1946 British plans to nuke Russia using wooden "Mosquito" aircraft

The De Havilland Mosquito famously had a wooden air frame. Above: One in flight in 1944

Britain's 1946 plan to nuke Russia

Details of a British and American plan to launch a nuclear attack on Russia just two years on from the end of the Second World War have been unearthed. 

The plans, outlined in 1946, would have seen Allied planes hammer Soviet positions in Germany and eastern Europe to pre-empt an expected Russian attack.

As part of the force, as many as 400 Mosquito fighter-bombers - which were famously made of balsa wood - would have been equipped with atomic bombs.

The British and American aim, according to Swiss military officials, was to have the effect of 'paralysing the points of departure' of a Soviet offensive for up to 45 days.

The file outlining the plan, which the Swiss said would not have been ready to launch until at least the summer of 1947, was discovered by the Daily Mail in the National Archives at Kew in West London. 

The plan, called 'Annex II', was discussed in a meeting involving prime minister Clement Attlee and his wartime predecessor Winston Churchill, in Parliament in November 1946.

The meeting detailed in the unearthed file was held in Attlee's office in the House of Commons on November 5, 1946.

Winston Churchill and Labour prime minister Clement Attlee at the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph on November 6, 1949

Churchill, who had led the country through most of the Second World War as prime minister, had by then been out of office for more than a year after losing the 1945 election to Attlee's Labour.

The file had been handed to Sir Winston during his visit to Switzerland just weeks earlier.

It gives a remarkable insight into the disastrous collapse of the relationship with Joseph Stalin's Russia less than two years after they had been allies against Nazi Germany. 

The document is distinct to the May 1945 plan 'Operation Unthinkable', in which Britain envisaged a surprise attack on Russia immediately after Germany's defeat.  

Churchill had ordered the drawing up of Unthinkable - which historians have known about for decades - in response to his fears about growing Russian strength and aggression.

It horrified Churchill's military chiefs and was dismissed as being impossible to pull off. 

A section of the file detailing an British-American plan to use nuclear weapons to attack Russian forces in Europe as early as 1947

Speaking of the newly-unearthed file, leading historian Damien Lewis told the Daily Mail: 'Winston Churchill clearly saw reason to draw it to the highest levels of Government attention and he did. 

'The Swiss were also seeking urgent clarification. Contemplating nuclear war in Europe - albeit as a US-British response to a planned Russian attack - as early as 1947, and on such a scale - would have put our European allies on edge. 

'But at that stage the we still held the key war-winning advantage, in that America had nuclear weapons, whereas the Russians did not. 

'Moscow was still years away from its first successful nuclear test. 

'In that sense, the plan - as a response to massive Soviet aggression - would have made some degree of sense, frightening through the scenario may be.'

Winston Churchill and Russia's Joseph Stalin were wartime "allies". Above: The pair during their conference in Moscow in 1942 

Attlee and Churchill previously worked side by side in the coalition War Cabinet.  

With them in the November 5, 1946 meeting were stalwarts of the same coalition.  

There was Churchill's foreign secretary Anthony Eden, his key Army ally General Hastings Ismay, former colonial secretary Oliver Stanley and Labour's soon-to-be defence secretary AV Alexander, who had served for most of the war as First Lord of the Admiralty.

The notes of the meeting outline its course in intricate detail. 

It began with a discussion of 'The Russian Situation'.  

Churchill told the attendees that he had received 'certain confidential information' and he felt it was his duty to 'make it known to the Prime Minister'.

He then read out a telegram he had sent to US President Harry Truman less than two weeks after Hitler's suicide in May 1945, when he was still prime minister.

The full telegram is detailed in the file's 'Annex I'. 

In the face of the Soviet Union's enormous strength, Churchill had expressed concern at the shift of US troops from Europe to the Pacific amid Japan's ongoing resistance and asked: 'What is to happen about Russia?'

He added: 'What will be the position in a year or two, when the British and American Armies have melted...?'

The first page of the file examined in the National Archives. It detailed a meeting held in Attlee's office in the House of Commons on November 5, 1946

The page from the file which described Churchill reading out 'Annex II'

The third page of the meeting notes, detailing Churchill's discussions with Attlee and the other attendees

The first page of 'Annex II', which detailed the Swiss assessment of Allied plans

The second page of the document. Britain had not yet developed the atom bomb, and in 1946 the US only had nine. Those paltry figures are a far cry from the 200 mentioned in the annex

The third page of Annex II, detailing a Swiss insistence 'not to express any judgement' on the alleged plan. The document went on to analyse the strength of Russian forces in the Middle East

Churchill implored Truman to 'come to an understanding with Russia, or see where we are with her, before we weaken our Armies mortally...'

After the Nazis' defeat, Stalin's men had - in defiance of the agreements made at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 - made the nations in Eastern Europe satellites of Russia.

In a letter to Eden on May 4, 1945, Churchill poured out his concerns, writing: 'Terrible things have happened.

'A tide of Russian domination is sweeping forward... After it is over, the territories under Russian control will include the Baltic provinces, all of eastern Germany, all Czechoslovakia, a large part of Austria, the whole of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

'This constitutes one of the most melancholy events in the history of Europe and one to which there has been no parallel.

'It is to an early and speedy showdown and settlement with Russia that we must now turn our hopes.'

In the Commons, Churchill told Attlee - after weeks of reports of growing Russian aggression in Eastern Europe and elsewhere - that 'what he had foreseen in this telegram had now come to pass'. 

Eight months before the Commons meeting, Churchill had warned in what would turn out to be his most famous post-war speech that an 'iron curtain' had descended across Europe.

Appeasement of the Soviet Union was not an option, the former PM argued. 

But his views were not popular back in Britain, due to pro-Russian propaganda in Britain during WW2.

'Democracies must demobilise - despotisms had no need to do so', the notes record Churchill as saying.

Churchill then highlighted his recent visit to Switzerland, where - in a speech in Zurich - he had floated the idea of a 'United States of Europe' to combat Russian aggression.

The former PM had found the Swiss 'very frightened of Russian intentions', the notes said.

Churchill said he had been given the document by a Swiss staff officer with the consent of the country's high command.

After reading it out, he 'emphasised most earnestly that knowledge of the contents of this paper should be limited to the smallest circle'.

In Annex II, which was marked 'top secret', the Swiss claimed that 'no foreign information service is in possession of any more accurate information than ourselves'.

The strength of Russian troops stationed in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland and the Baltic States amounted to a total of 130 divisions and 50 armoured brigades, the Swiss claimed.

'This is certainly more than is necessary to overcome the resistance of the 25 Allied Divisions of occupation in Germany, of which 9 to 10 American Divisions are nothing but a police force', they went on.

And then came the bombshell: a firm outline of an alleged British and American plan to attack Russian forces in Europe. 

'It is true that recent information, emanating from superior British and American Officers indicates that measures are being taken to resist possible Soviet ambitions,' the document said. 

In the 'first phase', which would last one day, there would be: 'Destruction of bridges, railway stations, railway tracks, nodal points on the main lines of communication in a Zone A, comprising the territory between the Elbe - Danube and the Vistula.'

At Yalta in February 1945, Winston Churchill praised his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin as a 'friend whom we can trust'. Above: Churchill with US President Franklin D Roosevelt and Russian leader Joseph Stalin at Yalta

So that would have been eastern Germany, what was then Czechoslovakia, western Poland and parts of Austria and Hungary. 

Then, in a second phase lasting three days: 'Air effort would be concentrated on Poland (Zone B) whilst continuing tactical operations in Zone A.'

At the forefront of the mission would be the 400 Mosquitos carrying up to 200 atomic bombs.

Supporting them would be 4,000 heavy and medium bombers and 1,200 fighter planes.

And over an envisaged four days of fighting, a further 120 Mosquitos, 500 medium bombers, 500 heavy bombers and 1,000 fighters would be available in reserve, the Swiss claimed.

The report went on: 'The American and British staffs reckon that this counter-action should have the effect of paralysing the points of departure of the Soviet offensive for a period of 30 to 45 days. 

'This delay would, in their judgement, suffice to allow forces to be brought up which would be capable of carrying out a defensive resistance.

'Later, it would be their intention to concentrate sufficient troops to beat back the Russian forces.'

The Swiss did rightly add that the key point was whether or not the 'Anglo-American staffs are in a position to put the plan into execution'.

America would have to provide the bulk of the resources, and would not be ready to engage air forces until June 1947, they added. 

Before moving on to the threat posed by Russian forces in the Middle East, the Swiss concluded that Russian forces 'still retain their relative superiority' and, chillingly, 'that a conquest of Western Europe by the Soviet must be considered as a practical possibility'. 

It would not be until 1949 that the US would have built up a huge stockpile of around 400 bombs.

In Churchill's view, the meeting notes went on, the deterrents to a Russian attack were the 'enormous latent strength' of Britain and America and the US's possession of the atom bomb.

Churchill wanted Britain to 'have about 50 of these bombs', and if America would not 'let us have them', then 'we ought to make them ourselves'.

Churchill, during his second stint as PM from 1951 to 1955, oversaw the UK's own nuclear programme, which culminated with the detonation of Britain's first atomic bomb in 1952.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15038593/Unearthed-Britains-plot-nuke-Russia-wake-WWII-using-bombs-dropped-wooden-planes.html