The Third World War: August 1985

Conventional air attack on many parts of the country had already been heavy, particularly on ports, power stations and communication centres, with severe damage and heavy loss of life. Fears of further nuclear attack were widespread. As a result, it was not immediately possible to divert to the stricken cities and towns in the vast circle of damage more than a comparatively small proportion of the units of United Kingdom Land Forces. Police and civil defence forces were under heavy strain. The voluntary groups trained by local authorities to cope with civil emergency, as well as conventional or nuclear attack, and the RAYNET Ham radio communications linked to the local authority and public utility radio networks were invaluable. Equipment stockpiled by local authorities, acquired by grant-aided purchase in the recent past or more recently still by requisition, was a godsend. Against the background of the damage done in Britain in the past few weeks by conventional air attack the Birmingham disaster could have pushed the national situation out of control. What had been done for civil defence in the preceding few years was just enough to prevent this.

Delegation of power over military and civil defence resources had become the responsibility of the Headquarters of UK Land Forces. Representatives of the Prime Minister, the naval, air and military commands and the civil agencies controlling essential services were assembled there, in well-defended underground bunkers, hardened against attack or interference to communications, containing all necessary equipment.

The news media had used all their resources to cover the Birmingham disaster — though for the first twenty-four hours after the detonation all pictures from the scene were banned. Approach by road to the towns of the countryside surrounding Birmingham was impossible. Visual cover was therefore only obtainable through oblique scanning from the air. There had been commentary all day on television and radio. When the Prime Minister broadcast, she explained what had happened in the first nuclear attack on a British city — indeed upon any city in the Western world — and outlined what was being done to provide relief. She repeated urgent advice that all people outside the disaster area should stay where they were; no one could yet know whether, or where, in the United Kingdom there might be another attack.

The Prime Minister then went on to announce that the enemy had in his turn been struck by nuclear attack, with even greater force than that used on Birmingham. This was the first official intimation in the United Kingdom that the Soviet city of Minsk had been destroyed.

Her Majesty the Queen with her family, said the Prime Minister, would remain in London, and she, the Prime Minister, herself would, of course, do the same.

CHAPTER 26: A Devastating Response

A few minutes after the detonation of the nuclear weapon over Birmingham, as the huge damage from blast was being followed by swiftly spreading fire, and as millions throughout the British Isles reacted in dumb horror to the emergency transmissions on their television screens and on the radio, the President of the United States was speaking to the British Prime Minister. The time was 1035 hours Greenwich Mean Time, 0535 Eastern Standard Time. It was at once agreed that immediate retaliation was necessary, if only to avoid a catastrophic decline in civilian and military morale. The French President was called and gave his instant concurrence. As the other Allies were being informed instructions were already on their way to two SSBN, one American, one British, to launch two missiles each, targeted on the city of Minsk. The epicentre was to be directly over the middle of the city, at 3,000 metres. Each submarine reported a trouble-free launch, exactly on time, and the multiple warheads from the four missiles, tailored exactly to their task, detonated on target in quick succession. The effect was cataclysmic. It was the horror of Birmingham repeated, only many times worse, scarcely mitigated at all by civil defence precautions. There was no TV or radio reporting of the attack. The news spread nonetheless like wildfire round the world. Its impact was everywhere enormous but nowhere more so than within the Soviet Union and its satellites.

The hot-line was used again, to tell the Soviet leaders that this was a limited attack ordered as an inevitable reprisal and that a reply about negotiation would be given in three days. In the event this proved unnecessary.