Casualty estimates
Initial estimates of between 8 and 10 million fatalities (approximately 25 % of the population of England prior to the attack) now seem low.
The UKIEA now estimates deaths in the range 11 to 13 million (with perhaps 6–8 million of these deaths being from blast and burn injuries received in the attack, and other factors such as disease, exposure and the absence of normal medical facilities for the elderly, or for those who were suffering from pre-existing illnesses).
In undamaged areas where the UKIEA has established civil and military control death rates have stabilised. Elsewhere, best estimates are that as many as two hundred thousand (200,000) people may be dying every week from the effects of injuries received during the attack, radiation exposure, starvation, insanitary conditions, disease and starvation.
It appears that the onset of a ‘nuclear winter’ weather system over northern Europe is greatly adding to the difficulties of survivors. Snow has now been lying on the ground in most parts of the United Kingdom for the last seven days, during which time the temperature has not risen above 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius).
Surviving Military Capability
Ground based US Strategic Nuclear Forces: all surviving units and personnel have been airlifted out of theatre. No attempt has been made to recover inoperable Thor ICBMs which remain in situ at RAF Hemswell, Bardney, Feltwell, Coleby Grange and as many as three (3) other sites. The recovery of these dual key assets has been raised with the UKIEA who have declined to prioritise the same.
Holy Loch. All SSBNs have been withdrawn from Holy Loch. Local officers of the UKIEA in the Clyde/Glasgow area have refused permission for USN support vessels and tenders to depart Holy Loch. The UKIEA has been apprised of our concerns in this regard.
RAF Strategic Nuclear Forces. Our best estimate is that a mixed force of some 30–40 serviceable V-Bombers either survived the attack or returned from missions. It is known that several V-Bombers landed away from the UK and have not yet returned to a home base. These assets have access to A-weapon stores in the UK and at surviving NATO depots under UKIEA supervision within the UK and in the Mediterranean.
RAF. Elsewhere approximately 50 % of assets survive although serviceability may be low given the priority the UKIEA has given to re-establishing the strike capability of the surviving V-Bomber Force.
Army. The loss of all forces in Germany has impacted the morale of units in the UK. However, the surviving units in the UK are completely loyal to the UKIEA and are conducting themselves with a relatively light hand in civil policing roles in all major surviving centres of population. Units stationed overseas remain under discipline and apparently loyal the UKIEA.
Royal Navy. Apart from the Chatham facility, none of the navy’s main bases was targeted. Subsequent to the attack all units were ordered to concentrate at Plymouth, Portsmouth, Rosyth and Londonderry, or at their appropriate overseas stations. Work details from ships in UK waters were subsequently sent ashore to assist in peacekeeping and other civil emergency activities. There are indications that major surface units overseas are being called back to home waters or redeployed to the UK’s Mediterranean bases at Malta, Gibraltar and Cyprus. C-in-C UK Home Fleet has notified CINCLANT that UK Fleet movements will no longer be routinely communicated to him and that all former areas of operational co-operation are under review. The British Pacific Fleet which includes three (3) operational aircraft carriers and at least twenty other warships took no part in hostilities and was not targeted by the enemy. This force constitutes the UK’s most potent remaining naval asset and is believed to be concentrating on Australasian ports.
Overall. The attack significantly degraded the UK’s nuclear strike capability, eliminated up to 50 % of its ground forces and its equipment, while leaving its naval forces largely intact. After the USA, the UK remains the most capable military nation on the planet.
Political Assessment
The UKIEA is struggling to regain control of all its territory.
The UKIEA leadership, while not openly hostile to contacts with the US Administration, clearly believes that its current situation is by and large, the fault of that Administration.
While having requested humanitarian assistance from the USA, the UKIEA is unwilling at this time to discuss military co-operation of any kind, or future European reconstruction plans with the USA.
The leader of the UKIEA has communicated his dissatisfaction with the quantity and the quality of the USA’s assistance thus far, to the UK, and to the relatively undamaged departments of western and southern France.
The leader of the UKIEA has further cautioned the USA not to see the current situation as an invitation to ‘interfere in the affairs of the Mediterranean’.
There are reports (unconfirmed) that the British Pacific Fleet, including the fleet carrier Ark Royal, may be planning to redeploy to the Persian Gulf, presumably to safeguard oil supplies in the event US help is not forthcoming.
US vessels have been refused permission to dock at Gibraltar and at Malta in the last seven days with port authorities citing the need to prioritise ‘emergency support operations’ over hosting ‘inappropriate courtesy visits by foreign vessels’.
British troops are now guarding CENTO’s Cyprus stockpile of 40 fully generated nuclear warheads, having previously removed all US personnel from the base outside Larnica.
There are suggestions from Intelligence sources that there may be a growing disconnect between the UKIEA leadership and its military high command.
The blasé assertion in this last point which had been allowed to pass unchallenged by the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Council before it got into JFK’s hands is symptomatic of the mood of the times.
The inhabitants of JFK’s by then lightly radioactive modern Camelot — allegedly the ‘best and the brightest’ of their generation — had blundered into an unnecessary war and allowed Curtis LeMay, the gung ho Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, to run amok. The ‘best and the brightest’ had betrayed not just their own generation, but generations to come. The ‘best and the brightest’, having presided over the massacre of their European Allies were already, in the winter of 1962-63 too preoccupied wringing their hands and attempting to justify their folly to pause to read the runes of the future. They thought they’d inherited one world from the ashes of the old, instead they’d inherited another in which they’d be friendless pariahs for all their military might, economic effulgence and ultimately, selfish and futile, good intentions.
In the months after the October War the Kennedy White House had the opportunity to become the saviour of western civilization. In the event it fluffed its lines, opted for parsimony and in the end sowed the seeds for new conflicts.