The Third World War: August 1985

CHAPTER 25: The Destruction of Birmingham

In the main control room of the great BMEWS station on Fylingdales Moor in Yorkshire the day watch had been on duty for a couple of hours and it was just coming up to ten o’clock in the morning. The station looked out over beautiful misty moorland, but the controller and his staff did not — there was plenty else for them to do as the giant radars swept some 3,200 kilometres out into space. They were searching and sifting the 7,000 pieces of orbiting debris and satellites that man had projected into inner space since his first invasion of it in 1957.

The control staff were of course well abreast of the war situation and they knew that, in political terms anyway, the threat of a nuclear attack was small. But they were not there to make judgments of that sort. Warning of an attack rested with the automated system coupled to the scanning and tracking dishes in the great radomes. Anything detected that was not immediately reconciled with the ever-growing catalogue of known objects was subject to an instantaneous analysis in spherical trigonometry by a battery of computers. These would assess the probability that the radar return indicated a missile and, as further radar tracking information came through, discard, decrease or increase the assessed degree of probability in the threat. If things ever went as far as that, the computer and the cathode ray consoles would show, in a somewhat academic way it might be thought, the estimated point of impact of each missile and the seconds to go before its strike.

A system that had to have the highest reliability that man’s ingenuity could devise was inevitably hyper-sensitive, and operators highly trained in monitoring the auditory and visual responses grew instinctively to feel the computer’s mood. Occasionally, even in peacetime, the alerting bell would sound as particles or atmospheric conditions produced a response from space that the computer took longer than usual to analyse. When it was identified as innocuous the computer would apologize seconds later and explain its over-eagerness.

This was the way it was meant to work, and it was the pattern to which the controller and his staff were accustomed. During the last two weeks at Fylingdales and its sister stations in Alaska and Greenland bells had sounded frequently as the Soviet rockets launched more satellites into orbit to maintain their space activities. There had been plenty going on.

The station was a sitting-duck target for an air attack but no guided weapon had come anywhere near it. This was not surprising — indeed it was to be expected — because it was very much in the interests of the Russians, in their non-nuclear war policy, not to risk anything that might so much as vibrate the hair-trigger of the Allied nuclear response. For the same reason the persistent jamming to which the other electronic warning systems had been subjected from the sea and air had not been directed against BMEWS. There was an occasional indication from badly tuned airborne equipment to remind the crew that the electronic battle was still in progress, but otherwise the displays were clear.

At 1005 hours a neighbouring air defence radar warning station rang to say it was no longer affected by jamming. Wing Commander Warburton, the Controller, entered this in his log and thought it curious enough to tell his controller colleagues in the other operational centres. An airwoman brought round the tea. It was all very different from the smoke, dust, blood and horror of the battle raging in the Central Region — but they were concerned here with a different kind of war. Warburton had finished his tea when an American controller from the Detection and Tracking Centre at Colorado Springs called to say that they had detected a launch via a warning satellite over the Indian Ocean. It had come from a distance, west of Baikonur, the site from which the satellite launches had been flying during the last sixteen days, and they had not reconciled it. It would not be visible within the Fylingdales detection range for a while, and he said he would call back as soon as they had any tracking information on it.

The line to the Springs was crystal clear. The whole watch had strained their ears to piece together the message and they had all mentally worked out where the response would appear on the display before the American controller had finished what he had to say. There was a scraping of chairs as each one took up a position so that he could see over the observer’s shoulder. The seconds ticked by and the radar movement seemed more sluggish than it had ever been before. Suddenly there it was: the next scan of the radar confirmed it and the computed display gave a very firm digital threat assessment on one missile on an approaching path. Instantaneously the threat light flashed and the tracking radar slewed.

The Royal Air Force control staffs were well used to calming their adrenalin flow, both through exercises simulated on magnetic tape and by the frequency with which bells punctuated the various steps in the computer process, but this had a very different feel about it. A single missile launch against the UK or the US was a highly improbable event, but the confident mood of the computer had come through to them, and with war raging in Europe anything could happen. Very definitely something was happening now.

It was twenty-four minutes past ten when the digital display abruptly upgraded the threat as the tracking radar picked up the missile soaring out of the atmosphere into space. The computer instantly calculated that it was on a sub-orbital trajectory with 353 seconds to impact. The whole watch was galvanized: if this was a real nuclear attack how could a single missile on its own make any sense? The digital warning display had gone instantaneously to all the other operations centres, including the Government Situation Room, but the Controller pressed the switch which connected them all on the voice circuit to confirm, even though they could make no sense of the alarm, that the BMEWS was 100 per cent serviceable and that the computers were continuing to upgrade the threat assessment.

While he spoke one of the plotters called out ‘impact somewhere in UK, sir’, and the computer print-out typed that before his eyes. The digital time-counter had now spun down to 317 seconds to impact. Warburton kept the voice circuit open to his fellow controllers with an additional hand-set to his ear connecting him directly to the Controller at Strike Command, High Wycombe, where he knew his commander-in-chief would be standing behind the control desk.

The Polaris Executive was the man in the system who would have the most to do if the President and the Prime Minister decided that a nuclear response was to be made, but it seemed hardly likely that they would agree to let sixty-four submarine-launched megaton missiles fly to the heart of Soviet Russia in response to this one baffling radar trace. ‘We still don’t understand it,’ said Warburton as he confirmed the amplification of the threat which had just gone up on the display, showing the Midlands as the impact area. The two plotters were poised over the print-out waiting for the next mathematical refinement of the target information as the seconds to go slid down to 227. It was the RAF Strike Command Controller who had the news first: ‘It’s real — it’s the real thing,’ came over the voice system. ‘The Government Situation Centre have just told us that a message has come in on the hot-line. Acknowledge — acknowledge — and Fylingdales have you any better estimate of the point of impact yet?’

The print-out started up again and in a split second it had written ‘Lat/Long 52° 23’ N. 001° 49’ W.’ As this appeared simultaneously on the main display there was no need to plot it on a map, for by one of the miracles of electronic automation a luminous green circle with a cross in the middle had appeared on the cathode ray map of the British Isles. It was over Birmingham. ‘It’s Birmingham — repeat Birmingham,’ Warburton called into the voice circuit. The other controllers acknowledged this grim news in the disciplined and mechanical way in which they had been conditioned for so long to think about the unthinkable. But on the other hand-set at his ear Warburton detected more than a tremor in the voice of the Strike Command Controller when he overheard him say, after his acknowledgement, ‘Oh my God!’ At High Wycombe only his squadron leader assistant knew that when mobilization was ordered the Wing Commander had sent his wife and their three children to stay with her family on the outskirts of that now hapless city.

The time-counter showed 114 seconds to go as the Fylingdales assistant controller exchanged and cross-checked data on the line to his opposite number in the Detection and Tracking Center at Colorado Springs. A US Air Force major was repeating back the facts and factors as he verified them with the information at the master control centre. All the space satellite and ground radar information was now integrated in the main computer at Colorado Springs, and as he logged the details from Fylingdales he said, ‘Yeah — yeah, that all checks with our data here’ — and then, with more than a touch of melancholy in his voice, as the counter slid down to sixty-three seconds, ‘It sure is going to be hot in Birmingham England.’

The SS-17 missile detonated its nuclear warhead 3,500 metres above Winson Green prison at 1030 hours on the morning of 20 August. Within a fraction of a second the resulting fireball, with temperatures approaching those of the sun, was over 2,000 metres in diameter and reached down towards the centre of Birmingham. The incredibly brilliant flash which accompanied the detonation was visible in London. Even at that range, individuals looking at the fireball suffered temporary blindness and felt a faint flush of heat on their faces.

The tremendous heat given off by the fireball had a more significant effect upon people and materials within a range of twenty kilometres. Lightly clad yachtsmen on Chasewater about nineteen kilometres from Winson Green felt their skin begin to burn as the lasting pulse of heat from the fireball hit them. The thoughtful ones dived into the water to escape the burning heat. Those who did not suffered blistering burns on all exposed skin. The varnish on their boats bubbled, nylon sails melted and newspapers lying in the boats burst into flames. Only those who were protected from the pulse of heat by their clothing, or were shielded in some way, escaped severe burns.

Closer in towards Winson Green the effects of the heat from the fireball were more pronounced. The foliage in the countryside had crisped as if autumn had arrived. Smaller brushwood was smouldering. Haystacks were burning and paintwork on buildings and vehicles in the path of the heat-wave blistered. At Aldridge, and at other places within about twelve kilometres of the fireball, people caught in the open received burns which needed immediate hospital treatment. At this range curtains and other materials inside rooms that were exposed to the heat pulse began to smoulder and in some cases burst into flames. Any lightweight objects such as newspapers, canvas and empty packaging in the open soon caught fire.

Closer to the fireball heat levels became even more intense, so that almost any lightweight material subject to the heat-wave burst into flame while metals and other objects were scorched and distorted. At these ranges the clothing worn by individuals no longer gave effective protection against the heat. Clothes burned off, and people in the open received such extensive burns that their prospects of recovery, even with first-class medical assistance, were negligible. Fires were started inside and outside buildings to an increasing extent as the epicentre was approached, with apparently almost total conflagration occurring within three to four kilometres of Winson Green.

The enormous blast pressures released by the nuclear device followed the heat-wave within a matter of seconds. Those in the open who had suffered severe burns had no more than a few seconds in which to register shock before the blast-wave hit them. Those inside buildings who had already experienced the overpowering flash of light were now subject to the effects of blast. Within a second or so of the detonation the blast-wave hit the city centre beneath the fireball. The enormous pressures had the effect of instantly crushing all buildings below it so that what remained was only a levelled mountain of rubble. The blast-wave then roared and crushed its way outwards from the centre utterly destroying everything in its path. No structures above ground level were able to withstand the tremendous pressures and the coincident wind speeds resulting from the blast. Within three kilometres of Winson Green nothing survived, every building and structure being reduced to rubble and strewn across the roads so that the entire area looked like a gigantic rubbish heap. The effects of the blast-wave began to decline as it travelled outwards, so that between three and six kilometres from the centre a few of the smaller and more strongly constructed buildings remained standing, some at crazy angles and missing many portions of softer construction around reinforced concrete or steel skeletons. Even these few remaining buildings were in such a twisted and derelict condition that they were hardly recognizable as the original structures. They were surrounded by the gutted remains of lighter buildings of modern construction such as hospitals and schools, demolished beyond recognition. All domestic structures within this area suffered similarly, with most brick houses collapsing under the effects of the blast-wave.

Those who had suffered the most agonizing effects of the heat-wave were mercifully killed by the blast-wave that followed. People who had been indoors were now buried beneath mountains of rubble and suffered a similar fate. Within three or four kilometres of Winson Green very few people survived the immediate effects of the detonation. Outside this range, and up to about seven or eight kilometres away, the collapse and destruction of most buildings trapped people in hundreds under fallen masonry. There were many deaths and severe injuries beyond counting. The air was full of flying objects, picked up by winds moving outwards from Winson Green at speeds which, even at ranges of four or five kilometres, approached 500 kilometres per hour. The wind drove along objects standing in its path like confetti. Motor cars and other vehicles were bowled over and over, carried tens and even hundreds of metres from where they were. People caught in the open were picked up, flung through the air and dashed against any solid object in their path. Roof tiles, pieces of masonry and any loose objects were projected through the air like missiles, smashing their way through obstructions and causing injury to many. At distances greater than seven or eight kilometres from the centre damage levels began to fall off, but even so all lightweight structures were blown over, roofs were blown off and higher masonry buildings suffered extensive damage. Large amounts of rubble and masonry fell into the streets and all windows were blown out, much of the glass being converted into missiles with much injury to people in the way.

A minor benefit of the blast-wave was that some of the innumerable fires started a few seconds earlier were blown out and did not rekindle. This was small mercy, however, compared with the even larger number of fires which were effectively fanned by the outward moving winds.

Birmingham airport, twelve kilometres from Winson Green, suffered relatively light damage, but wind speeds at the airport were of the order of 160 kilometres per hour and many aircraft lost wings and tailplanes or were turned on their sides by the blast-wave. Outside this range the effects of blast fell off rapidly, damage to buildings being confined to broken windows and shifted roof tiles.

The blast-wave had rolled outwards from the centre at something like the speed of sound, arriving at Birmingham airport approximately thirty seconds after the detonation of the weapon. Even at this point the roar of the explosion was stupendous, lasting for ten to fifteen seconds. The same roar was to be heard in London, approximately eight minutes later, as a rumbling, roaring noise from the direction in which the blinding flash of the fireball had been seen eight minutes earlier. Those in London with any knowledge of nuclear weapons were in no doubt as to what had happened.

Within one minute the stupendous activity of immediate damage from the detonation had ceased. The enormous mushroom cloud above the totally devastated centre of Birmingham had risen to a height of fifteen kilometres and had spread across a diameter of approximately twenty kilometres. It cast its shadow over a scene of extraordinary destruction, where everything was still except for the occasional crash of falling masonry and the crackle of multitudinous fires. Within a radius of five kilometres of Winson Green everything seemed to be on fire. Outside this area, to a range of about eight kilometres, hardly any building, or what survived of it, seemed to be free of a fire of some sort. Fires occurred less frequently outside this range though there were buildings on fire at ranges of up to fifteen kilometres. There were fires in towns as far away as Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, Halesowen, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield, Walsall and Brownhills.

The devastation within the centre of Birmingham was so intense that the road system had ceased to have any meaning, most roads having totally disappeared beneath the rubble of the buildings once standing along them. Outside this area, and to a range of five or six kilometres, all roads were totally blocked by fallen masonry. The only means of movement around the area was provided by the M5 and M6 motorways which encircle the centre of Birmingham. These roads, being wide and not hemmed in by buildings, remained relatively free of obstruction. The bridges along them had also survived remarkably well. Outside the motorway route the degree of devastation began to tail off, although most buildings still appeared to be unusable. Almost all roads were so littered with rubble that no immediate movement of vehicles was possible. The centres of Dudley, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and Halesowen were impassable, though in these towns the outline of the road system was still visible and the overall extent of the damage, though still enormous, was considerably less than in the centre of Birmingham. Fires were prolific, particularly in commercial premises in high streets and commercial centres, holding large stocks of inflammable materials. In many places the gas distribution network had been broken and fires were being fed by escaping gas.

The fires which were now alight across a circle with a radius of approximately fifteen kilometres centred on Winson Green were beginning everywhere to take hold. In particular the fires amongst the devastated remains of the centre of Birmingham were beginning to burn fiercely. As the flames rose higher into the sky air was drawn in from outside, with the result that winds began to blow inwards towards the flames. This further fanned the conflagration so that, within twenty minutes of the original detonation, an area of approximately thirty square kilometres in the centre of Birmingham was totally engulfed in a fire-storm. The flames and smoke rose hundreds of metres into the sky as the in-rush of air fed and fanned the fires. The in-blowing air prevented fires moving outwards but everything within the fire-storm area was now engulfed by it. Outside the area of the fire-storm thousands of other fires were burning furiously. In peacetime many of these would have been regarded as serious fires requiring the attentions of a significant proportion of the fire-fighting effort available locally. As it was there were so many such fires burning at once over a total area of about 600 square kilometres that conventional fire-fighting equipment could have little or no effect upon them.

The human casualties resulting from the detonation of the nuclear weapon were horrific. The day had been a sunny one, so that many people were lightly dressed and therefore susceptible to burn injuries on their exposed skin. The centre of Birmingham had been crowded with shoppers and others going about their normal business. Fortunately, schools were empty and some people were away on holiday. Nevertheless, a population of approximately 2 million, including that of Birmingham and its surrounding towns, was exposed to the holocaust. Of this population approximately 300,000 were killed within minutes by the heat and blast effects of the weapon or were subsequently to die unattended by any medical or rescue team. A further 250,000 received blast or burn injuries of a very serious nature, in need of urgent hospital treatment. Another 500,000 received lighter injuries which could conceivably be treated either by themselves or with first aid. Only a very small proportion of the population within the Birmingham area was entirely free of injury. The medical and hospital facilities available to support this catastrophic level of casualty were themselves savagely weakened.

Half the hospitals in the area were either destroyed or rendered totally unusable by the explosion. Of the remainder only a quarter were able to function as normal whilst the rest had suffered damage which severely limited their ability to cope with more than their original patient load. Doctors and ambulance services had suffered casualties in proportion to that of the civil population and so were hardly able to cope with an emergency. By any measure the enormous numbers of people requiring medical assistance so swamped the remaining medical facilities that the help these were able to give was almost negligible. In addition to the physical and human destruction, many of the survivors within the area were suffering from severe shock. They were helpless and in no position either to help themselves or to organize any form of co-ordinated help for others.

The fire-fighting services had also been severely disrupted, almost three-quarters of the fire-fighting equipment within Birmingham itself having been destroyed. Most of the firemen who responded to the emergency by making their way to their fire stations found that their equipment was either buried or so damaged as to be unusable, while those who were able to get their appliances out found that they were quite unable to move them along the roads. Additionally, there were so many fires burning that any sort of priority was almost impossible to decide upon. Those nearest to the fire stations received what little effort was available. Within Birmingham and its close environs the firemen who were able to deploy equipment found that the water distribution system had suffered so much damage that hydrant pressures were inadequate to support any real fire-fighting capacity. This was not the case in the surrounding towns, however, where subterranean water systems had remained undisturbed and where effective pressures were available.

Within the city of Birmingham central administration and organization had virtually ceased to exist. Normal telephone communication systems linking police, fire-fighting services, medical facilities and local administration had all been destroyed. In the preceding week a Sub-Regional Headquarters had been established at the government offices in South Yardley. These offices were approximately nine kilometres away from the centre of the explosion but they were of modern infill construction and had suffered considerable damage as a result of the blast. As offices they were generally unusable and, more important, all telephone communication had been destroyed. The personnel manning the headquarters were relatively unscathed but, having at first no form of communication with outside agencies, even by road, they were unable to co-ordinate any activity. It was some time before emergency radio communication, from what was left of local and public utility radio, together with RAYNET Ham Stations (the net of amateur or ‘ham’ radio stations), could begin to help.

A further problem was the total failure of electrical power in the Birmingham area. The widespread destruction of electrical distribution systems had led to the automatic cut-out of supply, and destruction was so widespread that the distribution system throughout that area of the Midlands centred on Birmingham had been affected. Many of the power stations supplying the area had automatically shut down as their imposed load had ceased to exist. Thus the whole of Birmingham, with its surrounding towns, was without electricity.

Spontaneous attempts at fire-fighting, rescue and the giving of medical attention to the injured developed within minutes of the detonation. But, being spontaneous and limited, the efforts were soon totally disorganized as calls for assistance flooded into whatever remained of the emergency service co-ordination centres. It was some hours before the initial shock had subsided sufficiently for any attempt at local organization to take place. In Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, Solihull, Walsall and Halesowen public utility communication systems had survived to some degree and were at least able to report the extent of local damage and casualties. These towns had been hit hard, with very extensive damage to buildings and with large numbers of fires. A great many of their inhabitants had suffered extensive burn or blast injuries and needed urgent medical attention. Their fire-fighting, ambulance and medical collection services had survived reasonably intact and were available to the local authority. The biggest problem these services faced was that of moving their equipment around streets blocked with rubble. In addition, the extent of fire was sometimes so great that entire areas had to be completely avoided. Most of these towns had taken some elementary precautions of a civil defence nature during the first days of war, even if they had not done something earlier, including the stockpiling of earth-moving machinery capable of clearing rubble off the main roads. They were thus able to clear routes through the centres of the towns so that emergency services equipment could be deployed, generally to the town or city centres, where the worst devastation had been caused, where fires were burning most fiercely, and where the majority of casualties had also occurred. The vast numbers of fires elsewhere in these towns had to go unheeded. So did most of the casualties, lying unattended. The extent of damage and casualty in these towns was so great that the local authorities were overwhelmed by their problems and could spare no thought for assistance to areas outside their own.

Towns closer to the centre of Birmingham, such as Dudley, which was approximately nine kilometres away from the centre of the explosion, had fared much worse than the towns in the outer ring. Dudley’s town centre was ablaze in many parts, while movement of fire and rescue appliances along its roads was severely handicapped and in many cases impossible. Again, a few items of earth-moving equipment had been assembled before the war and these now attempted to clear their way through the worst of the rubble. Many buildings had collapsed. People were trapped but little rescue effort was available. The local authority emergency services had remained reasonably intact but most of the telephone communication system had broken down; it was thus impossible to organize centrally any form of rescue effort. Rescue work continued on an ad hoc basis but was hopelessly inadequate to meet the town’s needs; this was also the case in other nearby towns like Halesowen, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and Solihull. These towns were in the worst state of any in the area. Large numbers of those still alive had suffered severe injuries. Emergency services existed in some form or other but without organization. The towns struggling for survival in surrounding areas could provide no form of help to those in the inner ring. Still closer to the point of detonation conditions were so bad that no help was available at all. Thus the towns in the worst condition of all were left to their own devices. This was where help was most urgently needed. As it was, there was none.

Within the motorway boundaries the position inside the city of Birmingham itself soon became quite unmanageable. Movement was virtually impossible. Although the fire-storm itself had abated, fires still raged throughout the area. The area was a wilderness in which no help was to be had, surrounded by towns quite incapable of providing any.

As the day wore on Wolverhampton and Solihull continued to struggle with the impossible task facing their rescue and fire-fighting facilities. Most of the fires had to be allowed to burn themselves out. Rescue attempts were made where resources were available and where it appeared that some benefit would result. In many places no attempt could be made to rescue people trapped inside fallen buildings or to provide medical attention to the injured. Inevitably this meant that many people trapped in buildings died either as a result of the spread of fire or from the injuries they had received earlier.

By the end of the day on 20 August an area of 600 square kilometres centred on Birmingham was a scene still lit by innumerable fires burning themselves out, with pockets of activity where fire-fighting and rescue operations were going on and groups of people had formed themselves into rescue teams to try to extricate those buried beneath rubble. A small number of people had been able to obtain medical assistance but thousands were totally unable to get near a hospital because of the large numbers of injured requiring attention. By the end of the day almost all organized endeavour within the areas hit by the nuclear explosion had to be concentrated on attempting to cope with the enormous numbers of casualties. Hospitals were being inundated with requests for help and submerged by the wave of people appearing for treatment. Many were still lying where they had been injured; there was no way of collecting them up. The numbers of people appearing at hospitals were such that physical protection of the premises was required from the police. Even so, the anxiety of people to receive treatment themselves or have others treated was so great that violence began to develop and there were disturbances outside some of the surviving hospitals.

The movement of survivors out of the area, by vehicle or on foot, soon began to clog the remaining passable roads and severely hampered the emergency services. Further police effort was required to control this. The police manpower available for this task, and also for the protection of the hospitals, even with the help of reserve army units, was simply insufficient. Chaos began to develop on the roads, chiefly near hospitals and in areas which had suffered less damage than others and where people came to find food and shelter. As the night wore on the absence of electricity made matters worse, so that the day ended in a shambles of uncoordinated activity by fire-fighting and rescue teams doing what they could against the mountain of disaster facing them, in an environment where hundreds of thousands of people were seeking food and shelter and attention for severe injuries. The extent of the disaster and its aftermath was such that the local authorities were quite unable to control events.

During the day the situation in Birmingham had been in the minds of the entire country. Everyone was aware that a nuclear device had been exploded and most were convinced that it was only the first of many. This caused an element of panic everywhere as individuals sought either to protect themselves within their own homes or to move from urban areas out into the country, where they imagined they might be safer. The potential mass exodus of people was of great concern to the government, who strove to check it through broadcast messages. Fortunately no further nuclear attack took place. Nevertheless, local authorities everywhere were making preparations to ensure their own survival and might not have been receptive to requests to provide Birmingham with assistance, had these been made.

The government had ordered Headquarters United Kingdom Land Forces to take whatever action in support of Birmingham was possible without detriment to its ability to withstand further nuclear strikes. Headquarters West Midland District was ordered within minutes of the strike to provide what assistance it could in the Birmingham area.

By mid-afternoon that day twelve major units from the regular and volunteer armies, together with units of the RAF Regiment, amounting to some 10,000 men, with logistic and medical services and some fire-fighting equipment, were being deployed on emergency relief operations. Units drawn from West Midland, Eastern and Wales Districts, including the Mercian Yeomanry and men from the Light Infantry Depot at Shrewsbury, were deployed to Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, Halesowen, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield, Walsall and Brownhills. Here the local authorities had retained some semblance of local control and rescue and relief operations were therefore already under way in some form or other. The military units brought with them vehicles, communications, tentage, blankets, medical assistance, engineer equipment and fire-fighting equipment. Most important of all, they were organized bodies of men, capable and under disciplined control.

By the evening of the same day the emergency committees nominated in peacetime had come into operation. These committees included representatives from the police, fire-fighting services, ambulance services and medical authorities. With liaison officers from military relief units the emergency committees now took control of the deployment of rescue and relief operations during the recovery phase. It was evening before troop deployments were complete and before the emergency committees had a chance to take stock of the situation within their areas. With no electricity and fires still freely burning almost everywhere, little could be done other than attempting ad hoc rescue and relief operations with existing facilities, while plans were made for a major effort at recovery from dawn next day.

By the early morning of 21 August the Sub-Regional Headquarters at South Yardley had managed to establish radio and land communications with central government and with emergency committees in the surrounding towns. It was thus able to co-ordinate the activities of all the emergency committees, which were by now backed by their own surviving emergency facilities and military help.

All surviving hospitals were still being besieged by crowds of casualties needing treatment. There were few doctors available either in the hospitals or in the surrounding areas. Most of the roads were still impassable to vehicular movement, so fire-fighting, rescue and ambulance teams could not approach the scenes of worst damage. There were no telephones and no electricity. Gas supplies had by now been cut off. The water distribution system had failed in many places, which made fire-fighting more difficult still. There were many thousands of slightly wounded people with no accommodation and no means of feeding themselves. Looting of damaged commercial premises was becoming widespread as some looked for food while others hoped for material gain. Many people were trying to leave the area, clogging the roads with their vehicles and preventing the effective deployment of emergency services. Fires were still burning in many places, and the thousands of bodies littering the streets and lying amongst the destroyed buildings threatened a future hazard to health.

The weapon had fortunately exploded at such a height as not to cause extraordinarily high levels of radiation over the area. Emergency teams were able to operate wherever they could be deployed without concern for radiological hazard. There would have been extensive and dangerous radioactive fallout if the device had been exploded closer to the ground. A very large area downwind of Birmingham which might have been significantly affected by radioactive fallout was thus not placed at risk.

As the day of 21 August wore on the emergency services, with military support, began to make some headway in restoring order to the devastated area. Emergency committees established road blocks at many places throughout the towns to reduce the movement of refugees. Specific evacuation could now be mounted to move casualties into other hospitals in the Midlands. Reduction in refugee movement also allowed the emergency services access to the roads, where these had been cleared, so that further rescue operations could be carried out. Relief centres were set up in suitable surviving buildings such as schools, assembly halls, community centres and cinemas. Emergency supplies of food were established at the centres so that those being sheltered could be adequately fed. Strong police and military guards were mounted at all hospitals to control the access of injured people. Patrols of police and military also operated throughout the area, wherever movement was possible, to check looting, which was widespread. Emergency teams, reinforced by military and ad hoc groups of local citizens, were organized to carry out further rescue operations and to gather in all those casualties who had remained unattended so far. Casualties so collected were passed through control centres where they were allocated to categories of treatment, including first aid, attention at local hospitals where possible, or evacuation to other hospitals in the Midlands. Military communications greatly improved the co-ordination of operations. Some headway began to be made at last in assessing the extent of the disaster and in allocating priorities.

The task of restoring order and of rescuing and providing succour to the injured was still enormous in relation to the resources available. Fires were still raging, thousands were still dying where they lay, many people remained buried alive. Scattered crowds wandered about in a state of shock and there was frequent violence amongst those who thronged around the hospitals, relief centres and food stores, all of which were now under police and military guard. Police and military were armed and in many cases had to use force, sometimes even with weapons, to maintain control.

By the morning of 22 August some semblance of order had been established in neighbouring towns such as Wolverhampton. Here all fires had now been extinguished or had burned themselves out, and the combined efforts of police and military were at last able to maintain some degree of law and order in the streets, while rescue operations went on in damaged buildings and the further evacuation of homeless and injured to other areas was arranged. Compulsory billeting had allowed shelter to be found for most of those still wandering the streets. Some military effort was now becoming available to probe further towards the centre of the devastated area and to carry out rescue and relief operations in the innermost ring of towns surrounding the city of Birmingham. Most of the surviving populations of these towns had already left them and had arrived in the outermost ring of towns. There they had been given shelter and such medical help as existing facilities allowed. Nevertheless, within the innermost ring of towns, in places like Dudley, many thousands of injured people still lay amongst the rubble of their homes and countless others were buried beneath the ruins. The extent of damage in this area was so great that only minor relief was possible.

The Sub-Regional Headquarters within the city of Birmingham had by now realized that little could be done for most of the city area. Fires had largely burned themselves out but the devastation had extended over such a wide area that the capacity of rescue teams, already engaged in rescue attempts in the towns of the inner periphery, was severely limited. It was evident that the resources in the area were hopelessly inadequate to begin to attempt rescue operations in what remained of the city of Birmingham itself. This would have to wait until national resources became available. The city was therefore cordoned off along the line of the motorways to the north and west and along the line of the River Cole and the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal to the south and east. It was ordered that no rescue or relief operations would be mounted within this area for the time being. The cordon was strongly manned by police and military units and access into the city area was forbidden.

By limiting the deployment of available relief resources in this way the Sub-Regional Headquarters was able to make some headway in organizing and administering the area outside the cordon.

Many thousands of seriously injured were now dying daily and sanitary conditions had deteriorated to such an extent that there was widespread danger of disease. Police and military units were forced to the frequent use of firearms in maintaining law and order amongst the droves of injured and often dispirited people who overcrowded the limited accommodation and swamped all medical facilities. Evacuation of the injured was proceeding as fast as possible but the numbers were so great that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable destinations for them. Further attempts were being made at clearing major roads around the city of Birmingham, but with the resources available only those in and out of the towns concerned could be cleared. It was obvious that a major evacuation of the entire area would have to be carried out, leaving behind only personnel essential to further rescue operations.

Londoners had seen the flash and heard the detonation of the nuclear explosion over Birmingham. While they watched the high mushroom cloud gather and disperse the government was already taking action. Civil and military staffs started immediately to put into operation contingency plans for nuclear attack. It was announced that the Prime Minister would speak to the nation on television and radio at midday.

Central government was already established away from London. On 4 August the first stages of the plans for evacuation had been carried out, with token staffs setting up in underground war locations. The main bodies of civil and military headquarters soon followed. Everywhere throughout the country the regional centres for joint civil and military control, located underground and well-protected, and subordinate sub-regional centres, had from the outset been fully operational. At the head of each was a minister of Cabinet rank, with representatives of all essential military and civil authorities. Procedures were well-practised. Communications had long been hardened against bomb damage and interference, even from the electro-magnetic pulse generated by a nuclear detonation.

Conventional air attack on many parts of the country had already been heavy, particularly on ports, power stations and communication centres, with severe damage and heavy loss of life. Fears of further nuclear attack were widespread. As a result, it was not immediately possible to divert to the stricken cities and towns in the vast circle of damage more than a comparatively small proportion of the units of United Kingdom Land Forces. Police and civil defence forces were under heavy strain. The voluntary groups trained by local authorities to cope with civil emergency, as well as conventional or nuclear attack, and the RAYNET Ham radio communications linked to the local authority and public utility radio networks were invaluable. Equipment stockpiled by local authorities, acquired by grant-aided purchase in the recent past or more recently still by requisition, was a godsend. Against the background of the damage done in Britain in the past few weeks by conventional air attack the Birmingham disaster could have pushed the national situation out of control. What had been done for civil defence in the preceding few years was just enough to prevent this.

Delegation of power over military and civil defence resources had become the responsibility of the Headquarters of UK Land Forces. Representatives of the Prime Minister, the naval, air and military commands and the civil agencies controlling essential services were assembled there, in well-defended underground bunkers, hardened against attack or interference to communications, containing all necessary equipment.

The news media had used all their resources to cover the Birmingham disaster — though for the first twenty-four hours after the detonation all pictures from the scene were banned. Approach by road to the towns of the countryside surrounding Birmingham was impossible. Visual cover was therefore only obtainable through oblique scanning from the air. There had been commentary all day on television and radio. When the Prime Minister broadcast, she explained what had happened in the first nuclear attack on a British city — indeed upon any city in the Western world — and outlined what was being done to provide relief. She repeated urgent advice that all people outside the disaster area should stay where they were; no one could yet know whether, or where, in the United Kingdom there might be another attack.

The Prime Minister then went on to announce that the enemy had in his turn been struck by nuclear attack, with even greater force than that used on Birmingham. This was the first official intimation in the United Kingdom that the Soviet city of Minsk had been destroyed.

Her Majesty the Queen with her family, said the Prime Minister, would remain in London, and she, the Prime Minister, herself would, of course, do the same.