UK atomic war attack predictions and civil defence plans

Exercise Grass Seed (1966)
A few major industrial and military places were listed in the late 1960s by the MoD and Home Office at the behest of Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson.

The [1966] Death of Bristol
It was a MoD symposium on atomic war, the effects of nuclear war and the civil defence response A Tu-95 bomber of the Soviet Air Force had taken off from its base in northern Russia and after 10 hours dropped a a-bomb just north of Bristol.

Operation Home Defense (1971-72)
The British PM, Sir Edward 'Ted' Heath, planned out an informal list of possible targets in 1970 and 1971 with the help of a few military leaders and civil experts. It was meant to build on the few major industrial and military places had already been listed in the late 1960s by his predecessor, Sir Harold Wilson. Both the lists was largely praised for thire strategic savvy, understanding of what the Soviets could do militarily (as much as they knew of it back then), logic and common sense.

The only complaints were that it went a bit soft on Northern Ireland by only destroying Belfast Docks with a relatively small nuke, rather than either using a bigger one or dropping a second small one on Belfast city itself. It was also considered demoralising that there wasn't any public release of the form, which did not happen until the 1990s, since it did not hide the assumed mass nuking of London and Birmingham.

Its official 1971-1972 version Operation Home Defence targets were as follows:
 * 24 towns and cities: Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Cardiff, Manchester, Southampton, Leeds, Newcastle/Gateshead, Bristol, Sheffield, Swansea, Hull, Teesside, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Stoke-on-Tent, Belfast, Huddersfield, Sunderland, Gillingham, Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone.
 * 14 centres of government: Central London, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Catterick, York, Preston, Cambridge, Dover, Reading, Salcombe, Brecon, Kidderminster, Armagh.
 * 23 RAF bases: Scampton, Waddington, Honington, Wittering, Marham, Coningsby, Lossimouth, Finningley, Bedford, Kinloss, Manston, Wattisham, Cottesmore, Wyton, St Mawgan, Machrihanish, Leeming, Valley, Brawdy, Coltishall, Yeovilton, Leuchars, Binbrook.
 * 14 USAF bases: Alconbury, Bentwaters, Woodbridge, Wethersfield, Lakenheath, Upper Heyford, Fairford, Boscombe Down, Pershore, Greenham Common, MIldenhall, Sculthorpe, Cranwell, Lyneham.
 * 10 radar stations: Flylingdales, Boulmer, Patrington, Bawdsey, Neatished, Buchan, Saxa Vord, Staxton Wold, Feltwell, Orford Ness.
 * 8 military control centres: Northwood, Plymouth, Pitreavie, Fort Southwick, High Wycombe, Ruislip, Bawtry, West Drayton.
 * 7 naval communications centres: Rugby, Criggion, Anthorn, Inskip, New Waltham, Londonderry, Thurso.
 * 6 naval bases: Faslane, Coulport, Holy Loch, Rosyth, Portsmouth, Devonport.

Later official criticism
Belfast City was now adequately hit, rather than just the docks next to it being hit. It was criticized by some for not hitting atomic plants and major infrastructure, such as Heathrow Airport. Experts also did question the size of some of the nukings at the time.
 * Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester were slated foe 1 or 2 airbursts of up to 5mt. A 5mt blast is 333 time more than the 15kt bomb that blew up Hiroshima in 1945!
 * Swansea and Leicester were slated for a 3mt ground burst.
 * Central London was not fully listed. It was slated for multiple 1mt air-bursts, but number was not definitively named. There it was also reckon that 2 1mt blast, either on the ground or in the air, would defiantly happen.
 * MoD Pig's Bay, Southend, Southend Airport], [[Tilbury Dock, RAF Woolfox Lodge, RAF Rattlesden, RAF Marham and RAF Warboys were not hit.

Basic assumptions
The Soviet deployment of the technically superior SS-20 missile from 1975 caused major concern in the NATO alliance.

In the early 1980s it was thought the UK could be wiped out with use of ~15% of the total Soviet nuclear arsenal. It was also assumed there would be a nuclear, chemical and conventional war across Europe and Turkey.

America chose to deploy in Europe from 1983 up to 464 USAF Gryphon Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCMs) that were based on the US Navy BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile, as well as 108 US Army Pershing II ballistic missiles. Some SLCM and ALCM were also deployed. RAF Molesworth and Greenham Air Base were the recipients of the non submarine launched missiles.

The theoretical OSL attack
Operation Square Leg was a 1980 British government home defence Command Post, MoD command and in field exercise which tested the Transition to War and Home Defence roles of the MoD and Government and a mock nuclear attack on the British Isles which assumed that 131 500Kt to 3Mt nuclear weapons would fall on Britain with a total yield of ~205 megatons with 69 ground bursts and 62 air burst occurring. Whist this was thought to be the most likely outcome some thought it could be worse, so the report also stated that a total strike in excess of 1,000Mt may also occur. This infact was nothing like the Soviet's Seven days to the River Rhine (1979) war plan.

The human toll was estimated at-
 * Dead- 29 million (53%)
 * Serious injuries 7 million (12%)
 * Short-term survivors 19 million (35%).
 * Long terms survivors 5 million (9%)

Later official criticism


The exercise was later critiqued because of-
 * 1) The exclusive use of megaton yield weapons with an average of 1.5 megatons, when in reality the Soviets warheads would be mixed and mostly in the low hundred kiloton range.
 * 2) Some thought an attack totalling 200Mt in yield was too low and it had to be assumed be much higher.
 * 3) No targets were chosen in Inner London are thus not attacked, such as the government offices at Whitehall, or RAF Northolt and Heathrow airport.
 * 4) Eastbourne, a stretch of empty County Armagh farmland and a small village in County Derry/Londonderry were hit for no obvious reason.
 * 5) According to some civil servants, the whole theory was apparently written up by panic-mongers, alarmists, sensationalists, doom-mongers, scare-mongers, warmongers, war-wackys, anti-communist fanatics, political skeptics and political cynics.

The theoretical OHR attack
A combined communications and civil defence exercise planned for September and October 1982.

Operation Exercise Hard Rock assumed a conventional war in Europe lasting 2–3 days was occering, during which the UK was to be attacked with conventional weapons followed up with a limited nuclear exchange with 54 warheads being used against various military targets at the end. After many public protests and CND's criticism of the scenario the exercise was postponed indefinitely.

It was predicted there would be 7.9 million dead and 5 million injured.

Later official criticism
The exercise was later critiqued because of-
 * 1) The scenario was ridiculed by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for it's severity.
 * 2) The New Statesman later claimed the targets were picked by political motivated MPs and not professionals working for the Ministry of Defence.
 * 3) The nuclear submarine base HMNB Clyde was not hit.

The media
Operation Square Leg was one of many military exercises used to estimate the results of the Soviet nuclear attack in the 1984 BBC drama Threads.

The New Statesman later claimed the targets in Operation Exercise Hard Rock were picked by political motivated MPs and not professionals working for the Ministry of Defence.

Public opinion


Naturally, the people of places like Newbury, which was near the Greenham Air Base were terrified and knew under any scenario, they were to die as end up piles of radioactive ash. This only helped prove CND's case for banning the bomb. People hated living with the concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) which had become de jure since the Cuban Missile Crisis and de facto since the early 1970s.

In September 1981 after a Welsh group, Women for Life on Earth, arrived at Greenham to protest against the decision of the British government to allow cruise missiles to be based there. The camp stayed in suite until 2000. It became ugly and violent as left winger agitators, members of the British Labour Party and local yobs tried to hijack it and the UK miners' strike of 1984–1985 so as to cause trouble for the British establishment during the early and mid 1980s. The British government then played on the apparent breakdown in public order and portrayed them all unfairly as an anti-establishment rabble and 'leftist' traitors.

250,000 worried people protested against Operation Exercise Hard Rock fearing it would provoke the Soviets and/or was a ruse to hide a covert attack on the USSR. 24 mostly Labour run councils refused to participate largely as part of a Labour party attempt to politicly undermine the government. Many people scaremongering Americans 'occupying' the UK under apparently false pretences in the 1950s, but neither did they like the 1980s anti-establishment rabble who did not understand that NATO needed to see off the Soviets once relations had broken down. They would have had proto-Glasnost after the Berlin Airlift, not mutually assured bloody mindedness!...

The United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which led to the removal of all nuclear missiles from the base which was completed by in March 1991, and the 501st TMW inactivated on 4 June 1991. The base closed soon afterwards, became a park in 1997 and a memorial was then erected in 2000. The base was never used to deploy nukes in anger, so was in the end a rather costly waste of time.

RAF Upper Heyford peace camp, was inspired by the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, peace camp was established on Easter Sunday 1982 and remained for over two years with activities designed to highlight the fact that the base had F-111 aircraft armed with nuclear weapons on fast response. It had earlier had nuclear armed British V-bombers. More than 4,000 people took part over four day protest-come-riot in 1983, with a total of 752 people were arrested.

RAF Upper Heyford closed in 1994 and was partly turned in to a housing instate and retail park in the 1990's. It was used at least for non nuclear wartime reposes.

Overkill?
As with all wars there are limitations to practicality and the risk of over kill, the destruction of what is supposed to be captured and one's own forces and their allies.

Also see

 * Germany's Fulda Gap
 * Finnish pseudo-neutrality
 * Swedish pseudo-neutrality
 * Seven days to the River Rhine (1979)
 * French nuclear plans and the Force de Dissuasion
 * The Swiss National Redoubt (1880-2010)
 * North German Plain
 * Operation Northern Norway
 * The southern Danube route
 * Soviet/NATO invasion of Finland
 * The week of war policy
 * Operation Gladio
 * Nicaraguan Civil War
 * Korean Demilitarized Zone
 * Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie
 * Greece, Turkey and southern Italy
 * The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
 * A nuclear\atomic holocaust or nuclear apocalypse

Links

 * 1) http://www.robedwards.com/2014/06/revealed-the-106-cold-war-nuclear-targets-across-the-uk.html
 * 2) https://falloutwarning.wordpress.com/category/uk/
 * 3) http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1981-02-05a.396.8
 * 4) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1981/nov/26/civil-defence-1
 * 5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg
 * 6) http://thisisnotengland.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=340
 * 7) http://tridentploughshares.org/using-as-an-example-the-effect-on-britain-of-a-trident-sized-force/
 * 8) https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/operation_square_leg_targets
 * 9) https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/operation_square_leg_targets_3
 * 10) http://addiator.blogspot.co.uk/2005/07/london-bombs-calm-down.html
 * 11) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Greenham_Common
 * 12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom#Attack_scenarios