# Britain feared annihilation by Soviets



## pardus (Dec 30, 2008)

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Britain feared that it would have been overwhelmed in the event of a Soviet attack because of the depleted state of its armed forces, according to secret files made public on Tuesday.

Papers released by the National Archives, under the 30-year rule, reveal that Royal Air Force fighter jets only had sufficient ammunition for two days of combat and the Royal Navy would fail to defend the country from Russian submarines.

The army would have been too over-stretched to cope with a widescale campaign of sabotage and subversion by Soviet special forces, the papers show.

Prime Minister James Callaghan called the situation a "scandal" when he discovered the scale of the problem and demanded resignations among the military.

"Heaven help us if there is a war!" he scrawled on one note. But ministers could do little until the Tornado fighter plane became available in the mid-1980s along with other military hardware.

The problem became clear when senior intelligence officers warned in late 1977 that, in the event of a conventional war, the Russians could unleash up to 200 bombers and 18 submarines against the UK.

The assessment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was that British forces would be unable to cope.

"UK forces cannot match the threat postulated by the JIC assessment," the chiefs noted in January 1978 in a document marked Top Secret UK Eyes Alpha.

"Air defenses would be outweighed because aircraft would be outnumbered and stocks of air defense munitions would sustain operations for only two or three days.

"Maritime forces need better anti-submarine weapons, and face a massive threat from submarine and air-launched missiles and also from mines; the most serious deficiency is in numbers.

"The army in the UK would, until mobilization is complete, have insufficient forces to meet its commitments; after mobilization of the reserves, a process taking between 15-20 days, the Army would be able to counter the currently assessed Soviet land threat during the initial stages of the war but, lacking supporting arms and logistic support, it would be inadequate to deal with any more significant threat, including sabotage or subversion on a wide scale."

Find this article at: 
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/12/30/uk.coldwar.fears/index.html?eref=rss_latest 

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And the Brit politicians continue to gut the MoD! :doh:


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## Poetic_Mind (Dec 30, 2008)

That is scary. 




> Papers released by the National Archives, under the 30-year rule, reveal that Royal Air Force fighter jets only had sufficient ammunition for two days of combat and the Royal Navy would fail to defend the country from Russian submarines.



I wonder if we will be in the same position when Democrats are through with us. I was not alive at the time, but I heard from my folks how Carter F***ed up the military. 

I always thought the UK was a strong military power... How did it get that bad in the UK?


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## car (Dec 30, 2008)

Well, that was right before the Carter administration (Stansfield Turner was director of CIA) emasculated our intel collection capabilitiy in many "Soviet influenced" areas that sprung up to bite us in the ass later - Grenada and Nicaragua (both backed by el jefe Castro) being the first that come to mind :doh:


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## 7point62 (Dec 30, 2008)

car said:


> Well, that was right before the Carter administration (Stansfield Turner was director of CIA) emasculated our intel collection capabilitiy in many "Soviet influenced" areas that sprung up to bite us in the ass later - Grenada and Nicaragua (both backed by el jefe Castro) being the first that come to mind :doh:





Yes sir, Carter unraveled a lot of things to be kind and gentle to people who would like nothing better than to hand us our _juevos_ on a plate. Like _jefe_ Fidel and his _maricon_ buttboy in Managua. He also gave away the Canal, IMHO, the most important land/sea crossroads and strategic asset in the hemisphere.


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## car (Dec 30, 2008)

7point62 said:


> He also gave away the Canal, IMHO, the most important land/sea crossroads and strategic asset in the hemisphere.



Not to make excuses for Carter, but the whole "getting rid of the canal" issue was started by Nixon, believe it or not. We can move more commerce from our east coast to our west coast by truck. Nixon was dealing with Torrijos early on to get rid of responsibility of the canal.

The whole reason T. Roosevelt pushed it was for the advantage of getting our Navy to the Pacific without having to go around S. America. Now, our major warships can't even fit through the canal.


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## BLACKMags (Dec 31, 2008)

Oh yeah this is something we REALLY want to be put out for the entire world to know LOL. 


pardus762 said:


> LONDON, England (CNN) -- Britain feared that it would have been overwhelmed in the event of a Soviet attack because of the depleted state of its armed forces, according to secret files made public on Tuesday.
> 
> Papers released by the National Archives, under the 30-year rule, reveal that Royal Air Force fighter jets only had sufficient ammunition for two days of combat and the Royal Navy would fail to defend the country from Russian submarines.
> 
> ...


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## QC (Jan 3, 2009)

No drama, didn't happen. ;)


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