellington Field AFB on foot. The US Air Force was in the process of evacuating this major airbase for the Twelfth Air Force at the time and the US Marines were called upon to put a stop to Soviet paratroopers from getting there first. The attack head-on and the strike in the rear caught the US Marines between a rock and a hard place. They couldn’t counter both attacks, not while trying to act in a mobile fashion. If they’d been dug-in, the Soviets would have had to root them out of defensive positions and would have failed but when caught in the open, they were outnumbered and outgunned. The 24th Marines were engaged and overcome when out in the open and they were in the middle of the 2nd Brigade and the 25th Marines… each of which the Soviets then took apart in turn after getting between them. Neither the US Army nor the US Air Force, fighting elsewhere, could come to their aid. The Soviets overran a wide area outside Houston (including Ellington Field and the Johnson Space Centre) and then managed to close off access from Galveston Bay to the sea by seizing the Bolivar Peninsula. Part of a battalion of the 25th Marines barricaded themselves inside Texas City, determined to hold and secure attention from more numerous Soviet forces, and that they did yet away from there, their fellow US Marines were either dead or prisoner. The IV MAF was lost in what was nothing more than a sideshow.

Between the Cubans on one flank and the light Soviet forces on the other, it was in the middle, with the heavier Soviet forces, where the Battle for Texas was taking place.



Early October 1984:

National guard forces, air and ground, had been in the fight to defend American soil since it begun. Those on the Mexican border or nearby had been practically ambushed by the unexpected assault which had come over and done the best that they could before succumbing to costly defeats. Elsewhere across the United States, the national guard had mobilised and been organised – sometime haphazardly, other times far better – to fight alongside regular forces. National guardsmen were part-time volunteers best known to most Americans for disaster relief after floods or hurricanes though they were trained and equipped to fight. Any idea that national guard units should sit comfortably in the rear as an uncommitted reserve because they weren’t up to scratch, or maybe given low-priority tasks, was foolish considering the scale of the ongoing invasion and how it had begun. There were those in the rear who were undertaking guard & patrol roles, in addition to those aiding with civil defence & law enforcement support missions, but all of those from the fifty states plus from American territories (in Puerto Rico and the Pacific) were fighting soldiers after all. Geography had a factor in the commitment of many national guard units due to where their home states were at the beginning of the war though there was also a hastiness to move forward better-trained formations, those which had wartime NATO taskings, early on. Certain state delegations in Congress had long secured funding for their national guard units and the regular forces had been welcoming of the addition of better formations in the post-Vietnam, volunteer US Armed Forces. The US Army and the US Air Force found itself relying heavily on the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard since war had come; in time, they would spin up huge numbers of their own additional forces yet that couldn’t happen overnight. For those part-timers, they were thrown into the war alongside the regulars and had to face what they did.

The 39th Infantry Division was a week-old when it saw action. It was a fudge of a formation where combat and support units of national guardsmen from several states were pushed together to complete a divisional force to support the US Fifth Army in Texas. Arkansas and Oklahoma each had a brigade of infantry with their state national guards which was committed to the 39th Infantry and there were also some elements from Louisiana as well; Louisiana’s better-equipped infantry brigade wasn’t with them though for it completed the order of battle with a regular infantry division which was a brigade short. Neither those brigades from the two states in the South-West nor any of the subunits attached to form a divisional command were those peacetime high-readiness NATO units trained to fight alongside the US Army but were second-line units instead. They were tasked to go to Texas after mobilising in their home states though because they were soldiers and their country called upon them. It wasn’t as if there was any other choice. The Fifth Army needed them and attached the 39th Infantry to the arriving V US Corps which came across from the South-East with its two regular divisions (one of those having Georgia national guardsmen from another high-readiness unit) into Texas as well. The national guardsmen were out front, on the northern side of the no man’s land spread across a swath of Texas, and in-place when the Soviets began their breakout. They were there because they had to be.

As the Battle for Texas started, this was the first time that heavy ground formations in number of Americans and Soviets faced each other in battle during the war. For the two weeks previously, the Americans had fought heavy units of the Cubans and Latin American nations or when they engaged the Soviets, it was lighter formations encountered. Not this time. Now the two of them had brought together multiple combat divisions in addition to supporting assets and faced them off ready to go at each other. This wasn’t West Germany where such a fight was long expected throughout the Cold War but inside Texas. The opening artillery barrage against the national guardsmen with the 39th Infantry was just what they could have expected had they been in Europe. The Eighth Tank Army didn’t have all of its heavy artillery nor nowhere near enough as much air support as promised, but they had enough to pound those in their way with all of those howitzers, heavy mortars and rocket-launchers that they had managed to get across from Cuba. The national guardsmen got their heads-down and attempted to ride out the barrage – one straight out of the Soviet Army’s textbooks – ready to fight against what came next. Riding out such an attack was easier said that done. The 39th Infantry were smack bang in the way of where the Soviets intended to attack and they wanted to make sure than those whom they couldn’t kill would be still unable to put up any meaningful resistance. The accuracy of their barrage might not have been the best yet the rate of fire and the concentration in the right areas was good enough. The artillery only lifted at the very last moment too, right before the Soviets poured forward… in several instances the timing was off too leaving Soviet forces shelled by their own artillery as they went into battle.

The national guardsmen were hit with something that they stood no chance of opposing. Two motorised rifle divisions, formations with all of the trimmings, came at the 39th Infantry. The men from Oklahoma came off the worst when the Soviet 128th Guards Division drove over them. The Soviets followed their doctrine and made a perfect attack to obliterate the nuisance which they rated the Oklahomans as with just one of their regiments taking part in their advance having to fight those national guardsmen and doing so quickly and efficiently. The national guardsmen needed tanks or if not then more anti-tank weaponry than what they had. A battalion of T-64 tanks came with the wheeled personnel carriers for fire support and it was they who did most of the killing. Going up against Soviet riflemen who had a lot of manoeuvre and brought with them their own heavy man-portable weapons was quite the ask for the Oklahomans yet the Soviet tanks were something else. Some were hit and knocked out but there were more than enough of them to use their cannons and then their physical power to smash apart the national guardsmen, especially when a tactical withdrawal – or a full-on panicked retreat; it depended upon how honest you wanted to be – was made. That regiment afterwards raced to catch up with its parent division once it had gone through the volunteer soldiers from Oklahoma to join the next fight.

Arkansas’ brigade of infantry suffered under a horrendous artillery barrage and then saw the Soviet 24th Division – the Iron Division, so the Soviets called it – detach a regiment of riflemen with tank support to overcome them while the majority of the division drove onwards. Where these national guardsmen were attacked was on better defensive ground than their brothers from Oklahoma. Texas was a mix of terrain with forests, rolling barren plains, farmland, hills and deserts. The brigade from Arkansas attached to the 39th Infantry was among wooded hills and the Soviets who came at them had to slow down to get at the national guardsmen, the tanks especially couldn’t get loose from soldiers firing off anti-tank missiles & rockets and then beating a hasty retreat. Still, faced with riflemen coming at them and distant tank support, the national guardsmen were very fast in trouble considering they had just been hit with an artillery barrage which no training could have ever prepared them for. They began their own withdrawal. It was one which the Soviets tried to chase down yet just couldn’t. They got stragglers and some smaller groups of Arkansans fighting rear-guard actions but the majority of what was left of the brigade got away. The Soviet regimental commander faced his divisional commander’s wrath over the radio and continued what became a hopeless chase through difficult terrain where his BTR-70 personnel carriers got bogged down. The tanks though attempted a flanking manoeuvre. They missed the withdrawing soldiers which they were trying to locate and instead unexpectedly run into divisional assets, engineering and forward supply units from the 39th Infantry, also in the process of withdrawing but who hadn’t been quick enough. The Soviets feasted on them instead, ripping the heart out of the American division when failing to get at all of its arms and legs.


No one on the V Corps staff had intended to see the national guardsmen massacred. That was not while they were out front, positioned ahead of where the correct assumptions where the Soviets would make their attacks. The 39th Infantry was meant to soak up the incoming attacks and hold the Eighth Tank Army so that the 3rd Armored & 24th Infantry Divisions could launch a corps-level counterattack and smash their opponents apart. This was planned to be done before the Soviets brought up their tank division too, their breakout element. The national guardsmen yielded the ground which they were defending within hours of the Soviet attack commencing. As a fighting force, that division was gone and the main body of the enemy advance hadn’t even been stopped. The V Corps scrambled to react to this, having to change and adapt their plans to counterattack when the first plan had failed to survive first contact.

The Soviets had come from their start-lines on the Guadalupe River near to Gonzales and Cuero to reach La Grange and Columbus on the Colorado River. Their twin advances had raced through that no man’s land full of Green Berets and unorganised militia/partisans to reach the national guardsmen ahead of the river. The 128th Guards & 24th Divisions moved to roll right over the Colorado River next. In the skies above, there were close-in and distant aerial fights between aircraft of both sides and interference came to the river crossing operations with those. The Soviets had brought up combat bridging units to replace the downed bridges with multiple ones of their own. The river wasn’t that wide and the bridges didn’t have to last for decades either. Reconnaissance units were over first, moving ahead and it was they which the V Corps engaged. The two American divisions came in ahead of Soviet expectations for their arrival and made their attacks the moment the sun dropped over the horizon. The skies above were flooded with aircraft and helicopters as the 3rd Armored & 24th Infantry Divisions struck, finally bringing American air power into play properly. They weren’t waiting for the Eighth Tank Army to get fully over the Colorado River and starting to charge forward again, ready to hit their flanks while the main bodies of their divisions were under attack from the national guardsmen – that plan had been binned due to the loss of the 39th Infantry – anymore. No, instead, something different was tried.

Soviet reconnaissance units gave the warning far too late of the onrush of American tanks and were wiped out as the Americans charged forward in the darkness firing from distance and on the move. Their Cav’ units, on the ground and in the air, lead the attacks straight towards the Soviet bridges. V Corps had its own bridging units, which were coming up, but the Soviets had helpfully constructed many of their own to be used first. Thank you very much! On the other side, the two Soviet divisions were coming forward and the Americans went at them once over the Colorado River. The Eighth Tank Army – with its tank division still far off (plus another one not yet brought over fully from Cuba and thus missing from what should have been a four-division army) – and the V US Corps went at it, tearing lumps out of each other in a night-time engagement along the course of the Colorado River. The heavies from both the Soviet Army and the US Army had finally met in open battle.



Early October 1984:

Through the night and into the next day the fighting along the Colorado River went on. Both the Soviet Eighth Tank Army and the V US Corps had met each other earlier in combat than expected and on a different battlefield than anticipated while also having their initial plans for the fight thrown into disarray by the actions of the others. In the darkness and then once the sun started to rise giving light, everything about their clash was confused and draining both physically & emotionally. There were accidents where friendly fire took place and also the shooting at shadows. Radio jamming and deliberate targeting of commanders came with navigation errors made. Tens of thousands of men were thrown into a fight against the other over a small piece of Texas. Commanders on neither side wished to see the complete destruction of their forces for there were plans for to be more fighting done after this one: the holding back of some forces ready for the next mission occurred far more than it should have.

The fight was joined by massed air and artillery support thrown by both sides into influencing the fight. The destruction caused by falling bombs and incoming shells wasn’t always done to the other side due to the whole mess of the fight where each side manoeuvred about with their tanks, armoured vehicles and dismounting infantry to get out of the way of that. At La Grange and Columbus, the two small towns beside the river where the first fighting took place, and then to the south of the river where it continued, civilians had already fled en masse beforehand: those who were left behind were caught up in the fighting and lost their lives. Fighting soldiers from the Soviet Army and the US Army were killed in battle yet others died after being captured where there were incidents of victor’s justice taking place among infantrymen who’d fought each other. The blasting apart of so many infantry carriers when they were carrying men saw orders given for early dismounts and many men going into battle after a long slog on foot to get there. They were scattered all over the place, spread out through the countryside and often away from the tanks which had come with them. When tactical withdrawals or sudden armoured advances were made, those on foot were often left behind too should they fail to get word in time to move out or get lost while doing so. Scattered confused engagements with no clear frontlines and the enemy seemingly everywhere occurred time and time again.

The American counterattack during the late evening and through the night saw the V Corps drive the Eighth Tank Army back over the Colorado River with the aim to drive them all the way back to San Antonio, maybe to the Mexican border soon enough. Such an attack caught the Soviets off-guard as they were getting prepared for their own attack the next morning through their bridgeheads and they came off very badly during the first stage of the fighting. Unwilling – but soon unable as well – to withdrawal in any meaningful fashion, the Eighth Tank Army held. They held the town of Schulenburg, a crossroads in the midst of the rural Fayette County where the fight had moved to by the early hours, and forced the Americans away from driving through there and smashing apart the forward supply base set up there. AH-1 Cobra gun-ships ripped up that site afterwards, making the holding of Schulenberg moot in terms of denying the Americans the chance to wreck it with their tanks, yet the steadfast opposition encountered by the Soviet pushed the Americans to spread to north and south of the town. Both the 3rd Armored & 24th Infantry Divisions had driven in that direction (the first to reach it would see the second divert elsewhere to a second objective) but afterwards were spread out through the countryside either side. The Americans kept on attacking with the 24th Infantry being driven onwards by its eager commander and reaching the crossroads at Hallettsville, down into Lavaca County, after failing to get to Schulenberg. This was halfway through the Soviets rear areas. However, the penetration was what soon enough the divisional commander called ‘all neck and no shoulders’. His command had smashed through the Soviet 24th Division – it was the 24th v the 24th – but not overcome them: the Americans had gone too far and unsupported leaving their flanks wide open to enemy attack. Where the 3rd Armored was, fighting with the 128th Guards Division, a wedge was made (with shoulders) yet that did them little good either especially once the mobile divisional HQ column was targeted & eliminated at the crucial moment of a rushed but effective Soviet counterattack. Much of the 3rd Armored was worn down and with heavy casualties already taken. When the Soviets started pushing back against them, it should have been time to retreat yet that didn’t happen. More than half of the division was left ineffective, lost for all intents and purposes, in just an hour. Communications problems and confusion, but also the lack of effective centralised command, saw the 3rd Armored fall apart. One of the brigade commanders took charge and led his units back towards La Grange; other scattered divisional elements fell back southwards towards where the 24th Infantry was aiming to link up with them as they in turn came north to join the fight to support their sister division. Schulenberg again showed its worth as it acted as a breakwater around which the Americans had to flow to avoid it. The 128th Guards Division came onwards and caught most of those being chased south before the 24th Infantry could get to them.

V Corps ordered a general withdrawal back to the Colorado River. This wasn’t what they had launched their opportune spoiling attack to achieve, that being the soon-to-be-loss of the two divisions if they (the remains of them) weren’t pulled out. As to the Eighth Tank Army, there came an order from its commander for a general attack. Based upon intercepted communications, in addition to what few air recon reports came in – the skies were full of fire from anti-air weapons on the ground as well as a lot of American fighters –, the Americans were pulling back in disarray and now was the time to exploit that. The orders to retreat for the Americans and for the Soviets to advance set the course of the second day of the clash of the heavies.


The 3rd Armored’s 2nd Brigade made it back to the bridges – theirs and those captured form the Soviets – over the river near to La Grange. The re-crossing took place when Soviet tanks showed up: lots of them. The Eighth Tank Army sent into battle its reserve formation, the 10th Guards Tank Division. The Americans didn’t spot the onrush of tanks until it was far too late and couldn’t stop them using air power nor where they halted on the ground all around La Grange. They ripped through the Americans by coming at them from the flank but also crossing the river to the west of them and hitting the Americans on the northern side, were they had fought that safety could be found. Smashing apart this recently-orphaned brigade wasn’t the mission for the 10th Guards Division though. They took over the role initially assigned to the army’s two motorised rifle division before the Americans had interfered with that. Such a task was to move far beyond the Colorado River and reach deep into the American’s rear going for their corps assets: the supply, transportation, maintenance and command elements kept back from the frontlines. The V Corps had returned to the United States earlier in the year with one division (the 3rd Armored) from West Germany and left almost all of their supporting assets there in Europe. What had been brought to Texas in a cross-country dash from the East Coast as the V Corps raced to defend their homeland were Army Reserve and Army National Guard units from across the country hastily put together as a corps support network. There were military police units and some very small infantry attachments added to aid in security but nothing which could stop the three hundred plus tanks – plus everything else – with the 10th Guards Division from charging at them once they overcome the speedbump which was La Grange.

V Corps supply trains (not actual trains themselves; this was an historic term) stretched back as far as the Brazos River over quite an extensive area of rural land but through small towns and across hills and woodland too. Before the corps commander could respond to the silence coming from La Grange where the brigade withdrawing through there went silent, the Soviet tanks were loose. They had daylight and plenty of targets. Too many in fact, for the opportunity for destruction to their opponents which was exposed to them slowed down their advance. The 10th Guards Division moved forward blasting apart everything in sight when they should have really focused on charging as one towards the divisional objective. Orders to move onwards came alongside conflicting orders to destroy the supply trains at the same time. They were opposed by American soldiers not expecting to fight still doing so even if that was a doomed effort. There were ugly incidents everywhere including field hospitals coming under attack – Soviet forces didn’t purposely target them; they were just enemy targets in their way – and then a massive explosion of vehicle fuel accidently set off engulfing Americans and Soviets alike in burning gasoline for what seemed like miles in every direction (it wasn’t as bad as the first reports of it said though). The 10th Guards Division were ordered to reach the Brazos but they didn’t get there. Intelligence came to the Eighth Tank Army HQ of more American forces entering the battle. The 3rd Armored was out of the fight and the 24th Infantry away to the south but instead it was the 5th Infantry Division racing out of the Austin area. They were the III US Corps reserve which the Cuban attack up towards Austin was unable to tie them up like they did the 1st Cavalry Division. The 5th Infantry raced to save the V Corps from complete destruction.


The Americans and the Soviets fought themselves to a halt once again. This time it was the Soviets who were spread out and they initially took fierce losses before they could get their tanks to fight together alongside the rest of the division in stopping the American attack. Louisiana national guardsmen with the 5th Infantry fought well, very well in fact, with the attached 256th Infantry Brigade retaking the town of Brenham and the roads around it from Soviet motorised rifle troops and then rampaging forwards through artillery and combat engineering units from the 10th Guards Division in a lucky strike. They were pulled back under divisional orders when the Soviets started to reorganise but they had opened up a corridor in the meantime to allow for a significant number of troops from the V Corps supply trains personnel to get out… leaving behind everything they had come to Texas with though, including so many more of their fellow soldiers. By nightfall, the fighting settled down to a slog where neither the Americans and the Soviets could get a full attack going against the other. The Soviets had outrun their initial supply lines and been hit by a strong flank attack; the Americans had met strong resistance yet shut down the Soviet breakout and contained it in the end.

The V Corps had effectively lost the 3rd Armored and sought not to see the 24th Infantry lost as well. That second division withdrew back through Columbus and then towards the Brazos River. Like the 5th Infantry, the 24th Infantry had a national guard unit for a third brigade and these men were from Georgia: as the 256th Brigade was, the 48th Infantry Brigade was a high-readiness unit. The national guardsmen were given the task of forming the rear-guard for the retreat. They didn’t enjoy that. They were harried all the way on the ground and from the air too by the Soviets who tried to eliminate them and get at the rest of the 24th Infantry. Back, back and back the Americans pulled. The V Corps was on the Brazos soon enough with thousands upon thousands of missing men left behind dead, wounded or prisoner. The 5th Infantry became part of the corps but the weakness of the corps when compared to the still-functioning – if frustrated – enemy meant that there would be a further withdrawal to be made. The V Corps was left sitting between the Soviets and the greater Houston area: it wasn’t a position which they could hold.

Soviet activity round Galveston Bay plus the Eighth Tank Army’s continued numerical strength meant that the V Corps would have to withdraw once again. Until they could be supported by emergency, rush reinforcements being sent to Texas long before they had been planned to be, they were incapable of holding back their opponents. Houston was going to be left to the mercy of the Soviets otherwise so much more of the US Army than already had been lost in Texas would be overcome as well. The Americans were continuing to – slowly – lose the Battle for Texas. Once the withdrawal started, a gap was opening up as well. The III Corps was near Austin and the V Corps was pulling back away from Houston; each component of the US Fifth Army was battered to pieces. The Soviets were looking at that widening gap with intentions abound.



Early October 1984:

The forcing of entry into California through the back door by the Cubans had seen the firing of the commander of US Western Command. That headquarters was less than two weeks old and a fudge of a joint command for all military activity in what had become the theatre of operations through Arizona and California. The US Sixth Army, the Ninth Air Force and elements of both the US Marine Corps and US Navy all reported to Western Command with its inaugural commander being a three-star US Air Force general. He was removed from command for failure. Failure to push the Cubans and their allies back to & over the Mexican border. Failure to stop the breaking open of the front in western Arizona leading to California’s defenders being outflanked and attacked from behind. Failure to effectively lead those assigned beneath him from various service branches amongst their squabbling. Failure to do the impossible in a very short period of time it was also said. He was out and his deputy – another three-star general, this one from the US Army – assumed command over Western Command.

With immediate effect, several standing operational orders were rescinded and new ones instructed. There was no longer to be the planned (and stalled) grand operation to have those in Arizona make a ‘daring dash’ down to the Gulf of California covered from the air through the Cuban’s rear while ‘holding back with air power’ invading forces which had come into Southern California first up through the Imperial Valley and then across the Sonoran Desert. Such ideas were deemed more failures in the making should they be attempted by both the new commander but more importantly those higher than him in the chain of command – up to Defence Secretary Bentsen – because the Cubans had unexpected flatfooted Western Command with what they had done already. Instead, US Army forces in Arizona could come back westwards (letting the Guatemalans off the hook) and attack the Cubans from behind while those national guardsmen and US Marines in California would reposition themselves to fix the Cubans were they were until they could be overcome from behind. The shift in thinking was from the dominance of American air power being able to win the fight and instead it would be those on the ground doing so. Afterwards, once the matter had been settled, there would be questions asked and debates started as to whether the initial plan should have been stuck with. If it had, maybe the whole of Southern California wouldn’t have eventually have been lost? Maybe…


It wasn’t just the entry of the Cuban Third Army into California which the former commander of the Western Command had been fired over. He had also declined the assistance of several ground units to reinforce his command during late September allowing them to be sent elsewhere when they were initially slated for California. Air units were favoured instead, more and more of them: his superiors had sent the 82nd Airborne Division (though it only had one brigade stateside) to Texas, the 205th Infantry Brigade to Alaska and the 116th & 163rd Armored Cavalry Regiments to New Mexico when they apparently weren’t needed by the Western Command. The mucky stuff had rolled down hill and Western Command’s senior officer had got in the neck for those decisions when ultimately they were signed off on by those above him. All of those men – plus so many more – were now needed in California. Only the two Cav’ regiments, national guard formations from Idaho and Montana, were available when they were reassigned just before they were about to see action in New Mexico and ordered to make a cross-country dash all the way to California. They quickly made very good progress, transiting via wide freeways which weren’t blocked like others were, and reaching California within two days. When the 116th & 163rd Regiments arrived in Southern California, they found those whom they had come to support lost after a crippling defeat, a terrible defeat at that.

Near to Palm Springs, the Cubans had been temporarily held at the Banning Pass. US Marines had stopped them in the gap between the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south. The 23rd Marine Regiment (a mix of regulars and reservists) had made a furious stand at the Gateway to L.A through where Interstate-10 ran. The Cubans overcame them eventually, using tanks and a lot of artillery, before the defenders could be reinforced by California national guardsmen racing northwards in a rush redeployment. Once through, the Cubans entered the eastern reaches of Los Angeles: the suburban areas through Riverside & San Bernardino Counties connected ever so well by excellent transportation links. The Cuban First Army was still tied up down to the south fighting the rest of the US Marines left in California who hadn’t been sent to South Korea pre-war so the Third Army was on their own. Losses and flank security duties meant that only two divisions were available for what was a corps-level rather than an army-level attack, but that was an aside issue as far as the Cubans were concerned. They had their army on the march heading in towards Los Angeles and were generally unopposed on the ground whilst doing so. The skies were full of American aircraft and their own were far outnumbered and doing bad but those on the ground pushed onwards through better, more open ground.

On October 4th, the Cubans overran March AFB and the next day they had Norton AFB too. These major air transport bases were evacuated in a hurry ahead of them where the Americans fled, trying to destroy what they left behind but only doing a partial job of that. Each was on either flank of the advance which headed towards the small city of Ontario. The Cubans made use of the roads yet also rolled through residential areas as well. They were engaged from above by aircraft and also on the ground by scattered volunteer militia: Americans and their infernal guns! What the 3rd Armored & 80th Mechanized Division didn’t face was any heavy organised forces between them and Los Angeles proper nor the Pacific either. That was soon to change once the 40th Infantry Division was able to reach them and that would be around Ontario on the morning of the 7th. The forward dash left their rear and their long right (northern) flank, stretching all the way back into Arizona, open to attack but they continued moving onwards regardless.

Ahead of them, the Cuban advance caused extraordinary civilian panic throughout the L.A. Basin and down to San Diego as well. Why couldn’t they be stopped!? Far behind them, the Americans were trying to do just that to the Cubans but meanwhile they kept on going, taking losses yet closing in upon Los Angeles.



Early October 1984:

The Cubans moved into the L.A. Basin, entering the edges of the United States’ second largest city, but behind their advancing units, their rear areas were quickly in disarray when the Americans back across in Arizona struck westwards themselves. Regular and Army National Guard units with the I US Corps had mostly recovered from the Cuban drive through southwestern Arizona to get into California and now sought to shut down the onwards push of the Cubans by denying them their supply links and forcing them to halt and turn around. An American assault down to the Gulf of California, into Mexico itself, had been called off and instead it was to Yuma and the California state line which the I Corps went. The 9th Infantry Division was joined by the 81st Infantry Brigade and what had once been the OPFOR Group which was now named the 5th Armored Brigade; the 41st Infantry Brigade, previously part of the I Corps, had been lost when in the way of the Cuban attack in late September.

Yuma itself proved too much for the 81st Brigade – national guardsmen from Washington state – to get to due to local terrain and the air support that the Cubans had on-hand from MCAS Yuma plus Laguna Army Airfield (both fully-functioning Cuban & Soviet airbases now) yet they closed up far enough to force those there to have to throw everything that they had at them. While not part of the plan, this was exploited by the rest of the I Corps as they closed in upon the Colorado River which marked the entrance to California which the Cubans had used. The 5th Brigade fought those East Germans again – what had been an oversized battalion was left a few scattered companies afterwards; the pride of the National People’s Army was pretty much no more – and got in among Cuban’s supply columns backed up on the Arizonian side of the river first before they got over and did more damage to further parked trucks which had already been hit by air power. As to the 9th Infantry, that division joined in in the clearing of most of Arizona of Cuban forces. There were still Guatemalans (and some smaller Nicaraguan units) through southern Arizona and centred on the Tucson area that should really have been finished off first, but for now the Cubans had been rated the greatest danger. Only around Yuma had the Cubans held.


Across in California, the Americans didn’t have as much overall success as they did in Arizona. Those two national guard armored cavalry regiments, the 116th & 163rd, attacked down from the Joshua Tree National Park into the Coachella Valley below: the forward base of operations for the Cuban advance towards Los Angeles and where what wasn’t over in Arizona in terms of supporting assets could otherwise be found. Cuban infantry supported by anti-tank guns, plus some air support in terms of Hind attack helicopters, brought the attack to a halt. There had been so much faith put in these two regiments after their dash down from Colorado but when they attacked in California, they went through defended ground where the Cubans were dug-in across the Little San Bernardino Mountains. Neither regiment had much in the way of dismounted infantry with them nor strong on-call artillery support. They had tanks and armoured personnel carriers full of scouts but they were incapable of rooting out the Cubans who fought them to a standstill and then counterattacked themselves. The localised strike-backs were parried away yet they were costly in terms of men for the Americans as had been the case when so many tanks and armoured vehicles were knocked out when the attack stalled. The Cubans held firm and frustrated American efforts to roll them up from behind.

California’s national guardsmen (with some from Nevada and Utah as well it must be said) with the 40th Infantry Division managed to bring the Cubans to a temporary halt. Riverside and San Bernardino were lost yet around the small city of Ontario where geography and the concentration of roads led the Cubans to advance towards, the 40th Infantry got there first early on October 7th just ahead of the Cuban Third Army. The 80th Mechanized Division came on too fast and too unprepared for what was waiting for them. The tankers from California and Nevada shot straight and true. They had last month been part of the containment effort of the Cuban First Army down near the border and then undertaken a redeployment all the way up to the east of Los Angeles – through the ongoing civilian chaos – to get ahead of the Cubans who’d avoided that other fight. The 40th Infantry had already been bloodied somewhat yet learnt from that. They were still missing a third of their strength, eliminated on the war’s first day when caught so unawares on the border, but the other two thirds knew how to fight against the Cubans by now, especially when taking them by surprise. The 80th Division was hit hard when driving into an ambush and then hit harder when the Americans moved forward. Back west the Cubans were driven and it wasn’t an enjoyable experience for them in their retreat.

The Cubans brought their other division up, the 3rd Armored Division, which then moved into the fight later that evening and then once again the next morning. First the Americans had been stopped, then they were pushed back. The Cubans had numbers on their side and came back towards Ontario again, engaging the Americans with everything they had. There was nearly a stalling of the Cubans when their tanks closed in upon Ontario yet one regimental commander found a gap. It was a small gap, just a little one opened up between the two brigades which formed the 40th Infantry. A tank regiment was forced through with an immense quantity of artillery support given at the crucial moment: many of those shells had been flown in recently rather than trucked in with Soviet transport aircraft supporting the Cubans stretched to the limit doing this. The shelling and the tanks helped widen the gap. The 3rd Division looped around Ontario from behind as the 40th Infantry failed to close that gap and the division was forced apart. The opportunity came on the afternoon of October 8th for the Cubans to wholly destroy the American national guardsmen once they were split into two component parts. It wasn’t taken properly and the 40th Infantry was able to merge its pair of brigades back together to fight as one again. This was done by falling back, retreating faster than the Cubans could attack and leaving rear-guard units behind to their doom. The Americans fell back north of Ontario, not away to the west towards Los Angeles. To do anything else would have meant wholescale destruction of the 40th Division. The San Gabriel Mountains were to the north – there was a whole chain of mountains (the Transverse Ranges) running north of the L.A. Basin with the Mojave Desert & the rest of California behind – and it was back that way that the national guardsmen were ordered to retreat to.


These men abandoned their fellow Californians to their fate under what was soon to be foreign occupation. That was how many in the 40th Infantry saw it and how civilians left behind saw it too. The division was ordered to withdraw away to safety leaving those behind in anything but. There were desertions which took place as the national guardsmen were ordered to head for the mountains leaving Los Angeles behind: men who had families on the wrong side of those mountains and who left their units to go and save them. Many civilians screamed abuse at those withdrawing when they realised what was going on while others followed them as best they could.

The Cubans didn’t follow them the retreating American soldiers up to the Cajon Pass. Los Angeles and beyond that the Pacific Ocean was right ahead. The city was expansive and spread out over a huge area and the Cubans were few in number. Occupying it completely would be a job for others. There were still US Marines to the south which the orders were to defeat and eliminate, not allow to escape from encirclement. In addition to that duty, the task was now for the Cubans to start overrunning all of the American military bases through the whole region with their breakout continuing as it was following the temporary stop incurred. There were quite a few of those bases and many were in the process of being evacuated after the fighting around Ontario was concluded. The Cubans were to put a stop to that evacuation. Priorities were identified all over the place… heading that list was San Diego Naval Base where those US Marines looked like they were going to try to retreat towards if they could. The race to the sea was on.



Early October 1984:

The Americans were sending troop reinforcements to the West Coast. They’d be too late to halt the initial Cuban attack at the beginning of the month though they would be in-place as quickly as they could get there and form up. It was national guardsmen being sent again, these from the Mid-West. A corps command – the IV National Guard Corps – was still in the process of being built when the movement orders came. There was no time to wait. Their mission in Texas was off and to the West Coast they would go. What needed to be done to complete everything would have to be done whilst either on the move or when the IV Corps reached California. Two pre-war standing divisions, a third ad hoc formation and corps-level assets were all dispatched westwards before the Cubans broke out from Palm Springs. The deployment was then negatively affected as the Cubans moved into the L.A. Basin with Norton AFB taken and then afterwards the decision being taken that first Los Alamitos Army Airfield was to be abandoned before everywhere else. Flights were directed elsewhere with soon all rather than part of the IV Corps to form up through the Mojave instead. Much of the IV Corps was coming cross-country by rail and road (with many problems having occurred) yet the air transport for the national guardsmen was the fastest way to get them to California… the men couldn’t fight without equipment and supplies though.

That decision with the incoming reinforcements from the US Sixth Army to be diverted away from Los Angeles directly wasn’t one which was supposed to be made public. It was a military secret kept from the Cubans and their Soviet backers yet also one not announced openly. Through Los Angeles, Orange County and down to San Diego – all across Southern California – there was already an understanding that the military was pulling out though. Activity around many bases including demolitions and convoys driving out heading northwards meant that rumours started and these were unofficially confirmed. There were certain military officers who disobeyed standing orders to not tell the American people, those who lived in the way of the incoming Cubans, that their soldiers were leaving them behind and getting out. This secret was being kept for morale purposes yet also to try and keep the roads open as best as possible. There were already so many civilians on the move and it was feared that many more would do see should they find out of the evacuation. Just what was feared would happen did: panic swept through Southern California once word got out. There was a rush to escape just like the military were. Interstate-5 was jammed seemingly in an instant when before the California Highway Patrol had done a brilliant job in keeping it open; so too jammed were almost every other road. Other civilians converged upon Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) – closed to civilian usage since September 17th – as well as many other small airports as well. LAX was being used by the US Air Force and after a previous Cuban commando attack, security there was extremely tight as big transport jets and requisitioned airliners were making use of the facility. Elsewhere though, the no-fly zone over the L.A. Basin was broken in quite the dramatic fashion. There had been small civilian aircraft – everything from microlights to corporate jets – in the skies before yet when word spread of the military evacuation, hundreds of them were soon in the sky. The US Air Force was overwhelmed in trying to confirm that all were innocent and not hostile as radar screens filled with contacts. Afterwards, many of them put down in places where they shouldn’t too, further complicating things when they did so.

There had been rioting, looting, murder and violence through Southern California since the beginning of the war. Mirroring what had occurred in other large urban areas of the nation – New York & the Tri-State area, Detroit, Miami and California’s Bay Area – the trouble throughout the L.A. Basin had been ongoing without pause. Even when Soviet aircraft had appeared over the region (and not had a good time of that) on bombing missions, and when missile attacks had also come, the violence had gone on unabated. Politically, the United States was putting on a propaganda show of unity as the new government pushed the notion of non-partisanship and nationwide patriotism. However, as the police and state authorities in Southern California knew, that patriotism wasn’t all that it was said to be. Volunteers flocked to fight and there was extensive civilian cooperation in so many areas with the war effort yet with certain people there was no such thing as taking part in the war effort at a time like this when there were so many opportunities. The crime wave was unprecedented and with it came violence. Martial law had been declared with Californian nation guardsmen meant to assist in enforcing that but that was impossible since the Cubans had embarked on their effort to reach the Pacific. The ongoing violence carried on as the Cubans came closer and the military pulled out. Screams, gunshots and the roar of so many raging fires could be heard as well as the sounds of approaching war too.


The 1st Marine Division – the main combat component of the I US MAF – wasn’t able to escape from Southern California. So many US Marines were either dead or unfortunately cut off and thus left behind when the ‘Old Breed’ (the divisional nickname) began their withdrawal away from the Imperial Valley as they headed for the sea. They pulled away to the west, with the Cubans in their First Army unable to follow them. The US Marines had beat them to a standstill and given them a memorable defeat yet the Third Army had arrived to then change the whole course of the war in Southern California. Staying and fighting where they were was an impossible task, not with the enemy beginning to encircle them. Therefore, the Old Breed had been given the task of making a ‘tactical retrograde movement’… such was the term used by a briefer to President Glenn whom hadn’t been impressed; a retreat was a retreat to the former US Marine aviator.

The Cubans, despite being as battered as they were, tried to follow. They didn’t have much luck in making the retreat costly for the 1st Marine Division though who were able to pull away with their destination being San Diego. It was to the Pacific where they headed with the intention of making a stand there on the coast over a wide defensive front rather than be concentrated directly in that city of even at the naval base itself. The withdrawal was made in haste yet went very well in terms of how fast the US Marines were able to pull back. There were other issues though. Many of those taking part faced angry comments from civilians which they passed by which were unsettling. Why are you abandoning us? Back to San Diego they went regardless and they were also followed by many of the same civilians heading to join others who had already fled to the coast. When the 1st Marine Division fought again, they would do so with their backs to the sea and in an area where there would be hundreds of thousands of non-combatants also there too.

[James G]

Early October 1984:

El Paso was the centre of much military activity by those foreign forces on American soil. The fight for the border city had been short and vicious with the aim being to force open access into New Mexico through the very westernmost point of Texas. Afterwards, when the Soviets who had prised open the border and then the Nicaraguans who had advanced onwards had departed, El Paso became a major rear area base positioned as it was in the centre of the wide front of invading armies which had entered the United States. The road and rail connections around it had suffered damage and so too had the air facilities, yet the transport infrastructure – while smashed up – was still there. The Nicaraguans were those who moved the most troops through yet there was the presence afterwards of those from several countries. Cuban, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Soviet and even Mexican military personnel were tasked with important duties around El Paso. Supplies were being moved through Mexico with that coming in overland up from Mexico but also by air too direct from Cuba. From El Paso, those were then distributed onwards through New Mexico and also into Arizona too. Plans were being made to make the role performed by those in El Paso bigger in terms of being part of a wider supply network but that depended upon other factors: Mexico was in chaos in part and El Paso was a long way from the sea. Communications was another major task undertaken by those in the border city as through El Paso signals were relayed while antenna and satellite dishes had been set up with processing & decoding stations working. The Soviets had set up a big military intelligence post on the grounds of Fort Bliss for communications interception and also other tasks such as reconnaissance interpretation and prisoner interrogations as well.

The Soviet Air Force had been fast to get to El Paso International Airport and the neighbouring Biggs Army Airfield after each place had been taken by the Soviet Army. Fighting had caused major damage at both when the Americans had contested Soviet entry from across in Mexico. Towards each site, Soviet airfield engineers had been quickly dispatched and they were joined by more specialists from several of their allies. Each place didn’t need to be made sparklingly new and pleasing on the eye, just useful. The runaways had been the first to see repairs before some of the supporting facilities had been turned to. There had been construction of blast shelters to protect aircraft on the ground during the expected American air attacks. Air defences had been set up as well for the two sites were important to protect. El Paso had become a major piece of the air defence network which had been created to cover occupied areas, especially through New Mexico and down into Texas; away to the west, the Americans were making anything like that very difficult. They still made air attacks in New Mexico and Texas yet those were better contested than they were elsewhere. Localised air defences around captured air facilities were joined by more strategic weapons, longer-range missiles, in forming up an air defence network supported by radars and command posts. Ground defences were always nice to have though stopping air attacks was always best done in the sky. Cubans and Soviet fighters were flying from Biggs with that regiment of Soviet MiG-29s belonging to their Air Force while the Cubans flew MiG-23s. Arriving in El Paso through the first week of October and getting set up were interceptors from the Soviet Air Defence Force though. These were MiG-25s: aircraft with longer-range and focused on missile interception beyond visual range rather than close-combat fighter duties. Another regiment with more of these interceptors was already in Texas. There were problems with interservice cooperation (it wasn’t just the Americans that had those) and the personnel were unused to foreign deployments but they were here in the United States to stay. And fight.

The Mexicans who were in El Paso had suffered from severe discipline problems when first arriving including mass desertions and acts of criminality. They were meant to undertake security duties yet had been a security problem themselves. Cuban military policemen along with Nicaraguan infantry had put down the worst of the trouble and then the Mexicans themselves had been forced to sort their men out. These men were those who didn’t want to fight for their country in Mexico not outside of it whether the army which they had been forced into was democratic, communist or whatever. They were forced to regardless of their wishes. Back in El Paso after being reformed back over the border and after a lot of shooting had been done within the ranks, they had returned a better disciplined force. There were still problems with them though. Rumours had swept through their ranks of the nuclear destruction of Mexico City. There was a lot of anger at that and that affected how they behaved whilst here in America. They were used to guard prisoners and make patrols along transport routes: such roles gave them opportunities aplenty to take their revenge upon the Americans for Mexico City. Their rage had turned from their own officers and politicians to the enemy up close whose country they were inside. Those civilians who had been caught in El Paso, who had to deal with the KGB and the Cuban DGI having a big presence in their city, were at the mercy of that vengeance.


El Paso wasn’t on the frontlines of the fighting. That was taking place through northern and eastern parts of New Mexico some distance away. The Nicaraguans had reinforced their beat-up First Army with their Second Army. Like the Cubans, the Nicaraguans had moved all the troops that they could sent to the fighting inside the United States already there and no longer would any major reinforcements be available. They were running out of men to send so far away from home. That wasn’t apparently a concern for the Soviets who were sending – trying to anyway – many more of their own not just from Cuba but across on the other side of the world as well. As to those Nicaraguans, they had done far better than anyone had expected them to. They weren’t just soaking up American bullets and causing a distraction. Instead, they had won several victories in New Mexico and were aiming to achieve more of them. Reaching Colorado and breaking into the Texas Panhandle were later objectives that it was believed that the Soviets would have to do in the end though before then, the Nicaraguans were tasked with clearing New Mexico of American military forces.

Those Americans were from the XVIII US Corps and part of the Twelfth Air Force. They all answered to Texas Command – what was fast becoming a source of contention – but were far away from the fighting ongoing there which was demanding so much attention… and also seeing assigned forces pulled away. The 35th Infantry Division (a national guard unit) had been destined to come under XVIII Corps command yet was reassigned following the Soviet attempted breakout in Texas to go there; so too were several US Air Force units. Non-combat support units as well as much of the resupply effort was sent to Texas on top of everything else. New Mexico was secondary, a sideshow. It wasn’t for those fighting there, those who had been humiliated by the effectiveness of the Nicaraguans. The Americans were on the retreat and were not enjoying that experience. Like Holloman AFB had previously been, Cannon AFB had to be abandoned. The Nicaraguans pushed back the understrength 1st Infantry Division in direct combat – the Nicaraguans had twice as many men and a lot of tanks – after beforehand making the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division make its own withdrawal for fear of a tank attack against their lightly-equipped men.

The drive towards Clovis, near where Cannon was, couldn’t be stopped. The Nicaraguans approached from the southwest and the west. They came under air attack but kept advancing. They were ambushed by airmobile troops making raids along their flanks but kept advancing. They faced off against some of the US Army’s premier units but kept advancing. The US Air Force decided not to wait until the very end and leave Cannon in a rush: they evacuated the facility carefully and truly went about destroying everything that was left behind. If the Nicaraguans were going to have the place, they would find nothing but ruins. The fighting withdrawal which the American made caused a lot of death and destruction to the Nicaraguans. They wanted to hold though, to stop them and destroy those invading forces, yet were unable to and had to withdraw. The other main Nicaraguan attack, the one going northwards, was slower than the drive to the east. The terrain was better for the mobile defence which the 4th Infantry Division conducted in its retreat. Soviet paratroopers from Albuquerque joined them, those men which the 4th Infantry had come south to overcome yet who helped chase them back north operating alongside the Nicaraguans. By October 9th, the Colorado state line was reached. Nicaraguan tanks would get there the next day but it was the Soviets who got there first making a helicopter landing outside the little town of Costilla and advancing then up along the road leading into Colorado. The Nicaraguans followed the 4th Infantry back to where they came from with blood spilt by both sides all the way.

It was up there in Colorado where there were those Cuban & Nicaraguan paratroopers still holding on too. Both the retreating Americans and the advancing Nicaraguans were heading towards them.



Early October 1984:

USS Independence and the carrier’s escorting battle-group entered the Caribbean through the Mona Passage, the stretch of water between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. There had been a submarine sunk in the Mona Passage beforehand, a suspected Cuban vessel (though there was the possibility it was Soviet) eliminated by falling torpedoes, and also the shooting up of two minelayers attempting to use subterfuge to cover their activities. Aircraft flying from Puerto Rico – US Navy P-3s and then Air National Guard A-7s – had been responsible for that air activity ahead of the Independence’s transit from the North Atlantic into the Caribbean. The carrier herself had an air wing which had already seen action and would again afterwards. There had been Cuban reconnaissance aircraft flying from the occupied Turks & Caicos Islands engaged during the approach and there were many more of those spread throughout islands across the Caribbean. The Cubans and their Soviet backers were attempting to completely dominate the Caribbean and use it for their reinforcement and supply purposes for their war on American soil. The Independence arrived to make sure that that didn’t happen.

The carrier turned eastwards once fully inside the Caribbean and headed towards the Lesser Antilles. Many of those islands were under Cuban control where they had taken over the airports and harbours spread throughout them. Such facilities were being extensively used already but the US Navy sought to bring that to a stop. No longer would they be used by aircraft and ships coming from the Soviet Union as a safe transit point. Grenada was first. The Cubans had fighters there and more nearby on St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Barbados too. They were waiting for the Americans to attack them from outside, with air strikes coming in from over the Atlantic: the Mona Passage (like the Windward Passage) was supposed to be blocked. Such a belief in their own capabilities to close down access to the Caribbean cost the Cubans dear. A full squadron of F-14s covered the Alpha Strike made by A-6s and A-7s. Cuban fighters were taken by surprise and shot down while on the island, the Americans concentrated on putting bombs into the extensive Point Salines Airport first and then the smaller Pearls Airport afterwards. High-explosive and cluster bombs rained down upon each though there were also smaller attacks made upon the harbour at Saint George’s and a Soviet radar base. Two American aircraft were lost during the Grenada strike with a third landing damaged back on the Independence. Two dozen combat aircraft were claimed as kills by the US Navy – the reality was fifteen – and they also shot down a transport aircraft in the sky plus blew up four more on the ground. It was quite the successful mission.

There were other islands though, those nearby and those afar. Certainly the Cubans had been taken by surprise yet they wouldn’t be so again. Regardless, the mission of the Independence was to bomb the enemy and stop their activities. That extended away from just hitting the islands themselves. That transport aircraft shot down while the strike on Grenada was underway had been a Tupolev-154 carrying almost two hundred military personnel. It was an Aeroflot jet now in military service making the Murmansk–Iceland–Grenada–Brownsville run and had been on approach to Point Salines when missiles fired from an unseen F-14 had brought it down. There were other big transport aircraft engaged in the days afterwards – carrying personnel and cargo – on similar flights. Shipping was targeted as well, those making use of the islands which the Cubans had taken control over or either side of them heading east and west. The Independence didn’t stay stationary whilst doing this, waiting for the enemy to react. There were Soviet missile-bombers in Cuba waiting for a fix to be gotten on her so an attack could come and there were also submarines active as well. The carrier moved about at speed, going in all directions while undertaking air missions. The US Navy couldn’t afford to lose her.


The Soviet air presence within Cuba was why the Independence wasn’t sent to the Gulf of Mexico. They had their Tu-22Ms there, Backfires carrying cruise missiles which had already proved their worth in this war as anti-carrier platforms, and those were supported by fighters. In addition, the Straits of Florida and the Yucatán Channel had each been mined in places while on Key West, in Cuba and along the edges of the Yucatán Peninsula there were mobile launchers for anti-ship missiles. If the carrier had managed to enter the Gulf of Mexico without being hit, she might not last long in there either. There was another US Navy carrier already in the Gulf of Mexico though: the veteran of the fight against the Japanese in World War Two in the form of USS Lexington. The Lexington was a training carrier which had been at Pensacola in Florida when the war started. Her war so far had been one where extreme caution had been used to keep the carrier from coming under attack. She was a warship and she would see action yet the US Navy had no wish to see her lost nor those who served on her killed for no reason. Making a suicidal attack towards the enemy might satisfy the wishes of some to see the United States strike back using her but what good would that do? The US Air Force was able to – and had been – hitting both Cuba and Mexico so there was no need at the time being for the Lexington to go charging off towards either country all by her lonesome; she only had a very few escorts assigned as the neither the Gulf of Mexico nor the Caribbean had been home to many American warships pre-war before access to such waters was then restricted like it was.

Aboard the Lexington were F-4 fighters and A-4 attack aircraft. There weren’t many of these but enough to support maritime air operations which the US Navy was conducted up the northern reaches of the Gulf of Mexico stretching from Florida across to Texas. The hunt was on to find and sink the carrier. The Japanese had given the Lexington the name ‘the Blue Ghost’ and she was living up to that. Air missions flown from her were made against surface and subsurface efforts undertaken to influence the fighting in Texas and also sink the carrier. Cuban missile boats and a Soviet submarine had all fallen prey to the Lexington’s aircraft. There had been the aid given too by the carrier in the evacuation of Galveston Bay by all that shipping – including the old battleship Texas – too. The Blue Ghost carried on as October began doing what she had in September: fighting the war and avoiding enemy attention. It would be hard to keep up the latter for good though.

Whilst the Lexington stayed away from Cuba directly, several US Navy submarines were close by. They had come from the North Atlantic, moving fast through deep waters to race towards the island and then slowing down upon approach to go into action. The Soviets were using Cuba rather than Mexico as their springboard for moving more of their forces into the United States and the American air interdiction of that – which had been nowhere near as successful as anticipated – was joined by submarine activity. There were three submarines now with twice as many more eventually on their way to operate close to Cuba or at a distance away from the island itself but interfering with enemy activity around and through there. Ships were sunk and mines were laid. There was a major hunt to find these submarines but for now they were undetected and doing their worst. They, and those soon to join them, would have to be stopped if Cuba was going to be continued to be used like it was to support the war ongoing inside the United States.



Early October 1984:

The city of Cincinnati in Ohio had been floated as a possible compromise for a site for where the US Government could establish itself with the space for the necessary sprawling bureaucracy which would come with it as it moved out of the bunkers and into the open. It was in Glenn’s home state but more so deep within the Mid-West and far away from the coast: there should be enough of a warning of an incoming missile attack to get the government clear by being in such a geographical location. Cincinnati was a pipe dream though, a silly concept suggested to the president by several ego-strokers. Washington would remain the de jure capital of the United States but a de facto capital was needed for the government to make use of rather than stay dispersed underground. Apart from Cincinnati, there were only two real choices: New York City or Philadelphia. The latter was appealing for historic reasons as it had been the nation’s capital before Washington but the Big Apple was more practical. It was very near to the ocean and a major urban area – a submarine missile strike could eliminate it within minutes and there was the real risk of further civil unrest there – yet New York had the space to accommodate the federal government and more so the symbolism of moving to the country’s biggest city was seen as being necessary. Why hide away in Cincinnati? Why look to the past with Philadelphia? New York was favoured by Glenn who wanted to move the federal government to there for the foreseeable future. The bunkers which the government was operating out of would stay functioning though more and more use would be made of above-ground facilities in the Big Apple.

Such a notion of moving from Mount Weather, Raven Rock and The Greenbrier to New York – or anywhere else for that matter – at a time such as this was a source of debate among others in the government. Arguments took place over whether this was the right time to be thinking about doing that and whether the necessary effort should be put into such a move at a time when the country was still being assailed like it was. The country was still in the process of being invaded, there was still nuclear fallout and the political upheaval post-attack continued. Across in West Virginia where Congress was spending some time underground but also oftentimes meeting up above within The Greenbrier luxury hotel complex, the idea about moving the nation’s capital wasn’t something which they saw as important. There were many more pressing things to do. New senators appointed by many state governors arrived and there were ongoing debates about what to do in November. No new congressmen could be appointed like senators were and even then, those special appointees to the Senate needed to be elected by the public. Furthermore, Glenn should really be elected by the American people as well despite everything. The United States needed an elected president! Strong words were exchanged among the politicians on these matters due to the demands of the constitution pushed by some and others reminding their colleagues that this situation was unprecedented. How could elections take place now? Solutions were put forward and they were contested. On and on the arguments over elections went with Glenn and new vice president Baker both sticking to the position that they should be held regardless with some in Congress agreeing while others disagreed.

There remained only twenty-three representatives yet there were soon seventy plus senators up from the post-attack number of six survivors. Forty-seven of the states had the power to appoint new senators (the governors of Oklahoma, Oregon and Wisconsin weren’t able to) and those took the opportunity to appoint at least one but two in most cases. Even those which were war zones or covered in fallout sent senators to represent them among those dispatched by others rather than have no voice. Former senators and public officials were most often sent to The Greenbrier with such personalities who had served in the Ford Administration as Cheney and Rumsfeld (coming from Wyoming and Illinois) being among former presidential candidates like Carter and Shriver (Georgia and Massachusetts) as well as governors who resigned from their posts and were then nominated by their successors: those from Kentucky, Montana and Rhode Island were in this category. Defeated candidates in past elections got what they always wanted when favours were called in as well. Bob Dole, who’d came within an hour of being obliterated in Washington like so many of his colleagues on September 17th but luckily been delayed, kept his new position as president pro tempore while Speaker Phil Crane reigned over such a tiny House. The business of government went on while the country was at war though the decisions taken when it came to law-making reflected the national situation of war and invasion. There remained a very difficult relationship with the president and especially the handling of the war so far. Calls for the firing of Bentsen continued unabated and many of the new senators were far from happy at the appointment of Baker and then other choices made when it came to the Cabinet-level secretaries which Glenn wanted them to approve. Unity and non-partisanship – a Republican vice president and (through circumstances not design) the next two in the line of succession also being non-Democrats as well –, plus continued open democracy with upcoming elections, was the message being put out to the public and the world at large when it came to the US Government fighting a war against foreign dictatorships. However, behind the scenes, the truth was far from that of unity.


The war went on while the politicians did what politicians did. Soviet troops and those of their allies were still on the move. They suffered defeats alongside their victories yet occupied a growing area of American soil. Their advances in California, New Mexico and Texas occurred when reverses happened in Alaska and Arizona. American military forces suffered some rather disturbing defeats while this went on. This all led to civilians being killed, caught behind enemy lines or ending up fleeing from their homes. Combined with the issues with fallout in Maryland and North Dakota, the American people were being caught up in this war fought throughout the nation and becoming casualties of it. Emergency economic measures had been enacted to stop the freefall of the national economy though so much damage had already been done too. Law and order had fallen apart in countless areas. There was the collapse of international trade to deal with as well. Atop of all of this, further commando attacks had taken place nationwide as the national transportation infrastructure came under further attack with rail links especially hardest hit but also airports struck at too.

The United States wasn’t on the verge of collapse though. Things were bad, very bad, but not yet fatal. The invasion was still being opposed and the chaos in some areas certainly was repeated everywhere. The switch to a wartime economy was painful though being done. Mobilisation was taking place domestically while the fighting aboard – by American forces and those of their allies – continued to take place against the Soviets too. Some foolish errors made earlier in the war, in the opening days and weeks last month, were now being corrected. Turning back the tide really wasn’t easy and it wouldn’t be done overnight. Recovery was still going to take time and enemy blows would be struck with devastating effects. The latter was still true this month as it was last month: for now, the advances through the United States by the country’s invaders weren’t going to be stopped across the board as their breakout continued.



Mid October 1984:

The Cubans were running out of fuel. They had supply problems with their armies in California when it came to shortages of ammunition, rations for their troops and the plethora of replacement parts for military equipment yet fuel concerns were far more pressing. Projections pre-war on usage had long been shown to be worthless when it came to how much was burnt through in real combat operations yet what had come now was something different indeed. The Americans had eliminated the supply lines used by the Third Army through Arizona and afterwards moved their air power to blast apart what was left of the supply lines coming into California direct from Mexico which had been supporting the First Army. Every fuel truck which those aircraft could find from above, along with every other one spotted by those on the ground (American Green Berets but also civilians too), was a priority target. It seemed to the Cubans that all of those trucks laden with vehicle fuel had been lost or, if they hadn’t yet, they would be soon. Fuel on the move through improvised stretches of pipeline – laid above ground – was targeted. Fuel at hidden depots came under attack. Fuel about to be captured from American military or civilian stocks was set upon and quickly lost.

Without fuel, the Cubans couldn’t move forward. The men could walk of course but that was hardly practical for the majority of the armies that they had on American soil. Those were fully-mechanised with tanks, tracked & wheeled infantry carriers, reconnaissance vehicles, self-propelled artillery & air defence weapons, engineering & bridging vehicles and all of their supply trucks… and many more smaller vehicles too. All of those needed fuel. That had to come up from the pre-war storage sides in Mexico, ones which hadn’t been blasted apart in American air strikes, to get to those who needed it. Every drop was valuable, every drop of it was something that the Americans wished to see denied to the Cubans. Still, that said, the Cubans would walk to California’s Pacific coast if they had no fuel to do so: getting there meant winning the fight in Southern California as far as their commanders were concerned.


Because the Cuban Third Army was fast running out of vehicle fuel and there was only a trickle coming towards them, there was a reduction in the attacking units sent onwards to reach the sea. The 80th Mechanised Division was joined by 3rd Armored Division elements but it was the 80th Division which would make the final push from around Ontario in the east of the L.A. Basin on to the Pacific. On the twelfth of October, the tanks and personnel carriers started rolling forwards. The drive westwards was one opposed all the way though one not stopped. Within two days, the Cubans reached the beaches at Santa Monica and then that night moved southwards to Los Angeles International Airport. LAX was on fire when the Cubans got there and the scene of a lot of further deliberate destruction but the 80th Division had reached their objective. They journey to LAX had seen Downtown Los Angeles itself avoided but the Cubans still had to move through urban areas. American fighter-bombers and armed helicopters making attack runs from the north caused a lot of destruction to the Cubans during their advance. However, the worst came from weapons in the hands of civilians. Every minute, there came gunshots and there was also the throwing of petrol-bombs in abundance… how the Cubans could have made better use of all of that fuel! Civilian volunteer militia and individuals with weapons didn’t stand a chance. They ambushed and sniped at the Cubans continuously but couldn’t stand and fight in the face of organised soldiers. The Cubans returned fire with everything they had each time, blasting everything in sight and moving down those in their way with heavy gunfire. Officers screamed at sergeants and the sergeants screamed at their men: stop wasting ammunition! It was the liberal use of ammunition that wiped out unorganised opposition every time though before those volunteers fighting the invading Cubans – after the US military had departed – could properly get at them, come around from all sides against the Cubans. There were very few of them who had come all this way and they were in a city home to millions. Many Cubans were searching for fuel while on the move to the coast and then once there. They soon found where it had been. Civilian gas stations, every single one in sight, were either alight or had long since had their storage tanks drained. There was fuel elsewhere, some hidden but loads more in parked civilian vehicles, but that was for all intents and purposes impossible to get at.

Cuban infantry walked after the 80th Division. Two divisions of troops were dismounted out of vehicles which there was no fuel for and therefore marched towards the sea if they couldn’t be driven there. They came under attack by civilians and they fired back too. Being on foot and constantly spreading out, men came out of the ranks. There were those who got lost or delayed and failed to catch up; there were those who deserted. This was Los Angeles and this was a looters paradise. It was also a very dangerous place though, especially in less-expensive areas of the city. The LAPD and the California Highway Patrol were gone and so too were the men of the California State Military Reserve, a non-combat volunteer force which had been assisting in maintaining law and order. Cuban deserters had competition for the loot available and those who ventured away faced extreme danger. Anarchy had come to Southern California, not just Los Angeles itself, and it was a dangerous place. Millions had already left their homes – many of them actually stuck on the way out – but there were many others left behind. Announcements had been made for people to stay in their homes and not risk their lives in fighting: this had come from the Californian state government up in Sacramento but also from El Paso where the Peace Committee was still calling upon an end to the war. Both were saying the same thing to those who hadn’t got out.

Those Cuban reinforcements who arrived on foot started positioning themselves to the north, running along the base of the mountains which loomed above the L.A. Basin. There had been no real American military presence in the Los Angeles area since the fight at Ontario had seen them abandon the city but along the slopes of those mountains, there certainly was. The fighting soon reached as far as Beverly Hills and then near the sea; Cuban infantry were taken under fire when standing with open mouths like tourists looking up at the Hollywood Sign. Burbank in the San Fernando Valley was on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains yet for now the Cubans were seeing the other sights of Los Angeles. As to the 80th Division, it was joined several days after taking LAX by the rest of the 3rd Division. There was a reformation of the two of them during that meeting. The fuel shortage was still there but for once, just the once, there had been less fuel used than believed it would be in getting them all the way across to the Pacific. There had been no fighting against the Americans to see that used up where manoeuvring over the battlefield would have done so: instead it had been a straight though slow drive forward. Air attacks had still occurred yet had eased up slightly when the Cubans had driven through such urban areas where there were many civilians. Many US Air Force pilots – despite orders not to discriminate – still shrunk from dropping bombs over civilian areas. The Cubans had taken advantage of that and got the last of their fuel forward. There was no more left, this was all they had. The Third Army didn’t know when more would come. Until then, the army commander was given instructions from the Western Front headquarters to send his mobile forces southwards. They were to go to Long Beach and then down into Orange County. The Cuban First Army – with its own supply problems – was further south, down around San Diego, but the 3rd & 80th Divisions would have the mission of pushing down along the coast. That they would have to now do, staying away though from what was quite the fight near to San Diego.



Mid October 1984:

The Americans were going to trap themselves against the sea, that they were well-aware of. San Diego was seen as a good defensive position to withdraw to though when the only other option was the certain defeat in the field when being surrounded. There was always the possibility of evacuation too should it come to that… the possibility anyway. It was back towards the city on the Pacific coast which the US Marines with the I Marine Amphibious Force (primarily what was left of the 1st Marine Division) headed towards, fighting a rear-guard action along the way. The Cubans did follow them yet not with all of the vigour expected in that. There was a reluctance shown to race ahead and try to cut off the US Marines which they couldn’t understand. Only by the time that the outskirts of San Diego was reached did the Americans understand: the Cubans were running very low on fuel. If only that had been known about beforehand, it could have been exploited. Some small-scale counterattacks were made once that became clear, taking advantage of what little tactical mobility that the Cubans had, and there was also an extra priority given to air attacks against anything that might look like a fuel truck. Cuban fuel problems showed up the closer that they got to San Diego and the Americans changed their deployment plans along the coast. They secured some better ground, further forward than initially planned, with the knowledge that they would be able to get the time to dig in properly before the Cubans arrived. They had a three-to-one manpower advantage when it came to the Cuban First Army vs. the 1 MAF in a straight fight but closer to the defensive position being established, that numerical advantage dropped significantly for the Cubans. They weren’t going to be able to dig the Americans out of the many places where they set up their positions unless the Cubans were able to be significantly reinforced and also regained their mobility.

Morale skyrocketed among the US Marines as they got closer to San Diego. They were retreating but remained unbeaten. It was only because the Cubans had broken through elsewhere, where the US Air Force and national guardsmen had let them down (an unfair summary but the general feeling), that the I MAF was being forced back. As to the Cubans, they’d beat them soon enough. Other fighting men might have lost all hope during such a retreat and these US Marines might have had too had the Cubans really pushed on, but during this withdrawal, there was confidence that the further they came closer to the sea the further they came close to eventual victory!


The San Diego Pocket was still smaller than the US Marines would have liked to have made it despite the last-minute changes in getting some more time to extend it. If they had more men, then the area which they defended would have been far larger. It must be said though, that if the I MAF had more men, then they couldn’t be withdrawing like they did. Regardless, when the I MAF got back to San Diego, they met those who had been working hard on the improvised defences which ran around the city. The naval air stations at Miramar and Imperial Beach were outside the pocket but inside there was NAS North Island plus San Diego International Airport. Those were jammed with aircraft and helicopters for the close air support mission to aid the defenders. The pocket also contained the naval anchorage itself from where so many warships had already left, joining cargo ships taking away a lot of equipment, along with the Marine Corps recruiting depot inside of it too.

The retreating US Marines linked up with those already in-place who had been busy digging anti-tank ditches, undertaking demolitions to create blockages and establishing strongpoints to be used by heavy weapons teams. All around the outside of San Diego and down through Chula Vista, then looping back around to the sea again, the I MAF linked up with those already there finishing off the defensive positions. These were their fellow Marines who’d come from other bases spread throughout Southern California – rear-area men from Camp Pendleton but also those from airfields further afield such as MCAS El Toro – and also the recruiting depot itself when so many retired Marines not in the Reserves had showed up as well. The I MAF doubled in strength in manpower terms. Those Marines had been reminded that every Marine was a rifleman, such was the Marine Corps code, and they would fight as just that. There were those manning the aircraft and the marine artillery also in the San Diego Pocket who wouldn’t be on the frontlines, yet they, like those on the pocket’s edges, had a weapon at hand.

The US Marines weren’t alone in San Diego. There were scattered national guard units, US Air Force personnel, US Army rear area soldiers and US Navy sailors who weren’t on the ships which had departed which had all fallen back to the city and were inside the perimeter. All under I MAF command, they were to be used as reserves to plug holes in the frontlines and for security duties behind them. San Diego was full of civilians, so many of them who had come from very far away including many Mexican nationals who had come here before the war, and they weren’t all on their best behaviour. Young men aged eighteen to thirty should all have already reported for conscription by now – the war was almost a month old – and those who hadn’t left the L.A. Basin with the evacuation going over the mountains should only be those who were unfit for military service. There were quite a few young men in the San Diego Pocket who didn’t have any proof that they had a medical exclusion for military service. Other civilians outnumbered them though: men, women and children gathered together in a small area. They had escaped to the coast hoping for evacuation (there had been rumours that the US Navy was evacuating civilians and taking them to safety) with the belief that they wouldn’t fare well under foreign occupation. The horror stories of occupation elsewhere in the country hard reached them with some truth to that yet also a lot of falsehood. Nonetheless, safety was supposed to be in San Diego and they crammed in there. They needed a roof over their head, food & water, medical attention and to be policed: these were desperate people and they weren’t all willing to wait in turn for what was coming to them from the overstretched local authorities who too answered to military orders now issued by the US Marines.


The Cubans approached the San Diego Pocket. There was fighting with the last of the US Marines rear-guard around Lemon Grove on the fifteenth of October and more near to La Presa the next day. Green Berets outside of the pocket along with civilian volunteers traded shots with the Cubans once the last of the I MAF pulled back into the defensive belt behind. Air power came into play again now, after each side had curtailed operations – uncoordinated with each other, naturally – for a few days. The Cubans were flying their jets from distant sites such as Yuma and also the (smashed-up) El Centro; American aircraft were flown from inside the pocket. All of those aircraft had to watch out for the shells in the air. US Navy warships off-shore forming a flotilla of eight vessels especially tasked to give fire support to the San Diego Pocket greeted the Cubans as they got closer with barrages of shells: their guns could reach every square inch of the pocket. The US Navy and the US Marine Corps had worked well together throughout the fighting in Southern California, not squabbling like they did with the other services, and those on the front lines called-in the shelling. A flight of Cuban MiGs raced out to sea to engage those warships. They were soon blasted out of the sky when engaged by everyone who could take a shot at them. The warships there were exposed if the Cubans would bring forward many aircraft but they certainly didn’t have those available at the minute. The warships off-shore would stay as long as they could.

The next day, the Cubans started reaching the outer perimeter of the San Diego Pocket in number as their First Army arrived. The fight began.

[James G]

Mid October 1984:

There was a battalion of US Army paratroopers based in northern Italy pre-war which formed the nucleus of what was called the ‘Southern European Airborne Task Force’ (SEATF). The SEATF had the primary mission of operating in the Italian Alps or further north into Austria in a wartime scenario with the expectation to be fighting Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops there. The Soviets hadn’t marched into Austria and nor had Italy gone to war either. Three days after a wholly different conflict from the one long expected began, the SEATF left Italy and headed home. The paratroopers, the attached airmobile artillery battery and the support troops had flown across the Atlantic and arrived in Florida. They had been held there in the Sunshine State in a position ready to repulse a Cuban follow-up to their seizure of Key West though at the same time notions had been floated for the SEATF – still retaining its name through September – to maybe go to Panama, to Guantanamo Bay or even to Puerto Rico. US Marines took over the defence of Florida, alongside national guardsmen, and the SEATF did nothing. They waited and they waited some more. They were forgotten about for some time. The II Marine Amphibious Force had then guarding the Kennedy Space Centre in support of Florida’s 53rd Infantry Brigade (assigned alongside the 2nd Marine Division) and the SEATF was involved in a shooting incident against a Cuban naval commando team which swam ashore from a submersible yet ran into soldiers which they didn’t expect to run into.

Those soldiers were now in Colorado. The SEATF was now under XVIII US Corps command and the name changed to just 1-509 Infantry. That battalion was the combat element which it was built around. The gunners had stayed along with some of the engineers though many of the non-combat supporting assets had been reassigned away to the XVIII Corps due to shortages coming from earlier losses and reassignments. Those supporting elements – forward supply & maintenance, military intelligence and extra communications – would have come in mightily useful for the fight which the 1-509 Infantry was taking part in. They were trying to do what the 4th Infantry Division and then the Colorado Army National Guard had both failed to do: finish off the Cuban and Nicaraguan paratroopers spread through the southern part of Colorado. Twice, they were supposed to have been beaten after they had arrived on invasion day. The infantry division from Fort Carson had poured through Pueblo and unleashed tanks upon the Cubans there before afterwards heading down into New Mexico confident that they had overran those invaders. National guardsmen moved in afterwards and also hit the Cubans, along with some of the Nicaraguans, and pushed the remaining men back ready to finally eliminate them. They hadn’t done so. The Nicaraguans had retaken the town of Pueblo and cut the supply line for the troops to the south which ran down from Fort Carson to the north and linked up with the last of the Cubans. Many of the Coloradoans who’d stood in their way had been either killed or taken prisoner and the infantry division to the south was busy. With the Nicaraguans on the advance through New Mexico, getting closer to Colorado every day, the decision had been taken to send the 1-509 Infantry in to finally overcome those foreign troops around Pueblo. They stood in the way of the fighting retreat being made from New Mexico and if the 4th Infantry Division had to retreat through Pueblo, then it needed to do so unopposed.

As those before them had found out, neither the Cubans nor the Nicaraguans were willing to be easily defeated by the latest American troops sent against them. These men had not been reinforced since they arrived – success was reinforced in Soviet military doctrine (which the course of the war was following) while failure, what it was said these men only had achieved, wasn’t – and had struggled against those they had fought. Some recent air-drops had been made of weapons and ammunition but no more men. Those who were alive and so far from home, fought well against the next group of Americans who came against them. Pueblo was abandoned when the 1-509 Infantry attacked in number when aided by artillery but that had never been a strongpoint designed to be held by the Nicaraguans: when the Cubans had done that, most of their brigade had been wiped out. The Nicaraguans pulled back with their 19th Parachute Regiment (what was left of it after almost a month in combat) withdrawing to the east. They fell back past the flattened airport and through the east-west running valley. The Americans followed them but the Nicaraguans had done this before and knew how to make their opponents pay in blood for their advances. Localised counterattacks were made at every opportunity and traps were sprung. The Nicaraguans withdrew along the valley formed by the Arkansas River yet refused to be beaten.


Most of the Cubans were away to the west, on the other side of Pueblo. They were spread throughout Fremont County, as far to the west as Florence – around which they had taken control of several prison facilities – and into the forested regions of the Rocky Mountains in places too. Those out there had faced guerrilla attacks of alarming frequency and, without the numbers to properly combat them, had pulled back quite a bit from they called ‘las tierras baldias’ (the Badlands). When the 1-509 Infantry struck at the Nicaraguans, that left what remained of the Cubans on their own and to the national guardsmen who had been previously forced out of Pueblo. Pushing against the Cubans, the Coloradoans had more success than they previously had done since their opponents were few in number, cut off and spread out. In addition, those air-drops of weapons and ammunition had been hoarded by the Nicaraguans with the Cubans getting far fewer of those supplies. Moreover, they had recently also come under repeated air attack when the north-south supply links for American troops fighting in New Mexico had been attempted to be opened west of Pueblo and through Florence with air power leading the way of that effort. The Cubans were ready to collapse. The American national guardsmen made the final push and had Florence in sight. If they could get there and take that crossroads…

Soviet helicopters showed up first. At the very last minute, right before they were about to finally give in, the Cubans were joined by their allies. They weren’t being reinforced for they hadn’t won anything and were to remain fighting on their own after Hind gunships shot up the national guardsmen. Instead, the Soviet Airborne from Albuquerque, the men of the 76th Guards Airborne Division which had been there in New Mexico since the war began, arrived to prepare for another mission. They were soon in a position to begin turning the flank of XVIII Corps troops which were withdrawing up into Colorado. The Americans had been focused on the Nicaraguan armoured drive following the course of the interstate; the Soviets were moving all up their western flank through the Rocky Mountains. The Cubans welcomed their allies with much relief but they soon found that their comrades had no time for them nor their troubles. Neither were the Soviets here to go cut off the Americans ahead of Nicaraguan tanks. The Cubans would have to stand and fight, soaking up American bullets, while the Soviets prepared for a very different fight. They set themselves up in Florence plus Canon City and especially around the little Fremont County Airport that the Cubans had been unable to stop from having every aboveground structure there blasted to bits. There was a runway there which Soviet engineers were all over and quickly set to work on. The 76th Guards Division was no more than a brigade in size in real terms (part had fought at El Paso and there had been many casualties among the rest of the division during their stand outside Albuquerque) but the four thousand men who arrived over the period of two days throughout the general area where the Cubans where were all experienced and well-equipped troops. This was their staging point for an upcoming helicopter-borne assault mission to the northeast of where the Cubans were. They were going to a mountain made of granite soon enough.



Mid October 1984:

High drama and the resulting change in political leadership back home, events which were going on behind the scenes, affected the conduct of the war being fought by the Soviet Union on the other side of the world. There had come the firm message from Moscow that the invasion of the United States would not be allowed to stall. Problems, no matter what they were, must be overcome. New instructions came with regard to several issues of significance. Among those, there was the order which eliminated the previous political considerations when it came to how the Soviets fighting the war in America dealt with their allies. The Soviets had previously assumed the ‘big brother’ role which they did with their Warsaw Pact allies in Europe when dealing with the Cubans and the LAComs in this war yet still did more than just pay lip service to the notion of treating their allies equally. Cuban and Nicaraguan forces were given important tasks and there were many senior command roles – including the very top one – performed by non-Soviets. The new Soviet leadership considered this to have been one of Ustinov’s ¬many mistakes (Leningrad was at the top of that list) and corrected those. Until the Soviets could get more men into the United States, something which was being stepped up with a lot of the earlier caution thrown away, their allies would still do plenty of the fighting for now... dying in their thousands while they did that.

However, things were different with the command set-up as generals were moved about. The Cuban who had led the opening of the invasion was given a promotion and returned home a hero, replaced by his Soviet first deputy. The Cuban general commanding the Western Front stayed in-place yet most of his staff were now Soviet; most of the top Cuban people with the Northern Front (who had the Texas mission) were reassigned leaving that fully to the Soviets as well. In addition, another army group command was established, this being the Central Front. It was responsible for continuing operations in the middle of the other two with mainly Nicaraguan troops under command along with some Guatemalans and also Soviet troops too. The entire command staff for the Central Front was Soviet. Down throughout the two Nicaraguan field armies, there were Soviet liaison officers being attached everywhere (the same was happening elsewhere) as they took over. More of their own men were coming soon, the Soviet’s allies were told, and this was just the beginning of that. There were grumbles in Managua and Guatemala City as well as some choice words spoken in Havana. None of those in those far away places could do anything about that though. The Soviets were moving more men into occupied parts of the southwestern United States, but more than that, they had the presence on the ground already of their men who were taking over command: those in uniform from their allies who might want to liaise with their political masters back home to act would have to do so through Soviet-controlled communications. Furthermore, those Cubans and Nicaraguans (the Guatemalans had less complaints than the other two) weren’t fully aware of the big picture in how this was happening everywhere: again, the Soviets controlled access to all information and little was known of anything going on elsewhere until it was too late. Rebellion in any fashion against the Soviets would be impossible to coordinate and this was arranged early on.


The Central Front commanded those (beat up) Guatemalans in southern & eastern Arizona as well as those airborne troops from three countries up in Colorado. The main concentration of combat power was in New Mexico though with the Nicaraguans supported by a few Soviets. The Nicaraguan First and Second Armies were spread across New Mexico and been reorganised since the latter had arrived with sub-units allocated to each moving subordination to another. There were to be two advances as the Central Front was to continue with their earlier, stalled breakout. The First Army was to complete the movement north into Colorado to link up with those flown in there while the Second Army advanced eastwards, pushing into the Texas Panhandle and onto the edges of the American Great Plains. The Americans were on the run, withdrawing everywhere, but they were still dangerous in their retreat and there was intelligence information that those small forces they had were soon to be reinforced. Win now, the front commander had been told upon appointment, and winning meant not chasing the Americans away but engaging them in battle and beating them so they couldn’t escape to fight another day. That intelligence was wrong though. The Americans here weren’t being reinforced, not with the ongoing disasters in California and Texas. There were orders that the Americans had to hold where they could and not run away: they would give the Nicaraguans that battle which they sought rather than run to avoid it if possible.

This quickly became apparent to the Nicaraguan First Army as they entered Colorado following the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division. The Americans gave them a stand-up fight in the Purgatoire Valley (Purgatory it was) near to Trinidad. The Nicaraguans had followed the course of Interstate-25 northwards and aimed to keep on going but the 4th Infantry was no longer withdrawing. They instead commenced an attack in the early hours, striking first in the darkness before the sun came up and then continuing to go forwards through the morning of October 14th. They had chosen their ground well yet more so had let the Nicaraguans become strung out with supply lines which stretched all the way back to Albuquerque. Air attacks, commando actions by Green Berets & Rangers and guerrilla activity – in addition to the Nicaraguans having come so far – had set the scene ready for the Nicaraguans to be in no position to reply on what was coming up behind them. The field army moved on an extremely narrow frontage with few men at the front, most stacked up behind and no room for manoeuvre when they reached the Purgatoire Valley. Some units defied orders and tried to fall back, crashing into their own comrades coming forward to support them leading to a lot of friendly fire incidents. The Americans did more damage than those though. Their tanks and infantry worked excellently together when back in Colorado again, far better than the embarrassment which had been the 4th Infantry’s fight around Albuquerque. The Nicaraguans lost the fight and lost badly. The American advance slowed as it reached difficult ground going back south (ground they had gone through twice already now) but they still pushed the Nicaraguans back to the New Mexico state line. The Nicaraguans were left a mess with formations now destroyed left in disarray during a panicked retreat. There were stragglers all over the mountains, men who were lost and in very dangerous terrain for them. As the Nicaraguans tried to reform afterwards, once the American advance had stopped, they were sniped at and bombed too slowing that process down considerably. There would be no Nicaraguan offensive this month up into the heart of Colorado unless something significant happened in the American rear.

The rest of the XVIII US Corps – the 1st Infantry & 101st Air Assault Divisions – weren’t able to stop the Nicaraguan Second Army. They tried to do so, aiming to block them from crossing into Texas, but failed to do so. The 1st Infantry fell back from around Clovis and then made a fight of it against the oncoming Nicaraguans near to Farwell & Texico. The Nicaraguans couldn’t push forward there so moved to the American’s right flank. On open ground such as where they were, they were greatly exposed to American air power as the skies were full of their jets; the occupied Cannon AFB was a ruin and wouldn’t be available for at least a week (maybe more) for air operations to support the Nicaraguans. Orders from above which came from the front commander had the Nicaraguans go the other way then, to try and turn the American’s other flank. Again this was over flat terrain yet the American aircraft which came in faced an increase in anti-air defences with a lot more missile-carriers and anti-aircraft guns sent that way. Some bombs fell but not enough. Nicaraguan tanks then started to loop around the Americans, aiming to get at them from behind. The 1st Infantry didn’t have the numbers for an all-round defence but more than that, its commander feared being caught in-place and trapped. His flank was being turned and those to his front increased their attacks trying to pin the majority of his division down. He pulled back from the Farwell-Texico position on the New Mexico-Texas state line and into Texas. That fighting withdrawal was made in a north-eastern direction, which split the 1st Infantry from the 101st Air Assault to the south.

Those airmobile troopers were spread out over a huge area, just as they had been since they had entered the war. They conducted a fighting withdrawal through the south-eastern corner of New Mexico and were joined by Texan national guardsmen from the 3rd Brigade of the (destroyed) 49th Armored Division who’d joined them. The 101st Air Assault needed the armoured support on the ground of tanks and mechanised infantry to do what they had been unable to do before and try to contain the Nicaraguan advance. That had restarted with a smashed-up but still capable division of theirs pushing onwards and this time they were better dealt with. As long as the Americans were capable of holding off heavy Nicaraguan units, they could use their helicopters to dance all around their opponents. Control over that part of New Mexico in every direction away from Hobbs was contested and the Nicaraguans were held back. Then a US Air Force F-4 on a recon flight through the Trans-Pecos region (the most-western bit of Texas) spotted Soviet armour moving in strength. The 66th Brigade – victors of El Paso – went over the Pecos River and survived several air attacks before moving onwards through West Texas. They arrived in Odessa and turned then north. They were going to roll up the 101st Air Assault from behind unless it abandoned New Mexico. Those Texans along with the regulars hadn’t wanted to leave their home state to be sent to New Mexico and were not best pleased to be told that as the US Army withdrew, they would be too. The national guardsmen wanted to go south, to go fight those Soviets but instead the orders were for a general XVIII Corps retreat.

The Soviets, with their ‘allies’ doing most of the fighting & dying, were back on the breakout. American forces throughout the region where the Central Front had its men pour onwards asked just where were those troops from the East Coast and the ones from Europe? Why were they not here? Where else could be more important than this fight? The answer: Central and East Texas.



Mid October 1984:

It had been asked in Moscow whether there was a war taking place in Texas or a courtship. Was the fighting ever going to get started there or were the armies from both sides going to keep dancing around each other, smiling & flirting but not getting down to doing the dirty business? Such remarks from the new leader showed quite the complete misunderstanding of the situation on the ground there and were, by either accident or design, disrespectful to all those who had died there serving the Soviet Union far from home already. More would follow them to their deaths as the war in Texas was stepped up. The Northern Front was told that no longer would there be any excuses allowed: the Americans must be beaten and destroyed in combat, not allowed to again withdraw to fight another day.

The Eighth Tank Army thus forced its way into Southeast Texas where the V US Corps was. They avoided Houston itself and crossed the countryside north of that city between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers. The towns of Bryan and Huntsville to the north were avoided too as the Soviets were on the advance and had no wish to be delayed by getting into fights around them were there were Americans volunteer militia waiting in ambush. Straight towards the US Army and National Guard heavy units on the far side of the Trinity was where the Soviets drove their field army. Specific attention was focused on getting at the un-blooded 35th Infantry Division rather than the 5th & 24th Infantry Divisions which had already seen action. They latter two had national guard units with them, which had done well, but the 35th Infantry consisted solely of those and GRU intelligence reports rated them lowly, especially as their parent division was still in the process of peacetime formation when the war started. The Soviets went directly towards where the 35th Infantry was, aiming to tear through them and then get at the rest of the V Corps.

Reaching the American positions took the Soviets a day’s advance – one contested from the air and below on the ground too with delaying actions – but once they did so, they hit the national guardsmen which they targeted head-on. Their 128th Guards Motorised Rifle Division was only at half strength after earlier fighting, but that was judged to be enough for the lead unit of the attack… expectations were that the whole division would be lost soon enough. To the south of Lake Livingston on the Trinity River, the clash took place. The Soviets won the fight. The 35th Infantry did not collapse as fast nor as easily as expected, but they were comprehensively taken apart by the 128th Guards Division in the end. The cost for the Soviets was just as they anticipated: they lost their own division of experienced men in the fight too due to the intensity of the battle. Each side was a fully-mechanised formation suitable for high-tempo manoeuvre operations over a wide area yet they fought each other in a mostly static battle where each sought to outmanoeuvre each other but only outmanoeuvred themselves. Nothing went to plan for those involved in the fighting though for overall Soviet purposes, they had the victory they wanted. They way ahead had been cleared into the V Corps’ rear when they went through the 35th Infantry.

The rest of the army poured onwards. The 24th Motorised Rifle and the 10th Guards Tank Divisions – each having seen earlier action – once again fought the V Corps through their rear areas where the ‘corps trains’ could be found. The Americans struggled to redeploy, fighting on the eastern side of the Trinity River through the forests, and saw their support network torn apart just as had been the case the week before. The destruction which the Soviets caused was immense. The two American divisions eventually managed to mount a counterattack but it was far too late to save those whom had been on the receiving end of such an assault. Furthermore, the 5th & 24th Infantry quickly found themselves in real trouble in mounting their strike. They crashed into the 10th Guards Division and found themselves in quite the entanglement. The 24th Division joined in the fight too soon enough, on the V Corps’ flank and trying to cut off any escape route to the east. The Soviets wanted to trap the Americans against the Trinity and they came very close to doing so. However, first the 5th Infantry and then the 24th Infantry following them managed to slip away. Air power on the American side, the ability to fill the skies with more aircraft than the Soviets could, gave them the edge they needed to conduct a fighting withdrawal going south first and then eastwards. The Soviets were unable to shut off the escape of those they sought to destroy and when following them ,aiming to do so elsewhere then before the Americans could get to Louisiana, couldn’t do that either.

The three-day fight which was the Battle of the Trinity River came to an end with the Americans pulling away and surviving to fight another day. The 35th Infantry was lost and so too the majority of V Corps’ support network – meaning that before they could fight again the Americans would need to see that all replaced with new units (not easy) – but the two other divisions escaped. Louisiana’s national guardsmen fought at the rear-guard back past Beaumont and then Orange all the way to the Sabine River. They were the last to enter their home state. A new defensive line was to be strung on the Sabine. Could the Americans hold on that river where they hadn’t held on others? Time would tell. For now, despite an escape, the Americans had just lost another major battle with the Soviets. It was a costly one for each side and the Soviets weren’t about to call it a success due to the battering which the Eighth Tank Army took, but they had driven the V Corps out of Texas and wiped out about a quarter of their strength in doing so. That wouldn’t be enough for those in Moscow though.


President Glenn had a lot in common with the new Soviet leader when it came to Texas. The V Corps’ retreat from the Trinity River upset both men though for different reasons; the American president believed that the V Corps should have held while his counterpart in Moscow was furious that the Eighth Tank Army hadn’t finished the Americans off when they should have. In addition to that, the two men were equally unhappy when it came to simultaneous events in Central Texas near Austin and up the Interstate-35 corridor. How could the Cubans, each asked, achieve what they did there?

That achievement was the destruction of the US III Corps and a drive all the way to Waco before the Cuban Second Army ran out of steam. The Cubans were meant to be finished in the view of the Americans and barely capable of holding their positions on the Colorado River outside of Austin; such was why there had been that transfer of the 5th Infantry to join the V Corps. The III Corps had retained the (mangled) 1st Cavalry Division and the brigade of paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division along with Texan national guardsmen in a good defensive position with the belief that when the Soviets did as anticipated and attacked into Southeast Texas, their flank would be exposed to an attack from the III Corps. The Cubans had once again been underrated by the Americans. Maybe their advance starting on October thirteenth was their last hurrah and they would then have nothing left, but if it was, then before they had nothing more they did a lot. Their supply lines back to Mexico were long cut by American air attacks on the Rio Grande crossings – leading to the American belief that they were finished as an offensive force – but they had dragged over before then a lot of what they would need to fight in terms of fuel and ammunition. Mexican assistance had been vital in that though the Cubans fast found that the Mexicans were not those they wished to rely upon. Their whole country was falling apart after Mexico City’s nuclear elimination and the war being fought to defend the Mexican Revolution, as the international propaganda ran, had moved rather beyond that now. These Cubans fighting in Texas were under complete Soviet control too after the Soviets had severed all independent Cuban communications… blaming American actions for that, naturally. Their Soviet masters were using them for a distraction and that they certainly caused.

When the Cubans got to Waco, they were alarmingly close to the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Millions of Texan civilians, those who lived there and internal refugees from across Texas, were in that area along with a major concentration of pre-war and temporary American military bases. With the Cubans in Waco and news reaching Dallas–Fort Worth of that (which it shouldn’t have), panic hit that urban area. It looked like the Cubans could be there in days. That certainly wasn’t the case. The Cuban Second Army was at less than one-third of it’s pre-war size, barely able to field a complete division when reorganised once again. The fighting around Austin – an infantry fight at first – and then the advance northwards had cost them dear. They had already fought many earlier deadly battles with the Americans through South Texas and Central Texas was another long slog. They overcame the 1st Cavalry though the American paratroopers got away from them. There had been distractions caused by the orders from above for a strong armoured detachment to escort a GRU team into Fort Hood after the Americans pulled what was left out of there and the Cubans had too been stung by sniping & improvised explosive devices everywhere they went too from unorganised militia and lone gunmen. Nonetheless, wiping out the 1st Cavalry after already eliminating the 2nd Armored Division meant a fantastic victory had been gained. Between Waco and Dallas–Fort Worth, there was a brigade of the 82nd Airborne (who’d withdrawn all that way, taking losses as they did so) and Texan volunteers. That was all that there was in terms of opposition.

American commanders elsewhere fighting off the invasion, from California through to Arizona then New Mexico and into Colorado, had demanded to know why they weren’t being significantly reinforced. They were told that Texas was where those reinforcements were being sent to. Where was the US Third Army while so much more of Texas was being lost then? Answer: crossing the Mississippi and rolling into Arkansas & Louisiana. They should have been in Texas long before the Cubans and Soviets attacked. They had been delayed, held up on the way. Such a delay was costing the United States very dear. And while they took their sweet time in coming to Texas (such was the opinion of many) the Soviets were busy brining their own reinforcements into Texas, getting another army across from Cuba when everything was supposedly to be being done to stop that.



Mid October 1984:

Post-strike reconnaissance of the bombing conducted by the B-1As over Brownsville and Corpus Christi had told the Americans that the port facilities at each of those South Texas harbours were wholly destroyed. The Soviets had come to the same conclusion in the immediate aftermath of the bomb runs as well. So much damage had been done which caused the Americans to congratulate themselves and the Soviets to hold their heads in their hands. Both opinions on the matter of the scale of destruction came from afar though. Up close, things were different. Where the bombs had been dropped and the moving wall of devastating air pressure had advanced forward, there were areas of complete devastation. These had been the main bits of the ports which had been in Soviet use. The complete shutting down of ongoing operations at each was achieved when all of those bombs had fallen. However, the port facilities of Brownsville and Corpus Christi – especially at the former – were extensive. There were lesser-used and unused parts at each at the time of the air strikes. The Americans intended to come back and smash up the rest of each after the October first attacks but found afterwards that the Soviets improved their air defences around each (further SAM sites were set up and there were more fighters operating) especially when they moved to bring cargo into the other parts of the ports. What was left at Brownsville and Corpus Christi was in no comparison to what had been lost, but it would have to do. Orders from Moscow were clear on that. The Soviets thus opened-up other areas of the ports and had to do more than before to land cargo at each. That they did.

Brownsville and Corpus Christi were the centre of activity where ships arriving from Cuba unloaded their cargos though there was afterwards use made of further Texan harbours when Freeport and Galveston fell into Soviet hands. Tampico back down in Mexico, on the other side of the Rio Grande, was another site of activity. The sinking of ships coming across from Cuba – by submarines, mines and air attacks – continued and those increased. Regardless of the graveyard that the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico was becoming, ships still left Cuba for Texan ports. They went back and forth, each time running the gauntlet of attacks made either when at sea or in port. Galveston became the most dangerous port for those ships to use, ahead of free-fire zone which Mariel in Cuba appeared to be, and was quickly little-used after the frequency of sinkings near there. Freeport became far more important than it had been at first: an American submarine on its way to sit off the approaches and pick off incoming ships was located and sunk by a Soviet Navy helicopter detachment making use of Brazoria County Airport. The Soviet Navy didn’t have any surface ships in the Gulf of Mexico though had a few submarines; their naval aircraft based in number in Cuba with some moving across to Texas provided more of an effective force than their submarines.

That little airport near Freeport was one of the many held by the Soviets and their allies too throughout Texas. There were small regional facilities like those, military airbases and then big international airports. Some had been bombed, others had seen American demolitions take place. Nonetheless, aircraft made use of them. There were Soviet military aircraft alongside those of their allies (almost all built in the Soviet Union it must be said) and also aircraft from airlines such as Aeroflot and Cubana which were flying in & out of each. Bringing men from Cuba to Texas was far easier than transferring equipment and supplies due to the availably of so many sites in addition to the frequency of the flights. The naval problems meant that the air link became more important. Aircraft were used more and more to fly cargoes that would have gone by sea. It wasn’t practical, nor physically possible in a lot of cases, to use aircraft to move everything yet what could be flown to Texas was. The aircraft made a lot of trips and were able to avoid American interdiction by taking longer routes, flying a loop to the south and going in & out of Texas through Mexico and in & out of Cuba over the western reaches of the Caribbean.

Aircraft wouldn’t lift everything though and the ships still had to make those dangerous voyages. The most-firm orders had come since earlier in the month that Moscow demanded that the Twenty–Eighth Combined Arms Army get across to Texas. It was the second of the Soviet field armies there which were established pre-war on Cuba. This one had been begun moving even before Brownsville and Corpus Christi were hit like they were and then the US Navy submarines started to make their presence felt. Delays had come in the movement after that those the hesitation to rush the transfer – as it was regarded as being from afar – was overruled. Get that army across, came the message, or else.


The Twenty–Eighth Army was initially planned to be brought in and staged in South Texas before moving as a whole into battle afterwards. That had been the same with the Eighth Tank Army which had come before them though events had over taken plans when one of the four assigned divisions with the Eighth Tank Army had been left behind incomplete when the others went off to fight. That missing formation was the 23rd Tank Division, which was soon unofficially referred to as the 23rd Infantry Division because it lacked so many of its tanks and other heavy gear. The missing bits had been used to fill out the other three who had lost some of theirs during the crossings of the Gulf of Mexico. The 23rd Division had less than a hundred tanks (it should have had three hundred plus) and been sent to the northwest after what was left formed-up. The men moved in captured civilian transport or by air as the 23rd Division went towards San Antonio after the Cubans had gone through there and up into Texas Hill Country first before moving deeper into West Texas. They crossed through undefended territory, shadowboxing against Texan national guard units which withdrew to the north of them. Revolutionary Mexican infantry units joined them in helping to establish control of a wide area which culminated in the capture of the crossroads at Sonora. Those Soviets and the Mexicans with them fought guerrilla actions through West Texas as they tried to control the road network and supress resistance. In Moscow, those who looked at the maps only saw cowardice when it came to how little of an area was taken. Too much caution was used, they decided, and that was to change. The heavy brigade of Texans were later transferred to New Mexico leaving light units in their place; there was a Soviet tank division there!

When the rest of the Eighth Tank Army struck north of Houston and the Cubans moved past Austin to drive on Waco, the Northern Front headquarters took direct command of the 23rd Division and had it advance northwards towards San Angelo first. There was a non-flying US Air Force presence at Goodfellow AFB which the Americans had already pulled out of though the runways would be worked upon to open them soon enough. San Angelo was almost as far north as Waco was too. It’s capture, where light American units who stood in the way of Soviet T-55 tanks were crushed, allowed for a firm connection to be made between the Northern Front and the recently-established Central Front when they brought their troops eastwards as well. El Paso and San Antonio were both key centres of activity for the invading forces and they were now firmly linked east-west through Texas. Those in Moscow were pleased.

They were further pleased when the new Soviet commander of the Mexican Theatre of Military Operations – the Mexican TVD; what was in effect the American Strategic Direction (long-standing Soviet military doctrine was followed in these command arrangements, based on plans for one day ‘liberating’ Western Europe) – ordered that the Twenty–Eighth Army also go to West Texas. This meant that they would have to travel further, to go west before they would go north, but it was deemed a brilliant notion for where to introduce them to battle. The Americans weren’t expecting that, not at all. The transfer from out of South Texas was made through American territory using their roads and airports – Mexico was a mess – and long before the whole army assembled. It would form up in the San Angelo–Sonora area. The Cubans overrunning the abandoned Fort Hood and the activities of Nicaraguan forces on the edges of New Mexico secured the flanks of this movement. First one, then two and finally three of the divisions assigned to the Twenty–Eighth Army arrived. They were joined by the 23rd Division already there; the two further divisions were still landing on the coast and they wouldn’t be waited for. The objective for the Twenty–Eighth Army when it begun moving was to head towards Abilene first (where Dyess AFB was) but to aim for Wichita Falls and the Red River behind as its main goal. The Americans were flooding their reserves into East Texas and worrying about Dallas–Fort Worth. They would soon have Oklahoma to worry about as the Soviets planned to continue their breakout there.

The Cubans ahead of them and then the transfer of two Soviet field armies meant that there were few troops left in Cuba. What the Cubans had on their home island were to stay there. The departures of the last men slated for the Mexican TVD took place alongside the dispatch of so much of their stored equipment alongside supplies. Nothing more of significance which had arrived pre-war was left stored in Cuba afterwards. Throughout Mexico, this was the same: Cuban and LACom forces had long since moved north and the storage sites behind them were all running empty. What had been moved onto American soil was to be used for the fight there and would be, especially since the advance continued almost everywhere. More men & tanks, more bullets & shells and more of everything else (including fuel for all of those armoured vehicles plus aircraft fuel too) had to come from overseas. For the war to be won, to stop the invading armies in America come to a halt and die, the gloves would have to come off when it came to the war being fought beyond US soil.

[James G]

Chapter Thirteen – The Gloves Come Off

October 1984: Moscow

Who was Vitaly Ivanovich Vorotnikov?

That question was asked by many when they discovered the name of the new Soviet General Secretary. His name was barely known aboard and, to be fair, was hardly known in his home country either among his own people. His comrades at the top of the Soviet regime knew who he was though and so did many within the higher ranks below the leadership level as well. That was enough. This man replaced Ustinov and his takeover was generally well accepted. Neither a showman nor someone regarded as cunning & deceitful, Vorotnikov ascended to the highest position in his country’s leadership because he wasn’t feared nor hated by others. He was a compromise candidate to replace the departed Ustinov when those who made the decision were concerned over the future – theirs, not that of their country and its people – under the others jockeying for the same post. Vorotnikov was an apparatchik, a bureaucrat. He had risen fast by stayed out of the limelight. Then, at the behest of his colleagues and with a little bit of play-acting where he graciously accepted their generous office, stepped into that.

Chebrikov and Fedorchuk hadn’t seen it coming. The two of them, the former KGB chief whom Ustinov had moved to the Interior Ministry and his replacement at the Lubyanka, had each assumed that one of them would take over from Ustinov. There was a good chance that whomever lost out would lose their life if not straight away then afterwards. The pair of Chekists had plotted and schemed, calling in favours in a regime where patronage was everything. Chebrikov had been around far longer and had more favours to call in that his opponent, yet Fedorchuk wasn’t one to be underestimated either for he was more effective in making use of the alliances which he had been creating during his short time as the Chairman of the KGB. There had been some in their way who had suffered ‘accidents’, others had been attempted to be swayed with bribes and a few threatened with exposure of secrets which two Chekists each knew. There had been a lot of talk from Chebrikov and Fedorchuk about what they would do once they took Ustinov seat at the head of the Politburo. Their party colleagues hadn’t been able to choose between either and wanted to back neither. They didn’t want another spymaster at the top of their table, not at a time such as this when the country was at war. That may have seemed to have its advantages, as was said by the open supporters of the top two challengers, but it really wasn’t. This wasn’t that sort of war. The work of the KGB was important but it needed more than that. Gromyko, the foreign minister, had been approached by his colleagues. Could he lead them instead of Chebrikov and Fedorchuk? Neyt, said Mister Neyt. He recommended someone else though, someone whom was already openly being supported as a compromise candidate with Marshal Sokolov – the defence minister who had a seat among but not a vote with the Politburo – backing him. Gromyko supported him less openly as he owed allegiance to / was being blackmailed by Chebrikov over a private matter though urged others to stand with Sokolov on the case for this man.


Vorotnikov had been brought to Moscow back in 1978 by Andropov and risen through the Party Secretariat (its bureaucracy) fast. He was a trouble-shooter in the fields of party discipline and keeping Andropov abreast of party developments before moving to the economic side of things. It was there he had stayed at first: with the party bureaucracy in Moscow dealing with the economy though not in a ministerial position. That had come later as Andropov had turned to Vorotnikov in his dying days when the economy suffered under declining oil revenues due to events overseas and then the Western embargo on Soviet oil. Vorotnikov had moved from the Secretariat to Gosplan – the state economic planning committee – and onto the Finance Ministry with haste. He had been able to stem the tide of economic collapse somewhat though not stop what was coming. Ustinov had ignored him at first and tried his own solutions before coming to reply upon Vorotnikov as war approached. It was while at his ministry that Vorotnikov’s star had started to shine brighter than before and colleagues of his had paid attention to what he had done. Like Sokolov, he was a non-voting member of the Politburo though had joined in the unanimous support for the war when Ustinov took them to war. He was seen as one of them and knew the game of patronage and building alliances among colleagues.

Vorotnikov had worked to get the national economy ready for war. There were others who were doing important work, though he got himself noticed among men like Sokolov and Gromyko in addition to others on the Politburo who had the votes and the influence. They were impressed at what Vorotnikov claimed credit for and weren’t aware of the things that they weren’t told about when things went wrong. Mobilisation was something that wasn’t begun until the very eve of war yet Vorotnikov was among those who helped pave the way for what appeared to be a seamless transfer from a peacetime economy to a wartime economy when it came to the reports delivered to the Politburo. Ustinov had been pleased enough with what Vorotnikov got the credit for. Moreover, after the obliteration of Leningrad, when the Soviet state economy took a hit like no other from that destruction of its second biggest city, Vorotnikov was quick to be seen as the one overseeing efforts presented to the Politburo as being made to mitigate those economic effects as best as possible.


None of this got Vorotnikov where he ended up though. This just helped establish him as someone on the fringes when Chebrikov and Fedorchuk looked likely in the days after Ustinov’s death to go to war over replacing him. There had to be something else for Sokolov so openly and Gromyko in quieter tones to get their colleagues to push for him to take the leadership. He had to be noticed and he had to be someone that they wanted to have lead them.

Chebrikov, frustrated and angry, set aside all of his patient games and careful manoeuvring when what he believed was his wasn’t given to him fast enough. He took the gloves off and struck a mortal blow to the leadership hopes of Fedorchuk. That was successful, successful in getting rid of his main rival. Unfortunately, it would doom him and see the culmination Vorotnikov’s supersonic accession. Now, what Chebrikov did was…



October 1984: Moscow

What Chebrikov did was to arrange for another ‘accident’ to take place. This was inside the Moscow apartment of Fedorchuk where the bodyguards of the KGB Chairman were meant to be protecting him from anything like that. Chebrikov’s long tenure at the same organisation saw many loyalties owed to him and the circumstances were created where there was the looking the other way as an entry was made to the apartment when Fedorchuk was present. A slip & a fall while he was getting out of the bath was how the scene was staged. Too much hurry was used though and not enough care taken. Fedorchuk didn’t die – he was left in a coma though – and the two failed assassins were caught when exiting the apartment by another colleague of theirs who wasn’t supposed to be present. He was shot, and would die soon of his wounds, though he managed to get a few shots of his own off where he wounded one of those who were desperate to get away and alerted the whole building to something going on with the gun battle.

First Deputy Chairman Kryuchkov – he whose powerplays had seen Chebrikov pushed out of the chairmanship by the dying Andropov at the end of last year – moved again to rid himself of Chebrikov. The near-successful attempt on Fedorchuk’s life had been ordered by Chebrikov he told the Politburo when he met with them without Chebrikov’s knowledge. They asked for proof and he could provide it too with several confessions from those involved. The Politburo would finally give Kryuchkov what he long coveted, the top job at the Lubyanka, and in exchange, there was information passed on when it came to other matters from the KGB’s own files about its former chairman. Collectively, even among Chebrikov’s own supporters, there had come a decision to get rid of him. The KGB had been active doing this type of thing aboard before the war and once it begun yet there was wholescale outrage that (attempted) murders of such kind would take place among them. If Chebrikov got away with this and reached the position of general secretary still with parts of the KGB in his pocket, who would he attempt to give an ‘accident’ to next? There was even some speculation among them that’s Ustinov supposed heart attack might have been something which Chebrikov had done. That wasn’t true but it didn’t matter. Chebrikov was done for. There was a call for the Soviet Army to get rid of Chebrikov and Marshals Sokolov & Ogarkov were both keen to do such a thing yet instead Kryuchkov had his people move against Chebrikov. He was arrested when surprised in bed, dragged out to a waiting van with a hood over his head and taken to the basement of the Lubyanka. His fate was already written despite an upcoming secret trial and the pretense of a chance to defend himself. Before the end of the month, Chebrikov would be gone from this world.

Through all of this, Vorotnikov was among his colleagues where they stuck together as one against Chebrikov and his plots. Few cared much for Fedorchuk but it was that fear that it would be them next that kept them united. Vorotnikov was at the heart of this, flanked by Gromyko and Sokolov. He was the one who whipped up the fear of what would befall them and urged for an end to be put to the madness. It was to him that they turned to lead them once the decision was made to take that step and he accepted the offer after a little bit of song and dance about whether they were sure. Yes, they were: they wanted him. So General Secretary Vorotnikov it was to be then… anyone better than a Chekist.

Vorotnikov would give his country the leadership to fight a wholly different kind of war from one which raged under Ustinov and would have been under either Chebrikov or Fedorchuk. There would be no more time for ‘messing about’, no more ‘half measures’. Vorotnikov, the apparent nobody, would do things very differently. The Soviet Union would now really be serious in this war when it was believed by some – certainly not those in the face of it – that it hadn’t been serious before. That not being serious had been using nuclear weapons and invading country after country. Things were going to change under Vorotnikov. That was quickly apparent in how the war was stepped up a gear inside the United States and was felt too across the globe: this was a world war after all.



October 1984: Alaska and Canada

Soviet ground forces which had crossed into Canada after moving out of the Alaskan Panhandle were pushed back and almost all the way out of Canada. Some British troops were present though it was the Canadians themselves who did the bulk of the fighting in overcoming the Soviets occupiers of a small slice of their nation. Haines Junction was retaken with the Soviet Airborne there pushed out and after the earlier victory against airmobile troops fighting near Whitehorse. The Soviets took several steps backwards, aiming to fortify positions in the mountains and wait for reinforcements, but they were unable to make a stand anywhere they tried. Their 11th Brigade and 345th Regiment were each attacked again and again from the air – with the Americans joining in with that – and engaged on the ground from the front but also the rear too. Those positions which they tried to hold appeared good enough at first glance due to the local geography with each yet they couldn’t be held against their opponents. It was supply issues more than anything else which crippled Soviet efforts to do this. The mountain roads were full of burnt out trucks ambushed when full of ammunition and other consumables while efforts to use helicopters to fly in urgent supplies when the long-windy roads became too dangerous to use saw many of them shot down by fighters and man-portable missiles.

Without bullets, the Soviets couldn’t hold what they were tasked to hold. The Sixty–Seventh Army Corps headquarters continued to issue orders each time but the men just couldn’t. They could dig-in all they want and suffer under fire coming from shells, falling bombs and armoured vehicles mounting heavy weapons, but they had to fire back. Which they couldn’t, not in any strength anyway. Their rifles, their machine guns, their RPGs and their mortars needed ammunition. The men needed food, drinking water and medical supplies as well. None of that came and nor did any bullets. Therefore, retreat after retreat was made. Opportunities were missed during those retreats as well to make the Canadians bleed for every inch of their territory they retook because the Soviets were unable to take them under fire like they could have done otherwise. Those soldiers who’d come here and fought so far away from home died on foreign soil in numbers too. Some were directly killed during the fighting, others died from wounds when they couldn’t be treated properly. The 345th Guards Parachute Regiment was full of veterans from the war in Afghanistan and the 11th Landing-assault Brigade wasn’t a lower category unit either with there being some of its men who’d seen previous service in Iran as well. Regardless, they were beaten in battle. The Canadians pushed them back to the border over which they had so recently triumphally come. What few shots were managed to be fired off, as the men burnt through the last of what they carried, did nothing to slow the retreat in any meaningful way.

It was only eventual Canadian hesitancy that allowed the Soviets to get some of their men out and back to the US border. They and the British with them had few armoured vehicles and used them cautiously after many were shot-up in the first battles. Those roads which the Soviets had followed northwards, and retreated back along, run along valleys below the mountains above. They were blocked in-places by rockfalls created to slow the Soviets down and those afterwards forestalled the chase. The British had some tanks – Chieftains from the Alberta training base – and they used them in support of the Canadians in a couple of instances, making headway, though again the terrain delayed matters significantly. There could be no armoured dash forward. Instead, those Chieftains and Canadian armoured vehicles such as Lynxs and missile-armed M-113 were used as mobile fire support platforms. They had engaged Soviet light armoured vehicles before and the few of those which were left had been withdrawn ahead of the retreating riflemen. Thus, the armoured vehicles were used to blast everything in sight what looked like opposition – using a lot of ammunition themselves – as they crawled forward along with the infantry.

The British with their 14th Infantry Brigade reached the Canadian-US border along the Haines Highway near to Mount Seltat. There was a battalion of Paras which had flown to Canada in the war’s opening days which had been joined by supporting assets in forming the brigade alongside infantry & armoured units which were already in Alberta. They were on the frontier by the end of October and ready to roll down into the top of the Alaskan Panhandle. The 11th Brigade didn’t look capable of stopping them, not at all. The British had supply problems of their own yet nothing like what the Soviets had. They were intending to win this fight and reach the Pacific coast soon enough. As to the Canadians, they had their 1st Infantry Division to the east of the British. The Soviets had been forced back to near Summit Lake along the Klondike Highway and again wouldn’t be able to hold once the Canadians moved down to head for the sea. The division was a wartime formation which had seen two individual standing brigades (the 1st and the 5th) of regulars forged together alongside many reservists forming a smaller third brigade. It was those reservists who were on the frontlines now, skirmishing with the opposing paratroopers and the 345th Regiment was having a torrid time. The rest of the Canadians division was allowed to rest at the end of the month, after much fighting, as it took in replacements and prepared to go ahead again. Next month, the British and Canadians aimed to finish what they started.


American forces in mainland Alaska spent October waiting for the invasion which was expected but didn’t come. The Soviets had their troops and aircraft throughout the Aleutians and on Kodiak Island as well but they didn’t use those stepping stones for the purposes that they had been taken for. The Naval Infantry on them weren’t reinforced by the motorised rifle division meant to come to join them in going into Alaska. It took the Americans some time to understand just how much damage the carrier raid through the Bering Sea – and onwards westwards – of theirs had done. The Soviets were unable to send any more men across the North Pacific after that. The previously multiple commando raids which had taken place across Alaska eased up as well. There were still many patrols conducted inland by the Americans and they had their defences ready around anticipated landing sites for a Soviet invasion, yet none came. The victories won by the British and Canadians in the Yukon Territory lifted the semi-siege that Alaska was under as well. US Army Alaska (a big name for a small force) wasn’t reinforced with further troops due to events elsewhere as the rest of the country was being invaded like it was though there was some relief in the form of supplies getting in and the evacuations of more wounded taking place. The pressure on Alaska was eased.

That was mainland Alaska though. Throughout the Alaskan Panhandle, which stretched down the coast to the south, those Soviet forces pushed back into there by America’s allies extended their control over that area as they secured their rear. National guardsmen in Juneau lost control there over the state capital and the port town of Wrangel was also taken. There were so few defenders and they were trying to cover a massive area. The Soviets were operating aircraft, helicopters and ships throughout the offshore islands and along the coast. Land connections were few and far between and where the Soviets had their air and sea mobility, they used it. What was needed was for US Army Alaska to go fight down there. Such a movement would leave mainland Alaska vulnerable and would also be a big logistical ask too. Perhaps the British and the Canadians could do that for them, especially as Canada had more troops moving west across their country, but the Americans wanted to do that themselves. Plans were made but the threat to Alaska from a full-on Soviet invasion hadn’t gone away and so US Army Alaska stayed where it was.


Canadian troops who were based pre-war in West Germany had arrived home ahead of the majority of their equipment removed from Europe. There had been some of that lost in the Atlantic crossings but there was plenty which arrived in Halifax and Quebec but also Boston too. Canadian aircraft were in the fight in the Yukon long before the troops started moving. Those regular soldiers were from Canada’s 4th Brigade, which formed the nucleus of the 2nd Infantry Division. The rest of that formation came from Primary Reserve and Supplementary Reserve units as the Canadian Militia was called out. There were a lot of men though unfortunately not very much heavy equipment. Canada just didn’t have that in service nor stored. Their American and British allies didn’t have much to spare at this time either. The Canadians moved their forces across the Prairies and into Alberta. Delays had been incurred as the Soviets still had some men active – far lower in number now than before – attacking transport links though more Canadian soldiers were combatting them as the 2nd Division crossed the country by road and rail.

Once in Alberta, the Canadians came to a halt. Their initial deployment had brought them west so that they could then go northwards from Calgary and Edmonton. The fight in the Yukon was one possibility for them to join; another was that they could go to Alaska to join the Americans there and effectively double the number of defenders. A halt order came though. There had been conversations between Prime Minister Mulroney and President Glenn. The Canadian PM had offered direct help to the American president. Could those Canadian troops be more useful at this time if they were sent to fight in the mainland United States?

The Canadians turned south instead of north from Alberta. They headed across the border, due south. They were off to Colorado – California had been considered but the Americans sent their national guardsmen out of the Mid-West there – to go and fight the Soviets and their Nicaraguan allies who them would encounter there. They wouldn’t need to have so much heavy equipment like large numbers of tanks and armoured vehicles (they had some, just not loads) when they had so many infantry and also rather a lot of artillery as well to support the upcoming fight. It would be quite the adventure for them.



October 1984: Britain

October 1984 saw the war truly come home to Britain. It was a torrid time for the nation as the Soviets struck hard and repeatedly while at the same time there were grave internal issues within. The start of the war back in mid-September had seen much death and destruction occur yet through October, especially when the order came from Vorotnikov for an increase in Soviet action, Britain suffered.


There were repeats of the Belfast missile attacks. Soviet bombers launched cruise missiles – they retained stocks of out-of-sate anti-ship models that were still useful for hitting land targets – against Aberdeen first and then Glasgow before launching more down into targets across England. The missiles were sent against what were military and civilian targets. British forces were fighting aboard yet couldn’t defend their own country. Those attacking aircraft flew from bases in Norway and were able to carry multiple missiles, more than they would be able to had they been flying all the way from the Soviet Union itself. Aberdeen came under attack because from that Scottish town there were connections with the North Sea oil infrastructure being used for military purposes now that the war was raging. Britain was trying to defend her (and Norwegian) offshore oil rigs from Soviet attacks and Aberdeen was part of that with ships and helicopters making use of what was there. Soviet cruise missiles slammed into the general Aberdeen area with their accuracy not that great yet carrying large warheads. The Clyde was a home to Britain’s shrinking shipbuilding industry and there were many ships in the Glasgow area being made use of for wartime purposes as some were repaired, others reactivated and some new ones getting last-minute finishing touches for early service due to the country’s need for them. In came Soviet missiles again, few of them with pinpoint accuracy. Northern and northeastern England was in the firing line later where more missiles rained down upon military-industrial targets. Civilian casualties came with these attacks and there were outbreaks of a breakdown of civilian law-&-order in many cases afterwards.

Amid those imprecise attacks, the Soviets went after other targets aiming to hit and carefully destroy these using bombers flying from both Iceland and Norway – Backfires over Britain it was – to do a different kind of damage. RAF Stornoway was hit first and then two more RAF bases at Leuchars and Machrihanish saw those supersonic bombers come in low and extremely fast to drop their payloads. These were RAF fighters bases from where the defenders of British skies flew from. After the attacks in Scotland, the Soviet bombers moved to England with Backfires making appearances above the Swan Hunter shipyard (which built warships for the Royal Navy) and then the Royal Ordnance Factory in Leeds. Carlisle was bombed for its cluster of transport links and the same was done to port at Hull as well. These air attacks used conventional weapons with high-explosive & delayed action warheads on the bombs dropped. That was not the case when the Soviets used chemical weapons against targets on the British mainland towards the end of the month. Nerve gas was used at RAF Prestwick (affecting the towns of Ayr and Prestwick too) and also against Milford Haven & Pembroke when the bombers flew far down into South Wales. The gas was targeted against military personnel though quickly killed and maimed many civilians too. The psychological effect was something else. Glasgow had seen anarchy after the cruise missiles smashed into the edges of that Scottish city; so did the two ports in Wales when gas was used there.

The RAF tried and failed to stop these air attacks from taking place. The cruise missiles were hard to engage and then when the bombers came in, RAF interceptors chased them all over the sky trying to bring them down before they could reach their distant targets. The Soviets had learnt their lessons from earlier air attacks. They used deception in places though also brute force as well when they flooded the skies with fighters of their own which engaged the RAF. There were RAF airborne radar aircraft which were shot down, very old piston-driven Shackletons hit by long-range missiles, and the attacks on Scottish airbases were where the RAF were flying from. Many of the cruise missiles were fired from out over the Atlantic rather than the Norwegian Sea which was the main threat axis. The Backfires came on a more direct approach and were not as difficult to get at yet they were so quick as they made their high-speed dashes. The RAF brought down Soviet aircraft were they could: there were many victories won. It just wasn’t enough though. There was a relaxation in the cruise missile attacks launched from Atlantic firing points when the US Navy showed up and the RAF was grateful for that. The resulting Battle of the Faroe Islands – which the Royal Navy joined too – changed things in that regard though and afterwards there were Bear bombers launching missiles once again from out over the ocean. It was at that time, during the later part of the month, when the chemicals were used and the whole dynamics of the war for Britain transformed into the far deadlier fashion like it did.


The intense air attacks, first conventional and then with selective chemical strikes, came when Britain was under the strain domestically. The start of the war had come so unexpectedly with little real pre-war preparations made. There had been international tension but for the war to come like it did, without a clearly defined set of incidents leading to a recognisable build-up – what the now-defunct NATO would call a ‘road to war’ –, caught the country by surprise. Transition to war measures had to come in when the war was underway. Restrictions on freedom of movement & travel, censorship & information control and all of the other measures with transition to war came very late. As rationing of food came into place, there were problems encountered. It was the same with the enforcement of blackouts and other everyday matters which affected the people. The national government sought to have the people maintain a ‘Blitz Spirit’ as they evoked memories of the last war. There was promise with that at the beginning when a bit of national unity came about after the murder of Princess Diana and her new-born baby, as well as other publicised Soviet outrages – the nuclear strikes in America at the top of that list – yet that unity faded away. There was a massive spike in criminality. There were food riots and general unrest in many places nationwide. The police were stretched thin across the nation in trying to control this while also on other security related tasks alongside the military.

The national government argued amongst itself. This was done out of the public eye and was quite fierce. The military overextension was one thing, domestic issues were another. All of the unrest should have been foreseen came the argument while that was countered with the belief that it was unforeseen and would die down soon enough. Problems with food and energy for the nation were encountered and there was tension over that issue. It was said that Britain was going to starve and the lights were going to go out. Those big issues came alongside the smaller political ones though issues which were still rather significant and not small in the opinion of some members of the national government. This concerned the ‘loony left’ and their effect on public morale. Across certain parts of the country but within inner parts of London especially, there had been a pre-war love affair among certain local authorities when it came to the tide of communist revolution in certain parts of the world with Latin America at the top of that. Socialists of several stripes had taken to the revolutionary aspects of first Nicaragua, then the other smaller nations nearby before the Mexican Revolution. Councils such as Haringey, Hackney, Islington and Lambeth had made a big deal out of supporting the ‘popular uprisings’ and skewed news coming from there to suit their own ends. They had held events and promoted the ideas of those revolutions including protesting against the Belize War in 1982 on the side of Guatemala. This was part of a wider political clash with not just the sitting Conservative government but the Labour Party too as it moved back to the centre ground in domestic politics. Those countries, like their Soviet and Cuban backers, were now at war with Britain. Troublemakers within such local authorities weren’t openly supporting those at war with Britain but they gave the impression of doing so to those who wanted to see that. They also organised events calling for an end to the war with the people of those countries, including vigils for Soviet and Mexican civilians killed in Leningrad and Mexico City… not mentioning those in Washington or elsewhere. The national government ordered a crackdown and had local politicians & activists detained en masse, off to join the better-known subversives in the wartime holding centres. This was not something that everyone agreed with as it was believed to have been overdone. The counterpoint was why couldn’t those involved have behaved like the Greater London Council (GLC) and its leader Livingstone who’d made the decision that this was a war which had killed British people – Londoners among them – and there was no more time to pretend that this was a ‘capitalist and imperialist war of aggression’. Livingstone was a willy operator and not everyone believed all what he said on this matter, but the GLC, which the government was moving to abolish before the war started as part of long-running feud, acted patriotically and was helping the war effort on the domestic front. Haringey and Islington – unofficially twinned with Managua and Mexico City – saw unrest afterwards. It was the start of an anti-war movement which while unorganised at the beginning, would grow from perceived government heavy-handiness. It would become violent in time as well yet never, despite claims asserting it was, acting in direct support of the Soviets or under their guidance.

London and the rest of the country was full of uniformed personnel. Britain had men fighting overseas yet at home there remained a big military presence. This came from the full mobilisation of the country’s reservists: every single one of them who could don a uniform did so. There were many part-time volunteer military organisations and they were all called out. Reserve policemen were in uniform and it was the same with firefighters and NHS staff. In addition, conscription came alongside this mobilisation of reservists. Britain couldn’t and therefore didn’t do what had been done in the past and call-up millions but instead took a slower approach in this. The country didn’t have the capability to do what had been done in the past. Young men aged eighteen to twenty-one who fitted certain criteria (there were many exclusions applied with this process) began military training. Volunteers who’d rushed to sigh-up at the immediate outbreak of war, and more who did so afterwards despite being in lesser numbers, joined them. The war was already proving immensely costly in terms of manpower and those already in uniform were fighting overseas, preparing to do so or aiding in the country’s defence. That conscription didn’t apply to women though there were many of those in uniform at home and abroad though. Some of them were killed, many injured and others take prisoner by the enemy. The issue of women in uniform and in danger would become an issue for Britain. They were needed but there was a lot of controversy with this.


Those chemical attacks against Britain came very unexpectedly. The beginning of the war had seen the Americans and the Soviets trade nuclear shots with each other before there was an unofficial nuclear ceasefire between them. No further use of nuclear weapons had gone alongside the restraint in the use of chemical weapons too by those two participants against one another. They fought engagements in a chemical posture, slowing themselves down dramatically, yet didn’t use such weapons openly despite unconfirmed reports that chemicals might have been used in Alaska. The North Koreans had then employed gas in South Korea; this brought an American nuclear response. China and the Soviet Union went to war, soon using chemicals as well with one of them coming off very badly indeed in that. As to Britain, there were no stocks of chemical weapons in the national arsenal, only nuclear ones. There was no use by the Soviets of chemicals nor nukes them against Britain at the start of the war. British troops in Norway fought with chemical protection there and at home – in the upmost of secrecy – there was activity at Porton Down when it came to chemical weapons; Britain knew how to make such weapons and had done so in the past but that wasn’t something that could be done overnight. There had been a hope that the Soviets wouldn’t employ gas against Britain, either abroad where British troops were fighting nor on the British mainland.

October 19th saw RAF Prestwick struck with an unknown substance that was similar to the internationally known and recognised chemical weapons but far more lethal. It was a binary agent with two components forming the gas when mixed in the air. The invisible cloud didn’t set off chemical alarms at the Scottish airbase which was being used as a major transport and airborne refuelling hub. There and in nearby localities where there were little warning and zero protection, almost nine hundred were killed. Chemical warfare suits were donned by some military personnel late on and didn’t save them. The deaths came with over seventeen hundred left injured, most with life-changing injuries. The horrors of those who saw the scenes there were nothing in comparison to Milford Haven and Pembroke, struck at on October 22nd. Three times as much gas was used and British analysis afterwards pointed to it mixing better than had been the case at Prestwick. The ports were the targets and in Milford Haven the harbour facilities were hit where there were ships present & a lot of dockworkers; in Pembroke the town was where the horror occurred rather than the port itself due to wind blowing the gas cloud away from the exact target. The injuries – and they were horrible – totalled three and a half thousand. There were twenty-eight hundred deaths.

Britain learnt a new word: Novichok. How was this going to be responded to?



October 1984: Britain

British military overextension continued. There was by now a real understanding that this was the case, that too much was being tried to be done, yet there was no way out of that. Those commitments to fighting in several areas at once needed to be maintained. If not, there would only be Soviet victory to come rather than any relief. British forces were in Canada and across the North Atlantic. Both the Azores and the Gibraltar Straits demanded attention. There was fighting to be done in Norway and the Baltic Exits to be blocked. From down over the Norwegian Sea and from Iceland too, the Soviets were attacking Britain by air and that had to be guarded against. There was the maritime threat as well with the seas around Britain an unofficial war zone in some places too. Soviet commando activity on British shores was ongoing as well: it had died down, though not ceased. Atop of all of this, the national government had ideas of making a fight of things in the Mediterranean at a later date and in the Caribbean as well, if possible. Possible that wasn’t going to be. The armed forces went through fighting men at an alarming rate. The losses in terms of aircraft and ships were another factor and arguably far more-costly than the loss of personnel… though the human cost of the war was still of great significance.


The seas around the British Isles were an undeclared war zone. The Soviets didn’t make an announcement that ships would be sunk around the UK and Ireland. They let their weapons speak for them. There was a realisation that accidents would occur where ships belonging to nations which Moscow had no intention of fighting yet would be lost and therefore denials could always be made. Those didn’t have to be believed, and wouldn’t be, but the decision was taken not to make any public declaration on this issue so there was always the possibility that someone else was to blame. Regardless of whether such denials would carry any water, this was done. The lack of a declared war zone also gave the Soviets some freedom to manoeuvre as well where they could disguise their own actions among ‘innocents’. They had submarines in the coastal waters as well as ships which were disguised in identity. It was with the latter that they were able to conduct reconnaissance and launch small raids, something impossible otherwise. The geography of the British Isles meant that some of those waters were far more dangerous than others. The English Channel and the southernmost portions of the North Sea were the safest; Scottish waters and those west of the Irish Republic were the most dangerous. In the North Sea, the Irish Sea and the Celtic Sea there was a middle ground.

Commercial shipping registered in Britain, its overseas territories and those of the Allies came into British waters to conduct trade with the country. Those faced direct, open attack. With those registered in foreign nations which were neutral in this war, ones which approached Britain ran the very real risk of being sunk by disappearing attackers. All of these ships faced torpedoes, missiles and mines. They were targeted in surprise attacks while the RAF and the Royal Navy struggled to try to protect them. Their cargoes from overseas of food, fuel and other goods was needed in Britain and the Soviets tried to put that at the bottom of the sea. Ships were bigger now than they had been in previous wars fought around Britain and were carrying far more cargo: a sinking was very valuable in terms of cargo lost. Each one which went down was a serious blow for Britain. Those which got through were a boon though, and the Soviets knew that. That was why they had their submarines active and also surface vessels with hidden identities trying to stay undetected.

The war through October saw losses steadily mount. Civilian ships were sunk and so too were military vessels. The British managed to get several of those raiding & intelligence ships as well, an effort certainly helped by former allies helping out from the side-lines with intelligence support in the shadows. Britain filled the skies with aircraft and helicopters – some of the latter flying from Ireland too (causing political problems in the Irish Republic) and the Americans also had some maritime patrol aircraft based in Ireland which while focused on the war over the Atlantic, were available for use anywhere they could fly to as well. Then there was the Royal Navy. Overseas commitments were aplenty but there was the need to keep parts of the Royal Navy in home waters. They took losses of their own but were taking out the enemy. Fighting on home turf for the British helped them greatly as well. They couldn’t rely on anywhere being safe yet were able to refuel and rearm constantly while their opponents were operating so far from home with nowhere friendly nearby to do that. That counted for a lot. It didn’t seem to be the case at the beginning, though it started to show after a while. The problem was that by that point, the targets for those surviving Soviet submarines were starting to become harder to find. It wasn’t that they were being better hidden than before, it was just that shipping was avoiding the waters around the British Isles unless there was the utmost effort expended to get civilian ships to come to Britain and Ireland. Too many had been sunk, too many crews had been killed fighting in someone else’s war. The tide had been turned, just very late.


Danish neutrality and the limited avenue of egress helped keep the Baltic Exits a minor danger – compared to other dangers it must be said, not on its own – for Britain. The Royal Navy was operating in the Skagerrak on the surface and in the Kattegat below. There were RAF and Norwegian aircraft based in southern Norway. The Baltic Exits weren’t going to be an exit for the Soviet Baltic Fleet to get their ships out. They were bottled up. It was the same with the Gibraltar Straits. Combined American and Spanish efforts had pushed the Soviets out of the western Mediterranean and back to the other end. What was left of their Black Sea / Mediterranean Fleet was on the far side of Sicily. British forces initially tasked for an emergency deployment to the Gibraltar Straits were thus freed up somewhat. They were heading south at the time when the panic over Gibraltar had first occurred and so carried on going in that general direction, heading towards the Azores instead.

The fighting there was something that Britain would afterwards wish it never got (partially) involved in. Soviet forces there were almost overrun soon after arriving by a strong local Portuguese reaction. They had taken the airbase at Lajes Field yet were on their own; the Portuguese were anticipated to be able to finish them off. A flotilla of Portuguese warships escorting an amphibious flotilla was sent to the Azores in early October and a Royal Navy task group was to rendezvous with them. The RAF sent some aircraft to mainland Portugal including a few air-to-air tankers to support the Portuguese as well as RAF strike aircraft. A battalion of British Army light infantry earmarked for Gibraltar instead ended up staging in northwestern Spain ready to go to the Azores as well though there were issues over how to get them in exactly as the Azores were a chain of small islands. Regardless, a combined Portuguese-British mission was planned. The Soviets interrupted that. Their forces on the island of Terceira were small but supported from afar. Missile-bombers flew via Iceland and out over the North Atlantic and couldn’t locate the Royal Navy ships heading towards the Azores but found the Portuguese ones. Their Badger bombers had no air opposition and were able to get in close, launching big cruise missiles against Portugal’s warships. The Portuguese were massacred. A co-ordinated submarine attack on their amphibious ships only got one before a Portuguese helicopter struck back and sunk that attacker but the damage had already been done. The Soviets also finally got around to start flying in more fighting men to Lajes Field as well as equipment to turn it into a fully-functioning airbase for their own use. British forces who’d been underway ready to support the Portuguese found their allies battered and demoralised. The Portuguese just couldn’t afford to take the losses which they did. Attempting to recapture the Azores once the Soviets reinforced it was impossible and they moved to work with the Spanish in a combined effort to stop the Soviets from island-hopping down to Madeira and the Canaries. A decision was taken in London to withdraw part of the Azores-assigned forces, pulling them back before they saw action in a policy reversal, and that left them all out of the picture for almost two weeks through October when they could have made a difference elsewhere. If Britain wasn’t fighting the conflicts that they were elsewhere and the Americans hadn’t been so embattled as they were, then Soviet forces in the Azores, even when reinforced, should have been dead meat. They were allowed to grow in size though. There was a British submarine active in the area, supposedly joined by a Portuguese one which was incommunicado (NRP Barracuda had struck a mine and sunk very fast), but neither one submarine nor two could stop the Soviets using helicopters to spread from Terceira to other islands in the Azores. This allowed them to set up more defences for Lajes Field and engage more Portuguese forces in the islands. Furthermore, HMS Onslaught then went ‘missing’ as well: she came unexpectedly across a minefield laid and sunk with all hands. The Azores was a disaster for Britain, in October and into the future too.


Conflicts to the north of the British Isles were the main focus for the time being though. The Soviets had Iceland and nothing could be done about that for now, but Norway was where Britain was able to fight. The Soviets were stopped from getting much further south from Trondheim. Their movement down Norway’s coast using air and naval forces had stretched them ever so far and it ran into opposition. That came in the form of not just extra British reinforcements (even some Spaniards flying in mountain troops) supporting the full might of the Norwegians, but the weather too. There was so much snow. Wind, terrible sea conditions and zero visibility in the sky hurt but sides but nothing compared to just how much snow there was. Moving down along in the general direction where they were heading of Bergen and Stavanger meant overland support and the snow just stopped that cold… literally. It caused the Allies problems of their own but hit the Soviets even worse. It forestalled movement and gave cover to those who were there to use its concealment. Norway was also a major hotbed of resistance from Norwegian irregulars which meant that Soviets were fighting one hell of a fight on their inland flank and through their rears. British forces took advantage. Along the course of the Vinjefjorden, between Trondheim and the Soviet objective of Kristiansund, the RAF used Harriers and Jaguars in number where they fought in terrible conditions but had plenty of help on the ground. The Soviets went back to Trondheim, harried all the way by the Norwegians. Alesund was another British victory with the Royal Navy fighting alongside the Norwegians near there in forestall the Soviets from getting another air & naval facility to continue their advance. Britain had troops fighting in Norway, a place where many had spent NATO exercises and were familiar with the ground. More were sent to add to those already there. A war in winter there favoured the defender, not the attacker: the Soviets had struck too late in the year to win here. Once the Norwegians were fully spun-up and supported by their allies, they could hold. Defending Norway was costly though and Britain was feeling the strain of that.

That fighting in central parts of Norway was fought on and near to the shores of the Norwegian Sea, which was a battleground. The British had been unable to stop the Soviets from making their prominence felt there and been pushed back southwards over the water. If a Soviet reversal wasn’t suffered through those waters, that fighting to keep Kristiansund, Alesund and other towns with airports & harbours along the coastline out of Soviet hands would eventually become impossible. The Americans had been unable to send any forces to fight on land in Norway but the US Navy had come charging across the North Atlantic. They had sent a carrier group all alone last month and the USS Nimitz had ended up getting a battering before fleeing to Belfast, but the second attempt was made in October with two carriers and far more firepower in terms of bigger air wings & more escorts. Cooperation was sought with and gained from the Americans by the RAF and the Royal Navy so that they could all work together in riding the Norwegian Sea of the Soviets. The plan was to sink what they could and send the scattered remains running home to Mother Russia. Soviet forces left in Iceland would then be on their own and things turned around when it came to Norway.

This brought about the resulting Battle of the Faroe Islands.



October 1984: Britain

Before the mid-October Battle of the Faroe Islands, the Royal Navy had lost (seen sunk or burnt out) eight major warships with another four badly-damaged and out of service for many months to come. Five submarines were confirmed lost with another four ‘missing’ too. Such hull losses came with the human casualties as well. The worst of those had been aboard the carrier HMS Invincible when she had been set alight by a missile strike: over five hundred were killed in that incident. The sinking of the destroyer HMS Bristol had seen another three hundred deaths occur when she was torpedoed and went under the waves in barely two minutes during a fierce Atlantic storm. Britain still had a navy for now though wouldn’t by the New Year if it carried on losing vessels at such a rate. There was the Standby Squadron, older vessels in reserve, and an urgent rush put on to finish near-completed ships under construction pre-war, yet the numbers didn’t look good. Too many ships had been lost. In terms of manpower, the Royal Navy had many reservists who had returned to uniform to crew its ships. There were the men available if there were the ships for them. Nonetheless, such personnel losses were still staggering and there also came the injuries. Invincible had been on fire with the result of many burn casualties, something that put an immense strain on recovery efforts. It was the same with several of the other warships plus the non-combat vessels hit as well: the helicopter support ship RFA Engadine was set alight when carrying far more men than usual to support a flight of sub-hunting Sea Kings and a lot of those were burn victims. There were questions being asked at the Admiralty whether the wrong lessons had been learnt from the stunning victory that the Royal Navy had played a part in two years before during the Belize War. No serious naval air threat had been faced there and no warships had come under direct attack from the Guatemalans. Perhaps if they had, if the Royal Navy had had its ships bombed and shot-up, things would have been done differently when fighting the far more capable Soviets.

Those loses of ships and crew for the Royal Navy had come in the North Atlantic and British inshore waters as well as through the Norwegian Sea. It was to the north of Britain where the Royal Navy had strung a defensive line blocking Soviet surface forces from coming even further south than they had already done and where three of the eight sinkings of major warships up to mid-October had occurred. The others there were being reinforced all the while dodging attacks as they protected the UK mainland as best as possible while also trying to do the same to the supply & communication lines to Norway and British forces fighting there. The Royal Navy had been growing more concerned every day as more Soviet air assets arrived in Iceland and the occupied parts of Norway and they had to rely on the RAF to protect them rather than any aircraft of their own. The second regular service carrier, HMS Illustrious (sistership of the lost Invincible), was in the North Atlantic with HMS Hermes coming out of reserve status to join her. Destroyers and frigates formed the flotilla in the Norwegian Sea. They were positioned across the water’s surface spread from near Alesund on the Norwegian coast westwards across to the Faroes and the Shetlands. Smaller ships were with them and there was too submarine support. Off in the distance the Soviets had their own flotilla of warships, many of them carrying big missile batteries, which had been joined by some of their own reserve fleet as well (those being so very old ships that had yet to sink by themselves… there was time for that though). The Soviets outnumbered the Royal Navy but hadn’t come forward. The Admiralty was waiting – with dread – for them to do so. Before then though, the US Navy turned up. The Americans arrived not to aid the British in what was regarded as a passive defensive measure of stringing a protective shield, but going over on the attack. Coming near to the British Isles at first, the Americans then made a northern turn. They aimed to pass between the Faroes and the Shetlands and break out into open water. Two of their big aircraft carriers with full air wings were on the attack, seeking to make sure that there would be no more trans-Atlantic voyages made by Soviet ships in the future heading for the Western Hemisphere and successfully passing by the British when doing so. As the USS Coral Sea and USS Eisenhower turned into battle, the decision was taken for some of the Royal Navy ships to go forward with them. That was to be quite the fatal mistake for those involved.

Long before the Americans assumed that the Soviets could make an effort to attack them, that was done. During the very early hours of October seventeen – one month exactly after the war had begun – the skies over the Norwegian Sea to the east of the Faroes were filled with aircraft. Both the Americans and the Soviets had theirs in the sky as an immense over-water aerial engagement commenced. It was a huge fight, the complexity of it all unlike nothing seen before. The US Navy believed that they knew what they were doing when they met the enemy attack head-on; the Soviets had the same belief. The Royal Navy was caught right in the middle of that being far below and without any aircraft of their own in the fight. Soviet fighters, operating far from their bases, were massacred in the skies. Many of their bombers were downed too, long before they could get into position to start firing the missiles which they carried. Others avoided the US Navy fighters though and successful launches were made from several groups of bombers. ‘Vampire, Vampire, Vampire!’ came the emergency broadcasts from several US Navy ships. The Coral Sea turned out to be a missile magnet: she was hit by six cruise missiles. Three more struck the Eisenhower with another half a dozen American warships being hit: two of those suffered onboard ammunition explosions which obliterated them. The carriers were put out of action. The Coral Sea burnt almost end-to-end despite the most-heroic efforts to stop the flames; better luck was had on the Eisenhower and the fires were soon out though flight operations were greatly-curtailed. A British ship was hit in the missile exchange with HMS Sheffield being unlucky to be hit by a stray cruise missile. A huge hole was blown in the side of the destroyer and another one directly upwards through the superstructure too. The fires were brought under control but this was the end for the Sheffield as she lay dead in the water afterwards and the Battle of the Faroes Islands had only seen one round so far.

Round #2 saw the Soviets send their surface fleet forward later in the day. They went through the storm system that the US Navy had planned to use as a shadow to cover their own approach and towards where the ships of their American and British opponents. The approach of the Northern Fleet was spotted by submarines and aircraft though couldn’t be stopped. Those vessels were struck at with some hit (and one old destroyer going down without enemy action because she should never have been sent to sea) but air power was needed to really stop them, air power in strength too. That wasn’t available in time, not with the two American carriers out of action. Missiles started firing again, this time launched by warships and submarines rather than big bombers. The Soviet battle-cruiser Kirov and the missile-cruiser Lobov were at the forefront of firing their long-range missiles southwards. Those which they carried far outranged anything that their opponents had. There were other Soviet ships firing their own weapons and the Royal Navy & US Navy joined in too, yet the immense barrages from the Kirov and the Lobov were the most-significant. The missile defences of the ships from the Allies struggled to counter these. The Americans came off worst with the Coral Sea and the Eisenhower each hit again as they were the main focus for the Soviets. Their wars were over with afterwards and each was a total loss. The Soviets raked up some more kills against the Royal Navy as well where they hit HMS Fife, HMS Sheffield, HMS Brazen and HMS Rothesay during exchanges. Both destroyers would be lost and the frigate Rothesay killed as well. Brazen was struck by a missile which didn’t detonate and while there was significant damage, it wasn’t fatal. In exchange, the Royal Navy either directly or assisted in the destruction of four Soviet warships while the Americans killed three times as many. Nonetheless, there was only one winner from the naval engagement. The Soviet Northern Fleet emerged victorious from the fight. British and American ships scattered afterwards with the Brazen falling back with another frigate as well as an undamaged destroyer, retreating to join the now even more exposed defensive line across the bottom end of the Norwegian Sea. The Americans went with them, hoping for safety in numbers and expecting Round #3 in the form of another Soviet naval air attack to come soon enough. Later news that the Lobov was among several Soviet ships hit by torpedo attacks from submarines afterwards was little consolation: she’d long before fired off her missile battery.

Britain’s links to the fight in Norway were now left fatally exposed. The North Atlantic was empty of US Navy aircraft carriers too. Which was to be considered worse for Britain?


Within the UK, there remained many aspects of the war ongoing out of the spotlight of the big events. Soviet commando attacks slowed down considerably though the ones which continued were still deadly and very destructive at times. These occurred in coastal regions more than anywhere else, especially in (relatively) isolated spots. New men were landed from ships & subs after so many of the pre-war in-place teams had been wiped out or suffered too great losses to be effective any more. Military targets such as communications sites and air defence infrastructure came under random assault, drawing British attention towards them. There were other actions though, including big raids commenced against the Port of Dover and the usually quiet Cairnryan in Scotland. Britain was flooded with troops and Soviet commandos were nearly always engaged in action at some point. Many of them died in battle yet there were always some which were taken prisoner. There were other POWs taken by the British so far in the war – fighting men in Norway shipped to the UK, aircrew and sailors – but the Spetsnaz were very different. These were dangerous prisoners and there were several escape efforts made by them. On more than a few occasions, Spetsnaz either when taken or caught after escaping were ‘shot whilst trying to escape’ as well… these things happened in war.

The Americans had pulled almost all of their pre-war military forces out of Britain to fight the war at home. To help cover that, a wing of F-15 fighters from West Germany had been temporarily-assigned to fly from UK bases with the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing operating out East Anglia sites to protect transfers out of Britain but also mainland Europe as well. Those F-15s were needed at home back in the United States though the RAF wanted them to stay and fight with them. Through October they did so, joining the fight in the skies above the UK mainland. One of the squadrons transferred to Scotland later on. Elsewhere though, the Americans had left Britain. There were no more A-10s nor F-111s in British skies. The US Army units moved to the UK by Kennedy out of West Germany before the war had also headed for home. Only those F-15s were left. Britain was long viewed as an unsinkable aircraft carrier by many in the US Armed Forces, a base for air operations over mainland Europe in wartime. There was no war raging there though, just around the continent’s edges, and the Americans had the war in their homeland instead. The naval battle around the Faroe Islands saw many US Navy aircraft which weren’t lost with their carriers arrive at British airfields – military and civilian sites; anywhere better than in the ocean – afterwards though they again too would afterwards be returning back across to the other side of the North Atlantic. The UK was ready and willing to host the American war machine, yet that was elsewhere.

Replacement ships and aircraft for military uses were hard to come by for Britain. This wasn’t World War Two and there was no real provision before the war erupted for the country to suddenly start building them – and everything that came with them – in haste. Efforts were made though that was hampered by the Soviets going after shipyards and also sending cruise missiles towards the woefully few factories capable of producing aircraft. It wasn’t like Britain’s allies – current or former – had many ready to hand over. What was in storage was put to use where it could be. The Royal Navy had decommissioned vessels such as the old cruiser Tiger with her big guns (and the capability to operate many helicopters too), destroyers and other warships which urgent work commenced upon to get them back in service. The RAF scooped up aircraft in storage, some which were with private companies trying to sell them abroad. Like their naval colleagues, the RAF had the personnel returning to uniformed service who knew how to operate them. Things were slow going in some places yet remarkably fast in others. Miracles were achieved in certain instances. Nonetheless, the numbers weren’t on Britain’s side.


The chemical strikes on British civilians were an outrage that demanded a response. That response needed to be one which would make sure that the Soviets didn’t dare contemplate, let alone do, such a thing again. The national government agreed fully on that. There was nothing more to do with a response that they could agree on though.

Britain didn’t have chemical weapons to use in reply. The Americans had such weapons and there was a consideration given to asking to ‘borrow’ some. However, such a request wasn’t made. In time, Britain could manufacture her own gases and that process had begun in secret: it wouldn’t be quick and easy to do yet did start. Until then though, there could be no response made with chemicals.

Nuclear weapons were another option. Britain had those. There were talks – arguments – about whether to use them instead. A small attack could be made with a tactical strike somewhere against the Soviets, it was foreseen, to make them understand they had crossed a line. Usage of nukes in Iceland, Norway or at sea was considered. The fear of escalation was there though: the Soviets were highly-likely to hit back with their own… which Britain would then have to reply again with more nukes.

Making a conventional bomb raid against Soviet soil was something else discussed. RAF bombs could fall maybe on Kaliningrad or possibly Murmansk, small cities on the very edges of the Soviet Union. The strike would be logistically difficult and likely to see heavy loses made to those involved in any strike. No real gain from such an action was seen to doing this, not one that could be agreed to by the politicians.

Those in government argued and thus did nothing. They intended to act, to do something, yet nothing was done. Britain meant to react and there was the will to but the means to, and the act of making the decision to do this, wasn’t there. The strikes on Prestwick as well as Milford Haven and Pembroke went unanswered.

[James G]

October 1984: Western Europe

If Norway had been given the choice, the country could very possibly have opted to do as the majority of NATO members did when war began and gone for neutrality. A war that began with nuclear strikes and the United States being hit so hard surely wasn’t one which any nation would gleefully jump into. There hadn’t been a choice for the Norwegian government though. Norway had been attacked at the very outset as Soviet forces invaded their country. It was 1940 all over again where Norway was taken wholly by surprise and had foreign forces on its soil trying to subdue the nation and strip the country of its sovereignty. The Norwegians fought back, not speaking openly of any desire to not be involved in this war because there was no reason to once it had started like it did. It was one which they would be in until they either emerged a victor or were thoroughly and completely beaten. America, Britain, Canada, Portugal and then afterwards Spain all promised support for Norwegian efforts to defend itself though only the words from London and then Madrid came with real support i.e. boots on the ground. Norwegians themselves were the ones doing the bulk of the fighting. The contribution from the Allies was important, yes, but it was Norway which was doing the throwing everything it had in to try to stop the Soviets from overrunning all of their country. They were struggling to stop that from happening. By October as the weather got worse – admittedly it had never been good to start with; what idiot invades Norway in September? – the terrible conditions slowed the Soviets down a lot though not completely. The Norwegians and British, joined by Spanish Legion and mountain troops, held the Soviets from moving out of central Norway into the southern part of the country yet they failed to stop a complete collapse in the north.

It was up there through the Arctic where despite the snow, the wind, storms and more snow that Norwegian forces long cut off started to be eliminated through October. They were completely surrounded as the Soviets controlled the sea to their north, were present through the Narvik / Lofoten region and were granted partial passage through Finnish territory. Bardufoss Airbase fell after a long siege and the Soviets chased and caught withdrawing Norwegian forces before they could escape into the wilderness or head for the Swedish frontier. Other Norwegian forces holding the Banak Airfield and the general Lakselv area were overcome too. The Soviets were able to make use of their air and sea dominance and funnel in troops, second-line reserve units from the Kola, and bring them into battle without the Norwegians being able to effectively intervene. Norwegian irregulars were still fighting but the regular forces had been lost. Hammerfest and Tromso, Norwegian coastal towns in the north, were already in Soviet hands and they then moved on afterwards to smaller localities once the last of the organised opposition was finished off.

Trondheim was in Soviet hands and everywhere north of there was now theirs. Half of Norway was behind the frontlines along with so many Norwegians who hadn’t been able to escape to the south or at least get across into neutral Sweden. The crossroads near Storen represented the furthest south that the Soviets had got. They tried to push inland from there after their coastal operations had been forestalled but Storen was held. Norway had tens to thousands of troops fighting to directly stop the Soviets pushing onwards as the bulk of their army was concentrated together to do this. All along their seaward flank, there were those British and Spanish troops which had fought in places though also had a big security role. The Soviets had come so far through Norway by fjord-hopping and despite reverses were still capable of doing so again. They had paratroopers, airmobile infantry and marines involved in the fighting in central Norway and these men, while having taken losses, remained ready to push on once given and opening. Engagements on the ground took place where Soviet raiding and pathfinders were encountered. In the air, more Soviet aircraft arrived to fly from Norwegian airbases and they conducted offensive air missions down through southern Norway. The war continued to rage away throughout the country. No proper stalemate had developed and there was still the possibility that the Soviets would launch another major offensive weather and opposition notwithstanding and accept the losses which could come from that. No one could be sure that wouldn’t happen and the chances of that were judged to have increased significantly after the Battle of the Faroe Islands occurred. When they did, despite everything that Norway had gone through so far in this war, they were going to continue fighting. They were ready for anything they believed in what the Soviets might throw at them. Only time would tell if that readiness was what the Norwegians believed it was or whether the Soviets would actually attempt to finish them off: it depended upon events elsewhere.


What was the point of Ireland choosing to join the war? That question had been asked again and again. It was a matter of principle in effect, supported by Irish outrage at Soviet actions which affected them on the periphery. Nonetheless, Ireland was at war and one of the Allies. Ireland sought to find itself a role in the war. Bases were opened to their new allies with US Navy maritime patrol aircraft soon flying from Shannon Airport for North Atlantic anti-submarine operations. British helicopters flew from sites on the Irish side of the Irish Sea, also hunting submarines. The Americans were welcomed by many Irish people; the British weren’t. Those helicopters were aiming to protect Ireland too so the country could be fed but the domestic opposition was strong. Denouncements of those in Dublin being ‘West Brits’, wanting to seek reunion with the UK and sell out Irish freedom, were made with venom… and then violence. An Irish parliamentarian who had been rather outspoken on supporting active cooperation with the British was shot and killed. His murderer considered himself a patriot called upon to fight for the freedom of his homeland. Dublin regarded him as a terrorist working for Moscow’s goals even if he was a pig-headed egit. His arrest and detainment brought forth protests. There was an attempt by a radical group – not one of the recognised terror groups associated with The Troubles but a newly-formed gathering – to storm Casement Aerodrome and ‘get the Brits out’. Irish special forces were deployed there on guard duty (not the best way to employ elite units such as the Army Ranger Wing) watching for Spetsnaz. They ended up shooting some of their own civilians, men who were armed though and whom had come to Casement to kill.

Such events aside, Ireland was at war and the commitments were made to support her new allies. The Irish Defence Forces were small and not up to a high standard in terms of either equipment nor training. Not much could be done about the former but something could be done about the latter. Irish air and naval forces – small and lightweight – stayed in Ireland but moving across to Britain from the Curragh Camp was the 6th Brigade. The Irish Army sent its only real deployable overseas force of significant size to southern England to be retrained by the British. There was yet no firm plan as to where the 6th Brigade would go to fight when it saw war: that was for later. For now, there would be a significant portion of training done. The Irish arrived in Britain with some heavy gear – tracked British-built Scorpion light tanks and a lot of French-manufactured armoured cars – and were soon out on the Salisbury Plain were parts of the British Army of the Rhine also were engaged in their own manoeuvres after retuning home. Jokes were abound that the Irish had invaded and the British Army had come to repulse them! While such remarks were made, the Irish were starting to be taught how to survive on the modern battlefield for the real opponents which they would face would go through them like a knife through hot butter otherwise and the 6th Brigade wouldn’t last for long otherwise.


Portugal was brought into the war when its territory was attacked; Spain joined a conflict that (as it was with Ireland) it could have stayed out with. Both were in this war until a conclusion because while the instances of fighting which they had been involved in were limited, they were still significant in terms of casualties being taken and damage done. Moreover, islands within the Azores in Soviet hands weren’t something that the Portuguese could let go nor could the Spanish forget Soviet air attacks which occurred along its Mediterranean coast nor through its offshore territories. Fighting in the western part of the Med. alongside the Americans at first became the main contribution for Spain in this war though the small numbers of troops sent to Norway to fight with the British wasn’t unimportant. Soon enough though, what was going in out in the Atlantic where the Portuguese were also involved became the major issue for Spain’s war. Spain had helped block the Gibraltar Straits to Soviet access to the North Atlantic but the victories won by the Soviets when it came to the fight for the Azores put all that in danger.

The central islands within the Azores chain were in Soviet hands and the anticipation was that soon they would move onwards to take the rest. Afterwards… the Soviets might move further southwards. That was the shared concern for both Lisbon and Madrid. To the south (to the southeast to be fair) of the Azores lay the Madeira Islands and then the Canary Islands. Those sat behind the Gibraltar Straits and out in the Atlantic. If the Soviets could establish themselves there then Portugal and Spain were in far more trouble than ever could be imagined. It was to those island chains that both countries sent military forces through October, especially in the later portion of the month after that naval battle to the north of Britain which the Soviets won. Troops dug in everywhere and there were aircraft & warships all around. Retaking the Azores was seen as vital. The Spanish started working with the Portuguese and the British on a plan for that to follow the initial aborted one after a Portuguese naval flotilla had been massacred from the air. Every day that such planning went on, the Soviets flew aircraft into the Azores. They got some ships there too, ones which had avoided Royal Navy & US Navy submarines and made it there under air cover. Their mid-ocean garrison was being used as Iceland was to support the war going on across in the Western Hemisphere though it also put Portugal and Spain in serious danger. They had to recapture it and defeat the Soviets there, hopefully with assistance from their allies, but that continually became less and less likely as the occupiers reinforced what they had taken.



October 1984: Western Europe

American forces were out of mainland Western Europe. Like the British and Canadians too, by the end of October they were all gone. The troops and their families departed and following them home went equipment and stores. The war was elsewhere and not in West Germany, Demark, the Low Countries, France and Italy. Aircraft had flown almost all of the people out and some of the equipment & stores though it had been ships which had been made great use of where they were loaded with cargoes. They had departed from French ports for the voyage across the North Atlantic. Before the loads which they carried had left Europe, they had been brought to France by road and rail from elsewhere across the continent under protection and moved with haste. French rail and transport unions had been sweetened by the government into making things easy: there had been the readiness on the part of Paris to act ‘decisively’ otherwise for fear of showing weakness at a time like this which might be taken advantage of. West German railway workers had caused some problems through parts of their country with strikes led by known troublemakers. France had a suspicion that there was disguised East German involvement in that though had no proof to act upon it in that decisive fashion they promised at home. When parts of the Deutsche Bundesbahn came to a halt with refusals to carry military loads, France sent a fleet of military trucks. Cooperation from Bonn was browbeaten into them. Why Paris had expended all of this effort was to make sure that the Americans didn’t act themselves in West Germany to force their way out. France wanted a peaceful departure to keep as much of the continent free of war as possible.

When the America-bound convoys left French ports, there were aircraft and warships wearing French military markings which covered their departure. The Americans were gone. Their departure hadn’t been one which France had encouraged though once their new president had said that he was recalling all American forces from Europe and France had decided that neutrality was thus the only sensible option for the French Republic, there had been that assistance given in that evacuation. The Americans had charted some French ships to help too, ones which didn’t sail in the convoys protected by the US Navy but sailed under the French flag across the ocean carrying military cargoes to the United States. This went on alongside the transport to the Caribbean of further French forces to their islands there, ones now surrounded by Cuban troops in neighbouring ones. The earlier deployment of troops to West Germany to join those there in-place pre-war and the Caribbean mission stretched France’s military capability but it was manageable. France was a nation prepared for war though not in one. That preparation was ongoing though. French reservists recalled to service in haste during mobilisation when the war started remained in uniform. Security was tight nationwide and there had been many unpublicised events where arrests had been made – sometimes with shootings involved – and those detained held in secret.

France’s assistance to the Americans came alongside other help also given to former allies who were at war and in need, dire need in some cases. To varying degrees, assistance was given to Britain, Canada, Ireland, Norway, Portugal and Spain. There was intelligence support. There was help provided when it came to civilians of those nations caught up elsewhere in the world with consular aid. Ireland and Spain both had French-manufactured military equipment in service and spare parts & technical support – all unofficial – was given. Medical help was offered to and accepted by the British; so too was hush-hush military aid in terms of helping keeping aircraft like the RAF Jaguars in the air and sending ‘spare’ Exocet missiles for the Royal Navy. When it came to Britain (and in lesser ways Ireland and Spain too), there were refugees from those nations who turned up in France. They had come overland from Spain to get away from the war and by sea from Ireland and the UK. French aircraft and ships – including commercial hovercraft making high-speed dashes back-&-forth – returned home with stowaways aboard but there were also those who made their own way by air and sea too. It was certainly not a flood and France was able to handle the issue quietly and effectively. What France didn’t want, and neither did several other European countries, was to deal with the deserters that they had.

During the pull-out of military forces from West Germany and other nations, there had been soldiers from the countries of the Allies who had deserted their comrades. American, British and Canadian servicemen didn’t want to go and fight. There were also some more from those countries as well as Norway and Spain too who deserted and made their way to the neutral nations in Western Europe without deserting in-place. The numbers weren’t that great and there were many of them who later changed their minds. Others didn’t and wanted to stay. France took the decision to send them back to their countries of origin and Belgium did the same too, followed later by Italy as well. Denmark and the Netherlands decided not to do that, neither did the West Germans. A whole load of diplomatic incidents occurred due to this. These people had the right to request asylum, everyone could agree on that, but to allow them too at a time when their countries were imperilled didn’t seem like the best of ideas. France exerted enough pressure on Bonn to stop them accepting any more claims (they refused to budge on the others) yet Copenhagen and The Hague wouldn’t back down. No, they didn’t want to see the Soviets win the war, such was the message they sent back, but their actions were the right thing to do.

Deserters seeking refuge caused a problem for France, so too did West Berlin. Britain and the United States came to the decision – independently – to remove their soldiers from there like elsewhere. West Berlin lay inside East Germany, a country whose supposedly neutrality in this war had lasted only a few days while West Germany retained its. Aircraft belonging to those two nations of the Allies couldn’t fly in there and nor could those troops march out without a major fight. France didn’t want to see the departure from West Berlin of those men from Britain and the United States as that would leave them on their own there. When there first came requests for help in doing so, using French aircraft, the request was politely turned down: France was too busy helping those countries in other ways. Still London and New York pressed for that assistance in getting their men out of there and having them return to their homelands. France kept on saying no. Being difficult, upsetting the Americans & the British, wasn’t their intention. What France was doing was thinking of the bigger picture, that being the Strasbourg Summit which was of far greater significance.


President Mitterrand met with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko in the French city of Strasbourg near the end of the month. Since the war started, Gromyko had been pushing for a meeting with heads of government from the EEC gathered together so he could talk to them all. He had done so when serving under Ustinov and now under Vorotnikov. Come to Moscow, he had urged them, or I could come to see you all in Brussels. Gromyko had specifically asked to meet with the leaders of several countries, ones part of the defunct NATO alliance and other unaligned ones too. The intent was clear: the Soviets were aiming to play the game of divide and conquer. France took the lead and agreed for a meeting where France would represent the voices of many countries and deal with the Soviets one-on-one.

The Soviet Union offered France, and thus the rest of Western Europe, a deal. It was a complicated affair though basically one which would result in the trade of oil for food. The Soviets had oil of their own, plus that which they could guarantee the supply of from other nations in their orbit, which they wanted to sell to the Europeans. Western Europe’s pre-war oil supplies from elsewhere were negatively affected by that war. The Soviets would make sure that those troubles evaporated. In exchange, the Soviets wanted food, lots of food. Europe could supply that to the Soviets. The details would need to be worked out but that was what Gromyko came to France to try to get Mitterrand to agree to.

France was representing itself and other EEC nations – the EEC which included Britain and Ireland to complicate matters – in the summit. Europe did need that oil, especially the plenty which could come from the Middle East. They knew that the Soviets wanted food for themselves and for their Eastern European allies. Terms favourable to France and its partners could be worked out, Mitterrand believed, it the squeeze was put on the Soviets in the right manner. No deal was struck though. Gromyko wanted other things as art of the agreement, things he added on later. Those included the cessation of all support for countries at war with his nation and a lowering of what he deemed tensions in West Germany caused by French actions there. Mitterrand refused to accept this and was sure that even if he had, his partners elsewhere in Western Europe wouldn’t. Gromyko wasn’t best pleased. He spoke of ‘the gloves coming off’ on the matter of Soviet-EEC relations. Mitterrand told him c’est la vie.

The Soviet delegation went home. As they did, Air France began flying back-&-forth out of West Berlin carrying American & British soldiers out of there. France waited for a reaction to this, anticipating that Gromyko’s threats meant something. Would the Soviets, or more-likely their East German proxies, try to interfere with those flights? No, that didn’t happen. Instead, there was an explosion in West Germany on October twenty-ninth. It wasn’t at Unterweser (which had been bombed October twenty-first 1982) this time, but at the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant instead. Security was bypassed and the blasts bigger, so too the radiation leak which occurred. The gloves really were coming off.



October 1984: The Eastern Mediterranean

The first shots of the Greek-Turkish War were fired right before the Strasbourg Summit though the war really got going once that fell apart. None of this was coincidental. Britain and Israel at first, then France later on, and with each of their intelligence services acting independently in that regards, were able to point to direct KGB involvement in fermenting the outbreak of fighting. Such evidence was presented to the governments in Athens and Ankara. Nonetheless, war between them had already started… plus there was a lot of suspicion within those governments over the motives of those who were trying to show them the error of their ways. Blood had been spilt and the fate of nations was at stake. Greece and Turkey would fight each other despite what outsiders wanted.

It was in the Aegean Sea where the war started. Shots were fired between a Greek warship shooting first and a Turkish warship responding. The latter emerged the victor. There had been a communication sent to the Greek ship giving the order to open fire though that order had not come through the correct command chain. There were deaths on both sides yet far more Greek casualties. The following morning after that night-time engagement saw a low-flying Greek fighter fired upon from the Turkish-owned island in the Aegean (there weren’t many of those; Greece owned the majority) and brought down. That missile firing was authorised from someone high-up in the Turkish command chain though once again it wasn’t done in the proper fashion. Whereas afterwards the Greeks were able to pinpoint who had given their warship the order to open fire, the Turks were unable to actively identify that figure of their own. The Greeks had no idea of the circumstances around what had happened with the Turkish command chain and responded accordingly: they threw an air attack against that island to bomb the offending missile battery.

The military forces of both countries were on-alert and forward positioned facing each other before shots were exchanged. Greece leaving NATO several years beforehand and then being perceived in Turkish opinion as cosying up to the Soviets had put the Turks in a position ready for conflict; so too was the internal Greek strife ongoing which made Greece look likely to strike out to distract the people. Turkey abandoning NATO and opening the Turkish Straits to Soviet shipping made the Greeks believe that Turkey no longer cared for international opinion and would make a move against them at any moment; also, the Greeks believed the Turks would take advantage of their own troubles. Long-standing real tension between the two nations and the strength of their armed forces, each with the mission of fighting each other while the pretence always was about facing off against the Warsaw Pact, was thrown into the mix of this outside interference.

It was a Greek military commander who was behind that order given to that Greek warship. It was a Turkish military officer who was behind the order issued for the Greek fighter to be shot down. In both nations, there were those who did this pushed by those whom they knew to be Soviet operatives yet who still acted for their countries regardless. They justified their treachery to themselves as doing it for the good of their nation, acting with their conscience they told themselves. Greece was in turmoil at the time with economic collapse and a wave of terror. Parts of the military had already mutinied, refusing to obey orders from the government. In Turkey, there had been an attempt at an internal coup d’état within the Turkish general’s government which, while repulsed, had left deep divisions and suspicions over the direction that the country had taken. To describe the situation in both countries as complicated would be a serious understatement. There was a readiness to fight their opponents, and each other too at a later date, within the leaderships of each. The Greeks would fight the Turks and then sort out their own mess: the Turks believed the same thing. Once it stared, there would be a hunt internally to find those involved by their colleagues, though fighting their external enemies took prominence. Each military forces of country on the frontlines struck back against the other, assured that they had been the initial victim, without being aware of what had gone on behind the scenes at home and aboard.

Through the Aegean and on the border the two nations shared in Thrace, the conflict between them was one fought in the air and at sea. Both countries had large armies and also capable marines & paratroopers which could meet in battle through the Aegean islands or on the border, though the fight didn’t take that form. Small scale commando actions did occur yet each was limited in the terms of manpower deployed. They were each content to sink each other’s ships and down their aircraft. This all went on too while Soviet vessels – military and civilian – sailed through the Turkish Straits and then through the Aegean with neither side attacking those. The war spread though. Outposts on the mainland of each were attacked from the air and with naval shelling. Casualties mounted, including unfortunate civilian deaths on both sides.

Then there was Cyprus.


There was no Soviet interference as the fighting spread to Cyprus, that divided island out in the Med. A Greek submarine torpedoed a Turkish landing ship heading for North Cyprus laden with tanks to stop an ongoing rush Turkish reinforcement and the Turks responded by bombing a Greek transport on its way to the Republic of Cyprus (the South) also laden with military wares. This blow and counterblow lead to air action near to Cyprus and then above the island. Greece rushed paratroopers to Cyprus, aiming to reinforce the Republic and defend against an attack. Turkish forces started shelling over the Green Line – with some of those shells falling short – towards the military forces of the Greek Cypriots though unaware of the incoming Greek reinforcements. That Green Line was the UN-patrolled DMZ while ran east-west across the island. A serious of communications between the UN forces and (critically) both sides saw their position regarded as untenable: the Turks denied accidentally shelling them and the Greek-Cypriots were so enraged at the idea that they could do so that there was a threat made that they would! UN forces withdrew into the Republic of Cyprus and also one of the two British military bases on the island, one not connected to the UN mission on Cyprus. More shelling with artillery took place, this time going from south to north. Shells came back the other way. There was sniping soon enough and aggressive forward patrolling of dismounted men along the Green Line and into the no-man’s land. Shots were exchanged at close range. Greek soldiers joined with troops of the Republic of Cyprus in expelling Turkish troops and stepping into North Cyprus, somewhere they didn’t recognise as an independent country. The Turks responded, first with several air strikes at low-level and then the rush to send more troops to the island as fast as possible. The Greek-Turkish War now involved Cyprus fully as the reasons for the clashes there were swallowed up by the wider conflict.

British forces in Cyprus at the Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) of Akrotiri and Dhekelia had been there since the independence of Cyprus in 1960. They had been there too when the Turks had invaded and established North Cyprus in 1974 and seen the Turks halt on the edge of the Dhekelia SBA where afterwards the Green Line ran. The renewed fighting saw care taken to avoid Dhekelia (Akrotiri was further away) though, naturally, accidents happened and shells fell within the SBA and bullets flew across it. No British casualties were incurred. The British Army troops and RAF personnel didn’t come under direct attack. They were on alert anyway with the situation developing in Cyprus following the Aegean cashes yet at the same time dug-in in a position to fight off a Soviet attack. The eastern part of the Med. was a Soviet lake since they’d smashed the US Navy and chased away the few survivors. A Soviet attack, maybe a disguised one, was expected at any moment. Now the Greeks (plus the Greek Cypriots) and Turks were fighting each other. There came a declaration from the Republic of Cyprus that they would rid the island of Turkish forces. The war on the island wouldn’t die down and intensified instead.

Since the world war had started back in September and the US Navy had lost that battle of theirs, there had been talk of an evacuation of the SBAs. Retaining them, a foothold on the edges of the Middle East for British use and maybe for the Americans at a later date, was highly desirable: there was the airfield at Akrotiri and also the whole range of communications & signals antenna in-place. A pull-out was recognised in London as meaning that the chances of a return later would probably be impossible. One third of the troops based pre-war at the SBAs had already been removed and there were no aircraft nor helicopters; the rest of the garrison was still there though, now in the firing line. There were fears that in the midst of a full-scale war on Cyprus, ‘accidents’ might occur. Britain was neutral in the Greek-Turkish War as neither fighting side was actively part of the Allies now the Soviet alliance yet the SBAs were now even more exposed than before to an attack from former friends or long-standing foes. In London they discussed what to do about the troops in Cyprus, arguing over what to do. Those on the ground in Cyprus stayed in shelter as the fighting went on all around them… they also found out that with Greece and Turkey at war, their airspace – though not their waters! – was closed to ‘foreign’ military aircraft. The previous airborne lifeline for supply was now shut. All around them on Cyprus and elsewhere, Greece and Turkey continued to fight their ever-growing war.



October 1984: The Middle East

Israel had plenty of compelling and solid intelligence of the involvement of terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the initial attacks made against the United States when the war opened. They had been directed to do so by the KGB. This had given Israel some idea of what was going to happen before it did though no specifics and with information coming at the last minute. More information had come in the immediate aftermath. The PFPL had long been influenced by the Soviets though part – certainly not whole – of the organisation had fallen into their hands to be used like they had been. Those young men sent to strike at civilian targets in New York, Los Angeles and Miami back on September seventeenth had either been killed or captured (almost all those captured had been badly-wounded) by the Americans before then all being identified by Israel. The evidence presented to the United States on this was concise and detailed, explaining the links and making the case as clear as it could be that the PFPL was an enemy of the United States. President Glenn was then told that this one particular enemy would be smashed by Israel. That the PFPL was… and so too were many other Palestinian groups as well.

October saw Israel set about doing that smashing. Who was going to stop them? The answer was no one. Through Gaza and the West Bank, then further afield into Lebanon, they went after as much of the armed Palestinian groups as they wanted to as they struck at the PLPF and beyond. Israel had the firepower to back up their assault forces as they went after not just the gunmen of the groups they targeted but their organisation too. That firepower was put to good use and their opponents couldn’t stop the tanks, the artillery and the air strikes. Civilian casualties came with these actions. These were unavoidable when it came to the military operations undertaken and the manner in which Israel sought to eliminate those who they wanted to. Such deaths didn’t stop Israel from doing something long planned. This was an opportunity to kill off Israel’s enemies once and for all and it wasn’t going to be given up. As the terror groups got a battering and organised resistance collapsed, those members ran. They tried to run to neighbouring countries when before hiding where they were had failed. Israeli forces chased after them, gunning them down before they did so. There was a lot of that too: deaths of those Israel fought. So few prisoners were taken during the multitude of Israeli actions. They were many who stood and fought, disdainful of those who ran away, yet many more who were taken prisoner then ‘shot while trying to escape’. If the world hadn’t been at war and Israel hadn’t been in security lock-down to outsiders, this would have caused immense controversy because the scale of it looked organised. Things were the way they were though and it continued as armed opponents wouldn’t see captivity but rather their graves. Israel was getting rid of the Palestinian resistance problem for a long time to come, yet well aware too though that there were always those children in those camps who would grow into adults soon enough and one day pick up a gun of their own. Until then though, Israel would feel safe domestically.


For Israel to be feeling secure aboard, there would have to be something else done though more than just shooting people. The situation Israel found itself in during the early part of World War Three, a war which Israel was a declared neutral in, was rather alarming. It wasn’t a repeat of 1948 but there was the concern that things could go that way. Many enemies of Israel were aligned as allies of the Soviet Union and engaged in warfare with the Americans. Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria were all supposedly acting as one at the behest of their Soviet ally. Only Syria of those four countries directly bordered Israel though the other three weren’t that far away and were in a position where they posed a danger to Israel. Israel was convinced that the Soviets wouldn’t stop their allies from attacking Israel at any time despite the war with the United States. Fighting the Americans had moved away from the Middle East directly for the Soviets and their allies but neutral Israel was still standing. All of those countries, the Soviets too, would like to see the end of the little nation.

Red lines were set where Israel would act if those were crossed. Egypt was one of those. The Suez Canal was open to Soviet shipping – like from out of Iran they were sending ships down the Indian Ocean, around the bottom of Africa and up through the South Atlantic to Latin America; the long way around indeed! – but there was no Soviet presence there. Egypt under Mubarak wasn’t about to align with Moscow though neither Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran and Tripoli as well. Mubarak wanted to stay out of the war and sit it out until there came a conclusion. Should that change, Israel was determined to act to make sure that Egypt wouldn’t become an enemy ready to strike against them. There was another red line set in Jordan. Once again, this country was neutral in the ongoing world war and hadn’t thrown its lot in with the other Middle Eastern nations who were at war. Israel wouldn’t see Jordan turned into a launchpad for an attack on them. King Hussein had been warned in no uncertain terms about the consequences should that happen. Of course he bit back with his own threats though they were measured by those in Tel Aviv as having nothing behind them unless Jordan was pushed into the tightest of corners. Saddam’s Iraq was trying to do just that: push Jordan into a position where the country would be used against Israel. Whether Saddam was doing this on his own or at the behest of Moscow, it didn’t matter. Israel wouldn’t stand for it.

Iraqi intelligence operatives inside Jordan were kidnapped by unknown figures. They were then forcibly disappeared; their bodies dumped in desert graves. A series of bomb blasts occurred at the H-3 airbase near the Iraqi-Jordanian border, blowing up Iraqi fighter jets inside their Yugoslavian-built shelters. One of the Jordanian King’s closest advisers, a man with links to Baghdad, fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. Israel was ready to back up these covert actions with real strength, full-scale military attacks. There was a wait for Saddam to react and a counterreaction was ready, one with Israeli F-15s and F-16s prepared to fly all the way to Baghdad to put some bombs into the centre of the Iraqi capital. Iraqi didn’t react. Israeli intelligence got wind of a diplomatic fall-out between Iraq and Jordan instead as the Jordanians realised just how active Iraq had been inside their country. At the same time, Israel struck back against Syrian activities inside Lebanon when Assad’s aircraft came near to Israel’s in the skies over that country. A trio of MiGs were downed one afternoon and another pair the next morning. Israel made no official comment on this. Lebanon was a threat regarded nowhere near as severe as Egypt or Jordan but still Israel acted here, in the skies above anyway, showing the Syrians their attempts at aggressive intimidation would be met with force.

So much more was planned should the situation warrant it. In Tel Aviv, the Israeli government was ready – if it came to it – to fight any and all comers. They were strong and knew that their opponents were weak, especially on their own. Such a fight would mean taking on everyone if need be, where that weakness wouldn’t be so severe. Israel would do this despite their American backers having all their problems and unable to send any aid at the moment. Israel had war stocks too fall back on yet they were finite. This was the primary reason why Israel was doing what it was with limited actions rather than full-scale war. It was a gamble, a big risk. Taking on opponents covertly when possible or with targeted action at other times was preferable to full-scale open warfare. Getting Israel’s opponents at each other’s throats – a la King Hussein and Saddam – was something else which was going to be done again. Still, if it was necessary, Israel would openly fight them all. That was one of the options open to Israel and they were instead taking another.



October 1984: Japan

The Soviet Union had extended effort, and patience, in an attempt to avoid fighting Japan as well as the United States and the other Allies. Gromyko had convinced Ustinov of the need to keep Japan out and then if it wasn’t possible to keep the country neutral, then to make its participation small. Japan had refused to play the role set for them in Moscow. The air and naval war which Japan fought alongside the United States was anything but small. Japan made its presence felt. Ustinov’s death brought forth Vorotnikov and while Gromyko had the new general secretary’s ear on many things, he didn’t have the same influence when it came to the war being fought in the Pacific. That influence was Marshal Sokolov’s and his belief, which he convinced Vorotnikov to follow, was that the war there needed to be won fast and quickly. China became the real war in Asia which the Soviet Union needed to focus on: the conflict with Japan needed to be won by whatever means possible as soon as possible. American actions on the Korean Peninsula complicated things – that was putting the use of nuclear weapons in mild terms – yet the fight against Japan was still something regarded in Moscow as a war to be won. The way to do that wasn’t to play nice any longer and keep attempting back door negotiations through third parties to get the Japanese to back out of the war. The gloves had come off, Vorotnikov had declared, and Japan quickly discovered that.

Japan had been fighting a military conflict alongside the Americans against the Soviets. There were those clashes in the skies and at sea between the armed forces of the opposing sides. Vorotnikov’s changing of the rules gave the conflict a civilian aspect. Tokyo got the ‘Belfast treatment’: a barrage of missiles flew towards the Japanese capital, flying in towards the urban area over the period of several days. These were old weapons with not the best of guidance and therefore suitable for such an attack as hitting a massive target like the general Tokyo area. Fired from distant aircraft came cruise missiles; launched from the Soviet mainland came short-range ballistic missiles. Those Belfast attacks – later repeated elsewhere in Britain – came with conventional weapons only before a few select attacks were made on the UK mainland with ‘special weapons’. Such were used also against Tokyo with three of those missiles carrying chemical warheads. Japan had feared a nuclear attack, it was hit with chemicals instead. The gas used was a binary agent where it was mixed in the air and it was (as it was in Britain) a previously unknown substance. It had fatal results, killing over two thousand Japanese civilians in the first attack, almost sixteen hundred in the next and twenty-four hundred in the third. Using gas masks and seeking shelter did the civilians in Tokyo no good. The best way to avoid death – a horrible, painful demise too – was to not be in Tokyo. Several million Japanese fled soon enough away from the capital and many more Japanese cities too. The nation was left terrified of more gas.

Some of those missiles didn’t make it to Japan with aircraft downed, the Americans managing to bomb a few ground launchers (Japan didn’t have the strike assets to do that themselves) and HAWK surface-to-air missiles were able to intercept a couple of the older & slower ones cruise missiles lancing towards Tokyo. The failure ratio for the Soviet attacks was small though, painfully small from Japan’s perspective. The Americans told them that Soviet attention had shifted to China and so things would get easier with less attacks made against Japan but then the gas attacks came. They were so unexpected and nothing could be done to stop them or any more coming. There was the terrible fear across Japan that the conventional explosions and then nerve gas would lead to nuclear attacks next. Japan had not been informed beforehand of the American nuclear strikes on the Korean Peninsula and afterwards made it clear that they believed those to be a terrible error. Those would set the stage for the Soviets to hit back against an American ally who had no such weapons of them own in response: Japan feared that they would be the target of a response like that.

American and Japanese fighters pushed further off-shore above the Sea of Japan and also out over the bottom half of the Sea of Okhotsk as well as they actively hunted for those Soviet bombers launching missiles from afar to down them before they could fire on Tokyo. With the cruise missiles which still got through, Japan went after them with less-capable aircraft – trainers mainly – above Japanese airspace as they attempted to knock down those missiles which weren’t going supersonic with guns. The land-based launchers were far harder to counter. The Soviets used mobile launchers and those missiles on a ballistic arc were extremely fast and impossible to intercept. A crash programme to develop the necessary software to adapt HAWK systems was made by Japan but any pay-off would be some time away. Until then, Japan was at the mercy of those missile attacks and the country was chaos in places due to them.


Prime Minister Nakasone spoke with President Glenn directly. Japan needed more from her ally. Those missile-launchers needed to be located and taken out. Additional fighters were needed to defend Japan too. Furthermore, Nakasone wanted a retaliation made for the chemical warfare strikes to be undertaken by the Americans on Japan’s behalf.

Glenn couldn’t meet any of these requests. The United States had foreign troops on its soil and was fighting for its life. All that could be done for Japan at the moment was being done. Hold firm, Glenn told Nakasone, and we’ll turn the tide, especially as the China War continues for the Soviets and really hurts them in Asia. How long could Japan hold firm for though? The answer may have seemed to be a very long time, indefinitely even because the country wasn’t being invaded and Soviets got more and more involved in China. However, there came another chemical attack on Japan just before the end of the month. Tokyo was hit again yet so too were four other cities – Sapporo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka – when ballistic missiles rained down with gas clouds forming. Despite the fleeing of so many people from the cities, combined these took over eight thousand lives. When the news reached Nakasone, he was at a loss as to what to do. How could he and his government let this continue?

[James G]

October 1984: Korea, north and south

Just as the Soviet Union wanted to put a quick end to the participation in the war of Japan, the United States wanted North Korea out of the war too. For the Americans, the Korean Peninsula was the only place other than their home soil where they were fighting a land war and they wanted their troops there – those reinforced ahead of the war – to come back home. To pull them out of the fight when North Korea was still capable of overrunning South Korea wouldn’t do though. Late September had seen those nuclear attacks made against the North Koreans, with detonations occurring both sides of the DMZ and just thrilling the South Koreans with that, in response to the gas attacks made by North Korea. However, the nuclear attacks also occurred with the intent of knocking the armies of Kim Il-sung out the war too. On the back of them, American and South Korean forces undertook a large-scale counterattack which continued through October. Some early dramatic gains were made in places, especially at the beginning, though generally the advance to retake lost ground through South Korea was slow. And it was costly too. The North Koreans stopped the offensive cold in a few instances and also tried to get an advance going of their own where possible. Their area of occupation south of the DMZ shrunk – complete with radioactive dead-zones within – but they weren’t beaten. South Korea threw everything it had at trying to defeat those on their soil yet the Americans couldn’t match that wholescale commitment to do the same. Reinforcements weren’t coming from the United States either with troops or aircraft. If they had, the job might have been finished.

The war still raged inside South Korea through October as the North Koreans desperately and stubbornly clung on where they could. The South Korean–US advance stalled to a crawl. North Korean reinforcements walked southwards because transport links were destroyed to keep adding more men to the ranks; the Americans and South Koreans had to fight through minefields and trench systems to get at them and kill them before they could edge forward. It was looking like this was how the Second Korean war would continue onwards for the foreseeable future. A near stalemate had set in where neither side was able to advance any further. Men fought and died for inches of ground, much of that wasteland that had already been blasted to bits. This wasn’t how either of the three major participants wanted it to go on for any longer. North Korea kept sending more men with the aim of conducting human wave attacks soon enough. South Korea continued burning through their own reserves of manpower as they sought to retake more territory despite the mounting death toll. The Americans sought to do something dramatic to finish off the war with North Korea.


Kim Il-sung was afraid – make that terrified – of flying. Ten years beforehand, North Korea’s leader had toured the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (visiting each Warsaw Pact country) and travelled by train all the way across Eurasia and back. He had a special series of armoured trains aboard which he travelled in luxury and safety. There was a massive security effort around his trains and there were even decoy trains used. Kim didn’t like being underground too. North Korea was full of bunkers, deep ones at that, but he refused to go down into them. With the war on, Kim had stayed away from Pyongyang and was constantly moving about. He ran his country’s war effort while on the move as his special trains (he changed from one to another with frequency) criss-crossed the country. On two occasions, American bombs falling from attacking aircraft came close to striking the armoured train which he was on. Those near-misses came when the US Air Force was smashing up North Korea’s rail network. The second series of bombs fell very close to Kim’s train and American post-strike reconnaissance detected a series of unusual occurrences around an ‘innocent-looking freight train’ which the KCIA – the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency – correctly interpreted as actually being Kim’s train.

Killing him would end the Second Korean War, such was the view taken. The Americans deliberately went after him even more than they had before, targeting more of those few trains running on North Korea’s battered railway system. A lot of effort was expended on the Kill Kim missions and those aircraft involved could have undertaken more effective combat strikes elsewhere. They were supported by reconnaissance and intelligence assets which too could have been employed doing other important things. There was a lot of debate on this issue within the American military involved in the conflict on the Korean Peninsula and also between South Korea and the United States. Still, the Kill Kim missions continued and eventually the Americans claimed ‘success’. They hit a train on October nineteenth which there was a certainty that Kim was aboard it. Pre- & post-strike intelligence pointed to that being Kim’s train that was hit and those aboard killed… the initial bomb run by a flight of F-16s was followed by the urgent tasking of several waves of aircraft coming in dropping high-explosive bombs and then napalm too. Kim was thought dead and with his demise, North Korea was expected to collapse.


The Americans couldn’t and wouldn’t send reinforcements to South Korea yet other members of the Allies did so. The South East Asian nations of Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore were sending troops and aircraft; ahead of them came an Expeditionary Force from Australia and New Zealand. The reinforced mixed brigade from the latter two nations started arriving in mid-October behind Australian air assets already in South Korea and naval units from the two countries which had seen action beforehand in the Western Pacific. North Korea was unable to do anything to stop this and neither were their Soviet allies. The Pacific was an American lake now and more and more Soviet attention as directed against China rather than further afield.

The Australian 3rd Brigade – complete with New Zealand attachments – was the lead unit of the planned larger Expeditionary Force. Another Australian brigade (the 1st) was intended to join with them soon enough and New Zealand was planning (whether it would be able to was a different matter) form a brigade solely of its own troops to join with the two others to complete a full ANZAC division eventually. The commitment for both countries was huge with thousands of soldiers dispatched to fight but also to support them in a long supply train all the way back home. They sent their men off to fight a war far from home against an enemy which would certainly be no walk-over. Chemical warfare was anticipated despite American claims that North Korea’s ability to launch any more gas attacks was gone. The soldiers from Australia and New Zealand arrived in South Korea right after Kim was reported dead and there was quickly talk that the war was almost at an end.

As these men arrived, and those from the three Asian countries also started to deploy after being worked-up ahead of their transfer, the Americans started to pull out some of their forces from South Korea. It was said that the withdrawals from the United States matched the incoming reinforcements from other Allies in a like-for-like replacement. The South Koreans didn’t agree with the Americans when it came to that, not at all. The first Americans to leave were the All Americans. There had been a brigade of the 82nd ‘All American’ Airborne Division in South Korea since early August, sent to deter the North Koreans from attacking across the DMZ. Part of the rest of the division had been lost in Panama; the remaining third was in Texas and there was a real need for those in South Korea to return home to join them. A battalion of the Army Reserve – the 100/442 Infantry; a Pacific Islands-based unit – came out with them as the paratroopers and airmobile infantry withdrew from the frontlines and were replaced at first by South Korean reservists with the Expeditionary Force of ANZAC troops supposed to move in by the end of the month. These Americans had taken loses in combat though were still a significant force. They were very soon on their way home, destination Texas. The 3rd Marine Division started moving out too. They were in the Seoul Pocket, that island of resistance around the South Korean capital where they had helped keep the North Koreans at bay. Pressure had been greatly relieved upon the Seoul Pocket and while it was still cut off by North Korean forces through northern and central parts of South Korea, the stranglehold was far weaker than it had been beforehand. South Korean advances towards relieving it were slow and costly yet they would get there eventually, especially since the skies were full of friendly aircraft. Those US Marines had likewise been here since August and failed in their deterrence mission while taking major loses in combat operations. It would take longer to get them out and back home, but it was to California where they would be going to fight next. Other American forces in South Korea – the US Army IX Corps with the trio of infantry divisions – remained in-country alongside a big US Air Force presence. The United States wanted them to return as soon as possible, once the war was won though following the anticipated internal collapse of North Korean following Kim’s reported death.


Kim Il-sung wasn’t dead. He was injured and had needed serious medical care, including treatment for burns after the Americans had used that napalm, but he was alive. His country was not about to exit this war.

On October twenty-eighth, after fighting their way through serious Chinese opposition, the left-hand side of the Soviet Fifth Combined Arms Army reached the North Korean–Chinese border at Namyang. They were part of a three army group which had entered Manchuria, part of an even bigger force attacking elsewhere in China too, fighting the Chinese all the way. There were still more Chinese to fight – there always would be – but for part of the Fifth Army detached into a corps-sized group, their war was now elsewhere. They turned left and entered North Korea with the aim of going further south.



October 1984: China

The China War for the Soviets was undertaken for the same general reasons as their war against the United States. China was an enemy who it was decided to take the country on now and defeat it because the time was right. The circumstances leading up to the conflict weren’t what was initially desired but they had occurred. The Chinese would have been fought after the Americans, such was the initial idea, but now they were fought at the same time. The Soviets believed that they could win both though. Each conflict had been justified by the Soviet government – change of leadership aside – as being a pre-emptive war too; still, there came declarations made publicly to their own people and the rest of the world that the Americans and Chinese had on each occasion struck first. The peace-loving, innocent victim which was the Soviet Union was only defending herself.

Nuclear weapons weren’t used to open the attack against China but that didn’t mean that they had been ruled out of all operations. In fact, the Soviets intended to put them to use, just not at the beginning: when the time was right, they would be used. The Chinese had their nuclear forces on high-alert at the opening of the war, with missiles ready to fire. The Soviets had cast-iron intelligence from inside China when it came to how those would be used and that was in retaliation to an opening Soviet nuclear attack. There was no mood in Moscow to see the horrors of Leningrad repeated against elsewhere against another one of their cities. They opened the war with conventional weapons and waited until the chaos of war had set in, with Chinese command-&-control destroyed, before they would make any nuclear attacks. Those would be worthwhile too, undertaken where it mattered to ensure victory on the battlefield. Before then, Soviet armies smashed their way into China.

From the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, from inside Mongolia and from across in the Soviet Far East, the invasion was launched. It was huge, in its scale and the manpower commitment. More men would be committed to the fight against China by the Soviets than they sent overseas to fight the Americans and the other Allies. Mongolia and Vietnam joined in too: the former fighting alongside Soviet forces and the latter launching a far smaller effort on their own inside Chinese-occupied Vietnamese territory. Defeating the military might of China’s standing armies and occupying enough key territory to force a Chinese withdrawal from the war – including taking Beijing intact – was the aim of the war. There was no intention to overrun all of China and then occupy that. These ‘limited’ aims were fast put under strain.


The main bulk of the China War was fought through the first month across Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. These were the Beijing and Shenyang Military Regions of the People’s Liberation Army. It was in these areas where China had concentrated so much of its ready military forces pre-war and where the Soviets pushed into. The opposing armies met in battle repeatedly across the first few weeks of October. Many engagements were planned, many more not. There was a lot of confusion going on where the forces of one side, moving forwards or backwards, encountered the other unexpectedly. At the same time, careful preparation and shaping of the battlefield led to engagements which were set up to occur. Horrendous casualties occurred, both military and civilian.

The Soviets moved forwards and the Chinese either fell backwards or where defeated before they could do so. Soviet pre-war intelligence had shown the Chinese to be very far forward, extremely close to the frontiers with Mongolian and Soviet territory, and that was something that which their doctrine went against. It allowed the Soviets to get at them very fast and not have to get all of their supporting firepower onto Chinese territory first before it could be used. Soviet tanks and mechanised forces swept forward after the opening battles at lightning speed and then that became a problem. The follow-on forces, including all of that artillery which had done so much good at the start, had been left behind. On many occasions, Soviet vanguards were caught and massacred deep inside China without any support to come and save them. The Chinese were quick to take advantage, especially on their own ground, at any Soviet mistake made like that. Nonetheless, they were still forced into a general retreat. The Soviet war machine could take hits like that and keep on going… at least for some time anyway. They’d shown that in America and repeated that in China.

All across China, Soviet aircraft and special forces had been on raiding missions to take apart the Chinese rear. Communications and supply lines were hit, so too the ability to move major armoured reinforcements forward. Spetsnaz units did some fantastic damage to Chinese nuclear units as well, knocking them out when they were on the move to avoid attacks. Many groups of Spetsnaz had a terrible time though when things went against them and the Chinese overwhelmed them with numbers before extraction could come. China’s nuclear arsenal was – the weapons themselves and the capability to delivery them – curtailed greatly though not ended. As to the Soviet aircraft, they established air dominance over the battlefield and beyond and stopped the flow of heavy Chinese reinforcements forward. Soviet aviators had a better air war over China than their comrades flying above the United States did. The Chinese had older aircraft, older air defences and antiquated command for them. Advantage was taken at every opportunity. It wasn’t fair but who wants to fight a fair war?


Soviet casualties mounted. Victories and defeats, and the occupation duties over held areas, all brought about the loss of men. Reservists mobilised before and through the China War arrived yet the numbers continued to rise. Three Soviet military districts – the Central Asian, Trans-Baikal and Far Eastern –, plus their Group of Forces in Mongolia, sent all that they could. There were more Soviet troops that the Soviets could send leaving what they had in-place through Eastern Europe and fighting the wars against the Americans and the Allies. Regardless, at some point this issue was going to come to a head. The Chinese were still bringing forward reinforcements, not so much heavy forces but still men who could carry a rifle and kill a Soviet soldier. There was no sign of giving in coming from the Chinese either at a government level, with the People’s Liberation Army nor civilians who were taking part in the opening of a guerrilla war.

This was all projected in Soviet pre-war planning. It was recognised that the China War wouldn’t be easy and would be costly. Those projections were signed off upon by Ustinov though, not Vorotnikov who wanted a quick end to everything. The general secretary wanted a magic solution to many of the various conflicts being fought and actions were taken elsewhere to try to achieve that. In China, the gloves were ordered to come off when it came to Harbin. Around that city in Manchuria, as the Soviets approached it aiming to then charge southwards through better terrain beyond, the Chinese filled the battlefield with as many soldiers as they could. They were bunched-up in places and digging in. Vorotnikov pushed Marshal Sokolov for a magic solution to win and not to incur further staggering Soviet casualties. One was presented. The Defence Council – not the whole Politburo – argued over whether to follow that though not too furiously because they too were all looking for the magic solution. It wasn’t the act itself which Sokolov presented which upset them, it was the long-term consequences. It came down to a vote in the end and there was dissent. Unanimous decisions on matters like this were usually taken for unity yet with the ‘Harbin solution’ that didn’t occur. The yes votes won out the no votes but to those who voted (either way) they knew that this was something significant amongst how the wars being fought would continue from now on as the leadership was dividing itself.

Soviet internal arguments in Moscow meant little in and around Harbin when on October sixteenth, nuclear weapons were employed. Others were used in a few other places on Chinese soil yet, crucially, not against Chinese cities away from Harbin.



October 1984: China

So as to not alert the Chinese and give them time to react, the warning to Soviet troops fighting near the selected nuclear impact points in China was sent very late. Get down, stay down and avert your eyes. This had been practiced. The men were supposed to know what to do and do it upon command. Most did so yet there were always those who didn’t either because they were stupid and/or disobeyed the order… or didn’t get the warning in time. It was sent very late. Then came the nuclear blasts, near to those troops in places but far away from them too. China saw the use of nuclear weapons on its soil like the United States, the Soviet Union and the two Koreas already had.

The Harbin area was hit hardest. Almost a dozen tactical warheads went off around the city in North East China where the big clash between the People’s Liberation Army and the Soviet Army was taking place. The Chinese were targeted though not directly on the frontlines themselves. Nonetheless, there were Soviet casualties caught up in the nuclear fire and then afterwards. The Chinese were quickly ravaged by the effects of fallout yet so were unlucky Soviet forces caught where they shouldn’t have been when the strike was planned due to miscalculations and the ongoing fighting almost right up until the blasts occurred. They had protective equipment issued yet it wasn’t the best and not everyone was wearing it correctly. Such Soviet losses to their own weapons were minuscule in comparison to those taken by the Chinese through. Groupings of reserve forces moving in and troops manning concentrations of artillery were the targets, there others in the way too. The initial radiation and then the fallout hit other Chinese troops as well as the mass of civilians around Harbin. The actual city was physically untouched though so many of those in there were quickly going to become casualties of nuclear warfare.

Elsewhere in Manchuria, through Inner Mongolia and across to Xinjiang – the northern border regions – and then down into the centrally-located regions of Hubei and Sichuan, there were another twenty plus nuclear attacks. Larger warheads were used in these though they weren’t concentrated together like the Harbin strikes. Chinese nuclear forces, dispersed and already having suffered from conventional attacks to disrupt their operations, came under attack. Fixed missile sites and mobile platforms were hit by incoming Soviet ballistic missiles. China had a lot of missiles in service though not all of them had been deployed with the few nuclear warheads that China had, some too had already been ‘liberated’ from them by Soviet commandos who’d hit Chinese nuclear forces in raids beforehand when mobile units were on the move. These nuclear strikes, using strategic weapons, were going to cause so many more casualties all across China afterwards.


Deng was dead, killed on the second day of the China War. The country’s Paramount Leader had been assassinated by a Chinese national being forced to do so by the KGB: he’d murdered Deng before being killed by bodyguards. Hu Yaobang had taken over though his leadership was shaky. He was meant to have complete authority over China’s military operations, including nuclear weapons release. When the Soviet nuclear strike went in, so too did a message which was sent direct to Hu. He was warned of the consequences of retaliating with Chinese nuclear weapons: Chinese cities would be targeted next in an exchange, one which China couldn’t win.

Hu didn’t order an instant counter-strike. He wasn’t about to surrender China and was determined to continue to fight the ongoing war, liberating all of China’s taken territory but he wouldn’t return fire using nuclear arms. The information that Hu had said that his country had maybe thirty nuclear warheads left in its arsenal (from a pre-war strength of less than two hundred) and very few means of effectively using outside of Chinese soil really far beyond. That wasn’t necessarily true but the confusion of war meant that this was the information he was working with. Hu didn’t want to see Chinese nuclear weapons used on Chinese soil, where he was told they would only be really effective. He also believed that using them to strike the edges of the Soviet Union, maybe hitting a small city, would certainly not be worth the loss of China’s cities and the tens of millions of lives that would entail. This was his view. Deng probably would have acted differently. Hu refused to give the order to the People’s Liberation Army to hit back against the Soviets and trusted that his word as Deng’s replacement was enough.

Some of China’s generals, political men with ambitions of personal power yet also who were convinced that not striking back would bring more Soviet attacks, took matters into the own hands. They didn’t listen to Hu’s ‘wisdom’ on this. In the hours following the Soviet nuclear strike, and against the will of its leader, China returned fire on the Soviet Union and also its allies. Hitting Soviet armies in the field wasn’t practical with the few weapons at-hand and the limiting factor of ongoing Soviet military actions. There was also not the will among the rebellious generals to strike within their own nation too. They thus unleashed nuclear fire outside of China.


Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, was blasted to smithereens. A missile carrying three warheads only managed to deliver one of those on target and with the required explosion fully taking place. One was enough: Hanoi was gone in a flash.

Choibalsan in Mongolia was another successful hit for China’s ‘rouge’ nuclear strikes. This city was a military centre for Soviet forces in the country – the 39th Army had moved into China though – and targeted for nuclear destruction when a smaller Chinese missile carrying just the one warhead exploded low above it. The Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar was saved form similar destruction when the missile unit ordered to fire upon there refused to do so.

The Soviet Union was hit once again by nuclear weapons. Tashkent in the Uzbek SSR, in the heart of Central Asia, took a near-miss but one which would be enough to soon see the end of this bustling commercial & industrial city when the fallout hit those who lived there. Another blast occurred above the Caspian Sea where Chinese targeting was off once again and Baku survived the nuclear hellfire destined for it. With Chita and Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East, locations key to supporting the invasion of China, Chinese targeting was near-perfect and each city was obliterated. These missile strikes on Soviet targets were meant to be followed up by bomb runs made elsewhere. Chinese bombers were shot out of the sky. What couple were left couldn’t get out of Chinese airspace due to the abundance of Soviet fighters flying. They turned back, only to land where they came from and face later Soviet wrath.

Then there was Moscow. China’s generals did what America’s president hadn’t done and launched a missile at the Soviet capital. Soviet anti-missile defences were on the highest state of alert already. The incoming missile was tracked flying out of central China from one of those missile silos meant to have been destroyed beforehand. It was a DF-4, China’s most-capable ICBM and the only one (of four in service pre-war) left. A massive three megaton plus thermonuclear warhead was carried atop the missile called the East Wind, targeted to explode above the Kremlin itself. It flew onwards through space, high above Eurasia and the earth below. The Soviets watched its progress and so did the Americans too. Breaths were held awaiting the termination of the flight of the DF-4. Would the East Wind reach Moscow?



October 1984:

Nuclear explosions occurred above Moscow.

These weren’t in the sky though. Instead, they were up in space and extremely high above. Soviet anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) with nuclear-tipped warheads were detonated to kill the incoming Chinese East Wind. The idea of doing so, using nuclear weapons above your capital city to stop a nuclear attack, might seem at first glance to be a little bit crazy – to put it mildly – but it was effective. Using a conventionally-armed warhead would be akin to firing a bullet at a bullet, with both moving at many times the speed of sound with absolutely no room for error. An ABM system of such nature was the stuff of science fiction: nuclear explosions to stop a nuclear explosion stood more chance of success.

The A-35M system, recently upgraded, worked as advertised. A trio of explosions went off and the incoming Chinese warhead was eliminated in nuclear fire seconds before it was about to explode itself. The radars had tracked the incoming missile and the trio of ABMs were fired to intercept at the right altitude.

Those below didn’t hear nor feel a thing. Muscovites saw it though. The early morning sky was lit up. Those who looked up, and the human eye is drawn to such a thing, suffered temporary blindness in many cases and permanent loss of sight in others. Next came the electro-magnetic pulse. It wasn’t as bad as certain predictions ran and the majority of military links were unaffected due to shielding. There were civilian effects though, extended far away from Moscow and not in a uniform pattern.

Moscow hadn’t been glassed. The millions who called the city home weren’t atomised like those in Leningrad had been a month earlier. The Chinese attack had failed. Payback was still going to come though for those other Chinese attacks had succeed… and China had dared to try to wipe Moscow off the face of the earth.



October 1984: China

Moscow might have been saved but two small Soviet cities on the border had been hit with Chinese nuclear weapons. There was additionally the near miss on Tashkent and a more-distant miss against Baku: the effects of those nuclear explosions were nothing to scoff at, especially once it became clear that Tashkent would soon have to be abandoned. The Chinese still had other nuclear weapons unused as well. Communications intercepts had caught several missile units refusing the order to fire and also overhead chatter with bombers which had been unable to get out of Chinese airspace. Post-strike reconnaissance against targets where the first round of missile strikes had gone in to eliminate China’s nuclear arsenal had shown some survivors of that. The ICBM had been one of those yet there were other missiles too.

A second round of strikes against China therefore commenced. This time chemical weapons were used as well, plentiful stocks of nerve gas used against military targets not being hit with Soviet nuclear weapons. Where the gas was used, it was against Chinese troops in certain areas of Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. Those targeted had no protection and holes were torn open in Chinese military defences. With the nuclear strikes, a wide variety of confirmed and suspected Chinese nuclear targets were eliminated along with selective civilian targets. There had been some internal debate within the Defence Council – who’d been far away from Moscow when it was nearly destroyed – over how strongly to respond when it came to striking back against China with different views expressed on the scale. Some of those, how far certain members wanted to go when it came to striking at Chinese cities, would have seen death occur across China on a genocidal scale with hundreds of millions of lives taken in an instant. Such ideas weren’t followed through with.

The nuclear exchanges took place on October sixteenth, before Gromyko was to go to Strasbourg and talk with Western Europe. There was hope at that point that the much-needed deal with the EEC-led France could be reached. The opinions of several neutral nations, ones which the Soviet Union wanted to keep neutral so they could trade with them, factored into this too: India and the South American nations being those of importance. Those who pushed for a massive attack against China dismissed such concerns but Vorotnikov listened. China would be punished for what they did and what more they tried to do yet he was made to understand that there would be consequences to going too far. Some things could be dismissed as lies and other lies created, but there was always only so far that could be taken. World opinion was hardly on the side of the Soviet Union at the time and wiping out every Chinese city – as rather forcibly suggested – didn’t seem the best of ideas if that was ever going to be improved. The Defence Council decided to act ‘proportionally’ and also convinced themselves that they could control the flow of information afterwards. They wanted to show the rest of the world – enemies, friends and neutrals alike – that they the Soviet Union now had world dominance and wouldn’t stand for what had been done but also they didn’t want to have everyone turn against them.


The proportional response selected was to hit four Chinese cities. Beijing remained standing, others weren’t so fortunate. Chengdu and Chongqing in central China were struck. So too was Guangzhou in southern China and also Shanghai in eastern China. Soviet nuclear weapons obliterated them and killed millions at once with millions more soon to die afterwards from these blasts and the strikes elsewhere against identified Chinese nuclear weapons.

It could have been a lot worse. Worse than the elimination of Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Shanghai was possible. Rumours would go around the world afterwards that it had been worse and that position which the Soviet Defence Council had intended to stake out for themselves as reasonable didn’t work as planned.

China didn’t return fire again. The Soviets still managed to miss some of China’s remaining weapons and Hu was busy trying to re-establish control over his nuclear forces after the generals had acted without his permission. He received another communique from the Soviets where they told him that China had been warned not to strike at the Soviet Union and had received the punishment for doing so. More was coming should China strike out again. China’s leader was also told that the Soviet Union still had its outstanding terms of a peace settlement between them. This war could be stopped. Hu didn’t reply and the war continued in China.


In western China, by the end of the month, Soviet armies had taken much of Xinjiang and taken Urumqi. The 32nd Army – victors in Iran several years ago – were victorious again in getting deep into China. They had been aided by further chemical attacks, these of a limited and tactical nature, in allowing them to get as far as they did. Up in Manchuria, after the Harbin nuclear strikes, the three field armies there (the 5th, 15th and 35th) moved onwards and got to Shenyang before reaching the Great Wall itself. Then there was Beijing, taken as well as most of Inner Mongolia by three more Soviet armies (the 29th, 36th and 39th) which had moved through Outer Mongolia and onto the Chinese capital. The Great Wall of China didn’t stop them either. The final battles near to the city were the fiercest fought where China threw everything they had to save Beijing, but the Soviets kept on coming with all that they had too. A full-on fight for the city itself then commenced by Chinese lighter forces as the Soviets moved in. Intact was what the Soviets wanted to take Beijing… and that wouldn’t be the case.

Across the rest of China, the earlier nuclear attacks had their after-effects with the extensive radioactive death zones where cities had once stood as well as Chinese nuclear sites. Shanghai was the worst of these in terms of immediate loss of life yet through central parts of the country where there had been ground bursts of Soviet nuclear weapons to hit hardened missile silos, those stories overseas of hundreds of millions of deaths looked to have truth to them. News came out of China along these lines too from the Guangzhou strike. Guangzhou was known to many in the West as Canton (in the same manner as Beijing being Peking; Shanghai was always Shanghai) and was near to Hong Kong. It was out of there which the ‘news’ came. Hong Kong was flooded with those wanting to flee to there from inside China – many coming very far – but there were also those trying to leave China by sea too from coastal exit points across the entire southern part of China.

They were leaving China because of the nuclear attacks. They were leaving because of the ongoing war with the Soviets. They were leaving due to the breakdown of government, and thus law-&-order, through many internal parts of the country. China was falling apart with social breakdown. It wasn’t all as bad as it seemed but where things were bad, they really were. Hu and the Chinese government were ruling over a nation gradually collapsing in on itself. After taking Beijing, the Soviets came back with another peace offering to China. Their demands were still outrageous and couldn’t be accepted. The security zone which would be occupied, the military demilitarisation and the reparations were unacceptable… worse was the territorial concessions demanded. No, no, no: China wouldn’t accept those. China refused completely to talk peace and kept on fighting. The government stood firm on this while all around them the house was burning down. There was yet to be any major infighting amongst the Chinese themselves, and they were still fighting the Soviets, so China wasn’t finished but it was heading that way unless things drastically changed.



October 1984: Latin America and the Caribbean

The American bombing of Cuba eventually eased up. It didn’t come to a complete stop, but the level of intensity with the initial aerial assault upon the island couldn’t be maintained as it began. Cuba’s armies were inside the United States itself along with those of its Soviet and Nicaraguan allies: American air attention needed to be directed there as the priority. Hitting Cuba was still important, very important as it was through there that much of the invasion was being conducted, yet secondary to those air strikes through the Border States and over into the northern reaches of Mexico. Therefore, the heavy attacks moved elsewhere. There came the occasion bombing with ports hit but nothing like what had been before.

Cuba smouldered afterwards. Havana was a ruin, target of countless B-52 hits from four-aircraft cells up to full squadrons of the giant bombers with a belly-full of bombs. Elsewhere throughout the country, there were more ruins of where military infrastructure had once stood and there had also been transportation points. Decades of American planning to hit Cuba from the sky had been put into practise where each and every harbour, airport and bridge had a position on a target list that the Americans had worked their way down. Power stations and telecommunications across the island had also been on that list. Tens of thousands were left dead. Cuba’s people had suffered for the actions of their government and their leader’s decisions… plus America’s desire to get even. Cuba was lucky though in only getting what it did. If it hadn’t been for the presence of so many Soviets on the island, the Americans would have launched a nuclear attack. There were demands from some that such a thing be done nonetheless yet it hadn’t. Cuba wasn’t down and finished as if it had been had such weapons been used.

Aircraft and ships were still leaving Cuba to go either across the Gulf of Mexico into captured parts of the United States or further afield. They moved men, equipment and supplies out of Cuba in some instances and in others brought those in. The Castro Brothers had been briefed on the damage done to their nation and all of the destruction caused. Fidel had gone to see some of it; Raúl had been too busy dealing with military affairs to tour the battered country. Both men still believed in this war despite all that it had done to Cuba and their people.


Across in Mexico, there was a death zone where Mexico City had once been. Tirado López was still alive with the leader of Revolutionary Mexico having been not in the capital when the United States decided to destroy the city. Those who lived there hadn’t been so lucky to be absent. The civil war had already thrown everything up in the air and with the detonation of those five nuclear warheads, the nation fell completely apart with the last of the economy finished off as well as civil order. From Guadalajara, Tirado López was issuing instructions for Mexico’s soldiers to restore that order but to no avail. So many Mexican soldiers were now answerable to Soviet and Cuban forces who had transferred them across the US-Mexico Border and were using them there for rear-area duties. Anything of any value in border areas south of that line was being used to support the ongoing war no matter what Mexico’s needs were. Mexico was hardly a functioning state any more.

Down in Panama, the destruction of the most important part of that country negated the value of Panama in Soviet eyes. With the Panama Canal destroyed when its locks were so utterly demolished and other obstructions caused to block passage through it, Soviet designs to send ships from the Caribbean to the Pacific were no more. Noriega found that he had no contribution to give to his allies. They had used him and his country to distract the Americans and to bring their troops down into Panama to be cut off and then defeated. Panama no longer had any importance after that. Panama’s needs weren’t important to those with whom the country had allied itself with to start the war. Without the ability to collect any fees for transiting ships and the sudden irreverence of the country’s international banking system, Panama was unable to pay for food, oil and medical supplies. Those all came from abroad and those who would provide them all wanted payment for such. Panama was unable to do that. In Moscow and Havana, no one cared any more about Panama’s woes. What they did want to know was when Noriega would have troops available to march north.

Across Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, as many able-bodied men as possible were being conscripted into the armies of the first two countries. The latter pair each retained their independence but that was in name only. They had no armies of their own and men from their countries joined those from the ones which had conquered them in being sent off to fight far away. In Nicaragua and Guatemala, some men stayed behind to work in vital industries but plenty more were forced into uniform where before they hadn’t been because there wasn’t the capability to see them serve previously. Now there was. The Soviets were now providing the means for this to happen as they sent guns and ammunition, much of that provided though when the conscripts arrived in northern Mexico ready to cross the border as reinforcements: it wasn’t sent direct to Central America. The staggering numbers of conscripts being sent off to fight in a foreign war left Central America seemingly empty of men aged fifteen to thirty (the ages went either side of those limits too in an unofficial manner) afterwards. Would those men ever come home? If they didn’t, the demographic factors there would be interesting to say the least.

Cuban troops remained occupying island outposts throughout the Caribbean. There were all of those islands where they had arrived to take over airport and seaports under Cuban occupation. Initial resistance had been minimal though there had come some trouble in a few after a while. That had been dealt with harshly. Antigua and Barbados had both seen mass shootings of those who had dared to raise that resistance… along with anyone else suspected of being involved too. The islands were dangerous places to be for those who had found that war had suddenly come to their country when the Cubans arrived. On the island dependencies & territories of Britain and the United States taken, the occupation was different as to how it was on those independent countries. From the Caymans to the Virgin Islands, even more brutality was used against those there where there was no pretence made of working with the local government. These islands had been liberated and the price of that revolution brought to them from their comrades aboard was to fully serve the interests of Cuba. What Cuba wanted, it would take. What Cuba demanded, that would be done. The Soviets had their presence as well where they were involved in the logistics efforts going through the islands and watched over this with approval given. The Cubans were keeping these islands secure and the Soviet Union wanted things kept that way.

The US Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Independence departed the Caribbean near to the end of the month after its air attacks which had been conducted against Grenada and done damage there. Earlier hopes of doing more with the carrier had had to be cut back due to how many fighters the Soviets & Cubans eventually moved into the occupied islands to counter what could be done by the Independence. Anti-shipping strikes had been far more successful for the Americans when using this carrier and there were many ships laden with cargo to be made use of as part of the invasion that had been sunk or burnt-out. It was because of where more of those ships could be found that the Independence left the Caribbean.


Coming up the South Atlantic after rounding the bottom of Africa were Soviet ships. Not warships, but freighters and tankers. They were making long journeys on their way to the Caribbean, Cuba and the occupied coastal strip of the United States on the Gulf of Mexico. Almost none of them had Soviet registration but they were fulfilling missions on behalf of the Soviet Union after travelling from the Black Sea and Iran and then crossing the Indian Ocean. The cargoes aboard these ships were being sent to keep the war going in America and it was being sneaked in because the ships were registered in countries not involved in the ongoing war. Actual ownership of the ships was muddled and there was no public description given of their cargoes. In addition, the actual destinations of these ships was often false as well. They were going where they shouldn’t have been and the Americans and the Allies had woken up to what was going on. Doing something about it was more difficult than working through the deliberate series of lies and covering up though despite the challenges that brought.

There were ships who had the flag of convenience of Liberia following the switching of registration from The Bahamas (where there had been cooperation with the Allies from that nation), Malta (after that country was occupied) and Panama (this ceasing due to Panama being in the war) soon after the war began. Actual ownership was with dubious fronts based in many other nations though eventually tracked down. Further ships came from known shipping lines based in Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia. These were far easier to trace the ownership of. Each ship was in theory free to go about its business with the Allies having no legal right to stop them on the open seas nor attack them either. Once the work was done to establish ownership and also see what the ones with clear ownership were up to away from the story spun of innocent activities, it became apparent that this had to be done regardless. The free-flowing of their cargoes unmolested couldn’t continue. Warnings were issued in public and then the Independence was sent at the head of a flotilla of warships from the Allies to stop those ships. They would be halted on the high seas and if they refused to be, they would be sunk.

The US Navy had their carrier & other warships and they were supported by further warships from several countries: Australia, Canada, Chile and Spain. Britain didn’t have any to send though did allow for the use of island possessions of theirs through the South Atlantic to help with this. Ascension Island and the Falklands were mightily-useful, especially as to where to take ships after they and their cargoes had been seized. However, the South Atlantic was a big ocean and the ships travelled alone, not in groups or convoys. There were many ships out there, including plenty which weren’t involved in helping the deception to keep the Soviet war machine in North America going. These real innocents had to be checked out and their identities concerned. From Brasilia and Buenos Aires, Brazil and Argentina had complaints. They had their ships stopped and trade disrupted where the Allies were trying to establish control over this part of the ocean. It brought the governments of both under increased scrutiny from abroad when it came to the activities of their own ships, those on innocent voyages. The anti-communist governments of both were selling food supplies to the Soviets. They’d been doing so before the war as part of peacetime agreements and were continuing to do so, shipping it to neutral countries in the Soviet orbit. From London, New York and Santiago, there came demands that this stop. Like Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela – which were also trading with the Soviets through intermediaries despite the severe anti-communism of their ruling regimes –, the Argentineans and the Brazilians continued though.

The balance of power in Latin America had shifted. For the time being, those countries which had for so long done as they were told by the Americans were making their own decisions in whom they traded with. The Soviets controlled Central America and had cut the Western Hemisphere in half; those south of that dividing line – Chile and Paraguay withstanding – had responded accordingly. They didn’t consider their activities to be hostile to the United States but rather of self-interest and national survival. This was being seen differently elsewhere. The strength of that feeling would only grow. The Americans would soon end up doing as the Soviets had done and having the gloves come off when it came to dealing with this situation.


[End of Part V]

[James G]

Interlude – Colorado Bound

September: Tanner

Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Tanner, US Air Force, was home on compassionate leave the day that the war began. He was in his wife’s home town of Devine, which lay down in South Texas between San Antonio and the border with Mexico. Her mother had died and the funeral was on the Tuesday. Along with Nell, Tanner had flown home from the Netherlands at the weekend upon the news coming of the passing of her mother and therefore left his command behind. The 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron (32 TFS), flying F-15s from Soesterberg, was that command of Tanner’s and they were left in the capable hands of his executive officer: it was peacetime and the family need was for him to temporarily return to Texas.

Late on the Monday morning, Tanner was in the backyard of the house in the backwater which was Devine where his wife had grown up. Nell was inside, Tanner was out back with her brother and father. A MiG-23 flew low overhead, going west-east across the clear skies.

A damn MiG-23 with a red star painted on its tail!

“Andy, that’s not one of ours is it?”

“No, Pop, it certainly isn’t.”

Without realising, Tanner was up on his feet off the bench he’d been sitting on and starring at the fighter jet heading for San Antonio as it flew that way. It was low and quickly out of sight below the horizon. He’d known exactly what it was after being long ago trained to recognise – it was meant to have been from inside the cockpit of his Eagle – an aircraft like that.

“Some sort of exercise, Andy? Maybe…” Pop was trying to work this all out.

Nell came out of the house. “Andy!” He turned to look towards her. “You best see this on the news.”


The news wasn’t on by the time Tanner got inside. It took him just a minute or two, talking Nell’s brother Nathan out of going to get his Pop’s rifle and sitting up on the roof to take a pot-shot at the MiG if it came back, but by then what his wife had been watching was off the air. Instead, there was the Emergency Broadcast System notification being displayed.

Nell grabbed him by the arm. “Is this some sort of test?”

Nathan walked in with the rifle that Tanner had told him not to ‘be a fool’ with. Pop sat on his useless behind down his old chair mumbling something about Cubans and the Castros.

Tanner’s mind registered all of this before decided that the best thing to do was to use the phone. He needed to report-in. There was a war going on, between who exactly and how it all started didn’t matter at all. He was on leave yet he was a serving officer.

Who to call though? Soesterberg? US Air Force Europe? They were both overseas and if there was a war here, there was a war in Europe too. He wouldn’t expect any call to go through. Should he call Tactical Air Command? Or maybe Twelfth Air Force HQ up at Bergstrom? Where was the nearest base? That was Kelly AFB outside San Antonio.

“Everything,” he told Nell, putting his best face on it, “will be okay.” He picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect him to Kelly. Someone there had to know what was going on and from there he would get orders.


Tanner took Nathan’s pickup truck to go to Kelly. Serving personnel were to report to their nearest service base he’d been told and Kelly was that. Nell hadn’t wanted him to go or if he did, then she could go with him. Tanner told her no. She should stay with her Pop and brother. He hadn’t wanted to leave her behind but of course he had to. Whatever form this war was taking – and no one knew how that was going apart from Pop who said it had to be the Cubans out of Mexico – it was no place to be dragging his wife off to. At Soesterberg, the plan for wives and families was to see them evacuated out of mainland Europe the moment the balloon went up there. Wives could hardly be dragged to the fight here if they weren’t ever planned to be over there. What was Nell thinking? She knew how things were.

Tanner sped through Devine without taking the time to see what was going on or talk to anyone, before he got to the interstate on the other side. I-35 ran up to San Antonio and beyond, going near to Kelly on the way. It was midday when he reached the interchange and found that there were far more vehicles on the road than usual. There were ones going north, south, east and west: all over the place for no discernible reason. He had to do what he was doing, which was get to the nearest US Air Force base.

Before Tanner could reach Kelly, the line of traffic came to a stop short of the turn off. In his uniform, he left Nathan’s truck to walk up to the Texas Highway Patrol officers standing back from something burning. He asked one of them what was going on. There was an aircraft down to the side of the interstate. It wasn’t American but that was all that they knew. The way south was blocked and there were a few bits of wreckage strewn across the northbound lanes too. Tanner told him that he needed to report to Kelly as soon as possible.

“Make a hole!”

Tanner got through with the pickup. The Highway Patrol made room for him as he was a man in uniform heading off to fight. Like him, they didn’t know much about what was going on but still understood the need.

There was blackened and burnt wreckage, just as he had been told, the twisted remains of an aircraft. Tanner saw what looked very much like a tailfin. He was sure that there was that red star he’d seen earlier. Was it the same MiG which he’d seen flying over Devine?


For three days Tanner was at Kelly. Three long days of waiting and doing nothing. There was a war going on though there was no role in for Tanner at the very beginning. He had orders only to wait, just like a few other officers like him who were away from their units and spread all over South Texas for various reasons who’d now reported to Kelly. So much else was going on and in the kerfuffle of war, he and them were forgotten about.

Kelly wasn’t a peacetime combat facility for the US Air Force but it quickly became that way. Texan Air National Guard fighters arrived with those F-4s showing up to fly from the base. Tanner had flown Phantoms before he had transferred to the F-15. He’d volunteered to take one up and tangle with Cuban MiG’s flying from Mexico. The national guard’s senior officer told him thank you but no. There was no time for refresher training to be given to Tanner and he also had enough aircrew.

Tanner waited. News came to those at Kelly of the ongoing war. Some of that was official, other bits weren’t. Listening to rumours and seeing them spread was something that Tanner was supposed to see stopped. He had his responsibilities as a senior officer. It was from them though that he learnt much of what was going on beyond the bland, limited facts of official news. There was no war in Europe and had had to assume that his command there wasn’t in the fight. There was talk that the Dutch would have interned his men and aircraft; something countered by comments that that wasn’t the case at all. Tanner heard about the nuclear strikes too: Washington, Kansas City and Omaha had all been obliterated he was told when the Soviets attacked. They’d hit some missile silos as well while also using commandos all over the place to hit bomber bases, here in Texas as well as elsewhere.

Then there was the border incursion. Tanner initially heard that they Cubans and Nicaraguans had come over the border before only later there was talk of the Soviets showing up in Texas as well. He didn’t know where or how they had done that. The incursion became an invasion. That was eventually made official. Tanner saw one of those Soviets, a pilot brought down over Texas when his fighter was hit and who was captured on the ground. The way he heard it, a Texas Ranger brought him to Kelly before a local posse – there were apparently civilian militias springing up everywhere – could hang him from the nearest tree. He was a POW though Tanner and seemingly everyone else in uniform wanted to give the ‘commie bastard’ a smack or two. An hour after arriving at Kelly, that pilot was off elsewhere. Tanner was jealous of the man despite him being an enemy. The Soviet had got to fly in this war while Tanner was still on the ground and useless to his country and his uniform.


It hadn’t been easy to do, but Tanner had managed to call Nell. She told him of the militia in Devine, one which Nathan had joined. He was twenty-one yet still a dumb kid. Tanner couldn’t believe that his Pop had let that happen. Pop had joined too, Nell said. There were a couple of dozen of them who’d set themselves up to defend their town. Tanner had been told that the Cubans had brought tanks over from Mexico. What could a bunch of guys with rifles do to stop tanks from overrunning their town? It was crazy! Anyone going up against an organised army, fighting as a militia or a guerrilla, had to have a death wish. Tanner would only want to fight in the skies, in the cockpit of his fighter.

Nell told him that they’d had the funeral. It wasn’t the big deal which it was supposed to be and the almost non-existent turnout had been something she was mad about. There was a war going on but her mother’s burial should have seen more people show up. Tanner had tried his best to comfort her on that yet he didn’t really have the words. He didn’t know what to say.

“I love you.” Nell’s voice was croaky. She’d been crying. “When can you come home?”

Devine wasn’t home for Tanner. His place was in uniform too.

“I don’t know when. Love you too.” He wanted to say more but didn’t.

If he’d have known it would be the last time that he’d talk to her, he would have said far more.


The Wolfhounds, the nickname for the 32 TFS, were coming home to the United States. Like the majority of Europe, the Netherlands weren’t taking part in the war. They’d let Tanner’s command go though and not interned them despite rumours that he’d heard about on that note. Tanner was first told that they would be sent to Texas and he’d re-join his squadron once they arrived. It didn’t look like when the came to Texas they would be based at Kelly. By the time he was leaving, the base had already been hit twice by air strikes and the Cubans were over the border heading for San Antonio.

The plan changed. Who made the decision and on what grounds, Tanner didn’t know the details. All he could do was to follow the orders that came. Those were to report to Hill AFB up in Utah. Why were the Wolfhounds being sent to Hill? They’d apparently be flying air missions over the Rockies, including Colorado’s skies.

Tanner was Colorado bound.



September: Bella

The Cuban and Nicaraguan pathfinders going into Colorado dropped on target. They set up their radio beacons and deployed the coloured smoke flares where they were meant to be for the first wave of incoming paratroopers to land generally where they were supposed to. The majority of the second wave didn’t arrive where they were meant to be. Wind and the sudden unexpected appearance of American fighters caused mis-drops to happen everywhere.

Colonel Ernesto Felipe Bella Ruiz was among the second wave.


With elements of his command group, Bella was meant to have been dropped over Pueblo Airport if the small facility wasn’t fully in Cuban hands; if it had been, the Antonov-32 transport was meant to land there. The airport hadn’t been captured and nor did the drop take place above it. Bella and those with him who came out of the aircraft landed far away to the west from the airport and Pueblo itself. It was the early afternoon and the men whom Bella as commander of the 2nd Airborne Brigade led had already been on the ground for several hours beforehand. They had taken control of a wide area though faced extraordinary resistance from civilians which had led to casualties and the inability to secure countless objectives, including that airport.

Bella didn’t know where he was when he landed. Fremont County wasn’t even on the maps which had had been supplied with. He and members of his command staff were shot at by Nicaraguans – also mis-dropped far away from where they were meant to be – before both sides recognised that they were firing upon ‘friends’. Once it became clear to him that they were lost, Bella made the decision to correct that.

“Pepe,” he called upon one of his lieutenants, one of the smarter ones, “go to that store over there.” Bella pointed to a convenience store with shot out windows in the middle of the town they were in. “Find me a map. Get me one… or as many as you can. They will have them in there.”

“Si, el coronel.”

The lieutenant from his intelligence staff returned within a few minutes. He’d taken a sergeant and two more paratroopers with him and Bella heard a shot from inside. The maps which came out of there were more important than what had happened.

“Let’s have a look.” The procurer of the maps (he’d grabbed four: three road maps of different types and one which looked like something for hikers) spread them out on the floor inside the barber shop they were in. “Get me Juan and Tito too!”

Bella brought his officers together and they all started to examine the maps which they had. Gunfire from the police and foolish civilians inside the town had ceased and Bella was able to concentrate better. This town had been shot-up though was still standing. It sat on a crossroads and would be useful for the time being.

The town’s name was apparently Calumet.


Calumet was one of several small towns where Bella was able to take charge of through the afternoon and the evening. There were Nicaraguans and his own Cubans dotted across the landscape and radio links were established with them. More weapons & equipment containers were found though unfortunately too a lot of bodies of his men: the Nicaraguans were now his too, no matter how little time he had for Nicaraguans usually. He gave firm orders for all of his men to start behaving like soldiers and not a mob. Any man caught looting, raping or engaging in unsoldierly behaviour would be shot. Bella made sure that they all understood that when he personally executed a man – one of the Nicaraguans – for breaking the orders issued before they jumped into Colorado and the ones which he had reaffirmed on the ground.

Communications between the scattered groups were what Bella fast aimed to strengthen. Radio links weren’t reliable and there were too many or too few weapons and men in different places. He had hundreds of men though many of them were either useless or overburdened due to their spread. Bella was trying to establish a proper force first. Afterwards, he planned to make contact with those to the east of him (the rest of his brigade who he hoped had one of his majors commanding it at least) and move that way.

American helicopters showed up before then.


Pepe – Primer Teniente José Victor Muñoz Garcia being Pepe’s full name – yanked Bella down. “In cover, el Señor.”

They’d just walked out of that barber shop when Pepe pulled Bella behind a parked car on Main Street.

“A Huey with guns!” Juan, another first lieutenant like Pepe and assigned to Bella’s Operations staff, pulled out his pistol and shot off a few rounds at the helicopter after calling out what it was.

Bella kept his head down. It could have been a Cobra and if it was, the pistol shots weren’t going to do anything but attract its unwelcome attention. More of his men were firing on the helicopter. Over the noise of its rotors and engines, Bella could hear the rattle of AK rifle fire. He waited for a missile launch: his men had secured dropped weapons containers with shoulder-mounted launchers. Instead though he only heard bigger guns firing.

The Huey had a mini-gun.

Bella stayed down and still. He shut his eyes, picturing his wife & two little boys back in Cuba. They were safe there. He was here in America getting shot at.


There were more helicopters making attacks through the night. They came from Fort Carson, that big US Army base not too far away. The mission here in Colorado was for Bella’s brigade and the accompanying Nicaraguan regiment to block passage south for them. An additional task was to cut east-west communications through the Rockies for the Americans; there were apparently Soviet paratroopers elsewhere to the south doing the same. The pre-jump mission briefing had gone over the presence of those helicopters alongside those troops at Fort Carson though no one had said anything to Bella about them going into action ahead of their troops, within hours of the invasion beginning. He’d never faced armed helicopter attacks before. As a ‘volunteer on internationalist duty’, he’d fought in recent years through Nicaragua, then Honduras and Mexico too. In neither had the other side had anything like what showed up in Calumet and across the surrounding area. The Hueys were followed by Cobra gunships. They killed and wounded many of his men with only one of the Hueys brought down by missile fire.

One, just the one!

That pre-war briefing back at the staging site in Mexico – one hidden in the desert – had covered other matters concerning what kind of opposition was supposed to be faced to Bella and his men. There had been his military commissar, a political officer with the DGI, alongside him when they two of them were given a warning that the local population in Colorado would be armed. Pistols and rifles were in countless civilian hands because this was the American West. The people in United States were soft, weak and wouldn’t fight but their arms were to be rounded up nonetheless. The brigade commissar nor any of his underlings assigned one each to the battalions of Bella’s brigade were in Calumet nor any of the surrounding communities where he had men he was in touch with. The Nicaraguans had one of theirs (a brutal thug, not a soldier) but he knew nothing about what Bella had been told when it came to civilian guns.

Bella had one of his lieutenants, Tito, go to the local sporting goods store. There was a government-mandated official list of local sales of weapons, Form 4473, which he wanted. The civilians here had already shown that they weren’t soft, weak and incapable of fighting.

Tito returned with the list.

With that in-hand, Bella would get to work as soon as possible on making sure that anyone who wanted to go guerrilla would face a problem with that, a problem in the form of his men showing up at their homes to seize their weapons first… if those homes could be found that was.


Bella was in Colorado and survived his first day.

He didn’t intent to personally spend where he started that first day for very long. He had a whole brigade to command, a brigade spread out and needing leadership ahead of a big fight sure soon to come their way.

The choice wouldn’t be his though. Bella wouldn’t get to decide the war he was going to fight, where and how that took place and against who exactly.



September: Putin

Captain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a KGB officer with their First Chief Directorate (responsible for gathering foreign intelligence), had been in Mexico City two days before the war began. He’d missed the fireworks there because he’d been transferred upon to Juarez ahead of the invasion going north. On September 18th, Putin was sent over the border into the western reaches of Texas and the city of Juarez, behind the invaders. He would witness a different kind of fireworks there.

Coming in with several other KGB officers aboard a low-flying helicopter, which was taken under fire on the way, Putin arrived in the evening of the war’s second day at the airport. El Paso International Airport had been fought over during a counterattack by the US Army’s Cav’ and Soviet (heli-borne) paratroopers there had taken fierce losses ahead of being rescued by Soviet Army tanks. There was the stench of bodies upon coming out of the helicopter. Putin had smelt the same before when down in Mexico and also during his time spent in previous years through Central America and its many wars. Flies and scavenging animals would be at the bodies soon though he was at a loss to know what type the latter would be here.

Wild dogs? Did they have coyotes here?

“Vova,” one of his comrades nudged him forward from behind, “let’s not stand around out in the open.”

For a moment, Putin had been still with his eyes, ears and nose open. He’d been taking it all in. He’d never personally seen combat and knew that he never would want to. This was bad enough. Imagine having to have fought here…

There was a hangar where Putin and the others went into. It was the only structure which he could see that wasn’t either burnt-out or blasted to smithereens. The briefing was to take place inside.


Putin came out of the hangar afterwards. He was aware that he wore a scowl on his face. How could he not have? He had just been told that things had changed with the deployments and mission orders for him and his fellow officers. As to them, he cared nowt. It was what he was told that he would be doing that he was furious at. He was not staying here and making use of his talents. They were sending him elsewhere to do something else.

Where was Albuquerque?

Where it was was far away from where the real action would be, the real work to be done. El Paso was to be the centre of KGB activities in the American South-West but he was being sent away. He wouldn’t be taking part in all that was going on here, especially that Peace Committee that was quickly being set up.

No, they wanted him in Albuquerque.

Another captain, Morozov, slapped him on the back. Too hard, not in a comradely manner and certainly not a friendly one either. “Cheer up, Vovan.”

Putin didn’t much mind being called by his comrades Vova; he minded Vovan (another diminutive of his name), especially when used by Morozov. They were not friends nor confidents.

Morozov offered him a smoke. Putin shook his head.

“What’s burning? Do you see it?”

Putin saw the smoke. “The Mexicans.” He hoped the simple answer would shut the fool up.

They’d been told that the Mexican Revolutionary Army, or whatever they were calling it this week, had crossed over from Juarez and were ‘misbehaving’.

“War is good for promotions, Vovan. You and me, we could be generals by the end of this!” The other KGB man wasn’t shutting up.

Morozov stood beside Putin, looking towards the centre of El Paso, between them and the Mexican border. Putin’s comrade wouldn’t be a general by the end of this war but he’d be a major, maybe a lieutenant-colonel even. Putin feared that he himself would still be a captain at the end of it. He was being sent to the middle of nowhere: Albuquerque. Morozov was staying here in El Paso, doing what Putin should have been doing.


It wasn’t fair.

Putin had put the work in and done all that he had been told to through the years which had had spent in Latin America since transferring from Leningrad… his home town, whose fate he yet knew nothing of. He’d learnt Spanish and gone to Cuba before moving throughout the region going to Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua and ultimately Mexico. He’d helped identify potential recruits for others to sway and helped detect counterrevolutionaries & false defectors. There wasn’t a blemish on his record. He’d done well.

Morozov had arrived in Mexico a month ago among a tripling of KGB personnel in-country, as far as Putin knew when it came to numbers. They came with secrets, secrets which weren’t revealed to him until last week. Those secrets were as to what was about to happen with the coming war. No one asked Putin’s opinion on that and he gave none, not even in passing to his comrades. This was the KGB: you keep your opinions to yourself.

The others like Morozov had no real experience of Mexico nor elsewhere south of the Rio Grande. They were ‘America specialists’, men who’d spent time in the United States beforehand or studied the country from abroad. They hadn’t been in this since the beginning, they hadn’t given everything like Putin had into getting this far… even if Putin only understood that ‘far’ so late on.

Now Morozov and the others were going to steal all the glory, get the promotions and the recognition, while he was banished to Albuquerque.

It wasn’t fair.


“Look at that fire get going!” Morozov yelped like an excited child. “It’ll burn and burn!”

How did this man ever become one of those entrusted as the Sword and the Shield?

“Remember what I said, Vovan,” Morozov wasn’t going to shut up, “when some men fall in war, others must step up and…”

Morozov did shut up. All of a sudden he said no more.

Putin heard the distinctive crack of a rifle. He’d never been in a battle before – no, thank you; that is for others – but he had been shot at before.

He dropped down to the ground, drawing his pistol.

Morozov had dropped before him, moving faster than Putin had though his comrade could.

Putin scrambled for cover, calling back to Morozov: “Ivan, follow me.” He may not have liked the man, but he had a pistol and wore the same uniform. Whatever they were facing, whether it be a random shot from distance or an incoming guerrilla attack, two men were always better than one.

Morozov didn’t follow. Putin looked around, ready to scream insults at the foolish man. He stopped himself. Half of Morozov’s head was gone; the other half was attached to a twitching corpse.

Putin felt a wetness of his face. He touched it with the back of his hand when he reached the side of the hangar building. There were other gunshots, going outwards now, but he paid no attention to them. It was to what was on his hand where he focused.

It wasn’t just a red wetness that had come off his own face. There were bits of white and grey there too. He was looking at the insides of Morozov’s head.


Putin left for Albuquerque the next morning. There were more Soviet paratroopers there and he flew up in another helicopter, this one which no one took a shot at. The Nicaraguans were meant to making a ground advance through New Mexico soon enough though Putin flew ahead of them. He had a mission to undertake there inside the airborne pocket held around that city but also outside at a place called Los Alamos too.

There was no expectation that in Putin he would go further north, up to Colorado.



September: de la Billière

Brigadier Peter de la Billière flew to Canada from the UK on Concorde. They didn’t lay the Concorde on for the British Army officer known as DLB nor the other military personnel & spooks aboard the supersonic transport. The foreign secretary and his diplomatic party were going to Ottawa and there were available seats on the aircraft. DLB crossed the North Atlantic from Heathrow to Ottawa International Airport (also a Canadian military site: CFS Uplands) in a couple of hours.

He went off to war, travelling in style as he did so.


Canada had asked for help from its friends and allies abroad. Both Britain and the United States were called upon to assist the Canadians in combatting the repeated waves of terrorist and commando attacks taking place inside their country. Bombings, arson attacks and shootings against civilian and military targets took place when Canada went to war. Canada’s police and its armed forces were caught unawares and scrambled to respond. The Prime Minister – who’d taken office the day the war began – had asked for help from abroad rather than worry about how that might look internally. The Americans were unable to do anything with immediate effect though a positive response came from London. There were already British military personnel heading to Alberta to link up with the training site there and then move onto towards Alaska & the Yukon; some more (far fewer in number) were sent to aid the Canadians combat the extremely deadly internal terror strikes.

DLB lead that team. He was the former Director of the SAS, Britain’s most senior special forces officer. When in that role he had overseen combat operations in Belize and across into Guatemala during the Belize War undertaken by the SAS (and the SBS too) during that conflict, though doing so from back in the UK rather than in the Caribbean. Other duties during his tenure had seen the SAS train & prepare for domestic terror incidents – the famed Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing – as well as overseas training for everything up to full-scale war. After his two-year duty, DLB had moved onwards to command an infantry brigade deployed to Northern Ireland. When the war started, DLB had first been told he was off to Norway though then the Canadians made their urgent request. The British Government decided to make that commitment to Canada and to do so with haste. DLB would have wanted more time to prepare though none was given. A political decision had been taken on that matter; the use of Concorde was a clear example of that.

A Troop of SAS men were the tip of the firepower being sent. That was a small number of men though DLB – humbly – knew that he and the others assigned as liaison officers for the Canadians were going to be more important. Canada didn’t have any military special forces of their own nor any serious experience in the field. They had men with guns, plenty of those and therefore enough to fight their opponents on their home soil. It was just a matter of showing them how to do that. DLB wasn’t able to get his perfect pick of men to take with him due to the speed of the set up for the deployment. He brought with him to Canada those who knew wouldn’t let him down though.


The airport had been attacked not long before the Concorde arrived. Someone had lobbed a barrage of mortars at the facility, hitting parked Air Canada airliners and setting a couple on fire. Canadian reservists with their Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa – a mobilised unit of the Primary Reserve – had been guarding the airport along with the city’s overwhelmed police. Before reporting to the Canadian Ministry of Defence, DLB spoke with the senior officer on-scene, the major in command of the company tasked to the airport.

“Three good men, Sir.” The major told DLB his losses. “A pair of sentries had their throats slit, from behind it looks like, while my C.S.M ran into a trip-mine which he should have seen.”

“Your reaction force?”

“Sergeant Philips was leading that and when he got it, that brought everyone else to a halt looking for more of them.” The major was rather despondent; DLB could see that this war had taken its toll and done so fast.

He’d also let down his men by not doing things as they should have been.

“Show me where, Major.”

DLB took a trio of his own men with him with two of them being former Para sergeants and the third a SAS junior officer. They’d all run ambushes before and preformed counter-ambushes. Their Canadian host showed them where the reaction force had been caught, not far from where they had been on-alert and ready to respond to an attack.

Someone had been watching them and laid a perfect ambush. One of DLB’s sergeants gave the opinion that it looked like the whole attack might have been set up to not mortar those airliners and disrupt air operations but instead kill and maim the soldiers based here. They only got one, though the company sergeant major being killed in front of his men would have been a good price. Sergeant Philips had been foolish to rush out like he did at the head of his men and had lead them all into that ambush. This extended view wasn’t loudly voiced openly in front of the Canadians but was said, just tactfully because it needed to be said. These men were reservists, never expecting this and not trained to deal with what they were facing, yet there still should have been some more thought put into their set-up here. DLB’s lieutenant told him that this was exactly the same thing done by the SAS in Belize two years beforehand in how it had been arranged and, given the opportunity, the SAS would be doing it in this war wherever they found their enemies.

“Major,” DLB took the senior man aside, “here’s what you did wrong…”

It was laid out for. Away from the other Canadian soldiers present and so as to not to diminish the man in front of his men, DLB explained the mistakes made. Basing the reaction force where it was and having its standing orders to rush out like they did, with their senior man at the head of that, had cost them lives. It had too allowed those who had attacked to get away unmolested. Things had to change or it would happen again.


The Pearkes Building, where the Canadian Defence Ministry was located, was somewhere that DLB had been told it was previously said would have been a location especially exposed to an attack in wartime. This had been recognised by many; denied by others. The former had been shown to be correct. A truck-bomb had devastated the site and killed many. The Canadian government was set up at CFS Carp, an underground bunker far outside Ottawa, though ministry operations were still going on at the Pearkes Building. The whole site hadn’t been destroyed and until things could be moved elsewhere, work was going on there amid the smashed-up bits.

DLB met with high-ranking members of Canada’s military staff inside a building with boarded-up windows and the distinct smell of recent fire. They’d been hit hard, the Canadians had, but this meeting was about doing much to correct that.

They’d asked for someone like DLB to tell them straight and that he did. Tact had been used at the airport, inside the Defence Ministry that was gone out of the window along with all of that glass. He was respectful because there were generals in the room and, with Canada as part of the Allies, they outranked him within his chain-of-command. He was also representing his country while wearing his uniform. They’d asked for the truth though. They wanted the attacks to stop and he would tell them how.


“You’re doing it all wrong.” He wasn’t just basing this on what he had seen at the airport. He’d been briefed back home in Britain, read up some more on the way here and had another briefing ahead of this meeting from junior Canadian officers.

“You’re facing an enemy that knows what you will do and is taking advantage. He is in fact purposely striking in a manner to keep you doing what you are too. You have to change yet also be prepared for your enemy to change further as well.

This will be no easy task and you’ll struggle with it.”

Winning friends and influencing people, DLB was either going to do or not do with this.

“They’ve studied what you have in terms of men and training. They’ve spent time planning this, stockpiling men and equipment. They’ve looked for weak-spots and found plenty of them. They’ve certainly watched your exercises and read copies of your plans. They want to kill your men and have you chase them all over the place, losing more men as you do so. That is the intention: to kill.

A political objective with the attacks in your cities, one which can be countered, isn’t what they are after. That isn’t a victory they are seeking with this. It is just about exposing openings and weakening morale among your soldiers. They want you to bring in more men and therefore leave yourselves unable to send them elsewhere, where they don’t want to you send them. Here in Ottawa, as well as in Toronto and Montreal, the aim is to have you rush many soldiers including, hopefully – from their point of view –, regular soldiers to aid the reservists who are in the way of those bullets and bombs.

So… how do you fight back if it isn’t by numbers? If victory can’t be bought by drowning the enemy with numbers and firepower, then how can it be won?

The answer is to fight the war you have a different way.”


They listened when DLB told them that different way. That being to take the war to those on the offensive against Canada inside its cities but outside them too where DLB saw that distraction being caused for. It was in rural areas where transport links ran, and at military sites, that the real war was being fought. He understood that his hosts would buck against that. They were seeing their cities being struck by terrorist actions with their reservists – Canada had a very small army for a nation of its size but large reserves – shot up trying to combat that alongside their police units. To stop that from happening by guarding and immediate ill-thought reaction, as they had been trying to do, would be the overwhelming urge.

Stopping it wouldn’t be won on the defensive though.

Those waging this war against them would be banking on such a continued approach. Any special forces commander on the offensive, as DLB had been himself in the past, would want that. The only way to win was to do on the offensive yourself. To take those loses in exposed areas when the politicians were screaming for them to be stopped and instead fight a waiting game at first before swopping in at the end and winning, where numbers and home ground was made use of like it should be.

They’d heard what he had said. They had said they had wanted someone from the SAS, a former Director SAS if possible please, and DLB had been sent to them. He’d told them what needed to be done and was to stay here in Canada to make sure it would work. Yes, there should have been more lead-time to prepare, and get them ready for the shock, but what was done was done. Would these men listen though? More than that, could they get those below them, the men on the ground, and then the politicians above them, to agree to the change too?

DLB didn’t know if any of this was possible.

All he knew was that he would be in Canada for a while. As part of that, somewhere that he certainly didn’t expect to end up – it was in a different country! – was Colorado either. Why would he?



September: Tanner

Tanner’s squadron, 32 TFS, had an authorised strength of twenty-four of the A single-seat & B twin-seat models of the F-15 Eagle. That was the paper number. Before leaving the Netherlands to come home for compassionate leave right before the war started, there were twenty-three F-15s at Soesterberg with two of those not in flying condition which Tanner had left behind. All of these jets, even the ones which were incapable of flight condition at the current time, had been recalled home. Tanner was ordered to travel up to Hill AFB in Utah and wait for them to arrive there. The flight-capable ones would be ferried across the North Atlantic with the presumption that he had that the remaining two would have to be sent by boat, probably at a much later date too. The F-15s were to be fitted with external fuel tanks and also have tanker support as they crossed the ocean. He was told that the 32 TFS – under the command of his executive officer (XO) – was on its way to Utah via the Britain-Bermuda-Virginia-Arkansas routing. It was going to take them some time to get to him.

The 32 TFS wasn’t just its aircraft, nor the pilots who flew them either. Tanner had hundreds of personnel under his command who preformed a wide variety of roles within the squadron. There were aircraft ground crews, staff & operations personnel and men in a variety of administrative roles. The 32 TFS was larger in this respect that the typical US Air Force fighter squadron who maintained far less of a supporting set-up. This was due to Tanner’s command being the only American flying unit based in the Netherlands with no commanding group or wing organisation above. There was talk, there always was, of that being changed but it never happened. It wasn’t happening now either as the 32 TFS was out of Western Europe. Anyway, all of those assigned to the squadron were returning home like the aircraft were. It was a logistical task of no small magnitude to move the aircraft though all of Tanner’s subordinates could fit in a pair of Boeing-747s on the trans-Atlantic air bridge. Moving from Soesterberg to Hill shouldn’t have been taking as long as it was, in his considered opinion, yet it was.

The war was five days old. Tanner was in Utah with his squadron, not even a small part of it, not here yet. The first of the F-15s were due to arrive tomorrow and until that occurred, Tanner was grounded. He was stuck on the ground while others flew aircraft from Hill, out and up over the Rockies. It was a long and frustrating wait for him.


F-16s with the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing (which had three operational squadrons of those multi-role jets) were based at Hill. They had a NATO reinforcement tasking and were a good unit, one in a better pre-war state than many others. The 388th Wing was departing from Hill ahead of the arrival of the 32 TFS. Texas was where they were going, off to the fight. Tanner wished them well though wished himself that he hadn’t left there, his home state, to wait for his fighters to arrive up here in Utah. The mission which the 32 TFS had been assigned, to begin as soon as possible, was one which he was ambivalent about. It had been explained to him how important what his fighters were to do, and he understood that, but he rather would have been where the F-16s were going to fight the air war over the South-West.

The 32 TFS was tasked in peacetime for the European air war, a frontline mission. Recalled back home in wartime, they were tasked in the rear.

From Hill, Tanner’s F-15s were to patrol the skies across the Rockies protecting the cross-country air corridors. Tanner had been briefed about the repeated penetrations deep into the interior by hostile and unknown aircraft since the very first minutes of the war and which continued as the US Air Force struggled to react to the sudden war. There had been faked charter flights which had dropped in paratroopers and commandos at the beginning. Now there were Soviet reconnaissance flights going on. The concern was that soon bombers would show up (flying from Mexican airbases or captured American border sites) as well as interceptors attacking transports going over the Rockies.

The F-15s were there to stop all of that though this wasn’t supposed to be a frontline role for Tanner’s squadron.


Hill was starting to look like a frontline airbase though, one prepared for war. Out went those F-16s and Tanner’s F-15 were soon on their way though other aircraft were already flying from here. There was a squadron of the Air Force Reserve based at Hill and they were staying in-place: the aircraft they flew were the last F-105 Thunderchiefs in service (cost delays had kept them flying when they should have been replaced with F-16s). Those old aircraft, Vietnam veterans, were already flying the air security mission which the 32 TFS was to undertake. It was that reserve squadron’s parent wing command who were continuing to set up defences at Hill. The airbase outside Salt Lake City was covered with sandbags, machine gun pits and point defence anti-air assets.

Tanner had never seen an airbase inside the United States as well protected as Hill was.

Defences against attack, from the air and the ground, had been done at Soesterberg and at further US Air Force sites in West Germany when Tanner had served in junior roles through that country as part of exercises many times. In Europe, the US Air Force was expecting to have its bases fight in the firing line the minute that the balloon went up. It was fast being done at home now that America was on the frontlines. Hill hadn’t been hit, but if it was, those here believed they were ready for it. Tanner was carrying his sidearm with him at all times and the base was full of armed personnel carrying heavier weapons openly. There were external and internal security checks throughout Hill and they were no joke. Tanner had seen one idiot make a fuss, an arrogant first lieutenant from the reserves (not Hill’s home-based unit) who didn’t like being challenged for the umpteenth time that day. He was lucky he hadn’t been shot.

This was war. This was a war zone, despite being in the rear, and the need for the security was real.


Tanner’s XO was in Britain at the minute where the 32 TFS was transiting through before making that long ferry flight across to Bermuda. This was wartime and making a long-distance call like Tanner did through official communications channels (busy with urgent wartime traffic) wasn’t something to be done for no official reason. He had that reason though. Tanner had the permission too.

At RAF Alconbury, a key US Air Force base in east-central England, Major Owens was there with many of the F-15s. Tanner was authorised to check up on the progress of his command as they made their way to him.

Tanner was informed of how many aircraft had reached Alconbury and the expected arrival times of them in Bermuda. There were some important personnel matters to address as well, including someone who’d hitched a ride to Britain in the back seat of one of the F-15Bs.

“You have got to be kidding me, Budd!”

“Unfortunately not, Sir.” Budd Owens was not having him on. “We have Major de Groot with us here at Alconbury.”

de Groot was one of the senior Dutch military liaison officers assigned to the 32 TFS when it was as Soesterberg. He’d flown across to Britain and had requested, once there, that Owens let him fly onwards with Tanner’s squadron to Hill so he could do whatever he could to fight the Soviets from American soil while his country was neutral.

“He doesn’t leave there.”

“Yes, Sir.” Owens sounded firm on receipt of that instruction. “I’ve already handed him over to the base commander here and he’s dealing with de Groot at the minute.”

The officer with the Royal Netherlands Air Force was one issue; Tanner’s subordinates were another. “Captains Martinez and Wilkins and whomever else… all those who were involved in this, Budd, will not get away with allowing this to happen.”

“I’m on that at once. Martinez is apologetic but Wilkins claims that he didn’t know.”

“He’s a liar and I’ll have his bars for this.”

Martinez was the pilot who’d flown de Groot in the back of his F-15 while Wilkins was the squadron operations officer who remained back at Soesterberg for the time being. To say that he didn’t know was a filthy lie. It was conduct unbecoming and Tanner wasn’t going to stand for it.

“And Martinez?”

“He stays on flight status until he gets here. We need him, Budd, but afterwards… we’ll see. I don’t like leaving him flying but I need him at the minute. As to Wilkins,” Tanner could no longer rely on the man, “he’s relieved of his duties for the time being. Johnson is still at Soesterberg, yes?”

“He is. Do you want him to take over?”

“Yes, do that, Budd.” Wilkins’ deputy would take over for the time being with sending off the F-15s from Soesterberg.

“I’ll get to it straight away.” Owens paused for a second and Tanner listened to him give a deep breath over the line before he finished up. “I’m sorry, Sir, I let you down.”

“Wilkins is the one who let us, and his uniform, down.”


Tanner had wanted to go to Soesterberg, or even Britain rather than straight to Hill. He hadn’t been allowed to. If he had been there, this wouldn’t have happened. There had been other problems which had come up as the 32 TFS made its transfer yet this was the worst one.

That Dutch officer, whom Tanner knew and liked, had decided that he wished to go off with Tanner’s squadron to fight despite his country’s neutrality and his service with his nation’s armed forces. He wasn’t going to. There were official US Air Force rules and regulations that Martinez, Wilkins and others had broken in allowing – openly or looking the other way – de Groot to get in the back of that F-15. He wasn’t the first military officer from a NATO country to try to do what he had and wouldn’t be the last either. Those restrictions to such a thing had been announced as part of an official measure and Tanner was a serving officer of his country. He had his own views on that, like he had his own on the decision by the Dutch and others to stay out of this war in the face of treaty obligations, but they were his. The rules were the rules, and those had been broken by those under his command.

Tanner would have stopped it if there. He hadn’t been able to but he’d make sure that those involved would pay for this as it was ultimately his responsibility as their commander.

Infuriated at what had been done, Tanner did also think about de Groot too. He’d be in for it himself. The whole situation with the Western Europeans was complicated yet he suspected that that they would see that act quite simply: it was desertion, wasn’t it?



September: Bella

Commissar Gómez wasn’t dead.

It had been Colonel Bella’s wish that the DGI officer would have been killed at any time during the entry of Cuban airborne forces into Colorado or soon after landing. However, Gómez was alive, very much alive, and going about his business.

His business was to oversee the occupation of an area of territory under the control of Bella’s soldiers. Much of that wasn’t where the initial plans had for that to be yet, regardless, Gómez got to that task. He was king here now and had instigated a reign of terror over the local population. Bella’s soldiers had shot down those who initially resisted their arrival and while things hadn’t been done in the best way in every instance, following every recognised law of war, Bella had refused to allow those of his men who he found out had done what they shouldn’t have from doing any more of that. Gómez had a different approach. He would terrorise and thus subdue the locals, in an organised fashion too. He didn’t even try to win them over first. Everyone who lived inside the occupied area west of Pueblo was someone whose fate was now in his hands. With very few of his own men with him, Gómez was using Bella’s soldiers to do that.

It was Bella’s men who had rounded up a group of hostages to be shot come the next ‘terrorist attack’.

It was Bella’s men who had already shot many local politicians, judges & policemen and community leaders.

It was Bella’s men who had locked the gates at those prisons near Florence leaving the hundreds of prisoners inside (some dangerous men, others not so much: all of whom no one wanted to risk see running free) to die inside.

It was Bella’s men who were doing what Gómez wanted.

Bella had no choice but to follow those orders. He was helpless in the face of such demands upon him and the riflemen detached to undertake these duties. Gómez hadn’t raised his weapon himself to take a life but made sure that Bella and his men had done so.

This was all happening while Bella and the 2nd Airborne Brigade were getting ready for a forthcoming battle.


The Americans moved southwards from Fort Carson. Directly south of there, along the interstate running towards New Mexico, was Pueblo with Bella’s Cubans generally to the west of there and most of the Nicaraguans with their parachute regiment on the other (eastern) side. The two units had suffered casualties before the battle and had seen many men from each mixed in with the others after their air-drops. Equipment had been mixed up too. Bella and his Nicaraguan counterpart had exchanged those men where possible ahead of the American attack but not weapons. Where the parachute-retarded containers with machine guns, rockets and missile launchers had ended up had been up to the wind and chance. It was all Soviet-origin equipment and could be used by both Cuban and Nicaraguan soldiers. After an initial disagreement with the Nicaraguan colonel, Bella had snapped and decided that what his men had they could keep and what the Nicaraguans had they could also keep. The bartering had been annoying and time-consuming. What Bella had wanted were anti-tank weapons and he got more of them then he should have had. He was more than happy to have plenty of those: the Americans came south with plenty of tanks.

The occupation area where Gómez remained with a couple of hundred of Bella’s men (stretched over quite the wide area) included that small town where Bella had first landed – Calumet – was behind where Bella had the majority of his brigade. His paratroopers were lined up ready of a fight, a real fight against an organised enemy.

More of those US Army helicopters hit the Cubans and Nicaraguans first before in came American aircraft. There were low-level and high-altitude attacks made by them, night and day. Pueblo’s Airport, in the Nicaraguan’s hands, was bombed and rendered unusable. Bella had been waiting for the arrival of a flight of up to six Cuban Air Force Sukhoi-22 fighter-bombers to deploy there – staging from Albuquerque – to help give some air support to him. They weren’t coming. Soviet fighter coverage from down there in New Mexico, aircraft which would have been operating at maximum range, were unavailable. The skies belonged to the Americans.

And then came their tanks.


Bella survived the Battle of Pueblo. He lost hundreds of men in the fight and saw his 2nd Airborne Brigade rendered military ineffective. Two battalions of his paratroopers were wiped out along with all of his small light armoured component (air-dropped BMDs and BTR-Ds) and the majority of his artillery (howitzers parachuted-in too). The remainder of his men withdrew under his orders, away from Pueblo as fast as their feet could carry them in quite the disorganised state. Bella’s mobile HQ column – a fancy name for a couple of trucks with radio antenna – was attacked during the withdrawal and he lost many of his staff too, further complicating the retreat as coordinating it became impossible soon enough. Among those killed was Pepe, the lieutenant of his who’d saved his life back in Calumet.

Pepe died right in front of Bella, his life extinguished by fire. Pepe had screamed while being burnt alive… and screamed and screamed.

It was the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division who won that victory.

Two hours was all that it took them to do so. The Americans hit Bella’s brigade and the Nicaraguans too an all-arms assault where they charged forward under their air cover and with heavy artillery strikes alongside those. They were careful to try to avoid hitting civilians caught up in the fighting, very careful in fact, but otherwise they blasted their opponents with everything they had before in came the main attack. A brigade of their own, mounted in M-60 tanks and M-113s personnel carriers, came forward. Hand-held anti-tank weapons did well, especially destroying many of the American infantry vehicles, but the Americans were fast and made up for those losses by doing their worst afterwards. Bella’s men were unprotected in the face of the assault they were hit with when the Americans caught them in the open.

It was only American civilians which saved Bella’s soldiers from all being killed. The Americans kept holding their fire to let them get out of the way first. The Cuban paratroopers quickly learnt how to take advantage, faster than Bella did. If there hadn’t been so many of those civilians streaming out of Pueblo, then almost all of the Cubans would have been wiped out. The ironic thing with that was that the Americans had attacked either side of Pueblo, avoiding the very centre itself, when on the attack. Still, their civilians fled out of there when warfare came to the edge of their small city and were everywhere with Cubans mixed in with them. Deliberate human shields they hadn’t been yet their presence had made them that.


Bella’s surviving men fell back away from the fight that they had lost. Control evoporated and so too was discipline in places as well. It was the most unpleasant of retreats back towards the rural areas out in Fremont County. Some of those who started the retreat were left behind during it.

Throughout, Bella waited for the Americans to finish off his brigade. He didn’t believe that they would let his survivors escape. Those sub-units of his which he was able to contact, those still following orders, were told to stop in places and stand ready to fight as a rear-guard against an American pursuit. They would have been doomed if they had yet the orders had been acknowledged when contact was reached with those selected platoons and detachments.

No pursuit came. The Americans went south.

It wasn’t as if it could be said that the 2nd Airborne Brigade lived to fight another day though. They had lost the Battle of Pueblo, been firmly defeated there in a stand-up fight and wouldn’t be able to make another attempt at that. Bella had no idea of the fate of the Nicaraguan regiment and had to assume that they were in a similar state. He couldn’t believe that Americans didn’t do as he feared they would. If he had been in the position of their commander, he would have done so. They were in a rush though and had won.

Bella’s Cubans retreated further, back to where they had their occupation zone and into a different kind of war brewing there. The actions instigated by Gómez were having the opposite effect of that intended.



September: Putin

The mission at Los Alamos was one undertaken by the GRU. It was they who directed what was initially supposed to be no more than a quick in-&-out raid there for their purposes. When American Green Berets nor fighter-bombers failed to show up with haste to stop what was going on, the GRU had the paratroopers from Albuquerque send more men up to expand the mission.

Captain Putin came up with the Soviet Airborne moving from Kirtland AFB. He wasn’t invited and the GRU didn’t want to have any KGB personnel here, unaware though that that had been the intention all along.


GRU-KGB relations weren’t that complicated. There was nothing but hatred between the two organisations. It wasn’t rivalry or matters of doctrinal difference. No, instead it was pure hatred from each side directed towards the other. It was said that the Americans were always the adversaries of both of them; the other was the real enemy. Each had different forms of support within the Soviet political structure with the GRU currently out ahead in terms of influence back in Moscow though not by an overwhelming degree. Fighting each other – including the odd spilling of the blood of their enemy – defined their relationship. Outsiders didn’t always understand, couldn’t get their head around why the two organisations where so fiercely opposed. There were those who did understand though, those who worked to see the two at each other’s throats less they be at theirs. Where Soviet military intelligence and the state’s secret police fought each other, there was always room for someone to take advantage.

Putin’s arrival at Los Alamos was part of that ongoing fight, one stretching back to the earliest days of the Soviet Union. He was sent up to the civilian nuclear research facility some distance away from Albuquerque after first being at a sister site on the edge of Kirtland: Sandia National Laboratories. There had been much damage caused to Sandia, accidental damage, but Los Alamos was taken intact. Where at the former, many of the scientists who had worked there had been killed or fled, that wasn’t the same with Los Alamos. The GRU had discovered that what they believed was some fool with the correct influence managing to do them an accidental favour and having a ‘stay put’ instruction sent to those at worked here once the war started sent.

Putin knew different. He had been told that it wasn’t a fool but rather a high-ranking American political traitor acting on KGB instructions who had sent that order to Los Alamos. He came up here to take advantage of that alongside a couple of dozen other KGB men. The GRU and the paratroopers who acted as their puppets believed that this was their operation; they were the fools.


One of the helicopters from Kirtland brought Putin to Los Alamos though once he reached the nearby airstrip he met with the Yakovlev-40 transport jet which had been making the Kirtland-Juarez runs beforehand. It had flown up into the mountains, making that short journey ahead of the Soviet Airborne helicopter which Putin had been aboard. The three-engined passenger aircraft which in peacetime wore an Aeroflot registration but was now in KGB service was here to be loaded with people taken out of Los Alamos. From Sandia, there had been those taken from there and now Putin was to take part in overseeing those removed from here. He didn’t select those who would certainly end up very far away from their home country, he just made sure that they went on the aircraft.

The GRU was concentrating on technical material and other physical secrets from Los Alamos like they had done at Sandia. That was important. Putin knew full well how much it mattered what secrets could be taken from such places. But there was so much to sort through, to determine what was really valuable and what would just be a distraction. With people, the scientists & administrators who worked at both places, there had already been that distinction made beforehand. From whomever the instruction to Los Alamos had been sent for the workers there to stay put, these lists of the prominent people had been gained too. Putin’s commanding colonel had informed him that such a detail like the identity of that person wasn’t important to either of them nor what else he had done for the KGB. All that mattered was that the names on the list were identified among the gaggle of people captured when the battalion of paratroopers from the 76th Guards Division had taken this place. Some had been killed – the assault hadn’t been actively contested but the Soviet Airborne had taken few chances when met with small-arms fire – and some more had run. Others were hiding who they really were, with or without the consent of their co-workers. Most were just there for the taking though.

The right people had to go on the aircraft, Putin had been ordered, with no exceptions.


There’d already been an initial ‘sorting’ of those who were going to take the flight. They were those previously identified as being on the list. The Yak-40 could take up to forty of them (plus five low-ranking KGB personnel as in-flight escorts) when crammed in. Three flights were planned, taking more than a hundred prisoners out in total and sending them to where Putin’s comrades were waiting down in Juarez. They weren’t going through Kirtland but rather direct to Mexico. This meant that the flights – as Putin’s one up to Albuquerque several days ago had been – went over what was technically American-controlled territory through southern New Mexico. The fighting on the ground was elsewhere and the Nicaraguans were coming north but there was the danger in the skies to be taken note of.

Putin was glad that he wasn’t going on any of those flights.

He stood at the base of the air-stairs which came down out of the rear of the aircraft. The senior sergeant in-charge had the clipboard with the names and (grainy) photographs… and where had the latter come from he had to wonder. Putin watched his subordinate check of each prisoner who was brought to him and then taken inside. He looked at those prisoners too.

There was nothing which he could feel towards them. There were men and women – far fewer of the latter – who looked like scientists and academics the world over. They were the people who worked in laboratories and dim offices whose work few people could ever understand. His country wanted these people to come to work for them and that they would do. There were those who walked past him and those who were dragged. They had their hands bound and hoods pulled over their heads. There were shouts from some, whimpers from others. Most of them were silent. The hoods were raised to reveal faces and then dropped back down again once identity was confirmed. Up they went into the aircraft afterwards. One of them spat at Putin’s sergeant and another tried to make a run for it before being knocked down.

Nothing would interfere with this orderly process though, neither from the prisoners nor the GRU.


Institutionally, Putin was taught that the GRU were the enemy. They were more so than Germans or even Americans. He knew the history and why, as a KGB officer, he was meant to feel the way he did towards the GRU.

Two GRU officers were nearby and Putin felt their eyes on him. He turned to stare back whilst waiting on the next prisoner. They were watching over Soviet Airborne soldiers manhandle stacks of bundled paperwork into another parked aircraft at Los Alamos’ airstrip. That Antonov-2 – a little bi-plane which was puny compared to the Yak-40 jet – was being fully-loaded with paper that kept on arriving to go aboard. Though he couldn’t hear it, Putin saw that the aircraft’s pilot was objecting to how much was going aboard his little aircraft.

What was the GRU going to do with all of that which they were taking?

It was the people here that mattered, the ones who had in their head things which weren’t yet written down. That was what was the prize here, not all that paperwork going out.

Did, he asked himself, those fools over there understand that… or, more correctly, did their superiors did? Putin had been told that the GRU wanted to shoot everyone when they got here and just take what they pleased. The barbarians!

When this war was won, it wouldn’t be won by the GRU. Putin knew that it wouldn’t be won by the Soviet Army either. No, it would be won by the KGB. And he was on the winning side.


The last prisoner for the first flight to Juarez was brought up. When the hood was lifted away from the man’s face, Putin saw that the man was Latino. He’d met several Latinos who were American down in Mexico and then before that further throughout Central America. There had been many of them who’d come down for various reasons whose paths and his had crossed when the KGB came got a-hold of them. There were ideologicals who came to fight for or against the communist tide which had swept the region as well as journalists, spies and opportunists. He was yet to really understand Americans even after all of that. The individualism was… just beyond him.

The greeting which the prisoner gave Putin and the sergeant was quite the curse. Putin had heard the word before and had its meaning explained plus translated into Russian. The prisoner said it in English and he understood that it was more offensive in that language. With everything that he would muster, the prisoner called them both the word a second time. He screwed up his face, he tensed up all over and shot his head forward with his eyes bulging. He was conveying his hatred to them beyond the word.

Putin took a step forward and pulled the man’s hood down as he repeated it once again. That was the attitude that the prisoner wished to take with him to Siberia by way of Juarez, was it? He’d be broken soon enough.

The numbers matched up. Forty prisoners assigned to this flight and Putin had personally counted all forty aboard. He took the clipboard from the sergeant and checked his number as well. The sergeant had forty all checked off. The duty had been done. The first flight from Los Alamos of the spitting, the crying and the cursing was ready to go.


Walking away from the aircraft alongside his sergeant, Putin looked towards the north. The Americans had a military garrison that way, a big one up in Colorado. Supposedly they had troops there which the Cubans and Nicaraguans were going to stop coming this way. He wished those men fighting up there well.

If the Americans got their troops here and found out what was going on, he wouldn’t want to be here in his KGB uniform to see that. There were people being shot here, not just taken out as prisoners, and he doubted that the US Army would be in the mood to be merciful to any prisoners they took. He himself was still safety away from the frontlines of the war. The shooting in El Paso had been the closest that he intended to come to the ongoing fighting. The Cubans and Nicaraguans blocking the way down from Colorado would make sure that Putin’s posting to Albuquerque, with diversions to Los Alamos notwithstanding, a safe one away from danger.

The aircraft soon took off. It would be back soon for another group of prisoners and Putin would make sure again that the right ones left here. At least they were leaving here alive. Maybe one day they would be grateful for that?



September: de la Billière

The Canadians called their Huey helicopters the CH-135. They used them for light transport and liaison missions mainly though such helicopters could also be armed for light attack roles too. The CH-135 which Brigadier de la Billière watched plummet to the ground, spinning out of control as it did, had been mounting machine guns while helping to hunt down Soviet Spetsnaz. From up on the ground a missile had come and it had blown the tail off. Transfixed like those around him, DLB followed its sudden progress towards the ground. It dropped out of sight and then there was the noise of the impact. Unlike a Hollywood movie, there was no great explosion. A plume of smoke started to rise soon enough but the dramatic scene which someone who hadn’t seen war might expect to see wasn’t there.

The four, maybe five Canadians aboard the helicopter were dead. They hadn’t stood a chance once the CH-135 was hit like it was. They’d been too low and fallen victim to a shoulder-mounted missile. The threat was known because Spetsnaz had already previously fired on helicopters. They should had stayed higher and further back. However, they’d come too close and paid for that error.

DLB had lost men before in his career. There was no time to mourn those men at the moment though. That just couldn’t be done and especially not now since the Soviets had just broadcast their position by launching that missile. The helicopter wasn’t that much of a threat to them but someone on their side had panicked – or maybe been too arrogant; either way it didn’t matter for now – and given them away.

The Canadian major with him, someone who had learnt a lot in the past week of war, and not had a good time doing so, was quick to react. He ordered his men into action. DLB nodded approvingly. This man would go far.

Canadian soldiers moved in upon the enemy for what, hopefully, would be the victory they deserved… and needed too.


DLB had moved from Ottawa out into western Ontario. There were still ongoing incidents near to the national capital and the big Canadian cities in the eastern part of the country though those had eased off somewhat. If DLB had been a different sort of man, he would have claimed credit for the progress made there. However, though he hadn’t realised it at the time, when he had spoken with the senior Canadian military leadership to tell them what they needed to do to stop that, the level of intensity in attacks that could be maintained had dried up by that point throughout that region. It wasn’t professional special forces active there and soon enough the majority of them were either dead, captured or in hiding. Nothing was finished there and those who had escaped were still a danger, yet the war had moved onwards.

Soviet commandos were active on the Prairies and near to them either side (the Rockies and through the Winnipeg to Lake Superior area) where their focus was different to the terror attacks elsewhere. Military communications and civilian transportation links which connected Canada were their targets. As was the case elsewhere, a far smaller number of men tied up those opposed to them. The successful way of prosecuting them which DLB believed would work was to be undertaken here.

It was out into the stretch of Ontario running west from Thunder Bay up as far across to Manitoba where DLB had brought his own SAS men and the Canadian soldiers – all reservists – to fight those Spetsnaz.


The helicopter crash which had killed the aerial observers had occurred when the major had brought it in to finally pin down the enemy active in the area around Shabaqua, a way-point along the Trans-Canadian Highway not far away from Thunder Bay. That highway and two important railway lines for freight movement all converged around Shabaqua. There were forests, lakes and emptiness of people all around. This was perfect ground for a special forces operation to conduct repeated raids to cut communications going across Canada. DLB, should he have been in the shoes of the Soviet operational commander, would have found this area perfect for a mission to tie up major enemy resources and also aid the war effort as well.

The men from the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment moved in, led by the SAS men and also some Canadian Rangers who had tracking experience. DLB was in the company command post where the major – a good man who had served in West Germany with the regulars before joining the Primary Reserve – directed the assault. DLB was here to oversee though not command the mission.

The Canadians didn’t have it easy. They were on the ground, within the forests, and moving on foot. The Soviets had covered their tracks well. However, they were on the run and seeking to find cover. They had laid traps in places and set ambushes too to deter pursuit. Reports came in of casualties. The Canadians pushed onwards, ordered to not back off. DLB listened to the major push them forwards, ordering the firing of the man-portable heavy weapons that his men were lugging about with them to blast their retreating enemy. The Soviet sniping and hastily-laid landmines were there to kill their pursuers and get them to withdraw. Night was coming and in the darkness the Spetsnaz could properly get hidden.

They had to be killed before then.

One of DLBs men, one of the SAS who’d flown with him across the North Atlantic into this fight, went down dead. A sniper got him with a clean shot to the forehead. There was panic on the radio from the Canadians with him, men who’d been told that these supermen were invulnerable.

They weren’t, not at all.

There was return fire though with the Canadians opening up with a pair of M2 heavy machine guns. DLB heard the rattle of the weapons over the radio and wouldn’t have fancied being on the end of that. The men on the ground reported afterwards confirming they took down a trio of ‘bad guys’, though unfortunately one of their own too, when unleashing the thumb-sized bullets in abundance through the undergrowth. DLB would have liked to have seen the Canadians take a prisoner – a live Spetsnaz would have been quite the prize – but he was happy enough to see three killed. They must have messed up on their end to be caught like that. They were running and making mistakes.

There were a few more engagements before night came. The Canadians nor his own SAS Troop didn’t win the full victory they aimed to. They took out five Soviets in total, losing seven men of their own plus the helicopter crew. The rest of the Spetsnaz went to ground. DLB made sure that the major pulled his own men back afterwards, weary of leaving them out there in the forest overnight less the Soviets get a few hours sleep and then strike in the small hours. They’d done that before elsewhere.

The day’s events were nothing to get overly excited about. More friendlies had been lost than casualties inflicted. The Soviets had managed to evade being wiped out. They’d been chased down though, and pushed away from where they had been striking at the highway and railway lines. The Canadian soldiers had would be full of confidence at this, knowing that they had taken on the very best that the Soviets had and given them some of the same that for a week they’d been dishing out.

So this wasn’t finished. There was more to do and further fights to have. DLB would have preferred to have kept the fight up through the night, funnelling in fresh men and forcing the Soviets to panic again like they had before and give their position away. He was unable to because of lack of capable men to fight in the darkness. The Spetsnaz were hiding at the minute, ready to try to disappear as soon as they could do. The Canadians had other men out watching, those Rangers with night-vision equipment, though DLB was aware that they were reservists too and fighting Spetsnaz was beyond them. He could hope that they got lucky in spotting more bad guys. If they did, they were good shots and DLB was hopeful that in such a situation they would take down anyone in their sights.


Tomorrow though was when this fight would continue. More troops would be brought in, those who hadn’t got here today. The Canadians had their mortars that they had yet to put to good use as well, especially against men up on their feet and running under little cover. The fighting around Shabaqua and the nearby Kaministiquia River still had a lot more to it. Plenty of deaths were still yet to come.

There would be also be more missions for DLB to take part in throughout western Canada, running near to the US border. He didn’t know it, but combatting the Spetsnaz active and on the run would take him further that way.