By what means would the USSR nuke Britain in the event of an exchange in the 1980s?

If a full nuclear exchange occurred in the 1980s what would be the USSR’s primary means of nuking Western Europe and Britain (ICBMs, SLBMs, aircraft, IRBMs etc)?
 
A mix of their intermediate and medium ranged missiles from both land and submarine launchers (one of the reasons the Soviets kept around their shorter-ranged SLBMs), medium-weight tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, and strategic bombers.
 
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Wimble Toot

Banned
One SS-18 Satan with 8 MIRV'd 1 Mt warheads, and some SLBMs on Faslane and Holy Loch is probably all you'd need - Britain would struggle to recover from a single 1 Mt detonation.
 
The INF Treaty's deadline of June 1st, 1991, a total of 2,692 of such weapons had been destroyed, 846 by the US and 1,846 by the Soviet Union
INF covered entirely land-launched intermediate ranged ballistic missiles (and cruise, although the Soviets didn't employ many GLCMs), however, not gravity bombs, seaborne IRBM/SR-ICBMs, and air/sea-launched cruise missiles.
 
Back in the 1980s...

...I was an Emergency Planning Officer. My best boss (a former RAF Group Leader) estimated that Britain then had no more than ten nuke-worthy war-fighting targets, all in Eastern England. He told me that he and his colleagues expected a mix of a few IRBMs and gravity bombs, with Soviet High Explosive and Chemical warhead cruise missiles and bombs delivered to lesser targets. Those apparently included most naval base targets, although Devonport and Faslane would probably have been nuked.

"Remember that fallout tends to go east." He reminded me. I studied some meteorology as a Scientific Advisor and realised that Jet Stream dynamics make it so. Excessive use of nukes is disastrous for the Warsaw Pact.

Hope this helps.
 
War Plan UK includes target maps of what we expected to be hit by- about four hundred warheads, IRBM, older SLBM and what of Dalnaya Aviatsiya could be spared from the trans- Atlantic mission. Mostly of a few hundred kilotons, apart from mountain- melters on Coulport and Aldermaston for counterforce reasons. London alone was due for about seventy.

Wild West Welsh Wales and the North- west Highlands were the places to run to, if practical.

In Peter Hennessey's book The Secret State, he recounts a joke that supposedly came from some of the meetings after the Cuban crisis; a military attache' is supposed to have told Khrushchev that the difference between a British nuclear optimist and pessimist was the pessimist believed it would only take six large warheads to cause Breakdown- the collapse of civil order in the UK. The optimist was someone who believed it would take at least nine.

Khrushchev had a fairly heavy sense of humour; the reply was "You under-rate yourselves, the Soviet people have great respect for the resilience and determination of the British. We have you down for twenty-five."

The force structures grew and changed, but looking at the 1983 version one suspects the principle remained the same.
 
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According to the BBC Docu-drama 'Threads' that portrays WW3 and the effects on the UK in the lead up to, the actual attack and the subsequant 16 years following the war - it remains the most terrifying film I have ever watched.....

At 8:30 a.m. GMT on 26 May, Attack Warning Red is transmitted and Sheffield's air raid sirens sound. Panic breaks out in the city and the Sheffield operations staff man their desks. At 8:35 a.m. a nuclear warhead air bursts high over the North Sea, producing an electromagnetic pulse which damages or destroys communications and most electrical systems throughout the UK and northwestern Europe. Two minutes later the first missile salvos hit NATO targets, including nearby RAF Finningley 20 miles (32 kilometres) from Sheffield. Although the city is not yet heavily damaged, the mushroom cloud from Finningley is visible and chaos reigns in the streets, with Jimmy last seen running from his stalled car in an attempt to reach Ruth. Shortly afterwards Sheffield is targeted by a one-megaton warhead which air bursts directly above the Tinsley Viaduct. Strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are the primary targets, with two thirds of all UK homes destroyed and immediate deaths ranging between 12 and 30 million. The resulting East-West exchange amounts to 3,000 megatons. About 210 megatons fall on the UK.
 
According to the BBC Docu-drama 'Threads' that portrays WW3 and the effects on the UK in the lead up to, the actual attack and the subsequant 16 years following the war - it remains the most terrifying film I have ever watched.....

At 8:30 a.m. GMT on 26 May, Attack Warning Red is transmitted and Sheffield's air raid sirens sound. Panic breaks out in the city and the Sheffield operations staff man their desks. At 8:35 a.m. a nuclear warhead air bursts high over the North Sea, producing an electromagnetic pulse which damages or destroys communications and most electrical systems throughout the UK and northwestern Europe. Two minutes later the first missile salvos hit NATO targets, including nearby RAF Finningley 20 miles (32 kilometres) from Sheffield. Although the city is not yet heavily damaged, the mushroom cloud from Finningley is visible and chaos reigns in the streets, with Jimmy last seen running from his stalled car in an attempt to reach Ruth. Shortly afterwards Sheffield is targeted by a one-megaton warhead which air bursts directly above the Tinsley Viaduct. Strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are the primary targets, with two thirds of all UK homes destroyed and immediate deaths ranging between 12 and 30 million. The resulting East-West exchange amounts to 3,000 megatons. About 210 megatons fall on the UK.

Oh god, Threads. That movie messed me up and left me horribly depressed for a few days.
 
Oh god, Threads. That movie messed me up and left me horribly depressed for a few days.

As a young teenager I manged to watch the first half before I had to turn it off (I only managed to watch the whole thing in my mid 30s its on Youtube!) - thats not happened before or since

There was a more recent BBC Docu Drama in on a typical 'war game' played by junior ministers standing in for their senior 'masters' back in the 80s

Apprently both 'sides' would frequently 'leak' the results of those paper wargames at the time so as to make sure there would be no confusion over the resolve regarding a reaction to a first use or otherwise of nuclear weapons in a WW3 scenario.
 

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
According to the BBC Docu-drama 'Threads' that portrays WW3 and the effects on the UK in the lead up to, the actual attack and the subsequant 16 years following the war - it remains the most terrifying film I have ever watched.....

At 8:30 a.m. GMT on 26 May, Attack Warning Red is transmitted and Sheffield's air raid sirens sound. Panic breaks out in the city and the Sheffield operations staff man their desks. At 8:35 a.m. a nuclear warhead air bursts high over the North Sea, producing an electromagnetic pulse which damages or destroys communications and most electrical systems throughout the UK and northwestern Europe. Two minutes later the first missile salvos hit NATO targets, including nearby RAF Finningley 20 miles (32 kilometres) from Sheffield. Although the city is not yet heavily damaged, the mushroom cloud from Finningley is visible and chaos reigns in the streets, with Jimmy last seen running from his stalled car in an attempt to reach Ruth. Shortly afterwards Sheffield is targeted by a one-megaton warhead which air bursts directly above the Tinsley Viaduct. Strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are the primary targets, with two thirds of all UK homes destroyed and immediate deaths ranging between 12 and 30 million. The resulting East-West exchange amounts to 3,000 megatons. About 210 megatons fall on the UK.

Watched it in '84 . . . still the best documentary regarding this subject. Way better than the US version "The Day After" which aired on UK tv unbelievably on over Xmas '83. If think it was on the 27th . . . the day after Boxing Day!

From what I've gathered and read about "Threads" though is that it is unfortunately based on a slightly dodgy war game plan called "Square Leg" in the regards to the attack profiles.
 

hipper

Banned
One SS-18 Satan with 8 MIRV'd 1 Mt warheads, and some SLBMs on Faslane and Holy Loch is probably all you'd need - Britain would struggle to recover from a single 1 Mt detonation.

Depends on wind direction and nature of bursts if you are being really nasty you target Selafied and the nuclear power stations with ground burstswich would probably split the UK into independent regions communicating by telephone for many years.

Everyone else is equally vulnerable of course.
 

hipper

Banned
Watched it in '84 . . . still the best documentary regarding this subject. Way better than the US version "The Day After" which aired on UK tv unbelievably on over Xmas '83. If think it was on the 27th . . . the day after Boxing Day!

From what I've gathered and read about "Threads" though is that it is unfortunately based on a slightly dodgy war game plan called "Square Leg" in the regards to the attack profiles.

Some of the 80s war games had the UK hit by 200 warheads, of course that was to make sure everyone could play.
 
Some of the 80s war games had the UK hit by 200 warheads, of course that was to make sure everyone could play.
You mean civil defense exercises Square Leg, here is a 1981 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament published a map based on the Square Leg scenario.

Map: Soviet strike, nuclear targets across the United Kingdom

Operation+Square+Leg+map+1.JPG
 
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