BOTA 20 – Doomsday Requiem
BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC PART 20 – DOOMSDAY REQUIEM
The failure of the Day of Days has left the Soviet high command reeling. Marshal Ogarkov’s spring offensive, Operation Krasnyy Rassvet (Red Dawn), was meant to shatter NATO carrier power, sever the Atlantic lifeline, and open the door to Iceland. Instead, it ended in disaster. The rebuilt Northern Fleet has been decimated, their surface groups and submarines sent to the bottom of the sea. NATO now controls the convoy routes and the North Atlantic sea lanes, and the war has shifted from survival to liberation.
In the United Kingdom, the buildup has begun in earnest. Where 1944 prepared for France, 1985 prepares for Norway. NATO planners are assembling amphibious forces, carrier air wings, and the logistics to push into occupied territory and begin rolling the Soviets back from the fjords. NATO forces continue to chip away at the Soviet’s Fortress Norway from the sea and air. Every day that passes tightens the pressure, and every day increases the risk that Ogarkov will escalate rather than accept defeat.
With Ogarkov reeling in defeat, NATO has stepped up diplomacy – pushing ceasefire proposals and backchannel messages with increasing urgency, calling for withdrawal and the return of occupied ground. The Kremlin answers with silence, delays, and denials. Ogarkov’s position is under strain, but his instincts remain unchanged. If he cannot stop NATO at sea, he will try to stop NATO by raising the risk of escalation, forcing Western leaders to hesitate, divert forces, and slow the liberation campaign.
MISSION:
On 9 June 1985, Naval Air Station Bermuda receives a priority signal from COMLANT. The SOSUS network has detected a surge of submarine activity moving west across a front nearly 500 nautical miles wide between Bermuda and Nova Scotia. The tracks are intermittent and not yet classified, but the pattern is wrong for routine transit. COMLANT’s assessment is blunt. This may be Soviet ballistic missile submarines moving into launch positions against the American and Canadian eastern seaboard.
For Ogarkov and Admiral Chernavin, the logic is desperation disguised as nuclear deterrence. A forward deployed SSBN threat forces NATO leadership to divert forces, slow the liberation timetable, and reconsider every major operation. Ogarkov’s remaining leverage is the threat of nuclear escalation, using the possibility of a strike to buy time and political hesitation. Chernavin understands what that gamble could unleash, but if Ogarkov orders the move, the Navy must execute it.
POTUS reacts, ordering the United States to national DEFCON 3, with Atlantic forces directed to DEFCON 2. COMLANT responds with a rapid, layered ASW scramble. A small surface screen is pulled from what remains available on the western side of the Atlantic commitment. Two US destroyers and three US frigates sortie to form an ASW picket, joined by two Canadian destroyers pushing down from the north to seal the approaches. P-3 Orions lift from Bermuda, and CP-140 Auroras launch from Greenwood to lay sonobuoy fields, refine the tracks, and force the Soviet boomers to reveal themselves.
Beneath the surface, four USN attack submarines are vectored into the search area to hunt the boomers and their escorts. They are ordered deep and silent, tasked to penetrate the wide search front and take positions where a Yankee cannot settle into launch posture undetected.
The mission’s danger is not a lack of firepower. It is the clock, the ocean’s depth, and the dispersion of multiple submarines across a massive battlespace where every false contact costs time. NATO must find them, fix them, and finish them before the threat becomes irreversible, because once the launch order is given, the Doomsday Requiem will play.
CAMPAIGN:
The Battle of the Atlantic campaign unfolds in a dark reimagining of 1984, where Cold War tensions erupt into full-scale war. After seizing power in the Kremlin, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov launches a lightning invasion of Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Soviet forces pour across Scandinavia and surge into the Norwegian Sea, threatening to sever NATO’s transatlantic lifeline and dominate the GIUK Gap. In response, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and allied NATO naval forces mobilise for a desperate stand to preserve control of the seas.
From the fog-choked Baltic to the windswept North Atlantic, players will command Task Forces through a series of missions: from the defence of Gotland and interdiction of Soviet amphibious landings, to high-stakes carrier battles in the mid-Atlantic and convoy escorts across submarine-infested waters, to full-scale amphibious warfare. In this struggle for maritime supremacy, every decision counts—and the future of Europe hangs in the balance.
A 25+ mission linear campaign, The Battle of the Atlantic, is inspired by famous naval battles of WWI and WWII.
***FULL CAMPAIGN MOD COLLECTION: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3718111590
Thank you to @Hogthunder, @AmbientAmoeba, @Nikethegreat1 for testing the mission.
Required items:
Click the title to search on this site.
Boeing Vertol CH-113 Labrador MOD — Steam Workshop
Iroquois Class Destroyer — Steam Workshop
NATO E-3A Sentry — Steam Workshop
RAAF P-3s Orion, P-2s Neptune and RCAF CP-140 Aurora MOD — Steam Workshop
RAN and RCN Sea Kings MOD — Steam Workshop
Soviet Intelligence Collection Ship MOD — Steam Workshop
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
