The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

[forcon]

This all makes sense. If anybody was going to push the button, it would have been Mitterand IMHO, and it's difficult to blame him with Paris only, what, a four hour drive from Belgium? Especially after what happened to France under German occupation in the last lot. Still though...

[stevep]

Jan 16, 2020 22:09:01 GMT forcon said:

This all makes sense. If anybody was going to push the button, it would have been Mitterand IMHO, and it's difficult to blame him with Paris only, what, a four hour drive from Belgium? Especially after what happened to France under German occupation in the last lot. Still though...

  It might depend on what he does.  Use of tactical nukes will escalate things rapidly as the Soviets will respond quickly and the rest of the alliance will almost certainly be drawn in,  If he's issuing a threat of keep out of France or else with warnings of a strike against Soviet territory it might just make Moscow think again but their probably got too complacent that the west has backed down so many times already they they won't escalate themselves even when national survival is threatened.

  However the alternative is continuing fighting will being very exposed to invasion - with the threat of another intrusion resulting in nuclear use being the only deterrent - until those US reinforcements arrive, which will probably be a week at least.  Especially since Mitterand has rejected the 'generous' offer.

[stevep]

Jan 16, 2020 20:44:53 GMT James G said:

176 – Let bygones be bygones


Algeria was a former colony of France and relations between the two nations in 1987 weren’t at their best. A lot of that was due to historical animosity but French influence through North Africa among neighbours of Algeria had led to recent tensions. Algeria was maintaining its neutrality during the Third World War with no interest in getting involved. Its economy was under threat due it being a hydrocarbon exporting nation to Western Europe – France and Italy being chief customers – but the war hadn’t come to the nation. In Algiers, the French had an embassy there (along with consulates elsewhere) and there had been wartime diplomatic activity around it. The Algerians had seen how things had been going with other embassies in neutral countries and made sure that those on their soil respected their neutrality. The compounds of Soviet and Warsaw Pact nations likewise received the same message that the French and NATO ones did: no funny business or you will all be thrown out of here. There had been gunfire and bombings in other neutral capitals but not in Algiers. A message had come to the French Embassy today from the Soviet Embassy. This was done in a peaceful manner under the watchful of the Algerians. Contact was being made through this diplomatic link between Ligachev’s regime and that of President Mitterrand. An offer was made to France.

Mitterrand was quickly briefed upon that. The head of the DGSE, General René Imbot, came to him with news of the contents of that hand-delivered message for the president’s attention delivered through the embassy in Algiers. The Soviet Union was offering a cessation of conflict between the two countries. It wasn’t phrased as a demand or showed any sign of Soviet weakness either. Instead, it was in the words of Imbot, as if Ligachev was saying to Mitterrand let bygones be bygones on the matter of the ongoing war between our two countries. The offer for an end to the fighting made mention of certain particulars. French POWs would be returned within seven days. There would be no border crossing into French territory. At the end of the conflict which Soviet forces were having with other countries, Soviet forces would withdraw from Belgium and the French zones of occupation in West Germany bordering France which were a hold-over from the last world war. Ligachev’s message said that the Soviet Union had already signalled its intent to end fighting with France due to the recent halting of attacks against France itself. He spoke too of how where the Rhine ran along the border with West Germany, France hadn’t been entered there and there was a ‘buffer zone’ which Soviet forces inside Belgium hadn’t moved into so they weren’t directly on France’s frontiers there as well. Soviet forces had no intention of taking the war into the French Republic, the message went on. It urged for Mitterrand to consider the defeat staring France in the face when continuing to fight alongside the Americans and the British. No longer fight with them and restore French sovereignty, Ligachev concluded, to allow for peace to come between our two great nations.

Imbot pointed out the many things that the message didn’t mention. There was nothing about West Berlin and also Soviet captives in French custody. The future of West Germany wasn’t mentioned nor what would occur with Belgium when the Soviets apparently pulled out of there. Talk of future Franco-Soviet relations wasn’t brought up either. There was nothing in the message too about any other areas of the world where French and Soviet interests – such as the Middle East – clashed through their allies. Imbot pointed out that there was nothing in this all about what the Soviets intended to do while they were still at war with other countries near to France as well. Oh… and nowhere in the offer – a ‘generous offer’, Ligachev had said – were nuclear weapons brought up either. Offering a professional opinion, France’s top spymaster conceded that this was overall a generous offer. It was giving France a way out of the war and seemingly giving France an excuse to do that. However, in Imbot’s opinion, it would be something to consider if France was on its knees. France wasn’t though. More than that, it wasn’t something that could be trusted. How could Ligachev be trusted to keep his word. Hadn’t be only a few days ago sent his assassins to try to kill Mitterrand? There were so many other outrages that the Soviets had undertaken too. The list was extensive but Imbot highlighted how only yesterday, Shultz and Genscher had appeared on Soviet television ‘confessing’ NATO’s attack that started this war. The US Secretary of State and West German Foreign Minister had been kidnapped in Vienna at the start of the war when duped by Soviet pretence of crisis talks: now the KGB was having them tell the biggest of all lies. France and its people had been gravely hurt by Soviet actions on home soil as well as abroad. Neighbouring countries were being occupied with brutality involved against helpless civilians. Soldiers in the uniform of France were being mistreated.

Mitterrand knew all of this. There hadn’t been a moment that he had considered doing this. Imbot was only reminding him how foolish it would be to do such a thing. France had long-standing issues with its own sovereignty within NATO but those were disagreements among firm allies. Turning his back on countries who’d had so many soldiers die alongside French ones, throwing away the geo-political security of being a NATO member, trusting Soviet assurances over France’s neighbours… that was madness! Ligachev couldn’t be trusted. His word meant nothing to Mitterrand due to all that had happened in the previous six days, even beyond that too due to pre-war events. That included the attempt on Mitterrand’s life in the war’s opening minutes! The Soviet leader was also trying to play him for a fool too. Look at what was happening tonight inside France’s borders that the Soviet Army was apparently wasn’t going to approach, let alone cross. Ligachev had his tanks on French soil already!


Late that evening, about an hour before Mitterrand received that message via Algiers, the French town of Maubeuge was entered by tanks coming down from Belgium. Maubeuge was located only a few miles south of the frontier and alongside the Sambre River. A regiment of tanks and infantry carriers – T-72s and BMP-1s – rolled around the flank of French troops fighting over to the north and met resistance here. They responded with everything they had and blasted Maubeuge’s defenders, smashing up large parts of the town at the same time. Afterwards, they went eastwards and looped back into Belgium again. The French reservists manning blocking positions had been overcome in short order. There were unknown but certainly high numbers of civilian casualties. The Sambre hadn’t been crossed due to the attacking Soviets turning away at the last minute but that river was open to them if they had chosen to do so: there was no French force of any note nearby. This attack happened while French troops were fighting in the wider Charleroi area and were being torn apart there. The 27th Alpine Division, joined by the 127th Reserve Brigade as well as bits and pieces of many light reserve units, were losing a night-time fight against two Soviet tank divisions. The swing through the Maubeuge area had turned their flank. The French High Command believed that by dawn tomorrow, there would be no effective fighting force there of Frenchmen. Instead, the Soviets would have those two Eleventh Guards Army divisions there with another three tank divisions coming down from the Netherlands with the Third Shock Army about to reinforce them. A five division force would be a couple of hours away from Paris with no one in their way.

This was how Mitterrand, Imbot and General Saulnier (France’s military head) understood what had happened at Maubeuge. They got the news of that just ahead of Ligachev’s offer to let bygones be bygones. It looked connected, an intimidation measure. It wasn’t the case though. What happened with that little French town was all a series of unfortunate, interlinked events. The Soviet’s 1st Tank Division had received firm orders in the preceding hours not to go within fifteen kilometres of France. They were attacking French forward defensive positions between Brussels and Charleroi: Charleroi was just inside the exclusion zone which the headquarters of the Eleventh Guards Army, the Third Western Front and the Western-TVD all said wasn’t to be entered. The SHAPE complex – abandoned by NATO – was on the edge of that though, just inside free roaming areas. To there had gone the 117th Tank Regiment with a KGB detachment on an intelligence tasking. Fighting against French and sometimes Belgian infantry, the 117th Regiment had got there with ease. Into the skies above them came those American B-52s on their Arc Light strikes. At the urging of the senior KGB man, who was exerting much pressure on the regimental commander than he should have been allowed to, the regiment went on the move to get away from them. They were supposed to have gone east. They went south. Navigation problems in the dark was a major issue especially for units seeing combat deep in hostile territory for the first time like the 117th Regiment was. Still… couldn’t they read a compass? Apparently not. They went past Mons – going into there would have shown the regimental colonel straight away what had gone wrong – and southwards over into France. Fire from old anti-tank guns and lots of rifles met them near to a town which misidentified as Nivelles. That was Belgian town which was one nothing like Maubeuge. Only when one of the battalion commanding majors saw a road sign and also had a captive interrogated was the mistake understood. Now, after this, the 117th Regiment suddenly learnt how a compass and map can be handy for navigation. An eastwards turn was finally made, going into Belgium towards Charleroi from behind but that city was avoided as the Soviet vehicles got further and further way from where they had been by going north now. The commanding colonel was of mind to keep his mouth shut. Perhaps no one would notice his error? That KGB man was already on the radio though and the divisional commander was informed when Chekists were overheard talking to each other at his command post. What the 117th Regiment had done was realised. He reported up the command chain to his army headquarters who then in turn spoke to the front commander. Marshal Ogarkov was being informed of what exactly had happened at the very moment that the Americans dropped those laser-guided bombs on his command vehicle in far off West Germany.

It was all a cock-up. Idiots had done something stupid in the heat of the moment when they were under attack. It was something bound to happen though. Before he was assassinated in such a fashion as he was, joining Admiral Yamamoto in sharing a similar fate, Ogarkov had mentioned the chance of something like this occurring when talking with Stavka about their restrictions on how close his tanks could come to the Franco-Belgian border. The High Command hadn’t agreed. With tight operational control, such incidents wouldn’t happen. Well, that was shown to be a false hope. Ogarkov had been correct. If Operation Monk Arrow had failed, it wouldn’t have mattered because this was already done. At least he wasn’t around to see the fallout which would come.


The contents of Ligachev’s message, plus the details of the particulars of how the communication was made, were shared by Mitterrand among his allies. He told the Americans and the British first before afterwards seeing that the West Germans and the rest of NATO knew what had happened. Imbot wasn’t so sure if France should be revealing all of this, at least beyond the Americans and British, but his president disagreed. In talking with Prime Minister Whitelaw, Mitterrand congratulated the British forces on their London victory and sent his best wishes to the success of the UK mission, as well as France’s gratitude, to save as many British & French troops from Flushing as possible. He told Thatcher’s successor – while thinking how different this war would have been for Anglo-French relations if she was still alive – that France wasn’t going to be backing out of this war. Whitelaw would take him at his word: unlike Ligachev, Whitelaw could trust the word of the French president. Britain’s wartime leader sent warm words in return but also asked for something personally which was being held up in diplomatic channels. France was asked to officially warn neutral nations such as Argentina and Guatemala not to attack British territory & interests (the Falklands and Belize) while the UK was at war… the same was something that Britain wanted France to do with regard to Gibraltar and the Spanish. At American prodding, Britain was moving uncommitted forces from distant places back towards Europe. Whitelaw’s War Cabinet feared territorial aggression. A Guatemalan action was more likely than another Argentinian attack in the South Atlantic. Mitterrand expressed willingness to do as the Americans had done and make those regimes aware of how Britain and France were fighting shoulder to shoulder so any attack would be a very bad idea but the Gibraltar issue was something that Mitterrand tried to convince Whitelaw that shouldn’t be done. Spain was an ally! They were sending men to fight in France to follow aircraft and warships already in action as part of NATO. They wouldn’t attack Gibraltar if British troops there pulled out to man the frontlines against the Soviets and Mitterrand wouldn’t himself, nor did he really think Whitelaw should do anything like that, in telling the Spanish not to dare launch a land grab. It would cause much offense and inter-allied problems at such a time as this. Whitelaw made reasonable noises but didn’t say the UK itself wouldn’t do that. Mitterrand stressed once more that that was something he didn’t think should be done at all.

Vice President Bush took Mitterrand’s call due to Reagan being ‘indisposed’: he was in the middle of something else of great importance which Bush couldn’t let on about at this time. However, he spoke for his president when he assured France’s leader that America stood alongside France in rebuffing this Soviet offer to drive a wedge between key allies. Bush thanked Mitterrand for the candid attitude shown in the intelligence sharing here and reminded him that a huge army was in the final stages of getting ready to step across the ocean to fight alongside France. National Guard forces in number were almost ready to set sail: they would be in Europe soon and ready to take the fight to the Soviets like everyone else already in Europe was. As to Soviet promises, Bush spoke of how they couldn’t be trusted. He brought up the Shultz issue too. American intelligence agencies had confirmed that that was him in that footage being shown to the Soviet people. He had to have had a gun to his head or was drugged, Bush speculated. Mitterrand added to this that he expected to see other high-profile captives of a political nature – many prominent West Germans were missing – soon start to make appearances too. The call ended with Bush promising that Reagan would soon be in touch himself yet France could be certain that the alliance between the two countries was firm. Mitterrand had some of his ministers and officials contact other government heads though he spoke himself to Manfred Wörner. The West German Chancellor was still on his country’s own soil – in Saarbrücken, right on the French border though – whereas the governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands had already set themselves up in exile in France. Wörner was given Mitterrand’s word that France wasn’t backing out of this war and leaving West Germans to their doom. This was welcomed but Wörner expressed concern. France’s border had been crossed, West Germany’s wartime emergency leader said, and its forces in Belgium beaten. Please don’t make my country a nuclear battlefield in response!

Mitterrand told him what his response was going to be to Ligachev’s offer and the border crossing. It was one which he had informed Whitelaw and Bush about too. Their responses were the same as Wörner’s was but Mitterrand wouldn’t be dissuaded. France had to act.


End of Part Five

James G,

  Must admit I was wondering where you were going talking about Algeria and somewhat relieved it was just setting up a 'peace' offer.

  Mitterrand was right to reject it, especially given how much Ligachev and Co have lied already.  Even if they kept to their agreement their at least implicitly stating that the Soviets are going to hold the Netherlands, a good chunk of Belgium and virtually all of W Germany which would put France in a very exposed position.  The cock up by a local Soviet commander and his bloody pass through part of France makes it even clearer.

  I think your a bit hard on Whitelaw.  He was weak with the response to the Soviet invasion but given how stupidly you had Thatcher react to the bombing of London in your previous TL - which unfortunately I could see her doing given her personality - he's not done anything stupid.  Also he actually has military experience, having fought in WWII, albeit most famously for a embarrassing clash where his armoured unit got badly mauled by was it a single Tiger.  I would have more trust in him in such a conflict that Thatcher and think you probably did the country a favour by knocking her off, let alone the morale impact from the outrage at such an assassination.

  As I said to forcon I can see why Mitterrand rejected the Soviet 'offer' and also why he's thinking of a nuclear 'response' but it depends on what exactly he does.  However I can see Moscow reacting badly to anyone standing up to them at this point.

  Steve

[James G]

Jan 16, 2020 22:09:01 GMT forcon said:

This all makes sense. If anybody was going to push the button, it would have been Mitterand IMHO, and it's difficult to blame him with Paris only, what, a four hour drive from Belgium? Especially after what happened to France under German occupation in the last lot. Still though...

If those Soviet tanks drove to Paris, they'd get there unless someone nuked the living hell out of them and a big patch of France too.
We'll have to see what has been decided and what will happen.
Bad things will come of this though.

Jan 17, 2020 10:43:37 GMT stevep said:

James G,

  Must admit I was wondering where you were going talking about Algeria and somewhat relieved it was just setting up a 'peace' offer.

  Mitterrand was right to reject it, especially given how much Ligachev and Co have lied already.  Even if they kept to their agreement their at least implicitly stating that the Soviets are going to hold the Netherlands, a good chunk of Belgium and virtually all of W Germany which would put France in a very exposed position.  The cock up by a local Soviet commander and his bloody pass through part of France makes it even clearer.

  I think your a bit hard on Whitelaw.  He was weak with the response to the Soviet invasion but given how stupidly you had Thatcher react to the bombing of London in your previous TL - which unfortunately I could see her doing given her personality - he's not done anything stupid.  Also he actually has military experience, having fought in WWII, albeit most famously for a embarrassing clash where his armoured unit got badly mauled by was it a single Tiger.  I would have more trust in him in such a conflict that Thatcher and think you probably did the country a favour by knocking her off, let alone the morale impact from the outrage at such an assassination.

  As I said to forcon I can see why Mitterrand rejected the Soviet 'offer' and also why he's thinking of a nuclear 'response' but it depends on what exactly he does.  However I can see Moscow reacting badly to anyone standing up to them at this point.

  Steve

To be honest, the Algeria bit was a set up for something that was edited out.
There is no way that Ligachev can be trusted. France would be at the USSR's mercy too: military plus economically.
Perhaps I have been with Whitelaw. He just never appeared through what I read to be a strong leader. The pressures of war, how he ended up PM and the nuclear danger were my thinking on that.
A French 'non' won't go down well at all! Other things are afoot at the same time too though.

[James G]

Interlude


Defenders of Britain; one


Day #1 for the Gurkha Demonstration Company [Sittang] began with an early morning unexpected wake up call. These Gurkhas were based at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to provide training support there. They were sleeping on the Sunday morning when the war suddenly erupted. Sandhurst avoided the horrors which befell elsewhere but those at the academy didn’t know that they were safe there. Throughout the morning, there was a lot of confusion among their officers and senior people assigned to Sandhurst over whether an attack was incoming there. Meanwhile, the Gurkhas were issued with weapons from the armoury and readied to leave. There was a long wait while a decision was taken as to where they were to go. A planned wartime role for the Sittang Company was for them to go to Heathrow Airport to provide security there yet his was delayed. That delay, the result of indecision higher up, saved their lives. Heathrow was gassed later that day while the Gurkhas were on the move to somewhere else. It wasn’t until the evening that a deployment was ordered for these men. They had infantry training but weren’t organised as a unit for real combat on the battlefield. A security tasking was best suited for them. The regional command headquarters at the South–East District opted to send them to the Channel Ports on the coast of Kent. They were travelling when the evening missile attack came against the UK mainland which included that use of nerve gas at selected sites. Britain’s biggest airport was one of those targets yet so too was a location to where the Sittang Company was going. Dover was further away from Sandhurst than Heathrow was. The trucks laden with Gurkhas were some distance away when the nation’s biggest port was hit. Warning came in time to stop the Gurkhas going there. Instead, it was only to Folkestone and Ramsgate where the Sittang Company went: the platoon assigned to Dover went to Folkestone with another one of the three. Arriving late in the day at two of those civilian ports, the Gurkhas were tasked to assist with already underway security efforts. Folkestone and Ramsgate were being closed to non-military use. Police officers and TA soldiers were already at them but now there were armed Gurkhas present. The task was to keep the facilities secure from commando attack but also to ensure that each remained open in the face of interference from unruly civilians. On this first day, the Sittang Company avoided seeing any instance of combat. They’d been lucky to have been held up in delays like they were.

Day #2 saw Folkestone and Ramsgate begin to be used for military purposes. British shipping as well as that of NATO allies were to make use of these ports. There were ships coming in and out, making runs across the Channel to France and the Low Countries. Fears over the possibility of civilian unrest were without cause. There was no rush of people trying to make for a ship. Armed Gurkhas were inside and outside the port facilities and joined by other military personnel too along with civilian workers now under orders to support shipping operations. Sittang Company’s commanding major was briefed at Shorncliffe Military Camp by the brigadier heading the 2nd Infantry Brigade, assigned to the South–East District for home defence, on related events. He was informed of the scale of the attacks made the day beforehand against Dover. A Soviet commando assault had hit the facilities there within an hour of the war starting and then a missile attack from distant bombers had fired a pair of cruise missiles with chemical warheads later on. The nerve gas used was an unclassified one: the NBC suits that the Sittang Company had wouldn’t have necessarily protected the Gurkhas. Civilians in Dover had suffered terribly while the port facilities, plus the rail-link which went through there, were contaminated. Thus, Folkestone and Ramsgate would be used more than they otherwise would be to support the war effort with Dover inactive. The Gurkha’s commander was issued with orders to do everything possible to keep the Kent ports open. The Sittang Company took operational command over a platoon of TA men from the 5th Battalion of the Queens Regiment who were at Ramsgate and were being detached from their parent unit who were readying to leave for overseas duties. Those extra men were put to use alongside the Gurkhas in the continuing security duties. More and more shipping was arriving. The Belgians, Dutch and French were involved in security at their end too but another commando attack on Kent was feared. Dover, out of action, like it was hit in another missile attack regardless of the current state it was in. This strike was conventional. Further hits on Folkestone and Ramsgate were feared due to them being in use but those didn’t come. The Gurkhas of No. 2 Platoon at Ramsgate saw action just before midnight. They were taken under fire from unidentified men aboard a Belgian ship which arrived. The ultimate intent of those assailants was never discovered: they were all killed in a short fight with the Gurkhas.

Day #3 witnessed fighting in the English Channel between a submarine of the Soviet Navy and the Royal Navy. This took place some distance away from the Channel Ports where the Gurkhas were deployed though afterwards would see a disruption to shipping operations at Folkestone and Ramsgate due to submarine scares. HMS Ark Royal, the aircraft carrier which survived the attempt to eliminate her just as HMS Illustrious had been, sailed through the Dover Straits and into the North Sea during her escape. Those on land knew nothing of that. Sittang Company, joined with the TA soldiers under assignment, continued to watch over the security of the port facilities. Before and after that pause in operations, freight was being loaded onto ships which went back-&-forth across to the Continent. What was being sent was almost all on wheels, either trucks with trailers or rail cars. Ro-Ro ferries were joined by hovercraft and smaller hydrofoils in making those short runs. Ships would make several trips per day. The exclusion zone around Dover complicated some of this but it continued on due to wartime needs. Ships went out and came back in. British civilians who were aboard when the war started, including members of military families, started to come through Folkestone and Ramsgate today. The Gurkhas had been told that there had been issues with civilians trying everything in their power to board ships on the other side of the Channel to get to Britain and were instructed to deal with unruly civilians. They saw none of that themselves though. Frightened and dour civilians arrived as part of an evacuation measure which was only meant to include British nationals: there were certainly may foreigners among them who had got through. Sittang Company’s commanding major was aware but made no move to seek them out. Those evacuees went onwards. Into Ramsgate Harbour came a French Navy patrol boat still smouldering from a fire which had been put out. It had been shot-up by gunfire from an attacking Soviet aircraft. Gurkhas there gave initial help before more was forthcoming for the injured crewmen. Not long after that unexpected arrival, news came through that the majority of the Netherlands had been lost to enemy advances. No ships would go to Rotterdam afterwards but the affect upon the Gurkhas was an increase in security around those coming in from there who’d gotten away in time less aboard one was a raiding party who’d sneaked their way in. No Spetsnaz were uncovered among the last arriving ships from that unfortunate country.

Day #4 brought with it Operation Red Eagle. Soviet parachute landings didn’t occur in Kent like they did in Norfolk and the middle of London but the Sittang Company received orders coming down from the 2nd Brigade to transfer those TA soldiers under command at Ramsgate to the nearby RAF Manston while still keeping operational control of them. The transfer away of half of the Ramsgate force weakened security for that port. However, there were still two platoons at Folkestone where the majority of the cross-Channel freight operations were taking place with Ramsgate as secondary. It was feared at the district headquarters that Manston might be targeted for an airborne landing. The men sent there beefed up the defensive force manned by ordinary RAF personnel undertaking guard duties in the absence of any RAF Regiment soldiers. The Gurkhas who stayed behind had another long day of guard duty. Some men were on patrol in the port facilities and nearby. Others were held ready as a reaction force. Then there were men on mandatory rest at the same time. A shift pattern was being followed by the Gurkhas. As soldiers, they were used to routine. Morale among them remained good. They were strangers in a foreign land but here doing their duty as defenders of Britain. Very little information came down to them from above. They were cut off from external news of what was happening to allow them to focus on their task ahead of them. Keeping these ports open was what they were to do. There was another firefight that afternoon. One of the roving patrols, a rifle section from No. 1 Platoon out of Folkestone, came across two men in a vehicle. Foolishly, those inside the vehicle choose to open fire with a sub machine gun. They were surrounded, outnumbered and up against professional soldiers yet they took this option. One of them was quickly killed though he managed to take the life of one of the Gurkhas too. The other man tried to make a run for it. The sight of a Kukri in the hands of a small soldier made him change his mind when that Gurkha came out of cover and pounced on him. He gave up and would be later handed over to Defence Intelligence Staff personnel who came down from Canterbury. That captive was a Briton who, alongside his travelling partner, had weapons and explosives in their vehicle. Whatever they had been trying to do, the Gurkhas had put an end to that but at the cost of one of their own.

Day #5 saw a Soviet aircraft crash land in Pegwell Bay. The shallow, sheltered inlet was just south of Ramsgate. A Sukhoi-17, one of those Naval Aviation Fitters which had since yesterday been active in the North Sea, came in to make a hard landing on the beach. It was on fire at the time and RAF Manston was very close by. Whether the pilot was trying to defect, make a forced landing to just survive or even making a suicidal last attack, no one would know because he died upon impact. He’d gotten past British air defences and could have made an attack upon the airbase should he not had ended up like he did. There were Gurkhas from Sittang Company on-scene afterwards: just a few of them to help for security purposes. Kent Constabulary, many men armed with weapons usually unfamiliar to them as British policemen, had control over the sight quickly pending arrival of RAF personnel and there was no need for the Gurkhas. They departed and went back to Ramsgate where ships continued to come in and out of. Those were taking military cargoes across to Belgium primarily – the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge (before the latter was knocked out of action) – yet with a few trips going from there to France. It was from Folkestone where the majority of French-bound shipping went. Like with Ramsgate, beyond the port there were many lorries backed up on connecting roads with cargoes for the war inside them. Freight trains were coming into Folkestone as well. The rail cars would go direct onto ships to go across the Channel like trucks and lorries would. Gurkhas carried on with their tasking to keep this all as safe as possible. There were no more encounters today with armed opponents though that crash landing by an aircraft concentrated minds over the issue of an air attack. Sittang Company’s commander was informed that there were now some Dutch fighters – NF-5s who’d lost their base back home to Soviet tanks – at Manston but there were reports coming in all the time of increasing enemy air activity. He anticipated that Folkestone and Ramsgate must be on the enemy’s target list. All he could do was wait for those to occur and deal with the aftermath. Those aircraft were busy elsewhere today though. Far away from the ports on the Kent coast, several vessels were hit including one of those hovercraft which had gone out from Folkestone and was inbound for Britain with war casualties. It never returned after being hit far from the coast. It’s absence was something noted by some of the Gurkhas though because they’d been readying to preform stretcher carrying duties and now there was no one to help off the missing Princess Anne.

Day #6 witnessed the Channel Ports come under attack. The Gurkhas could do nothing to stop these. They took casualties with four men killed and another trio injured in the first attacks: this came alongside many losses among other military personnel but also civilians too. First it was the ballistic missiles. These contained high explosives but Sittang Company was in their NBC suits in case those had gas warheads. Ramsgate was hit first and then Folkestone was struck afterwards. Those Scuds came from mobile launchers in Belgium. Their accuracy wasn’t brilliant but it didn’t have to be. A near miss among the much activity around the ports did enough. Air attacks followed in the next couple of hours. Fitters were seen in the early afternoon skies. Those attack-fighters came in firing rockets and dropping bombs. The Dutch fighters got among them and claimed a few kills but the Soviet aircraft were gone before RAF Hawks flying from further afield could also try to intervene. Unseen by those on land, there had been the downing of several more attackers by a US Navy warship transiting the English Channel which opened fire with SAMs as well. Folkestone and Ramsgate were still hit hard though. Another half dozen casualties were taken among the Gurkhas. They’d sought cover as best as possible yet the enemy attacks took the lives of some and injured others. Cross-Channel shipping operations came to a halt with these. A Belgian car ferry was left on fire in Ramsgate Harbour. By the cruelty of fate, her name was the Spirit of Free Enterprise: less than six months before, her sister-ship Herald of Free Enterprise had capsized in an accident at Zeebrugge on route to Dover. The Spirit was going to burn rather than roll over and there would be fewer casualties in this wartime incident than that peacetime accident but it was still something awful to take place. Gurkhas operating from Folkestone were called to assist that evening to take custody of a Soviet pilot who’d made his way to the beach at Hythe. The captain was found on the sand by locals in a bad way before policemen requested military assistance in this situation. He was taken to Folkestone first and given medical attention while Gurkhas stood nearby before later being transferred elsewhere. That captain’s aircraft had been downed over the water but he’d made a miraculous survival. Folkestone would be opened up to ship movements before midnight due to marvellous work done to get operations underway from there. Recovery efforts at Ramsgate post-attack would take longer due to the fire from that burning ship but they would start by the next morning. The Gurkhas weren’t called into rubble-clearing, firefighting or rescue tasks as they had firm orders to maintain their security duties. They had their rifles and knives for that yet could do nothing to stop missiles and aircraft.

Day #7 brought with it no repeat of yesterday’s attacks. There were a few false alarms and everyone braced themselves for more strikes on the Channel Ports. Instead, each time the mistake was quickly realised. Out on patrol, another Gurkha rifle section, this one from No. 3 Platoon, came across two people who they creeped upon fearing they might be foreign commandos or British traitors willing to attack their own nation. Alas, that wasn’t to be. It was instead a pair of lovers meeting in secret. They got the fright of their lives when caught naked by Gurkhas. Perhaps they were doing something they had never got the chance to do before and were doing it now fearing the end of the world was coming? There were red faces and giggling. The lovers were moved on. Another section from the same platoon was sent towards Dover to escort an NBC survey team from the South–East District. They weren’t going into the port itself but rather to examine conditions near to the railway tunnel under the Western Heights. The Gurkhas sent weren’t happy to be there. There was talk of something called ‘Novichok’ and chemical agents which would get through their personal protection suits. They were told that an aerial survey had said that contamination was at its most dangerous near the Eastern Docks and around the town centre: they were staying on the western edges. The Gurkhas followed their orders and went with the survey team. Those military scientists with their fancy equipment went to the rail tunnel and declared it clear. The approaches on the north side had contamination but not the southern side. However, when moving onwards, towards the train station on the western side of the town centre, their equipment sirens went off. The Gurkhas were quick to ‘help’ the scientists in backing off: some manhandling was done. The rail link through here was significant in military supply terms but it was all too dangerous. A complete pull out was done. The Gurkhas were very glad to go. Contamination fears through their NBC suits didn’t occur but they had seen some horrible things. Dover was full of dead bodies left unattended to. Meanwhile, the usual ship movements were taking place out of the ports on the Kent coast and other Gurkhas with Sittang Company observed them while providing overwatch. There were incoming casualties from the war aboard several vessels. Including among them were fellow Gurkhas. 5th Airborne Brigade, part of that formation rescued from Flushing and taken to French ports last night, had a Gurkha battalion assigned. There were injured men from them who were now coming through Ramsgate brought over on a Dutch car ferry now calling this British port home. Another day of the war would eventually pass. It seemed to those at Folkestone and Ramsgate that tomorrow would see much of the same. It wouldn’t though. Unknown to them, the war had taken a terrifying turn today. Everything was changing. These Gurkhas would, unfortunately, not be left out of that.

[James G]

I have several of these updates of the war experiences of small units in the defenders of Britain role coming up.
They take place through seven days of war (though we have seen six in the main story) with events mentioned elsewhere in the story interlinked into their experiences.
The unit here was officially named at the time Gurkha Demonstration Company (Sittang): I've called it Sittang Company for shorthand.
The next update, tomorrow, will focus on another small unit at the forefront of war but in, hopefully, a fashion that readers would unexpectedly enjoy seeing because it is far from usually covered.

[stevep]

Jan 17, 2020 20:17:36 GMT James G said:

Interlude


Defenders of Britain; one


Day #1 for the Gurkha Demonstration Company [Sittang] began with an early morning unexpected wake up call. These Gurkhas were based at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to provide training support there. They were sleeping on the Sunday morning when the war suddenly erupted. Sandhurst avoided the horrors which befell elsewhere but those at the academy didn’t know that they were safe there. Throughout the morning, there was a lot of confusion among their officers and senior people assigned to Sandhurst over whether an attack was incoming there. Meanwhile, the Gurkhas were issued with weapons from the armoury and readied to leave. There was a long wait while a decision was taken as to where they were to go. A planned wartime role for the Sittang Company was for them to go to Heathrow Airport to provide security there yet his was delayed. That delay, the result of indecision higher up, saved their lives. Heathrow was gassed later that day while the Gurkhas were on the move to somewhere else. It wasn’t until the evening that a deployment was ordered for these men. They had infantry training but weren’t organised as a unit for real combat on the battlefield. A security tasking was best suited for them. The regional command headquarters at the South–East District opted to send them to the Channel Ports on the coast of Kent. They were travelling when the evening missile attack came against the UK mainland which included that use of nerve gas at selected sites. Britain’s biggest airport was one of those targets yet so too was a location to where the Sittang Company was going. Dover was further away from Sandhurst than Heathrow was. The trucks laden with Gurkhas were some distance away when the nation’s biggest port was hit. Warning came in time to stop the Gurkhas going there. Instead, it was only to Folkestone and Ramsgate where the Sittang Company went: the platoon assigned to Dover went to Folkestone with another one of the three. Arriving late in the day at two of those civilian ports, the Gurkhas were tasked to assist with already underway security efforts. Folkestone and Ramsgate were being closed to non-military use. Police officers and TA soldiers were already at them but now there were armed Gurkhas present. The task was to keep the facilities secure from commando attack but also to ensure that each remained open in the face of interference from unruly civilians. On this first day, the Sittang Company avoided seeing any instance of combat. They’d been lucky to have been held up in delays like they were.

Day #2 saw Folkestone and Ramsgate begin to be used for military purposes. British shipping as well as that of NATO allies were to make use of these ports. There were ships coming in and out, making runs across the Channel to France and the Low Countries. Fears over the possibility of civilian unrest were without cause. There was no rush of people trying to make for a ship. Armed Gurkhas were inside and outside the port facilities and joined by other military personnel too along with civilian workers now under orders to support shipping operations. Sittang Company’s commanding major was briefed at Shorncliffe Military Camp by the brigadier heading the 2nd Infantry Brigade, assigned to the South–East District for home defence, on related events. He was informed of the scale of the attacks made the day beforehand against Dover. A Soviet commando assault had hit the facilities there within an hour of the war starting and then a missile attack from distant bombers had fired a pair of cruise missiles with chemical warheads later on. The nerve gas used was an unclassified one: the NBC suits that the Sittang Company had wouldn’t have necessarily protected the Gurkhas. Civilians in Dover had suffered terribly while the port facilities, plus the rail-link which went through there, were contaminated. Thus, Folkestone and Ramsgate would be used more than they otherwise would be to support the war effort with Dover inactive. The Gurkha’s commander was issued with orders to do everything possible to keep the Kent ports open. The Sittang Company took operational command over a platoon of TA men from the 5th Battalion of the Queens Regiment who were at Ramsgate and were being detached from their parent unit who were readying to leave for overseas duties. Those extra men were put to use alongside the Gurkhas in the continuing security duties. More and more shipping was arriving. The Belgians, Dutch and French were involved in security at their end too but another commando attack on Kent was feared. Dover, out of action, like it was hit in another missile attack regardless of the current state it was in. This strike was conventional. Further hits on Folkestone and Ramsgate were feared due to them being in use but those didn’t come. The Gurkhas of No. 2 Platoon at Ramsgate saw action just before midnight. They were taken under fire from unidentified men aboard a Belgian ship which arrived. The ultimate intent of those assailants was never discovered: they were all killed in a short fight with the Gurkhas.

Day #3 witnessed fighting in the English Channel between a submarine of the Soviet Navy and the Royal Navy. This took place some distance away from the Channel Ports where the Gurkhas were deployed though afterwards would see a disruption to shipping operations at Folkestone and Ramsgate due to submarine scares. HMS Ark Royal, the aircraft carrier which survived the attempt to eliminate her just as HMS Illustrious had been, sailed through the Dover Straits and into the North Sea during her escape. Those on land knew nothing of that. Sittang Company, joined with the TA soldiers under assignment, continued to watch over the security of the port facilities. Before and after that pause in operations, freight was being loaded onto ships which went back-&-forth across to the Continent. What was being sent was almost all on wheels, either trucks with trailers or rail cars. Ro-Ro ferries were joined by hovercraft and smaller hydrofoils in making those short runs. Ships would make several trips per day. The exclusion zone around Dover complicated some of this but it continued on due to wartime needs. Ships went out and came back in. British civilians who were aboard when the war started, including members of military families, started to come through Folkestone and Ramsgate today. The Gurkhas had been told that there had been issues with civilians trying everything in their power to board ships on the other side of the Channel to get to Britain and were instructed to deal with unruly civilians. They saw none of that themselves though. Frightened and dour civilians arrived as part of an evacuation measure which was only meant to include British nationals: there were certainly may foreigners among them who had got through. Sittang Company’s commanding major was aware but made no move to seek them out. Those evacuees went onwards. Into Ramsgate Harbour came a French Navy patrol boat still smouldering from a fire which had been put out. It had been shot-up by gunfire from an attacking Soviet aircraft. Gurkhas there gave initial help before more was forthcoming for the injured crewmen. Not long after that unexpected arrival, news came through that the majority of the Netherlands had been lost to enemy advances. No ships would go to Rotterdam afterwards but the affect upon the Gurkhas was an increase in security around those coming in from there who’d gotten away in time less aboard one was a raiding party who’d sneaked their way in. No Spetsnaz were uncovered among the last arriving ships from that unfortunate country.

Day #4 brought with it Operation Red Eagle. Soviet parachute landings didn’t occur in Kent like they did in Norfolk and the middle of London but the Sittang Company received orders coming down from the 2nd Brigade to transfer those TA soldiers under command at Ramsgate to the nearby RAF Manston while still keeping operational control of them. The transfer away of half of the Ramsgate force weakened security for that port. However, there were still two platoons at Folkestone where the majority of the cross-Channel freight operations were taking place with Ramsgate as secondary. It was feared at the district headquarters that Manston might be targeted for an airborne landing. The men sent there beefed up the defensive force manned by ordinary RAF personnel undertaking guard duties in the absence of any RAF Regiment soldiers. The Gurkhas who stayed behind had another long day of guard duty. Some men were on patrol in the port facilities and nearby. Others were held ready as a reaction force. Then there were men on mandatory rest at the same time. A shift pattern was being followed by the Gurkhas. As soldiers, they were used to routine. Morale among them remained good. They were strangers in a foreign land but here doing their duty as defenders of Britain. Very little information came down to them from above. They were cut off from external news of what was happening to allow them to focus on their task ahead of them. Keeping these ports open was what they were to do. There was another firefight that afternoon. One of the roving patrols, a rifle section from No. 1 Platoon out of Folkestone, came across two men in a vehicle. Foolishly, those inside the vehicle choose to open fire with a sub machine gun. They were surrounded, outnumbered and up against professional soldiers yet they took this option. One of them was quickly killed though he managed to take the life of one of the Gurkhas too. The other man tried to make a run for it. The sight of a Kukri in the hands of a small soldier made him change his mind when that Gurkha came out of cover and pounced on him. He gave up and would be later handed over to Defence Intelligence Staff personnel who came down from Canterbury. That captive was a Briton who, alongside his travelling partner, had weapons and explosives in their vehicle. Whatever they had been trying to do, the Gurkhas had put an end to that but at the cost of one of their own.

Day #5 saw a Soviet aircraft crash land in Pegwell Bay. The shallow, sheltered inlet was just south of Ramsgate. A Sukhoi-17, one of those Naval Aviation Fitters which had since yesterday been active in the North Sea, came in to make a hard landing on the beach. It was on fire at the time and RAF Manston was very close by. Whether the pilot was trying to defect, make a forced landing to just survive or even making a suicidal last attack, no one would know because he died upon impact. He’d gotten past British air defences and could have made an attack upon the airbase should he not had ended up like he did. There were Gurkhas from Sittang Company on-scene afterwards: just a few of them to help for security purposes. Kent Constabulary, many men armed with weapons usually unfamiliar to them as British policemen, had control over the sight quickly pending arrival of RAF personnel and there was no need for the Gurkhas. They departed and went back to Ramsgate where ships continued to come in and out of. Those were taking military cargoes across to Belgium primarily – the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge (before the latter was knocked out of action) – yet with a few trips going from there to France. It was from Folkestone where the majority of French-bound shipping went. Like with Ramsgate, beyond the port there were many lorries backed up on connecting roads with cargoes for the war inside them. Freight trains were coming into Folkestone as well. The rail cars would go direct onto ships to go across the Channel like trucks and lorries would. Gurkhas carried on with their tasking to keep this all as safe as possible. There were no more encounters today with armed opponents though that crash landing by an aircraft concentrated minds over the issue of an air attack. Sittang Company’s commander was informed that there were now some Dutch fighters – NF-5s who’d lost their base back home to Soviet tanks – at Manston but there were reports coming in all the time of increasing enemy air activity. He anticipated that Folkestone and Ramsgate must be on the enemy’s target list. All he could do was wait for those to occur and deal with the aftermath. Those aircraft were busy elsewhere today though. Far away from the ports on the Kent coast, several vessels were hit including one of those hovercraft which had gone out from Folkestone and was inbound for Britain with war casualties. It never returned after being hit far from the coast. It’s absence was something noted by some of the Gurkhas though because they’d been readying to preform stretcher carrying duties and now there was no one to help off the missing Princess Anne.

Day #6 witnessed the Channel Ports come under attack. The Gurkhas could do nothing to stop these. They took casualties with four men killed and another trio injured in the first attacks: this came alongside many losses among other military personnel but also civilians too. First it was the ballistic missiles. These contained high explosives but Sittang Company was in their NBC suits in case those had gas warheads. Ramsgate was hit first and then Folkestone was struck afterwards. Those Scuds came from mobile launchers in Belgium. Their accuracy wasn’t brilliant but it didn’t have to be. A near miss among the much activity around the ports did enough. Air attacks followed in the next couple of hours. Fitters were seen in the early afternoon skies. Those attack-fighters came in firing rockets and dropping bombs. The Dutch fighters got among them and claimed a few kills but the Soviet aircraft were gone before RAF Hawks flying from further afield could also try to intervene. Unseen by those on land, there had been the downing of several more attackers by a US Navy warship transiting the English Channel which opened fire with SAMs as well. Folkestone and Ramsgate were still hit hard though. Another half dozen casualties were taken among the Gurkhas. They’d sought cover as best as possible yet the enemy attacks took the lives of some and injured others. Cross-Channel shipping operations came to a halt with these. A Belgian car ferry was left on fire in Ramsgate Harbour. By the cruelty of fate, her name was the Spirit of Free Enterprise: less than six months before, her sister-ship Herald of Free Enterprise had capsized in an accident at Zeebrugge on route to Dover. The Spirit was going to burn rather than roll over and there would be fewer casualties in this wartime incident than that peacetime accident but it was still something awful to take place. Gurkhas operating from Folkestone were called to assist that evening to take custody of a Soviet pilot who’d made his way to the beach at Hythe. The captain was found on the sand by locals in a bad way before policemen requested military assistance in this situation. He was taken to Folkestone first and given medical attention while Gurkhas stood nearby before later being transferred elsewhere. That captain’s aircraft had been downed over the water but he’d made a miraculous survival. Folkestone would be opened up to ship movements before midnight due to marvellous work done to get operations underway from there. Recovery efforts at Ramsgate post-attack would take longer due to the fire from that burning ship but they would start by the next morning. The Gurkhas weren’t called into rubble-clearing, firefighting or rescue tasks as they had firm orders to maintain their security duties. They had their rifles and knives for that yet could do nothing to stop missiles and aircraft.

Day #7 brought with it no repeat of yesterday’s attacks. There were a few false alarms and everyone braced themselves for more strikes on the Channel Ports. Instead, each time the mistake was quickly realised. Out on patrol, another Gurkha rifle section, this one from No. 3 Platoon, came across two people who they creeped upon fearing they might be foreign commandos or British traitors willing to attack their own nation. Alas, that wasn’t to be. It was instead a pair of lovers meeting in secret. They got the fright of their lives when caught naked by Gurkhas. Perhaps they were doing something they had never got the chance to do before and were doing it now fearing the end of the world was coming? There were red faces and giggling. The lovers were moved on. Another section from the same platoon was sent towards Dover to escort an NBC survey team from the South–East District. They weren’t going into the port itself but rather to examine conditions near to the railway tunnel under the Western Heights. The Gurkhas sent weren’t happy to be there. There was talk of something called ‘Novichok’ and chemical agents which would get through their personal protection suits. They were told that an aerial survey had said that contamination was at its most dangerous near the Eastern Docks and around the town centre: they were staying on the western edges. The Gurkhas followed their orders and went with the survey team. Those military scientists with their fancy equipment went to the rail tunnel and declared it clear. The approaches on the north side had contamination but not the southern side. However, when moving onwards, towards the train station on the western side of the town centre, their equipment sirens went off. The Gurkhas were quick to ‘help’ the scientists in backing off: some manhandling was done. The rail link through here was significant in military supply terms but it was all too dangerous. A complete pull out was done. The Gurkhas were very glad to go. Contamination fears through their NBC suits didn’t occur but they had seen some horrible things. Dover was full of dead bodies left unattended to. Meanwhile, the usual ship movements were taking place out of the ports on the Kent coast and other Gurkhas with Sittang Company observed them while providing overwatch. There were incoming casualties from the war aboard several vessels. Including among them were fellow Gurkhas. 5th Airborne Brigade, part of that formation rescued from Flushing and taken to French ports last night, had a Gurkha battalion assigned. There were injured men from them who were now coming through Ramsgate brought over on a Dutch car ferry now calling this British port home. Another day of the war would eventually pass. It seemed to those at Folkestone and Ramsgate that tomorrow would see much of the same. It wouldn’t though. Unknown to them, the war had taken a terrifying turn today. Everything was changing. These Gurkhas would, unfortunately, not be left out of that.

James G,

  Interesting insight into a small unit not in the front line but still playing an important role and taking losses.  They had a couple of close escapes on the 1st day.  I get the feeling from the last few sentences that the Soviets won't take the French rejection kindly and will immediately escalate to widespread use of at least tactical nukes.

  Is Dover the largest British port?  I know our trade with much of the rest of the world has declined in recent decades - other than imports due to the collapse of British industry but I would have thought that London at least would still be taking more shipping than Dover, especially back in the 80s.

  Steve

[forcon]

Jan 17, 2020 20:21:12 GMT James G said:

I have several of these updates of the war experiences of small units in the defenders of Britain role coming up.
They take place through seven days of war (though we have seen six in the main story) with events mentioned elsewhere in the story interlinked into their experiences.
The unit here was officially named at the time Gurkha Demonstration Company (Sittang): I've called it Sittang Company for shorthand.
The next update, tomorrow, will focus on another small unit at the forefront of war but in, hopefully, a fashion that readers would unexpectedly enjoy seeing because it is far from usually covered.

Good work here with this interlude. Looking forward to the next one. Will any of these units be in Europe or will they all be in the UK?

[James G]

Jan 18, 2020 10:05:43 GMT stevep said:

Jan 17, 2020 20:17:36 GMT James G said:

Interlude


Defenders of Britain; one


Day #1 for the Gurkha Demonstration Company [Sittang] began with an early morning unexpected wake up call. These Gurkhas were based at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to provide training support there. They were sleeping on the Sunday morning when the war suddenly erupted. Sandhurst avoided the horrors which befell elsewhere but those at the academy didn’t know that they were safe there. Throughout the morning, there was a lot of confusion among their officers and senior people assigned to Sandhurst over whether an attack was incoming there. Meanwhile, the Gurkhas were issued with weapons from the armoury and readied to leave. There was a long wait while a decision was taken as to where they were to go. A planned wartime role for the Sittang Company was for them to go to Heathrow Airport to provide security there yet his was delayed. That delay, the result of indecision higher up, saved their lives. Heathrow was gassed later that day while the Gurkhas were on the move to somewhere else. It wasn’t until the evening that a deployment was ordered for these men. They had infantry training but weren’t organised as a unit for real combat on the battlefield. A security tasking was best suited for them. The regional command headquarters at the South–East District opted to send them to the Channel Ports on the coast of Kent. They were travelling when the evening missile attack came against the UK mainland which included that use of nerve gas at selected sites. Britain’s biggest airport was one of those targets yet so too was a location to where the Sittang Company was going. Dover was further away from Sandhurst than Heathrow was. The trucks laden with Gurkhas were some distance away when the nation’s biggest port was hit. Warning came in time to stop the Gurkhas going there. Instead, it was only to Folkestone and Ramsgate where the Sittang Company went: the platoon assigned to Dover went to Folkestone with another one of the three. Arriving late in the day at two of those civilian ports, the Gurkhas were tasked to assist with already underway security efforts. Folkestone and Ramsgate were being closed to non-military use. Police officers and TA soldiers were already at them but now there were armed Gurkhas present. The task was to keep the facilities secure from commando attack but also to ensure that each remained open in the face of interference from unruly civilians. On this first day, the Sittang Company avoided seeing any instance of combat. They’d been lucky to have been held up in delays like they were.

Day #2 saw Folkestone and Ramsgate begin to be used for military purposes. British shipping as well as that of NATO allies were to make use of these ports. There were ships coming in and out, making runs across the Channel to France and the Low Countries. Fears over the possibility of civilian unrest were without cause. There was no rush of people trying to make for a ship. Armed Gurkhas were inside and outside the port facilities and joined by other military personnel too along with civilian workers now under orders to support shipping operations. Sittang Company’s commanding major was briefed at Shorncliffe Military Camp by the brigadier heading the 2nd Infantry Brigade, assigned to the South–East District for home defence, on related events. He was informed of the scale of the attacks made the day beforehand against Dover. A Soviet commando assault had hit the facilities there within an hour of the war starting and then a missile attack from distant bombers had fired a pair of cruise missiles with chemical warheads later on. The nerve gas used was an unclassified one: the NBC suits that the Sittang Company had wouldn’t have necessarily protected the Gurkhas. Civilians in Dover had suffered terribly while the port facilities, plus the rail-link which went through there, were contaminated. Thus, Folkestone and Ramsgate would be used more than they otherwise would be to support the war effort with Dover inactive. The Gurkha’s commander was issued with orders to do everything possible to keep the Kent ports open. The Sittang Company took operational command over a platoon of TA men from the 5th Battalion of the Queens Regiment who were at Ramsgate and were being detached from their parent unit who were readying to leave for overseas duties. Those extra men were put to use alongside the Gurkhas in the continuing security duties. More and more shipping was arriving. The Belgians, Dutch and French were involved in security at their end too but another commando attack on Kent was feared. Dover, out of action, like it was hit in another missile attack regardless of the current state it was in. This strike was conventional. Further hits on Folkestone and Ramsgate were feared due to them being in use but those didn’t come. The Gurkhas of No. 2 Platoon at Ramsgate saw action just before midnight. They were taken under fire from unidentified men aboard a Belgian ship which arrived. The ultimate intent of those assailants was never discovered: they were all killed in a short fight with the Gurkhas.

Day #3 witnessed fighting in the English Channel between a submarine of the Soviet Navy and the Royal Navy. This took place some distance away from the Channel Ports where the Gurkhas were deployed though afterwards would see a disruption to shipping operations at Folkestone and Ramsgate due to submarine scares. HMS Ark Royal, the aircraft carrier which survived the attempt to eliminate her just as HMS Illustrious had been, sailed through the Dover Straits and into the North Sea during her escape. Those on land knew nothing of that. Sittang Company, joined with the TA soldiers under assignment, continued to watch over the security of the port facilities. Before and after that pause in operations, freight was being loaded onto ships which went back-&-forth across to the Continent. What was being sent was almost all on wheels, either trucks with trailers or rail cars. Ro-Ro ferries were joined by hovercraft and smaller hydrofoils in making those short runs. Ships would make several trips per day. The exclusion zone around Dover complicated some of this but it continued on due to wartime needs. Ships went out and came back in. British civilians who were aboard when the war started, including members of military families, started to come through Folkestone and Ramsgate today. The Gurkhas had been told that there had been issues with civilians trying everything in their power to board ships on the other side of the Channel to get to Britain and were instructed to deal with unruly civilians. They saw none of that themselves though. Frightened and dour civilians arrived as part of an evacuation measure which was only meant to include British nationals: there were certainly may foreigners among them who had got through. Sittang Company’s commanding major was aware but made no move to seek them out. Those evacuees went onwards. Into Ramsgate Harbour came a French Navy patrol boat still smouldering from a fire which had been put out. It had been shot-up by gunfire from an attacking Soviet aircraft. Gurkhas there gave initial help before more was forthcoming for the injured crewmen. Not long after that unexpected arrival, news came through that the majority of the Netherlands had been lost to enemy advances. No ships would go to Rotterdam afterwards but the affect upon the Gurkhas was an increase in security around those coming in from there who’d gotten away in time less aboard one was a raiding party who’d sneaked their way in. No Spetsnaz were uncovered among the last arriving ships from that unfortunate country.

Day #4 brought with it Operation Red Eagle. Soviet parachute landings didn’t occur in Kent like they did in Norfolk and the middle of London but the Sittang Company received orders coming down from the 2nd Brigade to transfer those TA soldiers under command at Ramsgate to the nearby RAF Manston while still keeping operational control of them. The transfer away of half of the Ramsgate force weakened security for that port. However, there were still two platoons at Folkestone where the majority of the cross-Channel freight operations were taking place with Ramsgate as secondary. It was feared at the district headquarters that Manston might be targeted for an airborne landing. The men sent there beefed up the defensive force manned by ordinary RAF personnel undertaking guard duties in the absence of any RAF Regiment soldiers. The Gurkhas who stayed behind had another long day of guard duty. Some men were on patrol in the port facilities and nearby. Others were held ready as a reaction force. Then there were men on mandatory rest at the same time. A shift pattern was being followed by the Gurkhas. As soldiers, they were used to routine. Morale among them remained good. They were strangers in a foreign land but here doing their duty as defenders of Britain. Very little information came down to them from above. They were cut off from external news of what was happening to allow them to focus on their task ahead of them. Keeping these ports open was what they were to do. There was another firefight that afternoon. One of the roving patrols, a rifle section from No. 1 Platoon out of Folkestone, came across two men in a vehicle. Foolishly, those inside the vehicle choose to open fire with a sub machine gun. They were surrounded, outnumbered and up against professional soldiers yet they took this option. One of them was quickly killed though he managed to take the life of one of the Gurkhas too. The other man tried to make a run for it. The sight of a Kukri in the hands of a small soldier made him change his mind when that Gurkha came out of cover and pounced on him. He gave up and would be later handed over to Defence Intelligence Staff personnel who came down from Canterbury. That captive was a Briton who, alongside his travelling partner, had weapons and explosives in their vehicle. Whatever they had been trying to do, the Gurkhas had put an end to that but at the cost of one of their own.

Day #5 saw a Soviet aircraft crash land in Pegwell Bay. The shallow, sheltered inlet was just south of Ramsgate. A Sukhoi-17, one of those Naval Aviation Fitters which had since yesterday been active in the North Sea, came in to make a hard landing on the beach. It was on fire at the time and RAF Manston was very close by. Whether the pilot was trying to defect, make a forced landing to just survive or even making a suicidal last attack, no one would know because he died upon impact. He’d gotten past British air defences and could have made an attack upon the airbase should he not had ended up like he did. There were Gurkhas from Sittang Company on-scene afterwards: just a few of them to help for security purposes. Kent Constabulary, many men armed with weapons usually unfamiliar to them as British policemen, had control over the sight quickly pending arrival of RAF personnel and there was no need for the Gurkhas. They departed and went back to Ramsgate where ships continued to come in and out of. Those were taking military cargoes across to Belgium primarily – the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge (before the latter was knocked out of action) – yet with a few trips going from there to France. It was from Folkestone where the majority of French-bound shipping went. Like with Ramsgate, beyond the port there were many lorries backed up on connecting roads with cargoes for the war inside them. Freight trains were coming into Folkestone as well. The rail cars would go direct onto ships to go across the Channel like trucks and lorries would. Gurkhas carried on with their tasking to keep this all as safe as possible. There were no more encounters today with armed opponents though that crash landing by an aircraft concentrated minds over the issue of an air attack. Sittang Company’s commander was informed that there were now some Dutch fighters – NF-5s who’d lost their base back home to Soviet tanks – at Manston but there were reports coming in all the time of increasing enemy air activity. He anticipated that Folkestone and Ramsgate must be on the enemy’s target list. All he could do was wait for those to occur and deal with the aftermath. Those aircraft were busy elsewhere today though. Far away from the ports on the Kent coast, several vessels were hit including one of those hovercraft which had gone out from Folkestone and was inbound for Britain with war casualties. It never returned after being hit far from the coast. It’s absence was something noted by some of the Gurkhas though because they’d been readying to preform stretcher carrying duties and now there was no one to help off the missing Princess Anne.

Day #6 witnessed the Channel Ports come under attack. The Gurkhas could do nothing to stop these. They took casualties with four men killed and another trio injured in the first attacks: this came alongside many losses among other military personnel but also civilians too. First it was the ballistic missiles. These contained high explosives but Sittang Company was in their NBC suits in case those had gas warheads. Ramsgate was hit first and then Folkestone was struck afterwards. Those Scuds came from mobile launchers in Belgium. Their accuracy wasn’t brilliant but it didn’t have to be. A near miss among the much activity around the ports did enough. Air attacks followed in the next couple of hours. Fitters were seen in the early afternoon skies. Those attack-fighters came in firing rockets and dropping bombs. The Dutch fighters got among them and claimed a few kills but the Soviet aircraft were gone before RAF Hawks flying from further afield could also try to intervene. Unseen by those on land, there had been the downing of several more attackers by a US Navy warship transiting the English Channel which opened fire with SAMs as well. Folkestone and Ramsgate were still hit hard though. Another half dozen casualties were taken among the Gurkhas. They’d sought cover as best as possible yet the enemy attacks took the lives of some and injured others. Cross-Channel shipping operations came to a halt with these. A Belgian car ferry was left on fire in Ramsgate Harbour. By the cruelty of fate, her name was the Spirit of Free Enterprise: less than six months before, her sister-ship Herald of Free Enterprise had capsized in an accident at Zeebrugge on route to Dover. The Spirit was going to burn rather than roll over and there would be fewer casualties in this wartime incident than that peacetime accident but it was still something awful to take place. Gurkhas operating from Folkestone were called to assist that evening to take custody of a Soviet pilot who’d made his way to the beach at Hythe. The captain was found on the sand by locals in a bad way before policemen requested military assistance in this situation. He was taken to Folkestone first and given medical attention while Gurkhas stood nearby before later being transferred elsewhere. That captain’s aircraft had been downed over the water but he’d made a miraculous survival. Folkestone would be opened up to ship movements before midnight due to marvellous work done to get operations underway from there. Recovery efforts at Ramsgate post-attack would take longer due to the fire from that burning ship but they would start by the next morning. The Gurkhas weren’t called into rubble-clearing, firefighting or rescue tasks as they had firm orders to maintain their security duties. They had their rifles and knives for that yet could do nothing to stop missiles and aircraft.

Day #7 brought with it no repeat of yesterday’s attacks. There were a few false alarms and everyone braced themselves for more strikes on the Channel Ports. Instead, each time the mistake was quickly realised. Out on patrol, another Gurkha rifle section, this one from No. 3 Platoon, came across two people who they creeped upon fearing they might be foreign commandos or British traitors willing to attack their own nation. Alas, that wasn’t to be. It was instead a pair of lovers meeting in secret. They got the fright of their lives when caught naked by Gurkhas. Perhaps they were doing something they had never got the chance to do before and were doing it now fearing the end of the world was coming? There were red faces and giggling. The lovers were moved on. Another section from the same platoon was sent towards Dover to escort an NBC survey team from the South–East District. They weren’t going into the port itself but rather to examine conditions near to the railway tunnel under the Western Heights. The Gurkhas sent weren’t happy to be there. There was talk of something called ‘Novichok’ and chemical agents which would get through their personal protection suits. They were told that an aerial survey had said that contamination was at its most dangerous near the Eastern Docks and around the town centre: they were staying on the western edges. The Gurkhas followed their orders and went with the survey team. Those military scientists with their fancy equipment went to the rail tunnel and declared it clear. The approaches on the north side had contamination but not the southern side. However, when moving onwards, towards the train station on the western side of the town centre, their equipment sirens went off. The Gurkhas were quick to ‘help’ the scientists in backing off: some manhandling was done. The rail link through here was significant in military supply terms but it was all too dangerous. A complete pull out was done. The Gurkhas were very glad to go. Contamination fears through their NBC suits didn’t occur but they had seen some horrible things. Dover was full of dead bodies left unattended to. Meanwhile, the usual ship movements were taking place out of the ports on the Kent coast and other Gurkhas with Sittang Company observed them while providing overwatch. There were incoming casualties from the war aboard several vessels. Including among them were fellow Gurkhas. 5th Airborne Brigade, part of that formation rescued from Flushing and taken to French ports last night, had a Gurkha battalion assigned. There were injured men from them who were now coming through Ramsgate brought over on a Dutch car ferry now calling this British port home. Another day of the war would eventually pass. It seemed to those at Folkestone and Ramsgate that tomorrow would see much of the same. It wouldn’t though. Unknown to them, the war had taken a terrifying turn today. Everything was changing. These Gurkhas would, unfortunately, not be left out of that.

James G ,

  Interesting insight into a small unit not in the front line but still playing an important role and taking losses.  They had a couple of close escapes on the 1st day.  I get the feeling from the last few sentences that the Soviets won't take the French rejection kindly and will immediately escalate to widespread use of at least tactical nukes.

  Is Dover the largest British port?  I know our trade with much of the rest of the world has declined in recent decades - other than imports due to the collapse of British industry but I would have thought that London at least would still be taking more shipping than Dover, especially back in the 80s.

  Steve

Ah... what happens there will be seen soon enough.
I thought it was. You might be correct though that it wasn't. It would have been pretty important for the war effort though.

Jan 18, 2020 12:02:04 GMT forcon said:

Good work here with this interlude. Looking forward to the next one. Will any of these units be in Europe or will they all be in the UK?

Thanks. I've been thinking about it for a while and had plenty of ideas.
They will all be UK-based preforming the Defenders of Britain role, just in interesting ways.
Next one below.

[James G]

Defenders of Britain; two


Day #1 begun with an urgent call made to the operations room at Leconfield where D Flight, No. 22 Squadron was based. This was unlike ‘usual’ early morning calls to the RAF detachment stationed in East Yorkshire with their search-&-rescue helicopters. There was no emergency dispatch for one of the Sea King HAR3s to go out on a life-saving mission but instead a warning that there was now a war on. D Flight was to take part in that war too. Famous for their yellow-painted helicopters and often in the news, D Flight spent the majority of their flying time undertaking missions to rescue civilians in distress. They were a military unit though. Part of the RAF’s Search and Rescue Force, their primary tasking was thus in support of the British Armed Forces. Military aid to the civilian power was done because units like theirs had the capacity to do so. Now, in wartime, they would be flying rescues primarily for military duties. Aircrew and ground personnel were woken up and told the news. Leconfield was a British Army base and there was much activity around them: there was surprise everywhere but there was a duty to do. Orders were issued. The pair of Sea Kings which D Flight flew needed to be in tip-top condition at all times. There would also be rotating guard duty to be preformed by D Flight personnel. A new paint job was needed too. The Sea Kings wouldn’t be flying in their yellow colours but in a blue-grey colour camouflage. The first mission was flown that afternoon. There was a Lightning F6 interceptor down over the North Sea. It was on a mission from RAF Binbrook in Lincolnshire and an in-flight, non-combat problem had seen the pilot unable to bring it back to base and seen him bail out. Pelican 14 – one of the two Sea Kings, the one which had a completed new colour scheme – was soon flying. The helicopter went across Holderness and out over the water. The weather was reasonable and there was a radio beacon which the pilot had activated. Pelican 14’s crew flew towards that and located the pilot. A winchman went down and plucked him from the North Sea before the two of them were hoisted aboard. That pilot from No. 5 Squadron was very glad to be saved! His rescuers asked him what had happened and he said that he’d felt something wrong with his Lightning the minute he’d taken off. He and his wingman had been sent up after a suspected hostile radar contact, one which they then couldn’t find, and then he’d lost all electrical power. They’d been too much rush on the ground to get the Lightning’s up, he added, and it had been costly. Pelican 14 flew him back to Leconfield: he’d go by road to Binbrook later on. Firstly Pelican 19 and then Pelican 14 as well flew missions that evening and night. Both Sea Kings went out over the North Sea. The first air attacks against the UK had happened. They had come from the north and west, rather than the east where D Flight was tasked to send its helicopters, yet there had been other aircraft flying at the same time. There was a Nimrod MR2 maritime patrol aircraft & submarine hunter, one which also in peacetime took part in search-&-rescue missions, ambushed by a Soviet MiG-25 flying far away from East Germany. Armed with Sidewinder missiles for self-defence, it still stood no chance against that MiG which fired from far off. Pelican 19 couldn’t find the wreckage nor any aircrew either. Pelican 14 was disappointed too. The second helicopter was sent out to look for the Nimrod later on but to no avail.

Day #2 witnessed instructions coming from squadron headquarters at RAF Finningley across in South Yorkshire that the Sea Kings of D Flight were to carry an extra crew member when flying. The additional man would be carrying a weapon. Pelican 14 and Pelican 19 had flown yesterday with an existing crewman armed but this was different. The reason for this: A Flight, No. 202 Squadron out of RAF Boulmer up in Northumberland had one of their Sea Kings shot at overnight during a rescue. They’d plucked a pilot from a Phantom FG1 out of the water and found a Soviet pilot with him. That second aviator was in the middle of being saved when he’d pulled a gun and shot the winchman dead. The Sea King left him behind: more fool him for wanting to keep ‘his prisoner’. Such a situation wasn’t wanted to be repeated again, but if it did, D Flight was to be ready for that. There were four missions flown on the war’s second day from Leconfield. Pelican 19 went not out over the North Sea but overland down into Lincolnshire looking for a RAF Jetstream T1 training aircraft. The turboprop could function as a light transport too. It had been coming back from West Germany carrying wounded personnel but never made it to RAF Waddington. An aerial search was conducted over the high ground of the Lincolnshire Wolds where the last contact had been with a Mayday message yet no luck was had: a search would be conducted by the Territorial Army on the ground after Pelican 19 was recalled. Pelican 14 went out over the North Sea and managed to locate and save a West German Bundesmarine pilot after his Tornado IDS went down. His navigator/bombardier wouldn’t be found though. They’d been evacuating their base in Schleswig-Holstein to move to Britain when East German MiGs had appeared and a missile struck home. That second man was taken by the sea much to his colleague’s grief. Pelican 14 was later on involved in another success – their third so far – with allied aircrew as well. There was an US Air Force Reserve unit making a transit flight with F-4s sent to Denmark via Scotland. One of those strike-fighters had a fuel leak which saw the two aircrew eject. The Sea King got both of them to take them back to Leconfield. Finally, Pelican 19 went out again with another overland mission. A British Army helicopter was apparently down near Flamborough Head. The Gazelle AH1 couldn’t be located leading to further disappointment for the crew of that D Flight Sea King. While the helicopters were flying or waiting to, those on the ground with this 22 Squadron detachment had much work to do. The extra guard duty was done while there was much work to be undertaken with keeping the Sea Kings in flight condition. Each had been up multiple times with a lot of strain upon such machines. A supply convoy arrived coming from RAF Carlisle over in Cumbria. That was a storage site for RAF equipment – everything from aircraft engines to office furniture – bringing bits and pieces to aid the continuing flight operations. There were extra personnel too who arrived. The reservists were welcomed. D Flight was having a busy war with no sign of that changing.

Day #3 saw search-&-rescue flights for D Flight not involving downed aviators. Instead, it was sailors who needed their help. A Soviet missile strike hit ships leaving the Port of Hull. There were North Sea ferries and cargo ships which had been pressed into military service. Cruise missiles coming from far afield impacted vessels in the Humber Estuary with a strike whose timing wasn’t a matter of luck: they had intelligence on that. Finding the culprits was the work of someone else. Locating those in need was for the Sea King crews. There were many ships on fire when Pelican 14 arrived along with one of them on its side. The morning was bright with clear skies up above but near to the water there was a lot of smoke. The helicopter’s pilot had to be careful flying about due to that smoke… and also after an explosion aboard one of the cargo ships due to ammunition cooking off. The Humber Estuary was a war zone! Pelican 14 flew in above the Norsun. The car ferry was only a few months old but now sure to be eventually lost to fire. Crew members and military passengers were mostly getting off her by lifeboats but there were wounded who needed urgent evacuation. The Sea King flew several times back-&-forth to hospitals in Hull (Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill) with burns victims gaining priority over other injuries. Pelican 19 was soon present too. The Norland had capsized. Five years before, she had been to war after sailing to the Falklands. Not a scratch had come in that war zone but here near to her home port she’d been sunk. Pelican 19 took passengers off her port side. These were all in uniform rather than weekend travellers making ‘Dutch Dash’ which ferries from Hull were famous for. There were small boats nearby including a Customs & Exercise boat aiding in the rescue but the Norland was filling with water and there was urgency. Pelican 19 went to the shore and back several times dropping off those rescued. Finally, the water took the big ship down. Many of those who’d been aboard when she was hit went under with her. The danger to other shipping would be a big problem with this wreck. While also a grave for those who were killed aboard, the Norland, along with the Norsun which would be burnt out & abandoned, those ships had been laden with war material. There were many vehicles and much equipment coming out of many British Army sites across Northern England aboard. Leconfield itself had seen plentiful vehicles from the training school there sent to Hull to go onto the Continent aboard the ferries. When Pelican 19 returned to Leconfield, she was grounded after a serious problem with her left engine was discovered. Pelican 14 was on standby for more air-sea missions through the night yet no call came.

Day #4 brought with it news that the Soviet Army had overrun much of the Netherlands the day before. Taking that in was quite something for D Flight: the shock that that country’s shore was now hostile struck home hard. The briefing told them that vessels coming out of the Netherlands were to be treated as hostile. If, when out over the North Sea, D Flight’s aircrews spotted them they weren’t to come to their aid unless it was explicitly clear that they friendly. There was a worry over commando operations and the threat to British helicopters too. Not long after being told that, there was a call-out which came into Leconfield. Pelican 14 went up and made the short journey over to the East Yorkshire coastline down in Holderness not far from Spurn Head. Easington Gas Terminal was on fire. The smoke could be soon as soon as the Sea King got airborne. Going in close wasn’t what Pelican 14 had been called out for but to pick up medical evacuees from the ground nearby. Easington was fed by North Sea gas platforms shut off since the war had started. Its loss would be very important yet… such was war. D Flight was on this occasion aiding civilians instead of military personnel. This was something that they would still be doing despite the wartime mission priority but only in exception circumstances: it had been decided that this was one of them. Four casualties were flown to Grimsby with a landing made in an open area near to the hospital in the absence of a heli-pad there. Pelican 14 returned to Leconfield and there was some more shocking news. Soviet paratroopers were on the ground in Norfolk. That battlefield was beyond the operational area of D Flight yet it changed the air picture completely. This briefing said that it looked like an armed raid on a big scale and the expectation was that by nightfall, the raiders would be overcome. D Flight personnel accepted that and took the news better than they did about the Netherlands being overrun. Back out over the water Pelican 14 went several hours later. There had been air clashes in the skies above the North Sea. The RAF had several aircraft missing and search missions were run for aircrew. Another Phantom navigator was picked up first (his pilot had gone down with the fighter) before the body of a Lightning pilot discovered. That man hadn’t survived ejection. Orders were to leave bodies and to only save the living but this was defied and his remains taken aboard. Coming back home, someone else was spotted in the water. Pelican 14 moved in towards a pilot’s life-raft with the thinking it might be a NATO pilot. The winchman who went down expecting a Dane, a Dutchman or a German discovered he had a Pole whom he’d saved. The Polish Air Force man spoke good English. He thanked his rescuer and stated he wished to surrender. Pelican 19 went up during the night and found an American pilot from their UK-based F-5 training squadron who were flying fighter missions as part of the Second Battle of Britain. He was hurt bad and died aboard the Sea King soon after being rescued. Every effort was made to save him but his injuries were too severe.

Day #5 saw Pelican 19 lift-off from Leconfield in the early hours. The Sea King’s crew were above the North Sea looking for those who’d been aboard a RAF Canberra T17. That jet had been flying a classified electronic intelligence mission over the Continent and hit by a SAM just as it started to head back to Britain. Neither the crew nor wreckage could be found. Pelican 19 was returning home when it had an engine blow-out, the same one which had seen it grounded for much of yesterday. Built by Westland Helicopters as versions of the Sikorsky S-61, this D Flight helicopter had two Rolls-Royce engines. It should have been able to make it home with just one. However, the other engine ingested bits of the blown one and failed too. Pelican 19 made a Mayday call before going down. Pelican 14 was launched before the Mayday after the initial call of engine failure. The second Sea King raced out to where the first one had been. Floating on the surface, Pelican 19 was found. Rescue efforts were made of her crew with all five men aboard being saved. The sea would take the abandoned helicopter not long afterwards. Coming back to Leconfield, Pelican 14 brought home fellow D Flight members. However, there was now only one helicopter flying. There would be recriminations for the ground personnel involved in supposedly fixing the problem with Pelican 19 and the officer who signed off on this. The RAF had just lost a key aircraft when it needed everything flying that it had. There was news which reached Leconfield during the day that the ‘raiding by commandos’ in Norfolk was instead a full-on invasion mission instead. This changed things. There would be more air-sea rescue missions flown to pluck aircrews out of the water involved in that fighting to stop the invasion through air power. There were enemy transport aircraft coming over the North Sea with RAF and NATO fighters going up against them. RAF strike aircraft were also being tasked to hit the Soviets on the ground coming via the overwater route too: some friendly aircraft were sure to go down. This was soon found to be the case. Pelican 14 went back into the sky and down to The Wash. That bay lay between Lincolnshire and Norfolk. It was dangerous for the Sea King to be there but the tasking was to locate aircrew. A Tornado GR1 pilot and his navigator were located and so too, on a second flight, was a Jaguar T2 pilot. There was a speedboat spotted during the second flight. Pelican 14 had no weapons fitted to her – the extra crew member for security had several handheld weapons though – but was able to radio-in what was seen. The result of that was unknown to D Flight afterwards. The rescued aircrews were dropped off at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire before the Sea King began flying home. A few minutes out of Cranwell, heading north, an aircraft was spotted flying incredibly low. The skies were darkening as night approached but there was enough daylight to see what the co-pilot was convinced was an Antonov-2. That was a little biplane and not a friendly one! Lincolnshire was full of airbases (RAF Coningsby and RAF Waddington as well as Binbrook and Cranwell) and there had been warnings about Soviet commando teams using such small transports to make low altitude jumps from. Once again, a mounted weapon would have come in handy for Pelican 14. All that could be done was to use the radio though and follow the equally unarmed An-2. Where paratroopers from it landed was reported on and then the route back towards the North Sea was also visually tracked. A Phantom showed up and got a gun kill against the biplane with D Flight later receiving an official acknowledgement for their part in that: Pelican 14’s crew arguably should be able to claim half a kill for what they did.

Day #6 witnessed Pelican 14 fly first up to the North Yorkshire Moors to look for the wreckage and any sign of aircrew from a downed Soviet Tu-22 bomber. American F-16s had shot it down. The concern wasn’t so much over rescuing enemy personnel themselves but to help guide TA troops dispatched on the ground to take into custody escaping crew. The Sea King from D Flight wasn’t on station for very long, without seeing anyone but having found the smouldering remains of that aircraft, before it was recalled. There had been more air clashes over the North Sea again. RAF aircrew were out there with rescue efforts to be mounted. There was no one to successfully find this time though. Recall was once more about to be made before a call came from a warship. There was Royal Netherlands Navy vessel out there. HNLMS Callenburgh had been absent when her homeport of Den Helder fell to Soviet tanks crashing through the main gate but, like D Flight, she was one of many current defenders of Britain. Callenburgh had been attacked by a Soviet aircraft with a bomb, just the one of many dropped, hitting her. She could still fight because the damage wasn’t that severe but she had casualties. The most serious ones needed evacuation. Pelican 14 took a trio of Dutch sailors off to fly them back to Britain. Not long after returning to Leconfield, the air raid siren sounded there. D Flight personnel sought shelter and donned their chemical warfare suits. Leconfield was hit by bombs from a pair of Sukhoi-24s. Most of the British Army units here were already gone and there was just the one Sea King helicopter flying. For reasons unknown to themselves, the Soviets used first-rate strike aircraft here. They put bombs on the runway – this had once been known as RAF Leconfield and maintained a part-used runway – and into several buildings. No gas was used, just high explosives. There were deaths and injuries with D Flight suffering four men hurt but none of theirs killed. Pelican 14 was untouched. RAF Hawk T1As would show up too late and both attackers got away unharmed. Within the hour, D Flight had another mission. They went out in the darkness to look for RAF & US Air Force aircrew in downed aircraft over the North Sea. None of the Americans were found but there was the two-man crew of one of the brand-new Tornado F2 interceptors who were plucked from the sea. They pilot spoke of how he’d downed a trio of MiGs but his silent navigator had nothing to say. He was looked over by the Sea King’s medics with nothing physically wrong found. There was something up with him though: he was a broken man who wouldn’t be flying again after today.

Day #7 brought with it another flight to a damaged warship out in the North Sea. This was a Royal Navy one which had been bombed and was in a bad way. There were casualties aboard who needed evacuation. The Fleet Air Arm had their own air-sea rescue helicopters, deployed in peacetime often rescuing civilians like the RAF did, but those were based along the South Coast and thus far from here. Pelican 14 found HMS Andromeda on radar but the smoke coming from here was far easily to see. The frigate was still on fire. All efforts were being made at fighting those fires. Bringing the Sea King in was done slowly due to smoke, with the avoiding of danger with a collision helped by how the warship was positioned against the wind. This was done to help stop the spread of the flames and Pelican 14 took advantage. Six sailors were taken off the Andromeda, all burns victims. There was a prisoner aboard the frigate. He was a Soviet pilot (not from the aircraft which had caused all this but another one) which the warship’s captain wanted taken off. Pelican 14 refused to take him. They had casualties to get back to receive medical attention and the distraction of a hostile passenger aboard wasn’t wanted even with the extra crew member there for security. Two of those rescued sailors died before they could get back to land and another one lost his life not long afterwards. D Flight had done all that they could for them but such was the way of war: people died. At Leconfield, there was another helicopter there when Pelican 14 returned. This was a Gazelle HT3. It was a training helicopter and far smaller than the remaining Sea King here. It, its crew and ground personnel trained in Gazelle maintenance had arrived to join D Flight in search-&-rescue missions. The lighter helicopter couldn’t replace the missing Sea King but was assigned to take part in rescue missions overland and along the coastline instead of far out to sea. Swan 12 would start flying this evening. Pelican 14 got airborne before Swan 12 was ready to fly. The Sea King went towards The Wash again to look for downed aircrew. More than halfway there, the orders were rescinded. Enemy air activity at low level, plus reported SAM emplacements along the Norfolk shoreline, had been decided made the mission too dangerous. Those aboard the helicopter wondered why it had taken so long to decide that… no one had told them about those missiles either! Arriving back home once more, there was a briefing for everyone. Some news was shared. It brought with it silence and dread among all those who heard it. The war had taken an unwelcome turn.

[James G]

Defenders of Britain; three


Day #1 started for HMS Dovey with the small ship tied up alongside at Govan in Scotland. She spent most of the day there, not sailing until the evening. The minesweeper had to wait for her crew to arrive. Those were reservists with the Dovey herself being a vessel of the Royal Naval Reserves (RNR). From across the Central Belt of Scotland, men and women came to Govan to board the ship to which they were assigned. Stores and fuel were taken aboard too. Govan was on the Clyde and lay on the western side of Glasgow. That Sunday was quite a day for the city. It wasn’t a case of mass rioting and pandemonium – much of that would happen on Monday as Transition to War measures came into effect – but instead a lot of confusion and fear. Those travelling to Govan came through the city and to the commercial port where their ship was. A lot of people were thinking that with the war having started, Glasgow was about to get bathed in nuclear fire. There was movement to the port but also out of the city to take into account for those aiming to get to their ship. Delays were incurred for more than half of the crew before they could reach the Dovey. There were thirty of them: seven being women. Their ship was a little one. A hundred and fifty feet long with a displacement when fully loaded of less than nine hundred tons, it wasn’t a case of the minesweeper being tiny but she certainly was far from the size of a traditional warship. That she would be though: a ship off to see war. There were ten sister-ships of hers spread throughout the country with the RNR and all had been built in recent years: Dovey was only two years old. Their wartime role was to go far from shore and keep the seas off Britain clear of mines. Sailing just after six o’clock, the minesweeper went down the Clyde. Orders had come from the 10th Mine Countermeasures Squadron before she got underway. The captain shared those with his first officer & navigation officer. These weren’t unexpected. There would be a deployment as per pre-war exercises to go out into North West Approaches and link up with another minesweeper crewed by RNR personnel. There would be operations to clear away minefields expected to be laid soon or, if the Soviets had been getting ready for this for some time, already in-place. Those mines which the Dovey would be looking to clear were anti-submarine ones. The work would be dangerous, as minesweeping always was, and there was the chance of direct enemy action against them too. Past Scotstoun, Clydebank and then Dumbarton the ship was taken. The river widened. The extensive port of Greenock was off the port side while to starboard was the Rhu Narrows. Faslane Naval Base was up there with helicopters seen in the sky. Another submarine base was also passed by to starboard not long afterwards, this one being Holy Loch where the US Navy had many of its ballistic missile boats based. It would be those submarines which called Faslane and Holy Loch home which the Dovey would be protecting by the work her crew would be doing. Soon enough, the Clyde Estuary was left behind and into the open Firth of Clyde she went. Next up was the North Channel as the Dovey turned to starboard and headed for the North Atlantic. Making twelve knots, it was dark now on this summer’s evening. The first day of war was coming to and end but the reservists heading out to war had seen none of that. The following days would be very different.

Day #2 brought with it the Dovey operating alone and thus unable to really do much. She was supposed to be joined by HMS Helford. That sister-ship was meant to come and join her in the North West Approaches after coming out of Belfast. There’d been an engine problem with the second minesweeper not long after she too had set sail late yesterday. Helford had gone back to Belfast overnight, taken under tow by a nearby civilian ship. Those aboard the Dovey didn’t want to think about the humiliation for their fellow RNR crew at that. A message from 10th Squadron HQ said that that ship should be coming back out soon enough: in the meantime, the Dovey was to take up her station and wait. If any mines were sighted, they should be dealt with as best as the crew would do on their own. That wasn’t much. River-class minesweepers were designed to operate in pairs at a minimum. Between the two ships, or up to four of them, nets would be strung which would be lowered deep to the ocean floor. Anchored mines waiting for a submarine to pass by would have their mooring lines cut leaving the untethered mines to float to the surface where the would be destroyed. The Dovey had a 40mm gun to finish the job. Without a second minesweeper, there wasn’t much for just one to do! Mines would be positioned below the waterline and out of sight. Determined not to do nothing, the ship’s captain had to do something. He had his crew on lookout for any floating mines which might have come loose – it happened – which were still a danger and also keep a watch on the seas & skies. Binoculars were handed out beyond those usually with them and the reservists aboard spent the day on observation duty. No mines were spotted on the water yet there were ships and aircraft seen. Two civilian ships were located during the day. Radio contact was made with each. They had been far out to sea when the war started and were heading for port now following instructions made to do so for all non-military vessels. Dovey reported their positions onwards in case anyone had missed them so that there was knowledge of their approach towards Britain. Up above, in clear skies, there were a total of seven different confirmed aircraft sightings. Five of them were friendlies, one was unknown and the seventh certainly hostile. The unidentified one was a propeller-driven aircraft far off that no one could be sure whether what it was in terms of type and nationality. Then there was the hostile one. It was a Soviet Bear: a Tupolev-95. The huge aircraft was trailing smoke from her starboard side and circled around as it got lower and lower in the sky. The Dovey’s main gun had an anti-air role, so did the pair of mounted GPMG 7.62mm machine guns, but that aircraft was out of range. Men were seen jumping from it into the sea and then into the water the Bear came. The splash was something to see! One of the petty officers disputed a suggestion by one of the Wrens aboard – those female reservists who’d gone to war like the male ones – that those men wouldn’t be left out there to die: she didn’t want to see them rescued. The captain had no intention of doing that at all. The Dovey wasn’t going to go save them when they were looking for mines. His expressed position on that ended all discussion among his subordinates.

Day #3 saw the Helford link up with the Dovey. The two of them moved further out to sea and then their minesweeping work begun. A deployment was made of the Wire Sweep 9 nets down into the deep ocean. There was some rough weather encountered through the morning but it wasn’t enough to disrupt this operation. The nets went down into the water and sunk to the bottom: they only came up a few dozen feet off the ocean floor rather than all the way to the surface. It was down below where tethering lines would be found though with any mines above them. Through the water, the Dovey and her sister-ship towed the wire-cutting system. An operational box had been chosen for them to work in. There was no direct intelligence that this particular stretch of open water would be mined nor that Royal Navy & US Navy submarines would come through here. Such a patch of the ocean off Britain’s shores was swept though. Those operating the system up above waited for any contact that the nets made. There was none. For many hours, the process went on. The sea conditions got worse yet this continued unabated. Minesweeping was often a boring task with little pay off. That was a good thing though. These waters hadn’t been mined. Once clear, an encoded message was sent off with the declaration that there had been a successful sweep: if submarines were going to come this way, they would know it was clear. The two minesweepers moved on. There were plenty of areas to be swept. This was going to go on for some time. The Dovey had several personnel again up on watch with their binoculars. They were fewer in number than yesterday though more than usual: four extra reservists than the minimal requirement for operations had been taken aboard at Govan. The ship had accommodation for even more due to her secondary training role yet had sailed before a further two reservists had arrived to take up extra spots. No ships were seen yet there were aircraft in the skies. The Dovey was operating far from land. The shores of Donegal in the Republic of Ireland were fifty miles off, Scotland almost eighty. Out over the open ocean, they were seeing aircraft at distance when gaps opened up in the clouds. Two friendlies and two unknowns were spotted with all of those far off. No more dramatic splashes occurred with crashes among them either. Things seemed calm, almost as if there wasn’t a war on. This was similar to a training mission… until there was a shout of alarm from one of the lockouts. He’d not seen something in the sky but on the surface. A periscope! Dovey went to action stations. Damage control parties rushed into position and the main gun was readied: she’d fire shells if necessary despite the low likelihood of those doing anything against a submarine. Helford was ready too. That lone sighting was all that there was though. No attack was made and no more sign of a submarine came. The captain took his lookout’s word for it with what he had seen and could only thank luck for a non-attack. There were other crew members who weren’t so sure that there had been anything though.

Day #4 witnessed more of the same. Minesweeping wasn’t for anyone who wanted to see ‘fun’. The WS9 system was deployed deep down below and there was no contact made with any mines lurking in the depths. New boxes were swept without the nets cutting any mooring lines. The captain had received a message from the 10th Squadron stating that, due to the observations made by the Dovey–Helford partnership plus other pairs elsewhere in British waters, there had been no pre-war minelaying either by Soviet ships nor submarines. However, that didn’t mean that they didn’t have submarines out laying mines now: if they were doing it with ships, they would have to be taking many risks with disguised vessels. News was short on what else was happening. The war was still going on and there were Soviet submarines at sea as well as aircraft flying reconnaissance & attack missions, but that was it as far as wider information came. The Dovey was to keep doing what it was. The sea conditions got worse. The little ship was thrown about quite a bit by waves and the wind. For those aboard, if they didn’t have sea legs, they wouldn’t have been at sea. RNR personnel were retired sailors with the Royal Navy, Royal Fleet Auxiliary & Merchant Marine. Worse conditions than these had been seen. Still… it was no easy going. A couple of aircraft were seen, all friendly, but only through gaps in the clouds above. One of them came down pretty low. It wasn’t in trouble like that Bear had been but was instead dropping sonobuoys. The American P-3 Orion responded to the Dovey’s radio communication to confirm she was hunting a submarine. That report sent off yesterday about the possible sighting of a submarine had been some distance away from where the lookout was convinced he’d seen that periscope so it wasn’t known if that was the same contact being sought. There were no P-3s based in Britain in peacetime but the minesweeper’s captain didn’t think this aircraft was flying all the way from a home base. He assumed it must be calling somewhere like RAF Machrihanish home for the time being. A friendly aircraft seen yesterday had been a Nimrod MR2 also out clearly looking for submarines too. On seeing the Orion so close, the captain of the Dovey worried over what was done below. Mines his ship would handle. A submarine was something else. Finally, the American aircraft flew off. The minesweeper carried on with her search for any mines laid in these waters but, once, more the hunt was a fruitless one. Frustrating no success was in some ways yet it was still a good thing. Friendly submarines could pass through these waters without worry of hitting one.

Day #5 saw the close sighting of a pair of warships. There was a Royal Navy frigate first and then later a Canadian destroyer. Each came reasonably close enough to the Dovey. That second warship had taken damage. There’d been a fire started after a missile hit and the HMCS Gatineau was in a bad shape. Heading now into port for repairs, she was a reminder to those aboard the Dovey of what was happening elsewhere to others at war. All they had seen of that was a shot-up aircraft crashing into the sea and maybe a submarine’s periscope. The searching for any mines laid by the Soviets in the North West Approaches continued. Mines were found later in the day. The nets down blow cut through the mooring lines of a trio of them. What came to the surface were what NATO had codenamed ‘Cluster Bay’ mines without knowing the Soviet’s own name for them. No longer tethered to the ocean floor, they floated to the surface. Each was armed with a (presumably) active warhead with the capacity to take out a submarine. That explosion wouldn’t have to be big when taking place far below due to the pressure being exerted on a submarine’s hull from the ocean. Now those mines were exposed where the Dovey could get at them. She engaged two of them while leaving the third to the Helford. The main gun fired for the first time in the war. The first shells were fired for ranging purposes for a short barrage was made with ones set with contact fuses. The Bofors-40 was an old weapon on a new ship. It worked as designed though. The two mines were soon hit and they exploded on the surface. Safe distance had been maintained but the detonations of them was still quite impressive to those aboard the minesweeper. The Helford got her’s too. Standing orders were for an area swept where mines had been discovered to be gone back over once more less others had been missed. The WS9 system wasn’t perfect and the irregularities of the ocean floor meant that there could have been others missed. Three mines didn’t seem to be many either: it was thought that a submarine would have laid more than just a trio. No further contact was made though with any mooring lines. A report back to the 10th Squadron was made and they issued instructions for the Dovey and her sister-ship to move on. That was done as they headed for another one of those operational boxes while behind them there were flights made of submarine hunting aircraft. They were looking for a submarine which would have laid those mines. No success was reported though from them. Aboard the Dovey, those reservists crewing her didn’t enjoy the success they had achieved. They were worried the real possibility of a minelaying submarine coming after them to stop the minesweeping.

Day #6 witnessed the sinking of the Dovey’s partner in her minesweeping. Helford had attached to the rear of that ship the net strung behind & below her though was some distance away off the port side. All of a sudden, a jet of seawater which shot upwards into the sky off the Helford’s bow. A crump came next. An underwater explosion had taken place with only these effects seen and heard above the Dovey. The bow was blown off. There were men thrown into the water. Down that second River-class ship started to go. At once, the Dovey cut her side of the net free less she be dragged down to the sea bottom by the rapidly sinking Helford. Twenty-seven crew were aboard when that ship had been hit. How many of them were still alive when her stern disappeared it wasn’t known. Eleven got off though with all but two initially in the ship’s lifeboat. Both of them were pulled to safety soon enough. They couldn’t be taken aboard the Dovey. A call was made for rescue to come to them but the surviving minesweeper had to sail away with haste. No mine had struck the Helford: it was a submarine firing a torpedo. It would be gunning for the Dovey and so the only thing to do was to make a run for it. The top speed of fourteen knots was achieved with the two diesel engines giving everything they had. A zig-zag routing was taken too. Whether that would defeat a modern torpedo wasn’t known but it sure was tried. No attack came though. Further and further away the ship went with anxious eyes cast backwards many a time. That same P-3 seen the other day was spotted flying back to the waters from which the Dovey ran from. It almost flew right overhead the minesweeper with several crew members seeing weapons hanging underneath. They wished it well. The escape was successful. There was no torpedo attack on the Dovey made. She was left all alone now and without a partner needed with which to commence minesweeping operations in waters where that task was certainly needed. Night fell while there was a wait for the 10th Squadron to issue new orders. Those aboard could only speculate on what they might be. It was very late before the new instructions arrived.

Day #7 brought with it the Dovey carrying out those new instructions. The old minehunter HMS Kellington was on the way with an arrival projected tomorrow. Built in the Fifties, she was crewed by regular Royal Navy personnel despite her age. There would be no towing of the WS9 system down between the Kellington and the Dovey (the former wasn’t equipped to do so) and therefore for the Dovey, there would just be ‘general support’ given. That other ship was going to physically go after mines rather than just sweep at random. The area where this would take place was near to where the Dovey had found that trio of anti-submarine mines the day before yesterday. There were others there and this was known because a submarine had been lost after hitting one. The name and even nationality of the lost boat wasn’t revealed – Dovey’s captain believed that he would have been told if it was a British vessel yet that was just his opinion on that matter – with all that was said was that there were mines there. The orders would mean that the minesweeper wouldn’t be able to do much. Her lookouts would be used and maybe her gun too: that was it. In the meantime, waiting for the Kellington didn’t include going there until that vessel arrived. The large island of Islay was behind where the Dovey was, close to thirty miles behind and out of sight. The weather had much improved though the seas weren’t exactly calm. The engines ran and a slow speed was maintained to keep the ship where she was waiting. It left the reservists aboard feeling as if they had nothing to do, nothing to contribute to the ongoing war. Morale had been good throughout the voyage. Thoughts of their families back home when there was concern over a nuclear war had been put out of mind when there was boring but arduous work to be done. Even after the Helford had been lost, those on the Dovey had maintained their spirits especially since they knew that many of the crew of their fellow minesweeper had been lost when she was sunk. Now there was nothing to do but wait. The captain had them run an attack drill where they manned action stations when faced with a hypothetical enemy aircraft. There was plenty of ammunition for the main gun but no shells were actually fired despite all of the steps being run through as if it was: when those shells might be needed wasn’t known and wasting them was certainly not going to be done. After the drill, another aircraft as sighted but again it was a friendly one – another Nimrod – instead of anything that the Dovey was prepared to fight. A secure message was received afterwards, one of the captain’s eyes only. It wouldn’t be one whose contents he would share for it certainly wouldn’t improve morale. The message contained a particular phrase, which was one encoded in a meaningless manner. He didn’t need to check on what ‘Tangerine Midnight’ meant. He knew all of the current Tangerine codes. Nuclear weapons had been used today, at sea in terms of the Midnight clarification, and the Dovey was being informed of what the war had now become. The war at sea was now a nuclear one.

[elfastball7]

Jan 19, 2020 20:22:14 GMT James G said:

Nuclear weapons had been used today

Had a feeling some instant sunshine would be coming soon

[James G]

Jan 20, 2020 3:42:08 GMT elfastball7 said:

Jan 19, 2020 20:22:14 GMT James G said:

Nuclear weapons had been used today

Had a feeling some instant sunshine would be coming soon

Oh very much so!

[stevep]

Jan 20, 2020 8:54:35 GMT James G said:

Jan 20, 2020 3:42:08 GMT elfastball7 said:

Had a feeling some instant sunshine would be coming soon

Oh very much so!

  James G,

  So the big guns are now out.  And it started at sea but I suspect it won't stay that way for long.

  One thing that occurred to me this morning.  Especially with what was initially thought to be a full scale invasion and the growing fear of nuclear war what is happening to the royals?  I suspect that the queen might well insist on staying in Britain, albeit somewhere secret and hopefully secure.  However I wonder if Charles, Diana and their two young sons might have been sent somewhere safer, such as Canada say?

  Steve

[Dan]

Jan 20, 2020 15:32:59 GMT stevep said:

Jan 20, 2020 8:54:35 GMT James G said:

Oh very much so!

  James G,

  So the big guns are now out.  And it started at sea but I suspect it won't stay that way for long.

  One thing that occurred to me this morning.  Especially with what was initially thought to be a full scale invasion and the growing fear of nuclear war what is happening to the royals?  I suspect that the queen might well insist on staying in Britain, albeit somewhere secret and hopefully secure.  However I wonder if Charles, Diana and their two young sons might have been sent somewhere safer, such as Canada say?

  Steve

This is where we find out they were on a fast ship heading for Canada that was hit with a nuclear torpedo fired by accident.