Britain and America came close to provoking the Soviet Union into launching a nuclear attack, classified documents written at the height of the Cold War have revealed.
Cabinet memos and briefing papers released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that a major war games exercise, Operation Able Art, was conducted in November 1983 by the US and its Nato allies.
The game was so realistic it made the Russians believe that a nuclear strike on its territory was a real possibility, stuff.co.nz reports.
According to the report, when intelligence filtered back to the Tory government on the Russians’ reaction to the exercise, then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, ordered her officials to lobby the Americans to make sure that such a mistake could never happen again.
The papers were obtained by Peter Burt, director of the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), an organization that campaigns against nuclear proliferation, who said that the documents showed how risky the Cold War became for both sides, the report said.
Able Archer, which involved 40,000 US and Nato troops moving across western Europe, co-ordinated by encrypted communications systems, imagined a scenario in which Blue Forces (Nato) defended its allies after Orange Forces (Warsaw Pact countries) sent troops into Yugoslavia following political unrest.
The Orange Forces quickly followed this up with invasions of Finland, Norway and eventually Greece.
As the conflict had intensified, a conventional war had escalated into one involving chemical and nuclear weapons.
Numerous UK air bases, including Greenham Common, Brize Norton and Mildenhall, were used in the exercise, much of which is still shrouded in secrecy.
However, last month Paul Dibb, a former director of the Australian Joint Intelligence Organisation, suggested that the 1983 exercise posed a more substantial threat than the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the report added. (ANI)