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So looking through the forum (well, more skimming it) I haven't seen many 'things get hot in the 80's' threads recently, so I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring for at least a concept of a World War III that nearly goes full scale nuclear war towards the end.

Preface

While most would point to the start of World War III being April 12th, 1986 as tanks and men poured across the borders of Western Germany and Austria, the Cold War went hot a good month earlier, in the March 13th Black Sea Incident. The rationale for the decision to send two American warships into the black sea to patrol within waters claimed by the Soviets as part of their territory is still hotly debated between historians, veterans, and politicians to this day. There are several proponents who lay the blame entirely at the feet of the Americans, their Freedom of Transit operation being little more than a thin excuse to try and provoke the USSR into hostile action and allow NATO to be the defender in a conflict. Another theory leaves the blame in the hands of the negotiators and diplomats who were unable to reign in the political ambitions of various officials in both the Warsaw Pact and NATO, and even another throws the blame at the feet of the Soviet fleet for aggressively acting against ships that happened to be in international waters near the Crimean Peninsula. The generally accepted explanation of the incident however, is that it was merely the match that lit the powder keg that had been brewing for four decades as the world’s two Superpowers waged an ideological battle in every medium imaginable. Escalation into full scale conflict was inevitable despite the best efforts and intentions of all involved, especially with unrest building up in the Soviet puppet states formed in the aftermath of the Second World War. Responsibility for the following bloody struggle belongs to no-one.

Whatever the truth behind it, the great tragedy of the Black Sea Incident is how close the entire thing was to never going beyond sailors on both sides simply exchanging hostile glances. As the USS Yorktown and USS Cason sailed on, semi-shadowed by several Soviet border patrol vessels and the Ladny, a Soviet FFG that was in the area. An hour into the tense stare down between the two groups of ships, and six miles off the coast of the Crimea, someone blinked. A junior weapons officer aboard the Ladny conducted a routine check of readiness for the frigate’s Anti-Submarine Weapons, a cluster of SS-N-14 missiles. A one in a trillion malfunction cased his check to launch a pair of the weapons in the direction of the two US vessels, and with that bring the clock a second closer to midnight for the world.

The USS Yorktown, the closer of the US Navy vessels, launched a pair of Harpoon missiles in response to the apparent attack and targeting the Ladny, and unfortunately for the Soviet FFG, both of the missiles got through the attempted defensive countermeasures. The Ladny didn’t even have a chance to respond, the chaff blown out by the frigate rapidly consumed by the fireball it became. Few of the crew survived, the inferno consuming those not killed by the explosion itself. The two Soviet coastguard vessels then opened fire on the Americans, but lacking missile armament they caused very little damage as the two US ships rapidly exited the area.

Tensions that were already in trouble due to the cancellation of the Reykjavik Summit suddenly reached a fever pitch, the Soviet leadership calling for the removal of the commanders of the two ships along with reparations and the men standing trial. The Americans complied with the first of the requests, but staunchly refused to follow through with the others. Along the borders of Europe and across the Atlantic, men were called back into uniform, units prepared to mobilize, and strategies and tactics developed in a vacuum over four decades prepared to be tested. The stage was set for devastation on a scale not seen since the first half of the century.
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