16/15 Jul M-21 Wellington New Zealand
The first moves to forming a new government was being taken. Muldoon as of yet had not been deposed as the leader of the National Party. But there was maneuvering. While Lange was getting the feeling that the knives were out for him some in the party blamed him for the failure of the party to win the election. Now while it was not as of yet an open revolt, the word was from some of the party leadership were saying, that maybe he should step aside to allow the Labor Party to form a government with the New Zealand party. The argument was that both the New Zealand Party and the Labor party wanted to engage in same economic reforms. While the Labor party wanted to increase social spending that while not a priority for the New Zealand Party. Jones the head of the New Zealand Party had made it clear that such additional spending as long as it was well thought out was not a none starter with him.
But he was quite clear that Lange was not someone he felt should be Prime Minister of New Zealand and that he, Jones had all the time in the world to make a coalition government. But he also admitted that he could not force the Labor Party to depose its current head. As he commented Muldoon would do an okay job for the moment. That he could wait for someone to replace Muldoon in the National Party and that person could make a deal with the New Zealand party.
Lange had been told of the talks and he could see that many members of the Party desperately wanted to form the next government. The question was how far they would go to get what they wanted. Over the weekend, Lange had been unrepentant about his stances on Foreign Affairs, claiming he only wanted to free New Zealand from the grips of that cold war warrior Ronald Reagan.
What Lange did not realized was that his unwillingness to admit that he might have screwed up with his stance on the United States and Ronald Reagan, was a problem. Word was that a couple of polls on the election were being done and would be coming out on Tuesday. What Polls said would be important to everyone since it would allow the political parties to see what direction the country wanted to go.
12pm Auckland Three large ships appeared over the horizon heading for Auckland a scattering boats and yachts were out. It was winter but some boats were out and the ships with radios began to announce to the world that several American warships were headed to Auckland. On one of the yachts a man had Janes Fighting Ships that he had purchased out of curiosity. As he looked over the ships he read the name on the first ships and he soon figured out that the first ship in the column was the Nuclear-Powered Cruiser Long Beach. It did not take long to find out the names of the other two ships the California and the Arkansas He quickly sent a message to shore telling a friend at a radio station what he was seeing. The news was on the radio in just minutes and by the time the three ships anchored off of the naval base the word was spreading across New Zealand.
10am Townsville
To the surprise of everyone in the harbor of Townsville when an Australian patrol boat escorted a large submarine into the port and then to the docks. A short time later the first of a series of trucks arrived carrying food supplies for the Portsmouth. Not long after that a C-130 arrived at the RAAF airbase Townsville. The spare parts and other supplies for Portsmouth sent from Pearl were rapidly loaded on a couple of trucks.
Members of the Peace Movement who lived in Townsville began to gather as closely as they could to the dock where the submarine was docked. While others climbed on board on yachts that would go to the docks to harass the submarine by water. Shortly afterward a jet carrying Captain Bronte and Prime Minister Hawke. Hawke was taking to opportunity to point out to the people of Australia that American sailors in Nuclear submarines were here to face Soviet Nuclear submarines. He fully intended to point out that the reality was that Soviet Union had no interest in a nuclear free south pacific and never had. The positioning of the Juliet class submarine in the south pacific only months ago, before the crisis showed that. For the crew of the Portsmouth there were bits of good news. They would be paid and they could have liberty.
9am Hong Kong
The convoy arrived to pick up the Ghurka brigades equipment and the cargo was being rapidly loaded on board. China had made it clear to its operatives that the departure of the Gurkhas was not to be interfered with. The orders to their operatives was that they were to help expedite the movement of the troops to South Korea in any way they could.
10am Beijing China The Chinese foreign Minister was in a good mood, he had asked the Soviet Ambassador for a discussion over the current crisis. He was going to be pushing Indira Ghandi proposal for a conference to bring the current crisis to an end. After the meeting he already had a press relief ready to go, with appropriate comments about the Soviet Union’s intransigence. Bringing the Soviet Union down a rung or two was always a good thing and it would make China a more popular with nations of the third world.
When the meeting was over the Soviet Ambassador went back to the Embassy and sent a report of the meeting to Gromyko. The message was simple the world wanted the crisis to be brought to an end. China’s comments could be filed in the file and forget. But as the day went on more and more such messages arrived and some of these nations were to one degree or another friend of the Soviet Union. The pressure was beginning to build. But at least for the now the messages were not particularly harsh the nonaligned nations were taking a more of a gentle approach.
2pm Moscow Gromyko walked out of the Politburo meeting, it had gone on longer than he had anticipated. The hardliners were proving to be more aggressive in their defense of Chernenko’s policies than he had expected. Politburo members in the center were not as of yet inclined to take a stand on way or the other. Gromyko realized that more pressure had to be applied to the center. But everything was on hold until Wednesday, by then he would be able to report the reaction of the rest of the world.
Arriving at the Foreign Ministry a stack of messages from the various Ambassadors informing him that the non-aligned world was letting them know what they were thinking. Also a few personal messages were being sent by various third world leaders telling him their concerns and hoping that the Soviet Union would agree to let Indira Ghandi mediate the current conference. He wondered just how the news that the Politburo had once again refused to accept her offer.
The announcement that the Politburo had once again delay making any commitment to Indira Ghandi’s offer to mediate the crisis. There were members of the press who were uncomfortable criticizing the Moscow were facing a lot of commentary from people. The story line that came out of Moscow that the Soviet Union was being ham handed in its handling of the crisis and that it needed to reconsidered it position.
3PM London Thatcher was not happy the French government’s announcement of seven new divisions to the French Armies order of battle. When the British Army arrived, she was in a very bad mood. But they had a plan. They reminded her about the 1st Airborne and that the division was now ready for combat. Once comment was that they had even shipped in Parachutes from the United States to have enough to make it possible to train the entire division in parachute operations. Then one of the senior officers commented at least the division they had formed was capable of doing an airdrop something he rather doubted the French could do. That mollified Prime Minister Thatcher at least a little bit.
Then they talked about the four new tank battalions, the battalions were form but the no regiment attachments had been formed. The decision was to assign the 5th RTR to the battalion armed with the Chieftains while the 6th,7th and 8th RTR would have the Centurion tanks. The British Army wanted to ask the queen to present the colors to the newly formed battalions. They also wanted to bring in groups of veterans from World War II to talk to the troops about the units past history.
They announced the three territorial battalions have been converted to mechanized battalions. All had been part of the 42nd brigade two battalions the 4 battalion of the King’s Own Royal Borders Regiment, the 5/8TH the Kings Regiment would remain with the brigade. The one regular unit was the 1st Royal Irish Rangers this unit was now fully truck mobile and the remaining unit the Duke of 4th Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry. It was the reconnaissance unit of the brigade using Land Rovers. The 6th RTR would also be assigned to the 42nd brigade.
The tank unit would be 7th RTR would be the 54th Brigades tank component. The 4th Queen’s Lancaster Regiment would be transferred in from the 412nd brigade. Now it would be 54th brigade mechanized battalion. This brigade would have one tank battalion, one mechanized infantry battalion with two light infantry battalions the regular battalion was the 2nd Queen’s Regiment and the 6th battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment was a territorial battalion. The Army had stated that the two light infantry battalions would be truck mounted by the end of the month.
It had been decided to form a brigade with 5th RTR, the 1st and 2nd battalions Scots Guards both were mechanized with the A sqdn from the Life Guard and A sqdn from the 15/19th Hussars, forming a mechanized brigade. There was some debate about whether the brigade could be formed as a Guards brigade since the brigade would not be purely made up of Guards units. But the British Army had decided to form the 1st Guards Brigade.
The plan was to take the 1st Guard mechanized brigade as well as the 42nd and 54th brigade to form a new 5th division. They did admit that the division would lack an artillery component but the could work out that part of the situation at a later date.
At the same time the 1st battalion Coldstream Guard 2nd battalion Coldstream Guard, the 1st Grenadier Guards were to be formed into a Light Infantry Guards brigade. Recalled Guardsmen were forming small companies of troops with a few officers and NCO’s having been transferred these new companies. They would take over the Guards Ceremonial duties. That would permit the formation of the 2nd Brigade of the Guards.
The idea was to put the newly formed, 2nd Guards with the 51st Highland Brigade compose of three territorial battalions with the 1/51st, 2/51st and the 3/51st Highland Volunteers and the third brigade would be the 52nd Lowland brigade all regular units the 1st Royal Scots, 1st battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders with the 1/52nd and the 2nd/52nd together to form a new division the 6th division. With the 8th RTR to be assigned as the division sole armored unit. The briefer commented that they were forming a recon battalion made up retired Saladin Armored Cars. The crews were being gathered from former prior service personal who had served in the various British Army recce units. They might not have worked with the Saladin’s during their tour of service but they knew how to do their mission. They would just need to train in the Saladin.
Support units would be gathered from the various other units, engineers, supply units could be formed but British Army had a shortage of field pieces to form new artillery units. One of the artillery officer commented that maybe they could find enough 25 pounder field guns put at least a few understrength artillery battalions. Thatcher told the officer to do their best at finding field pieces that could still be used for combat.
Then the discussion turned to the 1st Airborne, the 5th Airborne brigade was the regular army component. The other brigade was the 1st Airborne brigade formed out of the 4th, 10th and 15th territorial battalions. While the 1st Canadian regiment would be in a separate brigade despite it had the strength closer to that of a battalion. The briefer commented that the one battery from the 7th RHA had been in Belize and it had been brought back to the United Kingdom. He also commented that the equipment that had also been brought back. The plan was to match the batteries equipment with prior service 7th RHA personnel. The same thing was done with the battery assigned to the Falklands. But the personnel and equipment were headed home.
The troops would rejoin the main unit while the equipment would be used to form a second 105mm battery also using prior service personal. Also, some work was being done to form a battery from the Italian Pack howitzers that had one provided the artillery for the Paratroops before the new L118 came into service. Once that was done as far as the Army was concerned the division would be at full strength. Except for the minor problem of having to train the artillerymen to be paratroops. ** That comment elicited some laughter from the people being briefed one person commented, **Can just see the recruiters walking thought the recalled troops trying to recruit the men to fill out those units. But the 1ST Airborne would be fully operational.
Then Thatcher commented that they had only formed three divisions as compared to the seven divisions formed by the French. The senior officer replied that at least the divisions they formed were made up of combat ready brigades and that organizing the various divisional support units was much more doable. He argued that the three divisions organized by the British army would be much more combat ready than any one of the divisions formed by the French.
Thatcher was not looking convince when another officer commented that the British Army had went for quality over quantity and that the two new infantry division were individually more powerful than the smaller and weaker French divisions. Another officer commented that they had pretty much take all the forces they dare that only four operation brigades were left in the Great Britain the 2nd Infantry brigade, the 160th Wales Brigade, the 43rd Wessex brigade the 143rd Infantry Brigade If we sent those brigades overseas the nation would only have a few independent battalions scattered around the UK. We would be hard pressed to keep order.
Thatcher considered what the officer said and she replied, ** I see your point but I would be happier with one more division. Couldn’t we form one more division. The 43rd Wessex division, we could take the Wessex brigade and the Wales brigade. The gathered officers did not speak for a minute or so before the Senior officer replied, **I think that we could do that. **
One of the Minister of the Cabinet commented that the Soviet units have a lot of tanks and APC’s but all of the divisions were light on tanks and all the territorial units were understrength support weapons. I am a little worried about these unit’s ability to deal with the Soviet Armies Tank heavy units. Margaret Thatcher was glaring at the man. The Minister was not intimidated, he had served in the Army as at first an infantry man and later on tanker in the 6th Guards Brigade during World War II. He had commanded a Tank Battalion during the war. The officer respected the man’s question,
The briefer replied, We going through stocks of weapons, we plan on supplying as many Milan and Swingfire missiles from our reserves. We did have the foresight to keep as many of the most serviceable of the Wombat Recoilless Rifles in storage. When we changed over to the Milan system we took the time put the best of the Wombats in storage. We also have a good quantity of ammunitions still in storage. We held onto the ammunition on the off chance that we would need to bring Wombats back into service in an emergency. We are thinking about attaching double the number that were assigned to a battalion when it was still a frontline weapon. Sixteen per battalion with the non-mechanized units getting preference for the weapons. The man nodded his head he was satisfied with the response. He smiled at Thatcher and she smiled back. The man was one of her favorites and he would be allowed to question the armies plans.
Then the senior Artillery officer spoke up, **Madame Prime Minister, the Army has been in a fight with the Foreign Office over the shipment of war materials overseas. While we understand that we need to keep our reputation as a reliable supplier of arms to other countries. So far, the Army has been able to stop of the movement of weapons and other war materiel overseas. But with the new divisions being formed we need the L118 and L121 that are currently sitting in various harbors over to the military we have twenty L118’s sitting in ports and we have eighteen L121’s. We need those guns.
As Thatcher considered the request the Foreign Minister spoke up he defended the Foreign officers position but suddenly Thatcher put up her hand silencing the man. Then she replied, **Anything that can help the military strengthen the defense Europe must be done. We can add these weapons and anything else that we can use to our defense forces. Also, I imagine that there are some equipment built for export that are still sitting at the factories they are to take those weapons to and anything else that is produced during the crisis. Inform our customers that will send replacement as soon a possible.
As the senior officers of the British Army left number 10 Downing street one commented that we can make sure that the Airborne Division have it full complement of artillery and the 5TH division will have close to it full complement of artillery. The senior Artillery officer commented, **We will go through the replacement stock and see if we can put eighteen guns from logistic war stock. ** He went silent for a minute or so and he commented we might be able to find enough field pieces to form the third artillery regiment and fill out the 5th artillery component. But we will not be able to do that for the other divisions.
Then the senior general commented we have a lot of Saracen APC ‘s in Northern Ireland we could ship enough of them to full mechanize the 5th division. We could ask for volunteers from the Ulster Constabulary and other military units to provide the trained crews and the support personal in the three battalions that we were going to make truck mounted and the trucks could be used for the divisions support units. The other officers considered the approach and a slow grim acceptance of weakening of the forces in Northern Ireland ever more than they had already been.
Then the Artillery General asked what we do, about the divisions artillery for the other two divisions. His reply was simple, **We will go through all the stocks of the old 25pound guns, we have, a large quantity of spare parts. I am hoping to find enough guns, to organize the division artillery arm. If we can do that we will still have to find the rest of the equipment needed for an efficient artillery unit. But that could be a real problem.
Well we will do what Belgium and the Netherland’s will do. We go to the Americans with our hats in hand. We will see if we can get them to ship over additional National Guard Artillery brigade to help fill out the last division.
Then another officer commented, **With the last division I believe that we have spread ourselves to thin. The senior General of the British Army replied, **We will announce the last division but the odds of it ending up in West Germany is slim to none. We are pulling a French move and the Prime Minister knows it. But we will still ask for the artillery brigade just in case,