LONDON , England ( CNN ) -- Britain feared that it would have been overwhelmed in the event of a Soviet attack because of the depleted state of its armed forces , according to secret files made public on Tuesday . U.S. President Jimmy Carter watches UK PM James Callaghan speak at a 1979 meeting in Guadeloupe . Papers released by the National Archives , under the 30-year rule , reveal that Royal Air Force fighter jets only had sufficient ammunition for two days of combat and the Royal Navy would fail to defend the country from Russian submarines . The army would have been too over-stretched to cope with a widescale campaign of sabotage and subversion by Soviet special forces , the papers show . Prime Minister James Callaghan called the situation a `` scandal '' when he discovered the scale of the problem and demanded resignations among the military . `` Heaven help us if there is a war ! '' he scrawled on one note . But ministers could do little until the Tornado fighter plane became available in the mid-1980s along with other military hardware . The problem became clear when senior intelligence officers warned in late 1977 that , in the event of a conventional war , the Russians could unleash up to 200 bombers and 18 submarines against the UK . The assessment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was that British forces would be unable to cope . `` UK forces can not match the threat postulated by the JIC assessment , '' the chiefs noted in January 1978 in a document marked Top Secret UK Eyes Alpha . `` Air defenses would be outweighed because aircraft would be outnumbered and stocks of air defense munitions would sustain operations for only two or three days . `` Maritime forces need better anti-submarine weapons , and face a massive threat from submarine and air-launched missiles and also from mines ; the most serious deficiency is in numbers . `` The army in the UK would , until mobilization is complete , have insufficient forces to meet its commitments ; after mobilization of the reserves , a process taking between 15-20 days , the Army would be able to counter the currently assessed Soviet land threat during the initial stages of the war but , lacking supporting arms and logistic support , it would be inadequate to deal with any more significant threat , including sabotage or subversion on a wide scale . ''
Britain feared it would have been overwhelmed in Soviet attack , papers reveal . Score: 7 Prime Minister James Callaghan called the situation a `` scandal ''