"WWIII: Operation Musketeer?" Topic

Has anyone ever thought of starting WWIII in 1956 with Operation Musketeer and with Russian intervention?

If the US didn't muscle France and the UK into pulling back, could the Suez Crisis gone WWIII? Did the Soviets have the muscle to really threaten operations in Egypt? Or would it have been a Soviet attack on the UK and France proper with rockets and bombers?

Has anyone gamed this?

I don't think they would have really been able to do much in 1956.

They would have been heavily out-numbered in nukes then, IIRC. If this article is correct, Kruschev only has 4 x ballistic missiles armed with nuke warheads at the time:

link

They did have lots of divisions still, after WWII, which weren't stood down like ours in the USA, and NATO were. 200+ to a handful for the West, if the report I read on that was correct.

Basically, NATO/USA disarmed after WWII, and the Korean War.

I haven't gamed it, but am intrigued with the Suez Air Operations. Looks like a good excuse to use those nice, big, Valiant bombers.

IIRC, the Egyptian Air Force did not perform very well, if at all in the air war there, so it may not be as interesting as I'd like. The surprise attacks caught the Egyptians pretty flat-footed.

Maybe some good, hypothetical battles.

Also, I guess it depends upon which side the USA ultimately intervenes on as well.

"IIRC, the Egyptian Air Force did not perform very well, if at all in the air war there, so it may not be as interesting as I'd like. The surprise attacks caught the Egyptians pretty flat-footed."

True, the Egyptians underperformed, but I think there's fascinating potential for an '56 air campaign. Great mix of planes, with the Egyptians getting the best aircraft available in the world at the time*, but just getting up to speed on training.

And the RAF had just vacated, months before, the same bases they conducted surprise raids against, so they had good intel!

(*I think, I don't know much about 20th century aircraft.)

Probably gets really interesting if the UK calls America's bluff, .

Nice rules for the Suez air war are "Wings over Suez" from the Wings AT War series. The links below are to the W@W pages giving a brief history of the conflict and details of the aircraft used in the conflict.

link

link

Fatman

Hungary was in revolt at the same time. Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia were watching closely.

Probably gets really interesting if the UK calls America's bluff, .

That's the only way this scenario works. The UK has to go its own path with France, then the Soviets jump in. IIRC, the Soviets threatened to hit France and the UK with missiles and to deploy forces to attack them in Egypt. That's when the US has to act as an attack against them turns this whole affair into a NATO thing!

By the way, would WWII figures work for both sides? With the UK fielding Centurions, the US M48s, and the Soviets using T-55s? Sounds like a better scenario than say 1946.

Wasn't NATO around then? If the Russians had nuked France or Britain, wouldn't the USA have nuked the USSR? I think Russia would have more to lose than the US. The so called "satellite" countries of the USSR would have bolted from under their influence had the Rusians taken a serious hit. Too many fires to put out at the same time, would have left them too weak to defend their own country. They had been bled pretty dry during WW2.

From Wikipedia:

Soviet threats
Although the Soviet Union's position in the crisis was as helpless as was the United States' regarding Hungary's uprising, Premier Nikolai Bulganin threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side, and to launch rocket attacks on Britain, France and Israel.[296][298] Bulganin accused Ben-Gurion of supporting European colonialism, and Mollet of hypocrisy for leading a socialist government while pursuing a right-wing foreign policy. He did however concede in his letter to Eden that Britain had legitimate interests in Egypt.
The Soviet threat to send troops to Egypt to fight the Allies led Eisenhower to fear that this might be the beginning of World War III.[299] One of Eisenhower's aides Emmet Hughes recalled that the reaction at the White House to the Bulganin letters was "sombre" as there was fear that this was the beginning to the countdown to World War III, a war that if it occurred would kill hundreds of millions of people.[300] In private, Eisenhower told Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr. of his fears that:

The Soviet Union might be ready for to undertake any wild adventure. They are as scared and furious as Hitler was in his last days. There's nothing more dangerous than a dictatorship in that frame of mind.[299]

If the Soviet Union did go to war with NATO allies Britain and France, then the United States would be unable to remain neutral, because the United States' obligations under NATO would come into effect, requiring them to go to war with the Soviet Union in defense of Britain and France. Likewise, if the Soviet Union attacked Israel, though there was no formal American commitment to defend Israel, the Eisenhower administration would come under heavy domestic pressure to intervene. From Eisenhower's viewpoint, it was better to end the war against Egypt rather than run the risk of this escalating into the Third World War, in case Khrushchev was serious about going to war in defense of Egypt as he insisted in public that he was. Eisenhower's reaction to these threats from the Soviet Union was: "If those fellows start something, we may have to hit 'em — and, if necessary, with everything in the bucket."[301]