A Neo-Atomic Tango Thru a World of Dreams

  In late 1946, Aggressor, aided by agents and sympathizers, seized the Antilles chain of islands and the Panama Canal.

  In November an Aggressor expedition then passed through the Canal and landed on the coast of California. As the Aggressor Navy was inadequate to protect the supply line, the Aggressor troops were defeated. Quisling groups in the United States, however, assisted in arranging a peace in which Aggressor retained bases in the Caribbean area. Aggressor's determination to conquer the North American continent next resulted in a second campaign in the fall of 1947. The Aggressor Third Army overran portions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in a large scale amphibious assault on the southeastern coast of the United States. After suffering a serious defeat this Aggressor force began an evacuation of troops while making a final stand in the Florida area. The Aggressor units which could not be evacuated were annihilated. However, individual soldiers, aided by Aggressor sympathizers, scattered over the entire United States and became members of and advisers to subversive groups...

The Trigon War 1946 - 1949

Date: 2nd July Ref: PR29

STATE OF WAR

Piecing together what information we have, it seems that the nuclear strike on the UK was contained to a period of 16 hours, and that no weapons have been used for 36 hours. We are not yet in a position to estimate what has happened in Europe, the USA or in the Eastern Bloc. As time goes by I assume it becomes less likely that we will be attacked again.

Date: 14th July Ref: PR29

VIGILANTE GROUPS

The Regional Commissioner has been contacted directly by the County Controller of Derbyshire. The County Controller is concerned about possible tension between emerging local leaders and official authority. He says that in some places there are attempts to establish local vigilante groups for the protection of residents and the exclusion of outsiders.

With the present general confusion and limited availability of police he proposes to try to secure the allegiance of such groups by giving the leaders some semi-official recognition, e.g. by means of a badge or such like, plus special access to senior officials.

This possibility raises issues of such magnitude that the Regional Commissioner wishes the policy group to give advice to him on whether or not these groups should be recognized.

Two communiques from ORC, the Office of the Regional Commissioner, chief civilian authority of Britain's CENT-REG (Central Region) - comprising the five counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire - in the aftermath of the June 29th 1984 nuclear exchange between NATO, the Warsaw Pact and the USSR. During what very much later came to be known as "The Little Death", CENT-REG's local command posts were badly damaged - with Leicester's bunker destroyed, and both HQs at Lincoln and Sheffield lost. Only Derbyshire, with its HQ at Matlock, was unaffected.

The Home Office's Integrated Regional Recovery Plan, by which the re-establishment of civilian authority was assigned to the multi-county Commissions, was somewhat optimistically codenamed Regenerate.

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An example of a typical person to be one of the principals is a professional photographer in Anchorage; he has only one arm and it is felt that he would not benefit the enemy in any labor battalion; he is an amateur radio operator; he is a professional photographer; he is licensed as a hunting or fishing guide, and well versed in the art of survival; he is a pilot of a small aircraft; he is reasonably intelligent, particularly crafty, and possessed of sufficient physical courage as is indicated by his offer to guide a party which was to have hunted Kodiak bear armed only with bow and arrow. If such an individual were chosen it is believed that he would be eminently satisfactory as a principal.

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It is to be expected that, in any future war, prisoners taken by the Soviet Army, or by any other Army trained in Soviet methods will be ruthlessly exploited. They will be interrogated in detail, and the methods used will be designed to extract the last bit of information from them. It must be anticipated that knowledgeable prisoners particularly will be subjected to vigorous inducements to disclose such information as they possess.

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The selection of agents from the Eskimo, Indian, and Aleut groups in the Territory should be avoided in view of their propensities to drink to excess and their fundamental indifference to constituted governments and political philosophies. It is pointed out that their prime concern is with survival and their allegiance would easily shift to any power in control.

The Eskimo would probably not resist an invasion and would readily accept foreign rule if the Eskimo is provided the necessities for sustaining life. The Eskimo has been living so long in a land where his primary interests are tangible things that will keep him alive that he just cannot comprehend the feeling of loyalty to the Government.

Excerpts from the files of Operation WASHTUB, a joint effort between the FBI and the Office of Special Investigations of the USAF to select and train civilian 'stay-behind' agents (so-called "SBAs"), complete with hidden caches of equipment, food and survival gear, who would gather intelligence in the event of a Soviet invasion of Alaska. WASHTUB plans remained in place from 1951 until 1959, when Alaska achieved statehood.   (via: io9)

This has been a Yukon-tastic Xenophone TRUFAX submission to The Alt-Historian

  The members of Phượng Hoàng Lực 5 (“Phoenix Force 5”) of the Vietnam People’s Air Force are caught in a jubilant mood following Operation Bolo, a combined operation with the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing of the USAF against Red China’s air force, which was massing for a nuclear attack against Japan.  Based at two airfields, the PLAAF’s entire complement of Shenyang S-4 bombers - copies of B-29 Superfortresses interned during WW2 - were destroyed on the ground by USAF strikes (“Godammit - we don’t know which of the sum’bitches are carrying, do we?” Colonel Robin Olds).  The VPAF, providing top cover for the American attackers, consequently won the lion’s share of air-to-air kills, with the pilots of Phoenix Force accounting for seven victories between them.  With the end of the conflict, the United States rewarded “our newest ally and bulwark against the Chinese peril” with lavish financial and military aid.  When they traded their Russian-built MiG-21s for F-4 Phantoms, Phoenix Force leader Tu Thic Trung told VPAF chief Nguyen Van Coc: “Excellent bird, General. But it maneuvers like a furniture van!”

The Douglas B-62 Superstratofortress is shown here during its first test flight in 1959. Developed in response to USAF requirement for an "airborne aircraft carrier" the design was technologically if not logistically viable.

The project was cancelled in 1964, but the seven existing prototypes were mothballed rather than scrapped, and moved to a secure hangar at Area 51 in Groom Lake, Nevada. According to recently leaked documents, the aircraft, which are kept in good repair, are meant to be "America's final defensive line" in the event that "POTUS is compromised and/or WADC [Washington, DC] goes dark.

I sincerely hope they never have to be used.

Surrey, 1966: holed by thirty-six bullets, Squadron Leader James Douglas Thomson bails out of his English Electric Lightning after a scuffle with Senior Lieutenant Yakov Beriev of the Soviet Air Force.

Claiming he and his wingman had "gotten lost" on a routine Combat Air Patrol, the trigger-happy Soviet found Thomson's No. 111 Sqdn on maneuvers over Wisley and engaged them with the full power of his MiG-25 Foxbat. Almost immediately afterward, the RAF sprang into action, bringing down the two aircraft in just fifteen minutes. Beriev survived, though his wingman did not.

Enraged, the USSR threated military action if the English did not formally apologise. England stood fast, demanding the Soviet Union keep better tabs on its pilots. For several months, the two countries stood on a war footing, until a UN-brokered compromise defused the situation.

Three months later, Soviet anti-aircraft artillery crewmen brought down a West German F-105 while "testing the firing mechanism". The next month, American depth charges crippled an Oscar-class missile sub. The crew of the American destroyer claimed they were learning the ropes of their new depth charge launcher when they fired several by accident. And so it went, tit for tat, each side extracting revenge against a background of steadily building tension.

It took a truly accidental near nuclear war-- Operation ABLEARCHER in 1983-- to finally break through the animosity and put an end to the childish game of "eye-for-eye" going on between the superpowers.  

1967: American sailors fire on what appears to be a UFO, Indian Ocean. The aircraft, which appeared in the form of a small, loudly-humming red ball, approached the USS Percival McMahon at precisely 1600 by the ship's log, and then proceeded to buzz the vessel several times in an almost curious manner.

After twenty minutes of this, CPO Graham Atcherson gave the action stations call, believing the craft was some sort of remote camera. As the crew of his Oerlikon 20mm sighted their gun, Able Seaman Dave Trumbull snapped this photo of the mysterious craft and its apprehensive enemies.

The postscript is that the ball was shot down, recovered, and sent to Langley for analysis. Though the CIA normally kept such investigations locked up tight, one source leaked that the ball was apparently a sort of organic robot, and that deciphering its mission was for all intents and purposes impossible.

"Now it begins". This was the last recorded transmission from East German Generalmajor Heinz Gutstadt, September 1969. 

Two months before, Gutstadt had cut communications between LaSK (the high command) and his 13. Panzer Division, claiming he had discovered American agents were listening in to all communications. While it quickly became clear that the general had suffered a psychotic break, all attempts to reach him were rebuffed.

That September, he claimed that G-d had appointed him the instigator of the apocalypse, and ordered him to start Das Endkrieg by attacking a West German checkpoint. While the incident was quickly defused, it resulted in a complete closure of the West German border to all Soviet traffic, something that facilitated the real German Civil War when it broke out in 1986.

In a rare triumph over 'not invented here' chauvinism, the United States in 1960 evaluated and enthusiastically accepted the MiG 21C ласточка ("Swallow") as a replacement for the dangerously hot F-104 Starfighter. Built under license by Douglas as the F-7 Skyshark, in USAF service it made short work of  the piston-engine Yak 9s and Il 2 Sturmoviks fielded by the PLAAF during the Quemoy Crisis in 1966. A lack of parts and technical support meant few of the Mig 15 jet fighters still possessed by the Red Chinese were able to operate, the Soviet Union having withdrawn all aid during the Damanskii Island Border Dispute, which raged throughout the 1950s and forced a reconciliation between Russia and the West.  

Capt Willard B McLaren, master of the cruiser USSS (United States Space Ship) Percival O'Dare, poses heroically for Life magazine on the eve of the O'Dare's maiden voyage, 1965. The first space warship ever launched by the United States, it was a resounding failure, like most other early space-based battle platforms. 

Though tested three times, the O'Dare didn't even make it off the launching pad, as engine after engine flamed out in several spectacular malfunctions. This gave way to the old joke "how does an American rocket scientist teach his son how to count? 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1,oh hell".

The first successful American space cruiser was, of course, the James B McConaughy, launched in 1986. McLaren never got to space; transferred back to Naval Aviation after the O'Dare failed, he was killed over Viet Nam in 1979.

Soviet T-62s equipped with mine rollers lie abandoned and scuttled in the desert sun. Scenes like these were fairly common towards the end of the Afghan War, as Red Army troops deserted by the truckload. The bulk of the deserters were tank crewmen, and for good reason: the average lifespan of a tanker in Afghanistan was about eleven days.

These soldiers must have been desperate to get out, as most of the stowage is still in place. The figures you see in the picture are mujahideen looking for salvageable goods, and the photo was taken by an American SOG operator inserted with the Northern Alliance.

This picture, from the village of Pyotki, Ukraine, appears to show several children eating a large watermelon. The children belong to Lev Tsiolkovsky (no relation to Konstantin) the chief botanist at the Krazny Oktyober nuclear facility nearby.

While it was fairly unusual to have a botanist attached to a nuclear site crew, Tsiolkovsky had a special mission: to see if strategic doses of radiation could be used to increase the size and hardiness of certain plants.

Watermelon was ideal for his experiments, as it does not grow naturally in places like Ukraine. Buying a watermelon plant and adulterating its feed with small doses of radioactive waste, he produced several monstrosities akin to those shown here.

The project was going spectacularly until it transpired that anyone who eaten the watermelon developed horrific tumours and died painfully. This included all of Tsiolkovsky's children, his wife, and the local Party boss, who had eaten some himself at a dinner at Tsiolkovsky's.

The project was scrapped, the nuclear facility closed, and Tsiolkovsky relocated-- to Siberia, naturally.

An artist's impression of the Convair XF-120 Delta Domino (so-called because of its dual function) deploying its escape pod at 26 000 feet.

While the ingenuity of the system impressed the USAF, expense concerns (note the retro-rocket built into the bottom of the nose) forced reconsideration.

Also, the USA had a perfectly serviceable escape feature at the time. It was known as the ejector seat and was considerably cheaper.

So much for military intelligence.

Warsaw, 1979: medical student Andrzej Stachowski waves a Solidarity flag while perched on a Polish T-72.

When Lech Walesa was killed in a suspicious car accident in 1974, the Solidarity movement rapidly became divorced from its non-violent beginnings. The former trade union began buying in weaponry, in particular diverting several hundred shipments meant for the Afghan muzhahadeen. In 1978 they took to the streets, claiming full NATO support and tearing the country in half.

After consistent unrest forced the UN to declare Poland an "unstable area", NATO and Warsaw Pact forces joined together in the J-STAFOR (joint stabilization force) the only time in history such a thing has occurred.

Boise, Idaho, 16 February 1969: this stark Life image became known as the definitive picture of the US-Soviet wars. The contrails are from Titan-IV ICBMs (launched from Black Creek missile base), identical to the Titan-III but equipped with MIRVs for maximum impact.

The missiles are actually loaded with conventional weaponry; though both sides possessed nukes, they were too scared to actually use them.

It is generally believed that the periodic exchange of missiles between the USA and USSR is the only thing that have kept their people focussed and their economies solvent.

The early Russian Lenin-class space cruiserKomosomelets. Deployed by the USSR in 1960 to secure their "space supermacy" the cruiser was not actually armed (being equipped with dummy weapons, as the Soviets had not developed space-functional armament) the cruiser's mission ended abruptly three months later, when its navigational computer malfunctioned, and, instead of landing on a specially designed runway in Siberia, it pancaked onto Los Angeles.