Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

There are other patterns too. First the Cubans, then the Guatemalans and now the Nicaraguans have all been abandoned to die by the Soviet 'allies'.
There will be much scrambling for everything before the end.




You are spot on here. The US will see those supply ships going home and want to eliminate them less they come back. They won't be going home empty though.
On a wider note, yes, this overall situation is something I need to work in.




All the men have gone off to war. What news comes from afar says 'victory' The governments there will by now know the truth though. There's a crisis point coming in that.



That is an interesting and valid counterpoint, yes. They don't need all that the US does and I should factor that in too.

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February 1985: Texas

Much of Texas still remained occupied by foreign troops while American forces remained not that far away but not in a position yet to move forward and liberate the rest of the Lone Star State. Within those occupied areas, the Soviets directed the overall occupation effort though had their allies undertake the majority of the tasks that this entailed. Revolutionary Mexico provided much of the manpower for that, with the belief that once the war was over, after the United States was defeated, Texas – and a lot more of what would become former American territory – would be ‘rightfully returned’ to them. Moscow had pointedly made no such promise on that matter but had given a nod-and-a-wink that this would occur. Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary – eight more Latin American and Eastern European countries – all too had personnel spread through Texas on non-combat tasks as well. Still, the Mexicans and the Soviets were the face of the occupation for Texans caught up on the wrong sides of the frontlines.

This wasn’t an occupation which met any international standards of how an occupying power should treat a native population, not in any fashion at all. Daily outrages continued to occur and these were gross violations of human rights committed against non-combatants. This was organised in places, unorganised in others. Texans were considered the enemy by the occupiers. There was no real effort to win them over in any way to if not agree with the occupation then accept it. The activities of the occupiers continually drove resistance. Armed attacks by guerrillas carried on – though at a lower level than before – and there too was much passive resistance as well. Over in El Paso, right in the far west of Texas, there remained in-place there that Peace Committee which consisted of American ‘notables’. They weren’t involved in what was going on with the occupation though. El Paso was all for foreign relations. The KGB controlled access to them from overseas media and government officials: no undertaking was made to have them used to try to influence things through occupied areas. There was a trickle of civilians which left the occupied areas with people getting out and reaching freedom. The vast majority were stuck though, trapped where they were and suffering. The actions of the occupiers were seeing these numbers reduced at quite a pace due to a growing number of fatalities. There had been shootings before and there would continue to be so yet the deaths occurring came due to the occupation. There was no food. There was no medical care available. Disease ran rampant through urban areas due to overcrowding of civilians pushed out of the countryside and into them. Austin, Houston and San Antonio had all seen many civilians initially leave them ahead of the invading troops though other people had stayed inside them. From El Paso along with large towns in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, far fewer people had managed to get away before all major exits routes for them were shut off and the frontlines of war had moved far away. In the cities and big towns, their populations had risen as over the winter months as those who lived outside of them had been forced to move to each. With the people all gathered up, they were deemed easier to control. This worked on a general pattern because there were fewer people outside across the countryside who could cause the occupiers trouble as they did what they wanted with Texas. However, the intensity of what guerrilla activity then did occur away from the concentrations of people was fierce with many of those left behind believing that everyone else had been herded off to be killed and they themselves had no choice but to fight. The ramming of their urban areas with people saw so many of them fall ill with the resulting deaths that came. Starvation took the weakest first but it would get everyone eventually.

Unless stopped, this harshest of all occupation measures undertaken – a recent development – would kill millions of innocents. It wasn’t a deliberate state policy of the Soviet Union to see this done… Tirado López remembered what happened to Mexico City and his view on what should be done in Texas was different. However, while no one in Moscow had signed-off on this officially, it was known about. The KGB didn’t stop the Mexicans from doing what they did. The Soviet Armed Forces knew full well too what was going on. Neither organisation was full of idiots who weren’t aware what was very soon going to happen. There was thus a lot of ‘hand-washing’ going on. Soviet senior people were making sure that their hands weren’t dirtied by involvement in what they were making sure that the Mexicans were doing all by themselves. The immediate benefit for them and their own wartime activities by that confining of people was plentiful. There was an anticipation that in victory or defeat, everything would come crashing down on the Mexicans when the scale of what was occurring was uncovered but, in the meantime, they’d washed their hands of the whole thing.

Soviet military officers were pleased to see the easier time they had moving those reinforcements which had made it across the Atlantic now through Texas. American air activity was still a major hinderance and there were increasing activities of inserted Green Berets, but with large-scale civilian interference gone, this became easier. Roads were used for moving equipment and supplies but also Texan railroads. The Soviets had brought over Railway Troops, specialist engineering forces to not just repair existing rail links but expand them too. This was a seriously challenging task for them to do because the rail network in Texas was nothing like it was back home or even in Europe – Americans liked their air and road travel rather than railways – but it was done regardless of all of those difficulties thrown in their way by way of lack of infrastructure and terrain. Convoys on the roads and the few railroads travelled away from South Texas and throughout the rest of the Lone Star State. They went west, north and east.

The Seventh Tank Army was the largest of those reinforcements on the move. At the beginning of February, the field army’s headquarters was situated in Corpus Christi. By the end of the month, that location had shifted to Seymour. This put the mass of tanks which formed a strike force that the Soviets had shifted north to win the war (almost) within sight of the Red River and Oklahoma beyond. They were almost ready to see combat.


Over in Oklahoma, through the north-eastern parts of Texas and down its very eastern edges along the state line with Louisiana, the United States had their unbeaten armies in-place. These too were being joined by reinforcements as the newly-raised Army of the United States arrived. These new troops were far smaller in number than at first planned yet there were still many more men in training elsewhere and only waiting on equipment and war-stocks which would all eventually come. The Third and Seventh US Armies absorbed those newly-arriving troops through February. Welcome too were the supply convoys which rolled in. Factories in the Mid-West especially yet also through the rest of the country had been busy turning out ammunition and so many more ‘consumables’ for military use.

Late February had earlier been pencilled-in as the time for a combined offensive to begin. That had been cancelled because the ARUS wasn’t ready. There were many voices who had demanded that an attack to liberate go ahead regardless. The new troops could catch up with existing forces which, it was assumed, would suddenly be able to do the impossible and tear threw Soviet and Soviet-allied forces to reach the Rio Grande. Chuck Robb – fully established in his role as Defence Secretary since replacing Bentsen – had refused to see this done, fully supported by the Joint Chiefs. It would fail miserable, President Glenn was told, and result in the immediate deaths of tens of thousands of American troops on the attack and see millions die when Soviet occupation continued for what could be another year. All that could be averted if there was a wait of just a few more weeks.

Therefore, a wait it was.

During that time, the Americans strengthened themselves with more than just numbers. They shuffled forces about and readied themselves for their offensive. That increase in strength also meant sending forward reconnaissance to gain a better intelligence picture of what faced them ahead. They already knew about the Soviet convoys and while overestimating the losses taken to the cargoes, they noted how the Soviets were making good with what they had brought across to the fight in North America. This led them to uncover two important issues. The first was that the Seventh US Army would have crashed head-on into the Soviet Seventh Tank Army and not gone lancing straight down through Central Texas on a successful cavalry ride as many had truly believed that could occur with apparent ease. Robb and the Joint Chiefs were vindicated on that matter of waiting.

Of more importance was the cities and the ghettos being formed in them. The term ‘ghettos’ came not from what certain areas of American cities were called where there was poverty and social strife. No, that wasn’t the case with what was seen in Texas. In a NISS report delivered to the President and the National Security Council, the comparison was made to the ghettos that the Nazis had formed in Poland during the early stages of World War Two. The evidence pointed (rightly) to Revolutionary Mexican forces being responsible for herding all those civilians together yet there was no misunderstanding over the fact that they wouldn’t have done this on their own without Soviet say-so. A conclusion was presented to Glenn upon what the Mexicans were up to.

They were going to deliberately murder all of those people in an act of genocide ahead of a later repopulation of Texas. Glenn asked for evidence of this. If true, he would act against this but the scale of his action foreseen demanded more proof than what was available. NISS was instructed to find that proof. NISS went out to find it.

This isn't just a case of Idiot Ball on the part of Revolutionary Mexico; this is a full-on What An Idiot/What Were You Thinking on behalf of Mexico with regards to what they are doing to the population in the cities, especially since many of those occupants have relatives who live in Mexico (and/or are related to those who emigrated) from Mexico and might be sympathetic to Revolutionary Mexico if the right decisions were made.

OTOH, the backlash against Hispanics is going to be huge postwar, sadly, and will involve many Hispanics who didn't support Revolutionary Mexico...

Good update...

Ouch. This is a seriously bad idea. But then again, given what happened to Mexico City, the Mexicans have a lot of reasons to be incredibly angry with the North Americans.

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February 1985: The North Atlantic

The Allied navies had been humiliated by Soviet naval activities in the North Atlantic since the war had begun. Again and again, the navies of the United States, Britain and other Allied nations – true naval powers – had taken major losses due to enemy activity. They had done significant damage back to the Soviet Navy yet the North Atlantic was a contested stretch of water. The Allies were on both sides of the ocean where they had naval & air bases aplenty and also many island possessions with military facilities too. This was their ocean! The Soviets had managed to make control over the North Atlantic something that they could fight for though, over an extended period of time too. They had taken several islands to use as naval air bases – Iceland, the Azores and island nations at the eastern end of the Caribbean – for their missile-bombers and flooded the ocean with many submarines as well. On top of that, they had had a lot of ‘luck’. The US Navy had lost three aircraft carriers sunk in the North Atlantic; the Royal Navy had lost one of their own too. In addition to these, dozens upon dozens of major warships had been sunk as well. That was a lot of luck… very little of which was actually were examples where fortune favoured the Soviet Navy, especially their naval air arm flying from those island bases. NISS had broken open that Soviet spy ring and uncovered the scale of it in terms of how advanced it was and how the Soviets had been able to make use of intelligence gathered for real-time attacks. The GRU knew how the US Navy constructed its naval codes and the technology behind that. The specifics of communications changed daily – a necessary security measure – but it was how those codes were made and the precise methods of transmissions that the Soviet Navy was thus making use of. They weren’t able to pinpoint exact American naval movements and uncover all that they were saying, but they got enough information for it to be mightily useful. When NISS put this to the US Navy, there was initial suspicion. No one likes to be told that their trusted technology is being used against them and that due to that, so many deaths had occurred. NISS provided the proof though. The US Navy did want to know more and would have preferred to run a test, but this was wartime. They weren’t in a position to take their time in reaction. The president and the defence secretary had become involved and demanded that action be taken. The US Navy subsequently had changed its communication set-up early in January. There had been immediate results apparent where the Soviets instantly seemed to run out of ‘luck’. Their submarines weren’t showing up to attack American warships. From out of their island airbases, the Americans watched the Soviets behave very different where they were soon searching with reconnaissance aircraft on a wider scale for surface contacts rather than in a narrow area.

When informed of this neither the British, Canadians, Portuguese nor Spanish were impressed that the US Navy had been played for fools for so long and by extension they had taken the significant naval losses that they had too because the Americans had been so thoroughly penetrated by Soviet espionage. US Navy communications had allowed the Soviets to identity activities of its allies yet also stripped the North Atlantic of American naval power (when ships were sunk) that gave the Soviets a freer shot at them. Asked what the Americans were going to do with their own traitors, would they be shot, neither NISS nor US Navy could confirm that the ultimate punishment for traitors would be given to such people. There was talk of turning this ‘Walker’ spy ring against the Soviets. Part jokingly, part seriously, a Royal Navy admiral requested that instead such people he turned over to him… there was a yardarm or two which could do with some ‘decorations’.


February saw the Allied navies aim to take back their ocean. What had occurred with robbing the Soviets of one of their advantages was only part of the reason why they were able to achieve all that they were. They played to their own strengths when on the attack now that there was less time on the defensive and that was key. Operations were properly planned and executed well. Some luck came in too, real luck.

The US Navy linked up their two remaining operational carriers (a third was undertaking major post-combat repairs) and sent them towards Iceland. USS Nimitz and USS Saratoga, each hit hard earlier in the war by Soviet missile attacks and now patched-up, went after enemy aviation forces flying from that island’s south-western corner. They made a careful approach, following weather systems and in complete radio silence too, and then filled the skies with aircraft. Fighters and strike aircraft conducted a major attack over Iceland, being given a lot of help to do that in the form of the US Air Force. Ten B-52s came towards Iceland from the north after flying above Greenland and launched waves of ground-attack cruise missiles from far away. The B-52s turned for home, never in danger, while the missiles zeroed-in against the Soviet airbases at Keflavik and Reykjavik. US Navy aircraft showed up less than fifteen minutes after those missiles struck home. The Tomcats had few airborne fighters to engage and the US Navy would have loved to have used the others for ground attack if they had been able to. Alas, the Tomcats could only circle around while providing top cover for the Corsairs and Intruders, plus some new Hornets, which then went in low to do more than just shut the runways like the cruise missiles had done. They went after aircraft sitting on the ground: the Backfires, Bears and Blinders. Defensive SAMs were fired and took down several aircraft but others got their bombs through to their targets. Soviet naval air power on Iceland wasn’t wiped out by the time the American aircraft left, but it had taken terrible losses.

A joint effort by Allied navies, led by the Royal Navy, supported an RAF attack against Lajes Field in the Azores similar to the strike against Iceland. Tornados laden with bombs flew from mainland Portugal with tanker support and conducted a low-level surprise attack to hit more Soviet naval aircraft flying from there. Operation Talisman cost the RAF six aircraft – two to SAMs, one to anti-aircraft gunfire, two to enemy fighters and one to ‘terrain’ (i.e. the ocean) – but they would claim two dozen aircraft destroyed on the ground. Canadian and Portuguese ships and submarines joined with the Royal Navy in conducting operations around the Azores in the days following Talisman, when the Soviets were still hurting and unable to conduct major flight operations as the runways had been targeted like the aircraft parks. This was risky but the payoff would be high. Minefields were laid, commandoes were inserted and local shipping being used by the Soviets was attacked. A Canadian destroyer shelled Lajes Field from a distance and came under attack from an armed helicopter: it shot down its attacker though left the area trailing smoke after a missile had smashed into its superstructure. The Soviets picked themselves up and begun to conduct operations once much Talisman-inflicted damage had been done yet they soon found themselves very much on the backfoot due to all that had been done when the Allied navies had been allowed free-reign around the islands. The Portuguese had put a lot of special forces troops in on reconnaissance tasks (they’d use radios to broadcast aircraft departures) and would later seek to raid Lajes Field too. The mines laid were going to cause the Soviets many problems as well. They had had two minesweepers here, both of which had just been sunk. The majority of the Allied ships involved got away afterwards along with all of the assigned submarines. There were naval engagements far from the Azores but linked to the conflict there ongoing as well where several blockade runners were caught after being identified as what they were. The Royal Navy discovered a cargo ship which was supposedly Columbian was in fact a Soviet vessel loaded with weapons for what missile-bombers were left. The ship was taken under tow to Madeira. The Spanish came across another ship also flying a Columbia flag and coming up the South Atlantic bound for the Azores. A boarding party moved in and was met with sustained and accurate gunfire. That was too bad for those aboard the blockade runner as this was a warship from a vengeful nation they had engaged. The Spanish put that ship and its military wares on the bottom of the ocean… along with the crew too who due to a ‘submarine scare’, the Spanish didn’t stay around to save. There was a third ship (Turkish-flagged) which was missed, one carrying aviation fuel, and the Allies would have loved to have got that one too yet they’d done enough by getting the other two. Moreover, when that ship would dock, it would be entering mined waters.


Smaller engagements took place across the North Atlantic throughout the month. The weather wasn’t great but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it had been during the depths of winter. There was some success for the Soviet Navy yet those were limited and isolated occurrences. Everywhere else, the Allied navies were in the ascendency. They were attacking all over the place. Surface and air engagements took place while at the same time there were submarine clashes too. US Navy submarines pushed into strength into the Norwegian Sea. Four of them went forward and while a Soviet aircraft got one of them, the other three had a ‘happy hunt’. American submarines were busy on the other side of the ocean as well.

What the US Navy was calling the West Indies Exits were the multiple channels between islands of the Caribbean and the edges of the North Atlantic. These stretched from the Florida Straits to the water between Grenada and Trinidad. Soviet shipping – theirs and that they were using – passed through the West Indies Exits many times, going both ways. Attacks against this shipping had been undertaken and there had been varying levels of accomplishment. The further away from Florida, the more of a chance of success that ships had to get through safely though there was always a time issue involved. Going further east meant a longer voyage. In addition, there was often deception and even daring used by the shipping to get through where they pretended their passage was innocent or raced through with speed. The Americans were now aiming to shut the West Indies Exits for good. They were transferring more aircraft to Puerto Rico but before then submarines arrived. It wasn’t a wolf pack where many would operate together, coordinating actions. However, there were a lot of them and they were assigned operational areas alongside others while intelligence was shared from above.

Coming from South Texas, passing Cuba to the south and then around the divided island of Hispaniola came a Soviet convoy of ships. These had been some of those which had made it to North America during their winter voyage. The Americans watched them heading home. They were riding high in the water and thus without cargo carried. Nonetheless, sinking them was still important even if they weren’t carrying anything: they wouldn’t be making another journey loaded with tanks if sunk, would they? The Mona Passage was first thought to be the one of the Exits chosen but the ships went even further east and through the Virgin Islands. Both American and British owned islands of that chain were in Cuban hands. The ships passed by the islands, going this way and that way, and towards the open ocean beyond. This took the US Navy by surprise and they had to admire the daring. That wouldn’t mean much though. Their submarines and then afterwards US Air Force Phantoms from Puerto Rico turned up. Eight Soviet ships were sunk and three were beached on the sands of several islands, each of the latter targeted for more air strikes. Two ships got away after running further east. The US Navy celebrated such kills: eleven for no losses of their own, not even an aircraft lost to plentiful if woeful anti-aircraft fire from a couple of those ships. Later, much later, intelligence intercepts would discover that those ships had in fact been carrying cargo. It was human cargo. Those were hospital ships, heading home loaded with wounded men who weren’t lucky enough to have been evacuated by air. The Americans were justified in what they had done because the ships had been armed and they hadn’t known of the cargo (which mattered for nought when ships were carrying weapons anyway) and thus wouldn’t apologise for what they did. Hundreds upon hundreds of helpless men, all carrying war-wounds, drowned or burnt to death in the waters around the Virgin Islands. This was saw tragedies every day and this was only one of many. It was one which didn’t have to take place though.