Operation Atlantic Storm
April 12, 1970
In Our Reality
The K-8 sank on April 12 1970 after a series of accidents and errors in leadership, with the loss of 52 souls, including the captain, Vsevolod Bessonov.
In Delta Green
The Soviet Union has been researching the same stealth technology that vanished the USS Eldridge back in 1943. They have progressed further than the Americans and understand that it is in fact a time travel technology.
The Agents are Navy SEALs with Delta Green clearance. Their CO, Lieutenant Commander Harris, is trying to curry favour with Majestic by capturing the stealth tech research, before he gets liquidated following the Cambodia screwup. The target is a Soviet November-class nuclear attack submarine, K-8, currently foundering 250 miles off the Atlantic coast of Spain and France in the Bay of Biscay. An accident has occurred which has disrupted its time travel experiment and alerted Delta Green via unusual particle emissions similar to those emitted by the USS Eldridge.
The Agents
See page 145 of the Agent’s Handbook for SEALs. Tell the players they were selected for this operation because their Agent speaks Russian, and have them add 20% to that foreign language skill for free (so they can talk to the NPCs they meet). Each Agent has tactical body armour (armour rating: 5), gas masks, flash bangs, and their choice of an M16 rifle with flashlight or MP5 with sound suppressor.
The Briefing
Harris is accompanying the Agents to the submarine and gives his briefing en route, shouting over the noise of the engine and the Atlantic swell as the boat speeds at 50 knots (60mph) during its 4 hour journey from Portsmouth, England. He explains that K-8 has been disabled in an accident during tests of a stealth device which took place about 8 hours ago.
The objective for the team is to retrieve intelligence on the device and the test (whether written notes, computer hardware, or scientific personnel) and then to scuttle the K-8 with explosives to stymie Soviet progress in this field.
This operation is not on the books and no support will be coming for the Agents if they screw up. On the contrary, they will probably be extradited to the Soviets to avoid a war (and to get rid of more Delta Green operatives).
Reviewing the schematics with Military Science (Sea) shows three points of entry: the conning tower, and escape hatches at the bow and stern. The stern hatch has been locked shut by Major Kulikov. The bow hatch can be observed from the conning tower.
Infiltration
The rigid inflatable boat, under cover of night, must pass through the Soviet patrols screening the disabled submarine. The Soviet sailors aren’t expecting such a brazen attack. If a Pilot (Boat) roll fails and they do not pass through undetected, they are hailed in Russian by the confused captain of a Zhuk-class patrol boat. Persuading him they’re meant to be there requires a Russian roll. If they ignore the warnings to leave, the Agents will be resisted by pistol fire at close ranges (it has a complement of 17 officers and men) and by the boat’s heavy machinegun at a distance. The screen will put up flares to see what they are fighting and to alert K-8 that intruders are approaching.
Boarding
Harris instructs the team to board while he secures the RIB (he doesn’t speak Russian). He begins setting up C-4 explosives and tells them they have 30 minutes.
On the hull of the surfaced boat, the Agents find about 40 dazed submariners wearing bright orange life-jackets, uniforms soaked from rain and spray, faces blackened by smoke, some gasping for breath after suffering carbon monoxide poisoning and all of them shivering in the cold night air. The assortment of engineers, electricians, cooks, radio operators and other enlisted men are unarmed. They assume the newcomers are here to help if they haven’t heard gunfire. They immediately surrender if threatened. Remember that SAN loss for executing innocents in cold blood is 1/1d10. They have spent the last 12 hours battling the fires that raged below after a bizarre accident and are in shock from seeing so many comrades die around them. They have no information about stealth devices or secret research. They had a Chekist on board but he kept to the storage compartment.
Atop the conning tower, the Agents find 6 grim and dirty officers armed with pistols. Captain Sevolod Bessonov’s first priority is to save his crew, and his second is to prevent the capture or boarding of his boat by American SEALs, although he isn’t a fanatic and will not fight to the death. He feels like he has betrayed his men by not resisting GRU SV-8’s requisition of his boat and the subsequent experiment they conducted. He can be persuaded to let the Agents enter his boat if they play on his antagonism towards the GRU SV-8 agent on board, Major Sergei Kulikov. He doesn’t know the specifics of the experiment but he has some technical knowledge of the equipment GRU SV-8 installed and can point it out if interrogated.
Inside the Boat
Agents must wear their bulky gas masks during the operation or suffer carbon monoxide poisoning (2d6 hours speed, 15% lethality). The electrical systems have been disconnected by Major Kulikov (the rest of the crew thinks they have simply failed) and the smoke-filled compartments are only dimly lit by emergency lighting. Every door has been sealed tight and must be manually unsealed, which is tiring work in the gas masks and armour, requiring a strength test to avoid losing 1 willpower. Most of these doors have a handful of dead Soviet sailors clustered around them, some horribly burned (0/1 SAN loss from violence), others with eyes bulging from asphyxiation and fingers bloody from scratching at the door (0/1 SAN loss from helplessness). Navigating the compartments requires Russian rolls to understand the signage under intense conditions, with failures inflicting 0/1 SAN from helplessness as the Agents find themselves in filthy toilets, claustrophobic offices or pitch black storage rooms. Their firearms clank uselessly against torpedo racks and coolant pipes.
The Experiment
Major Kulikov makes his lair in the storage compartment at the stern of the boat, amongst traditional sci-fi apparatus: glass domes, spools of copper wiring, concentric energy rings, Tesla coils, resonant transformers, and other such thingamajigs. Unfortunately, the names of these will be lost in translation (he’s never heard of a Tillinghast Resonator but will recognise one if he survives this operation and is recruited into Majestic). The nuclear reactor on the November-class submarine outputs enough electricity but physical defects in the boat’s infrastructure could not sustain the experiment, and half the conduits exploded. Kulikov was wearing his NBC suit so he wasn’t cooked, gassed or shocked to death like all his technicians were. He has gathered a lot of useful data and considers the experiment a success. He has spent the last 12 hours repairing the burned out wires, and disconnecting the rest of the boat’s systems, to put even more power into the second attempt. Unfortunately, he isn’t very good at electrical engineering, and the outcome will not be what he desired (see A Stitch In Time).
Kulikov is surprised by the Agents’ entrance. He doesn’t have a weapon. His hand is poised to throw the switch that will send the K-8 through time. He tells them they could become masters of the world if they help him go back in time and take over with their advanced knowledge, science and weapons. Any Agent who seriously considers the offer should take 0/1 SAN from the unnatural, because time travel is impossible.
By The Book
If the Agents decide to follow their orders and sink or capture the K-8 before it can perform a second time-travel attempt, they and Harris become trusted operators of Majestic-12’s NRO and can be high-ranking antagonists in future operations.
A Stitch In Time
If the Agents allow (willingly or not) a second time travel attempt to take place, they take 0/1d6 SAN from being subject to an unnatural event, and there is a complication (of course). Instead of going backwards in time to become masters of the world, they go forwards to 2025 (the K-8’s electronics having screwed up once again). The crewmen outside the boat are fried in the transition (0/1d8 SAN from violence to see their charred remains if they did this by choice). The Program immediately picks up the same emissions of particles Delta Green did in 1970. The Navy SEALs have become the mission and you can run them as Agents or NPCs for your regular campaign. They were reported killed in a training exercise 50 years ago (0/1 SAN from helplessness to learn this), they cannot return to the Navy (0/1 SAN from helplessness for losing their careers), and their bonds have likely died of old age (0/1d4 SAN from helplessness).
Handout: The K-8
Character Stats
Lieutenant Commander Jason Harris
Desperate weasel, age 45
STR 11 CON 11 DEX 12 INT 14 POW 16 CHA 12
HP 11 WP 8 SAN 40 BREAKING POINT 36
ARMOUR: 5 (tactical body armour and helmet)
BONDS: Loving wife in Virginia Beach (Tamara Harris)
SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Athletics 40%, Bureaucracy 40%, Demolitions 30%, Dodge 40%, Firearms 50%, Heavy Weapons 30%, HUMINT 50%, Law 30%, Military Science (Land) 30%, Military Science (Sea) 30%, Persuade 50%, Pilot (Boat) 20%, Pilot (Helicopter) 20%, Search 30%, SIGINT 20%, Stealth 40%, Survival 40%, Swim 50%, Unarmed Combat 50%
DISORDERS: Adapted to violence.
ATTACKS: Suppressed MP5 (single shot) 50%, damage 1d10
Suppressed MP5 (short spray) 50%, lethality 10%, kill radius 2m
Unarmed 50%, damage 1d4-1
OTHER EQUIPMENT: gas mask, flash bangs, C-4 explosives, flares
Captain 2nd Rank Sevolod Bessonov
Between a rock and a hard place, age 37
STR 11 CON 13 DEX 11 INT 14 POW 14 CHA 14
HP 12 WP 8 SAN 50 BREAKING POINT 45
ARMOUR: 0
BONDS: Loving wife in Kursk Oblast (Katrina Bessonov)
SKILLS: Alertness 30%, Athletics 40%, Bureaucracy 40%, Craft (Electrician) 40%, Craft (Mechanic) 40%, Dodge 30%, Firearms 40%, HUMINT 50%, Military Science (Sea) 50%, Navigation 50%, Persuade 40%, Pilot (Boat) 80%, Search 40%, SIGINT 40%, Swim 60%, Unarmed Combat 40%
ATTACKS: Makarov light pistol 40%, damage 1d8
Unarmed 40%, damage 1d4-1
OTHER EQUIPMENT: inflatable life-jacket, signal flares
Major Sergei Kulikov
They all laughed, but who’s laughing now?!, age 39
STR 10 CON 12 DEX 11 INT 16 POW 14 CHA 6
HP 11 WP 6 SAN 20 BREAKING POINT 10
ARMOUR: 0
BONDS: GRU SV-8 colleagues
DISORDERS: Megalomania. Addiction (amphetamines). Adapted to helplessness. Adapted to violence.
SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Athletics 40%, Criminology 30%, Dodge 40%, Firearms 50%, HUMINT 40%, Occult 30%, Persuade 40%, Science (Physics) 40%, Search 30%, SIGINT 40%, Swim 20%, Unarmed Combat 40%, Unnatural 5%
ATTACKS: Unarmed 40%, damage 1d4-1
OTHER EQUIPMENT: NBC suit (apply -20% to rolls requiring physical movement)
Soviet Naval Officer
Captain-Lieutenant Mikhail Ivanova, age 30; Lieutenant Kirill Petrov, age 27; Junior Lieutenant Oleg Stepanova, age 24; etc
STR 12 CON 12 DEX 10 INT 12 POW 12 CHA 12
HP 12 WP 12 SAN 55 BREAKING POINT 45
ARMOUR: 0
BONDS: Son and daughter in Stalingrad (Yevgeny and Angelina)
SKILLS: Alertness 30%, Athletics 40%, Bureaucracy 30%, Craft (Electrician) 40%, Craft (Mechanic) 40%, Dodge 30%, Firearms 40%, HUMINT 40%, Military Science (Sea) 40%, Navigation 40%, Persuade 40%, Pilot (Boat) 60%, Search 40%, SIGINT 30%, Swim 50%, Unarmed Combat 40%
ATTACKS: Makarov light pistol 40%, damage 1d8
Unarmed 40%, damage 1d4-1
OTHER EQUIPMENT: inflatable life-jacket, inflatable 12-man life raft, flare gun
Soviet Sailor
Midshipman Igor Popov, age 25; Warrant Officer Nikolai Kosov, age 21; Seaman Anatoly Smolyak, age 19; etc
STR 13 CON 13 DEX 10 INT 10 POW 10 CHA 10
HP 13 WP 10 SAN 60 BREAKING POINT 50
ARMOUR: 0
BONDS: Girlfriend in Leningrad (Sofia)
SKILLS: Alertness 40%, Athletics 40%, Craft (Electrician) 30%, Craft (Mechanic) 30%, Dodge 30%, Firearms 30%, HUMINT 30%, Military Science (Sea) 30%, Navigation 30%, Pilot (Boat) 40%, Search 30%, Swim 50%, Unarmed Combat 40%
ATTACKS: Makarov light pistol 30%, damage 1d8
Unarmed 40%, damage 1d4+0
OTHER EQUIPMENT: inflatable life-jacket, inflatable 12-man life raft, flare gun
Shell-shocked Submariner
Sergeant Valentin Gorshkov, age 29; Seaman First Class Vladimir Dubasov, age 23; Seaman Nikolai Menshikov, age 20; etc
STR 10 CON 10 DEX 10 INT 9 POW 9 CHA 9
HP 5 WP 5 SAN 40 BREAKING POINT 39
ARMOUR: 0
BONDS: Babushka in Moscow (Maria)
DISORDERS: PTSD. Adapted to helplessness.
SKILLS: Alertness 40%, Athletics 40%, Craft (Electrician) 30%, Craft (Mechanic) 30%, Dodge 30%, Firearms 30%, HUMINT 30%, Military Science (Sea) 30%, Navigation 30%, Pilot (Boat) 40%, Search 30%, Swim 50%, Unarmed Combat 30%
ATTACKS: Unarmed 30%, damage 1d4-1
OTHER EQUIPMENT: inflatable life-jacket, inflatable 12-man life raft, signal flares
Credits
Written by Tristan Edge for the 2025 Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Contest
November-class submarine diagram via www.hisutton.com with labels via en.topwar.ru
Inspired by The X-Files S02E19 “Død Kalm”, Stargate: Continuum, and The Hunt for Red October.
Credits
Operation Atlantic Storm was written by Tristan Edge for the 2025 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19WvQSHW2gizWZwQI0n2IGfJQA36AT0cdEgxWs64xAFE/edit