Appologies for the long wait, a little matter of some surgery got in the way. Enjoy. 
*
D+7.1041 hours, 28th April. Charlottenberg, West Berlin. A distant rumbling woke Lance-Corporal Lucy Hargreaves from her nap.
“What the hell was that, Mike?” She asked the Royal Engineer she was now sharing her fox-hole with.
“Building collapsing, Lucy.” He replied. “I guess it was damaged by artillery and has just given up.”
*
There were some advantages to sharing a hole with an engineer. Mike had scavenged enough materials to turn the hole into a mini-bunker, adding overhead cover made out of corrugated iron and a door taken from a ruined house held up with baulks of wood.
The hole was also now host to a selection of weapons, there was the Minimi Light Machine Gun that Hargreaves had acquired in preference to her rifle, but there was also an L86A2 Light Support Weapon that Mike had found lying on the battlefield, plus his own L85A2 rifle. Hargreaves had also picked up an AK74M from an NVA soldier, but had dumped it in the corner of the hole having declared that it looked like its owner had kept it in a latrine.
As 5.56mm ammunition was now getting a bit short, Hargreaves was now using the LSW in preference to the LMG to harass any enemy soldiers she spotted. Mike was using a fine pair of East German binoculars to spot for her; he had told her that the previous owner had been ‘reluctant’ to part with them, but that he had been ‘persuasive’.
*
“Got some movement up by that burnt-out BMP, Lucy.” Mike said a moment later. “Looks like three Sov motor riflemen.”
“Bit cheeky of them, Mike.” Hargreaves replied, bringing up the LSW. “I’ve got them.” She added before squeezing off three rounds.
One motor rifleman went down with a round through his chest, a second collapsed with a stomach wound, the third ducked back into cover, unscathed. A few seconds later he began to drag the wounded man back into cover; Hargreaves debated weather to put another round into the leg of the wounded man, but decided it was not worth the expenditure of an extra bullet.
She leaned back down into the hole having safed the LSW and took another bite out of the ham and mustard sandwich that Mike had made after the last re-supply. She suspected that the supply people had raided a German hypermarket as this meal was not the standard army fayre. Despite being covered in dirt and gun oil it was delicious.
“Nice sandwich, Mike, you’ll make someone a very nice husband one day.” She said laughing.
*
“Okay this is likely to be our last sortie, so let’s make it a good one.” Sergeant William Donnelly had said to his co-pilot and TOW gunner, Sergeant Donald Campbell, as they went through their final pre-flight checks before the Lynx AH.7 took off from the Olympic Stadium Complex.
The Lynx was now down to its last load of eight TOW-2B missiles, which did indeed make any further sorties unlikely. Aviation fuel was also running short, restricting how many sorties the garrison’s remaining helicopters could now fly.
Donnelly and Campbell’s Lynx had been assigned to an armed reconnaissance mission, rather than being sent after any specific target. However they were available to any ground unit that needed support.
“This is Charlie Two Five Niner.” An American accented voice suddenly said over the radio.
“We could do with some air support down here…it’s like the damned Night of the Living Dead down here; we pop off half a dozen of them only for ten more to appear, over.” “Charlie Two Five Niner this is Echo One Three, we have eight TOW missiles looking for a home, please send your loc, over.”
A very relieved American captain relayed the position of his unit to the helicopter. Following the directions Donnelly took the Lynx down as low as he dared, fortunately Berlin had been built with wide main roads, which he could take advantage of.
“That looks like our customers up ahead, Bill.” Campbell remarked.
In front of the helicopter was a group of four M1A2 Abrams and five Strykers, all frantically exchanging fire with a much larger group of Soviet armoured vehicles. Donnelly knew that this section of the perimeter was critical to the rest of it being held, so he had a duty to do what he could to prevent the Americans from being overrun.
The Soviets were not expecting an attack from the air, so it was child’s play to pick off several vehicles before the Lynx had to switch firing positions. However as they were lining up to fire their last TOW Donnelly caught sight of something in his peripheral vision.
“***, a Hind!”
1125 hours. T.A Centre, Fort Charlotte, Lerwick, Shetland. Major Hunter was halfway through a bacon buttie when a sergeant burst into his office, out of breath and red in the face.
“What is it, Sergeant, can’t you see I’m finishing off a late breakfast?” Hunter said.
“Sorry, Sir.” The NCO replied. “But we’ve just received some strange reports from the RAF. They say that four aircraft from the current raid heading for the Mainland have broken off and are heading here, and that they are going too slow for bombers.”
“I see.” The Major said as he put down his sandwich and picked up the phone. “Get me the duty officer at RAF Sex…Saxa Vord now!”
“Duty Officer, Flight Lieutenant Radcliff speaking.” “This is Major Hunter at Fort Charlotte, what can you tell me about these four aircraft heading for us?”
“I’m afraid we’ve lost them, Sir, dropped below our radar horizon you see.” Major Hunter started to interrupt at this moment.
“Don’t worry, Sir, AWACS is still tracking them and passing the information to us. They’re very odd targets too, Sir, they’re not flying fast enough to be Backfire bombers, so we’re not too sure what they can be.” “Can fighters intercept them before they are overhead?” Hunter asked.
“Afraid not, Sir; the nearest fighters are dealing with the raid and we can’t spare anything that will arrive in time.” “I see.” The Major replied. “In that case I suggest you alert the guard force at your end immediately and I’ll put my QRF platoon on immediate stand-by.”
*
“Thirty seconds, Comrades!” The loadmaster in Major Pribluda’s IL-76 yelled.
The Major and the rest of the planeload of Spetsnaz got to their feet and hooked up. The paratroopers shuffled forward towards the two side exits, while the loadmaster opened the rear ramp, filling the fuselage with the roar of rushing air.
Pribluda stepped forward to the starboard exit as the red light came on, readying himself for the jump.
“Go, go, go!” The loadmaster yelled as the green light came on, slapping Pribluda on the back.
The major leapt out into space, trusting that his parachute would function.
*
The Soviet pathfinders had forced the two Lovat Scouts back into their Land Rover; half of the group were hiding in the rear of the vehicle, while the rest had seized a Toyota Land cruiser and were following close behind; and were now driving back towards the main road.
“There’s a Vehicle Check Point up here.” The scout driving remarked.
“You will get us through it.” He was told.
The driver briefly glanced at his companion, who nodded; both men knew what they had to do. The driver could already see the VCP ahead; the troops manning it recognised the Land Rover and were taking no particular interest in it.
Suddenly the driver slammed on the brakes, which threw their Soviet captors to the floor of the vehicle in a heap, both scouts leapt out, the driver taking the key with him, heading for the other side of the stone walls by the side of the road. In the confusion the Toyota ran into the rear of the Land Rover, preventing its Soviet occupants from exiting easily.
“Hit them! Hit them!” The driver yelled as he took cover.
The soldiers at the VCP were taken by surprise by what unfolded in front of them, but not for long. One man swung round a GPMG and opened fire, riddling the Land Rover with 7.62mm bullets.
The Toyota tried to reverse out of the killing zone but did not get far, coming to rest against a stone wall, its windscreen shattered and body full of bullet holes. A few surviving pathfinders bailed out of the vehicles but were brought down by single shots.
1131 hours. H.Q Scotland District, Craigiehall, Edinburgh. Lieutenant General Campbell had been in a meeting of the Regional Emergency Committee in Leith when the first news of something unusual happening in Shetland had reached him. Getting back to his headquarters by road would have taken at least an hour, depending on traffic, so he had been very glad to have an Army Air Corps Gazelle AH.1 at his disposal which brought him back to Craigiehall in less than ten minutes.
“Do we know any more, Brydon?” Campbell asked his Chief of Staff as he strode into the ops room in the converted hardened Anti-Aircraft Operations Room.
“Not much, Sir.” Brigadier Brydon replied. “All we know for sure is that the RAF have tracked four targets travelling too slowly to be ‘Backfires’ heading for Shetland. My guess is that they could be transports carrying some sort of raiding party.”
Campbell sat down and considered his next move. There was not a great deal of information for him to base his decisions on.
“Alert the QRF, but don’t send them off just yet. I don’t want to go off half cocked until we know more about what is going on.”
The general looked across to the projected map of Shetland that now appeared on the far wall. It showed all of the Key Points in the TAOR plus troop positions.
“The garrison doesn’t have it easy up there.” He remarked. “Even for a relatively small patch there are a lot of things to protect.
“What we need to work out is what are the Soviets after that they couldn’t attack by air?”
“The big oil terminal at Sullom Voe, Sir?” Brydon wondered.
“No, I don’t think so; a missile in the right place would blow that place to bits. It has to be something they want to capture and take back with them.”
“Bit like the Bruneval Raid then, Sir?”
Campbell looked back from the map to his Chief of Staff.
“That’s it!” He said exultantly. “They’re after the radar station at Saxa Vord; if they capture that, even temporarily then they’ll have access to untold secrets about how our air defences work.
“Forget what I said a minute ago, get the QRF moving right away. I’m damned if I’m going to be responsible for the loss of vital secrets to the Soviets.”
1136 hours. Over northern Hokkaido, Japan. The MQ-1 Predator UAV wheeled like a large bird as it began its second run over the target area. Below was a scene of frenzied activity which the UAV faithfully recorded and sent back to its controllers.
A few wisps of oily black smoke found their way up to the altitude that the Unmanned Air Vehicle was flying at. The small aircraft took a great interest in the source of this smoke.
“Looks like they’re putting elements of a motor rifle division ashore.” One of the controllers commented as he watched the screen.
“Looks like a couple of
Alligator class LSTs and a
Lebed class ACV on fire, so the air strikes have achieved something.” Another added.
“That looks like something interesting over…”
The picture suddenly wobbled, dropped down, before dissolving into snow.
“There goes another one, looks like we pushed our luck again.”
“This is getting expensive, but at least they’re not manned aircraft.”
1140 hours. White House Situation Room, Washington D.C. “…at least they’re not manned aircraft.” The voice over the speaker said as the National Security Council watched the same pictures, relayed via satellite.
“Amen to that.” General Jumper muttered.
The President looked away from the now blank screen towards the air force Chief of Staff.
“I second that, General.” POTUS said. “Better to lose a few million dollars worth of drone than a human pilot.” He turned to another screen on the wall of the Situation Room.
“Admiral Fallon, just how bad are things in northern Japan?”
“We’re holding the Soviets at the moment, Mr President.” The Commander, US Pacific Command replied.
“Our air assets and those of our Japanese allies have been hitting those landing beaches round the clock, but there is one hell of a battle going on up there. The Soviets have been pushing in a lot of fighters and attack aircraft and my air commanders tell me that the airspace up there is one big fur-ball; I’ve no estimates on losses yet, but they’re going to be heavy.
“Defending forces are at the moment mainly drawn from the Japanese Northern Army, specifically the 2nd and 7th Divisions, and the 5th and 11th Brigades. We only have a few specialist personnel, such Forward Air Controllers, on the ground at the moment.
“The Japanese are moving more forces to the area to push back this raid, or invasion, but they do face a problem, they have an almost crippling shortage of military ordnance and POL; they’ve never stockpiled it in the same way that we, or our NATO allies have done. Without help and soon they’re going to start running short in critical areas.” “No wonder they’re screaming for our help.” The President replied. “Just what have we promised them?” He asked the National Security Advisor.
“We’ve sent the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit; it was supposed to have been assigned to the KTO for possible amphibious raids; and we have also diverted the National Guard’s 81st Armored Brigade, which was also supposed to be heading for Korea.
“The Australians and New Zealanders have also decided to send their combined brigade to Japan rather than Korea.”
The President leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment.
“It doesn’t matter whether this is a raid, or an invasion.” He said calmly. “It’s doing its job – it has drawn off aircraft and troops badly needed in Korea. Yet we can’t let our Japanese allies down; we’re caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.”
1145 hours. Park Crescent, Harrow Weald, London. “Behind me you can see what Londoners have begun to call Ground Zero.” The reporter from Fox News said somewhat breathlessly. “Only a few feet behind me a huge Russian thermobaric bomb, a weapon that when it explodes creates heat and blast similar to that of a small nuclear bomb.
“When that weapon went off in this quiet residential neighbourhood it destroyed everything within three hundred meters, reducing houses to brick dust, autos to slag and people to ash.
“You can see here how the asphalt melted in the heat and was pushed out like water before the blast wave before re-hardening. Here and there the partly melted carcases of autos and other vehicles have been fused into the road surface like some sort of macabre pieces of modern art; who knows how many of these vehicles had people in them.
“Why the Russians decided to use such a powerful weapon in an area where there was a risk of mass civilian casualties is a question many people have been asking. There are military bases not too far away from here and it is pretty clear that the bomber crew dropped their weapon off target, something they can not be blamed for. Those to blame are the old men in Moscow who have sanctioned the use of such a weapon in a densely populated urban area.
“The death toll from this weapon is not yet known, the British authorities have been very cagey over exact numbers, but it must run into the hundreds, possibly even the low thousands. However despite this horrific attack Londoners I have spoken to have not been cowed and none seem to be disheartened, everyone still believes in an eventual NATO victory.
“Voicing some of these sentiments the Mayor of London had this to say earlier this morning.”
“Yesterday terror and destruction were brought to the streets of this city; there is no other way to put it. In its continued attack against Britain the Soviet Union chose to use what many people would classify as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, a weapon, which if it did not hit its intended target would kill many innocent civilians.
“Well we all know now that this appalling weapon did not hit its target and the people of Harrow Weald suffered for that mistake. I do not condemn the crew of the bomber, three of whom were killed by their own bomb, but those who took the decision to put that bomb onboard the aircraft. It is they who now have the blood of innocent Londoners on their hands.
“This is not the first time that London has come under Soviet attack, nor is it the first time that London has suffered under aerial bombardment. I would say to those in the Kremlin who chose to mount this terrible attack to look back at history – Londoners were not cowed into surrender by being bombed in the past and they will not be cowed now! Whatever difficulties may face us in the days ahead we will continue to do our jobs and provide for our families, the old men in the Kremlin can not stop us from doing that.” “Defiant words there from the Mayor of London.” The reporter said. “Deliberately recalling the two previous world wars in which London was also bombed from the air but never stopped from functioning as a city.” The reporter touched his ear for a second. “News has just reached us that a statement from the British Ministry of Defence has just been issued to the press. In retaliation for the Soviet use of a thermobaric bomb against London the Royal Air Force has carried out a number of attacks against Soviet military targets, including airfields and a command bunker complex. The statement goes on to say that some of the weapons employed had thermobaric warheads, but that they were of a smaller and more accurate nature.
“Clearly the British government is sending a message to the Soviets that any use of thermobaric weapons on its soil will be met in kind. The difference in this case is that the British have not chosen targets where mass civilian casualties might be caused, a vast difference in war fighting philosophy.”
1150 hours. Scatsta Airport, Shetland. Major Pribluda noted that part of the terminal buildings were on fire as he limped towards the rally point; hardly the ‘capture intact’ that his orders had specified; as were a few light aircraft and a couple of helicopters. Scatsta was an unusual airport, while by volume of traffic it was Scotland’s fifth largest airport there were very few passenger carrying flights, there was also no bar, or bus and taxi connections to anywhere. What it did have were three large rooms for oil workers to put on their survival gear, something indicative of the airport’s main purpose – to serve the offshore oil industry.
[1] The Major had landed awkwardly on some concrete hard standing, rather than on the grass and had twisted his left ankle. His AKM-74 was singularly useless as a crutch and he was having some trouble getting around; looking on the bright side at least his ankle was not broken.
The British platoon guarding the airport had caused the Soviet paratroopers some problems during the drop, shooting several while they were still in their parachutes. However the British survivors had been driven off, though they were still in a position to bring down fire on the airport’s open spaces. As if to emphasise this point a few flecks of dust and small pieces of concrete were kicked up around Pribluda’s feet by British bullets, forcing him to move somewhat quicker than was comfortable. The Major finally dropped into cover next to the survivors of his H.Q platoon.
“We’re going to have to do something about the remaining British before their reinforcements arrive, or we’ll have a devil of a job getting aircraft in here.” He commented.
“It’s not going to be easy, Comrade Major. They are well dug in now and we are stretched a bit thin.”
“Well, we’ll just have to manage.” Pribluda replied.
1153 hours. Charlottenberg, West Berlin. “Shiese!” Kaptain Bock swore as the British Lynx flitted away before the cannon rounds his gunner had fired could hit home.
Once again he cursed the fact that his Mi-24VM was not armed with proper anti-aircraft weaponry.
“He’s not getting away this time!” Bock declared.
*
‘WHANG!’ ‘WHANG!’ ‘WHANG!’ ‘CRASH!’
“What the hell was that?” Sergeant Campbell exclaimed, twisting round in his seat.
“I think we just got hit, Don.” Sergeant Donnelly replied, checking the instruments for any signs of something wrong.
Indeed three 23mm shells had just punched through the rear cabin, fortunately with out exploding. The only damage they had caused was to shatter one window and punch holes in the cabin doors on both sides of the aircraft.
“Damn, he’s still with us.” Donnelly muttered. “Hold onto your hat, Don.”
While not any faster the Lynx was more agile than the ‘Hind’ and Donnelly was determined to stay alive. He took his aircraft down as low as he dared, flying down streets below rooftop level, however Kaptain Bock was equally determined to get his kill above all else.
The two helicopters charged down the wide Berlin main streets, the Lynx dodging from side to side and occasionally making a sharp turn, heading off in a new direction while the Hind’s gunner occasionally fired a short burst of 23mm cannon shells. Despite being rather one-sided, the fight had become stalemated, the Lynx could not escape, but neither could the ‘Hind’ score a kill.
‘BLEEP! BLEEP!’
“Oh Hell, Bingo fuel.” Donnelly commented. “I was hoping to run him out of fuel, not us.”
“WIRES!” Campbell suddenly screamed.
Donnelly pulled up just in time, sending the Lynx bounding up and over the power lines. Kaptain Bock, on the other hand, did not see the wires until it was too late.
“Bloody Hell, he’s hit them!” Donnelly exclaimed, looking over his shoulder watching the Mil-24 smash into the ground after becoming entangled in the wires.
“Well thank God for…oh ***!” Campbell just managed to say before the Lynx ploughed into a ruined apartment block and exploded.
*
The British infantrymen had been cheering as they watched the ‘Hind’ being dashed to pieces in front of them but had now fallen silent as the fireball that marked the death of the Lynx died away.
“Poor bastards didn’t have a chance.” Lance-Corporal Hargreaves muttered.
***
[1] The nearest bar is three miles away from the airport, see
link for more details.
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