Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

James, did I miss something? In one of your previous updates there was a fuel air attack on the Can/UK corps forming up for the attack on Pueblo CO. Was it not as devastating as first thought? Or did I miss an update on that.
Apologies if I did.
Cheers!

The allies will need to be careful not to misinterpret the Soviet withdrawals as a general collapse. That one division has been mauled after getting sloppy should be a warning to the others.
The Soviets ARE still a threat in the field, even if they are about to be pushed out of the US and shortly afterwards, out of North America.

(306)

March 1985: North Texas

When revealed many long years later, Operation Mechanic would be judged by historians to be quite the feat. The United States had managed to undertake a successful strategic intelligence deception to dupe the Soviet Army to a significant degree. They played Soviet beliefs back on themselves and let their opponents do the vast majority of the work for them too. Mechanic was really an exercise in Soviet self-deception when it came down to it. A lot of luck occurred with this. The plotters and schemers with NISS couldn’t have factored in just how much both the GRU and the KGB would fall for what was presented to them and then compete with each other not to disprove what was presented before them but instead try to outdo each other in proving it was true. In normal circumstances, the two organisations were at each other’s throats to do away with the other. One of them could have – maybe should have – shot down the whole thing to the detriment of their real enemy. They did no such thing though. Each of them promoted the certainty that Americans were due to launch a major offensive where and when all the information uncovered pointed to this occurring.

Mechanic was just a trick though, a big fat lie. The GRU and the KGB hadn’t uncovered preparations for an incoming American attack. Yet, with the belief that they had, the Soviets moved to act on that. It made perfect sense to do so. They ‘knew’ when the Americans would strike and therefore would strike first. Information gained, all of which was confirmed through several sources, all pointed to a fantastic opportunity. It wasn’t one which could be missed. To catch the Americans unprepared for an attack against them, when they were in the final stages of getting ready for their own, was what Mechanic led the Soviets to attempt. There was no consideration at all that they had been fooled and were about to fall for a trap of a magnitude that they couldn’t even imagine.


Before the Mechanic deception was fully played out, there had already been the intention of the Soviets to go over on the offensive in March regardless. This apparent intelligence success which they had only accelerated the timescale for the attack. Newly-arrived forces with the Seventh Tank Army were moved into position facing Oklahoma as they based themselves on the Texan side of the Red River. Part of the already in-place Twenty–Eighth Army was moved aside to join the rest of that field army to launch a supporting attack into north-eastern Texas. Supplies were rushed forward while fire support was assembled. All of this extraordinary activity was covered from observation as the Soviet made use of their usual camouflage, both physical and electronic. They took all measures to ensure that the surprise they were going to spring upon the Americans wouldn’t be spotted beforehand. It had all worked in the past and there was a certainty that it would do so again. Masses of tanks, guns and infantry were hidden away, all so that when they went into action, their appearance would come as a surprise to the Americans.

The whole offensive operation was planned out in great detail. The Soviets marshalled their forces for the opening attack, the follow-up breakthrough units and then those tasked for the exploitation role far beyond the initial battlefield. Objectives were set for advancing units to reach at set times. That time-scaling was done using structural ‘norms’: doctrine taught in Soviet military academies was followed in exact detail. Criticism of how the war had been previously fought had come and it was a reverting to the basics now. Beyond the attacking units, this was done with everything else too from the supporting artillery to engineers to signalling troops to supply units. Everything was plotted out perfectly. Officers who were considered reliable – that would mean whatever those who set that wanted to see – were put into the important positions and others were shunted aside. Excuses made for earlier failures on the battlefields of North America, where it was pointed out that lessons had been learnt from what had gone wrong before, were treated as just that: excuses. The war would be conducted the right way from now onwards when the Soviet Army returned to the offensive.

Ahead of that offensive, the Soviets shaped the battlefields which they would fight over. They sent out reconnaissance units. Some of these stayed silent while others were tasked to be noisy. American positions in defence yet also the readiness for their own offensive were all confirmed. There were attacks launched to deceive the Americans as to what the Soviets were up to, making it look – in Soviet eyes – as if they were only getting ready to defend themselves. Communications jamming was done on an on-off basis to test new systems of their own and to get a feel for some of the modernised equipment that the Americans were using. Bridges in the rear were looked at ready to be grabbed for Soviet use and cut American withdrawal routes. It was anticipated that the Americans would withdraw, would once again give ground like they had done before rather than stand and die, and so plans were made after information gained as to how to stop them doing that. That didn’t only include bridges over minor rivers through closer bits of Oklahoma and north-eastern Texas, but further downstream reaches of the Red River and then far beyond to the Canadian River in central Oklahoma. A couple of the noisy reconnaissance missions blew up smaller ones ahead of the attack to force the Americans to make greater use of others and thus keep them open with no intention of demolishing them: all ready to be taken by the Soviets. This was a major operation where the battlefield was expected to be huge in scale where it would stretch into Kansas and Arkansas within weeks of it getting going. American supply dumps far in the rear were observed with the intention to bomb some of them but seize others: a lot of American weaponry was anticipated to be taken and used against them. Soviet pre-attack strikes focused to hitting some of those where munitions which they couldn’t use, not those where there was usable weaponry.

Everything that could be done ahead of that offensive was. The Soviets would conduct this attack near alone and were assisted in only minor roles by forces of their allies. Successes on the battlefield like had been achieved in the China War, doing the same thing here as was done there, was certain to be achieved in this because it was being done right.


First light on March 3rd saw the Soviets march their armies forward as the offensive began.

The Americans were waiting for them in an ambush which the Soviets had no idea was there.

I second that, a Maskirovka in the States is good to see! Good work James.

(307)

March 1985: Oklahoma

The Soviet war machine returned to Oklahoma. Last year’s failures were not meant to repeated.

Following precise instructions from the Northern Front HQ, the Seventh Tank Army did as it was meant to do and followed exact doctrine in attack. To open the offensive, a massive artillery barrage commenced. Howitzers, heavy mortars, rockets and tactical missiles flew over the Red River and into Oklahoma. The barrage wasn’t quite what it should have been due to constraints upon ammunition and also the actual numbers of weaponry, but it was still quite something. It began at first light and went on for the next couple of hours. The first crash of so many guns, followed by all of those explosions, preceded lower levels of gunfire. From general targeting, the artillery barrage moved to specific targets. When counter-battery fire came, Soviet guns turned their attention towards them as well. The cover of the ongoing barrage was used by the first men going forward. Engineers, escorted by teams of riflemen, went over the river. They entered the minefields that the Americans had laid over the winter months. These had been examined from afar and now they were looked at up close. Clearing these completely was out of the question: all that was needed was to be routes to opened through them. The engineers called in artillery strikes on sections of the minefields. Specialist ammunition was used, fired at the buried mines and exploding atop the soil rather than in the skies above. Explosion after explosion occurred as the minefields were attacked. Those engineers came under fire themselves. Occasionally they were shot at by hidden snipers – men riding out that barrage of artillery – though they were also targeted by American artillery who knew what they were up to.

Most of the first morning was spent with the minefields. The Americans had buried a lot of munitions yet it was also discovered a lot of dummies too. Until each was dealt with, there was no way of knowing which was which. The counter-battery fire and the attacks on the engineers took time away too. However, the Soviets remained on schedule where they brought in armoured engineering vehicles to help clear the mines which they wanted removed. They opened up the gaps which they planned to on a general pattern – changing things only slightly – and then across came the first armoured units. Scout cars and supporting detachments of tanks moved across. Two motorised rifle divisions each provided these units, opening up multiple avenues of advance forward. The guns back in Texas changed their pattern of fire. They began to support the scout units as they got into fights across in Oklahoma. The Americans were known to have the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in-place and a second, newly-raised Cav’ unit was anticipated to also be present as well. Soviet intelligence on this was correct. Engagements between reconnaissance and screening forces took place all over the place. Air support from each side interfered in that with aircraft managing to break free of the fighter battles higher above and getting down low. Missiles and anti-aircraft shells reached out to strike at them and keep them away from a battle fought by others.

Soviet scouts found openings. They faced heavy losses – as expected – yet there were passages through found beyond the extensive minefields. There were areas where the American screening units were weak, where there was a way through only if the scouts could be reinforced. Reinforcements rushed forward, facing off against air and artillery strikes trying to interfere with their progress. Mixed groups of tanks and infantry carriers, along with self-propelled guns, went into Oklahoma. Some got to the scouts in time but others didn’t reach them: those left on their own out ahead fought to the bitter end and died accordingly. Information coming from the front flowed into the Seventh Tank Army’s headquarters. This was a moving column of armoured vehicles, one which had already been attacked by an American aircraft. Bunkers were for those who wanted to die yet being on the move wasn’t always safe despite that mobility. The news which came to the army commander was that things were still going to plan. There had been hiccups all over the place yet penetrations into hostile territory had been made at multiple points. It was up to him to chose which to reinforce. Where were the main breakthroughs to be made now that the scouts were out ahead and supported? There was little time to choose. There was no perfect choice either. He selected several points, each which differed only a little from the pre-attack plan. Orders were sent for further reinforcements to start heading to them. Four separate regiments from the pair of divisions (half each) were now committed with two of those routes soon to end up as the main attack and the other abandoned: it depended upon the American reaction. Meanwhile, other news came in. There was all that success yet some strange occurrences going on as well. From afar, certain areas of the American-held areas looked one way get up close, things were different. They’d been using a lot of deception in where their forward units were meant to be and also hidden many physical defences as well. This was odd. More than that, reconnaissance images came back of those forward supply units that the Americans were meant to have moved into place ahead of their own attack which this offensive pre-empted. The plan was to overrun those and take their contents while the Americans ran away. Those supply units, pushed forward ahead of what would now be an aborted US Army attack, should be packing up and moving now that the Soviets were entering Oklahoma. They weren’t though. They were staying where they were. The general commanding the field army didn’t know what to make of that. Perhaps the Americans were in a panic and orders to those had yet to be sent? Perhaps all of the Soviet electronic jamming had seen America orders to do that not get through? Perhaps the Americans were going to run as fast as they could with their combat units and write off those supply units rather than risk losing what there was of their army’s fighting strength?

That night saw the Soviets consolidate their forward positions. The four major avenues of initial advance, down one of which first the rest of the motorised rifle division committed would go, then a tank division, maybe even the Seventh Tank Army’s third tank division too, would march forward were reinforced with men and widened as well as lengthened. There was fighting all around each of them. One of the four was immediately written off. What the Soviets discovered was the 12th Armored Cavalry Regiment – its higher command so far unidentified – smashed apart one of the breakthroughs. There wasn’t a proper American victory, but the avenue of advance was looking useless afterwards. Rather that trying to reverse the situation, the decision was taken to not reinforce failure there. Getting more men struck where others were being taken apart wasn’t worth it, not in the dark with all the incoming overnight American air strikes. There was a lot of that. Soviets fighters unofficially gave up the fight above the battlefield during the latter part of the night because there were so many US Air Force aircraft in the skies and there was a lot of anti-aircraft fire too. This wasn’t the Americans: it was the Soviet Army who was firing at any aircraft above but also beyond the battlefields. Despite all of this, the situation was still positive. Good news had been reported back and all was apparently set for victory to come the next day when the breakthroughs were expanded upon and the advance really got going.

The Americans had other ideas.


Even with the knowledge of what was coming, the Seventh US Army had one hell of a day. Both the US II Corps to the west and in the east the new US XII Corps took many losses. The Cav’ units along with dismounted scouting teams were right in the way of the Soviet’s heaviest offensive of the war. A lot of luck was involved in smashing up one of those small Soviet breakthroughs and there wasn’t even a full awareness that this had been done. Darkness, communication problems and also the general fog of war didn’t give a full understanding. The men at the frontlines were screaming for help. They were out there on their own though. Their mission was to keep the Soviets back and keep a track of them. Several full divisions of American armour and mechanised infantry kept out of that fight and in their hidden positions. They were supposed to be further back, dozens of miles away the intelligence deception against the Soviets was meant to show, and certainly not as close as they were to the frontlines. The Soviets expected them to begin moving in the morning. That they would… just not running away north.

The II Corps attacked first. The 4th Armored & 6th Infantry Divisions (different designations yet near identical copies of each other after winter internal reformations) moved in from the western side of Oklahoma against the forward Soviet positions. They were guided into battle by the 2nd Cav’. The Soviets in their way were the two lead regiments of the 9th Motorised Rifle Division. A third regiment of riflemen, along with a tank regiment trailing behind them, was moving across the Red River via the many pontoon bridges which crossed that waterway. One American division drove at the 9th Division’s lead units, the other at the bridges. The Americans seemingly came out of nowhere. They appeared from out of the ground! Soviet reconnaissance had missed them entirely in-places or otherwise identified them as supply units, even physical blocking features. The fools.

Within hours, after observing the Soviet reaction to the first move, the second attack came. The XII Corps was twice the size. It consisted of all newly-raised Army of the United States units in the form of two armored & two infantry divisions plus the 12th Cav’ on the frontlines. The 43rd & 48th Infantry went into the attack at once – one after the lead units of a Soviet motorised rifle division; the other towards the bridgeheads – leaving the 5th & 27th Armored behind for now. Like the II Corps, the XII Corps too appeared to the Soviets to have appeared like magic. Magic it wasn’t, just deception.

Focusing on their own fight, where they had just started to begin pushing forward on the basis of their breakthroughs, the Seventh Tank Army came under the attack which it faced seemingly from out of the blue. Panic hit from regimental HQ’s to those of divisions and up to the field army’s command column. Confirmation was sought of what was going on with all these reports of American divisions pouring forward. This caused delays. The Americans took advantage of those delays. First the 9th Division and then the 1st Guards Motorised Rifle Division went silent. Their headquarters were off the air and not answering radio messages. More were sent and couriers urgently dispatched as well. The Seventh Tank Army could seek all the information from dead men that it wanted: those headquarters were off the air because while the dispersed transmitters were functioning for each division, the divisional command posts had each been taken out. The link between the individual regiments in the field, which they needed to coordinate, was gone. That was more important that the general over in Texas knowing or not knowing what was happen.

Alone, the Soviet regiments were prey for the Americans. The II Corps and the XII Corps ripped six of the eight apart and came mightily close to getting the other two. Soviet troops fought well despite this being the first time in battle for all of them. They still had their tanks and their heavy guns to fire against them attacking them. However, without coordination, and the Americans extending their control of the night-time skies into daytime too, they were doomed. The 9th Division ceased to exist; the 1st Guards Division lost half of its men. The American’s 48th Infantry couldn’t finish the job that morning nor that afternoon either and in the end they had to rely upon the now-veteran 43rd Infantry to join them in engaging the last Soviet organised units north of the Red River. Men from both also stumbled into uncleared parts of the minefields laid by their fellow countrymen too. These were untested men until the early hours and this was one hell of a fight for them. They won though, overcoming the last of the 1st Guards Division. They beat what was considered to be a premiere Soviet Army unit. Yet the cost was a ruined US Army division too, one which really could have done with another month – even two – of training for these men.


The rest of the Seventh Tank Army was south of the river. There were three tank divisions there: more than nine hundred tanks, almost eight hundred infantry vehicles and thousands of soldiers. They all remained in Texas rather than crossing into Oklahoma. The bridgeheads were in Americans hands. On the opposite side of the river, non-combat units with those two destroyed motorised rifle divisions in addition to army-level assets, were massacred by the Americans once the fighting men were knocked out. The tank divisions remained in-place though. The XII Corps had the 5 & 27th Armored Division, plus the 28th Infantry from the II Corps as well if needed, all were waiting for them to come over. These units weren’t tied up in that small-scale but deadly fighting which went on. The rest of the Seventh Tank Army stayed where it was though.

Before the Soviets had come marching into Oklahoma, on course of victory they had believed, the Americans had been plotting their downfall and there had been consideration into waiting to launch their ambush until the Seventh Tank Army had sent its tank divisions across. Their movement could have been tracked and the right moment come. Knocking out one, two, even three of them would have been fantastic. However… what if an error was made? What if the Soviets managed to avoid the ambush at the river and broke free? How far could they have got before being stopped, if at all? The risk hadn’t been taken. It had been decided to eliminate the motorised rifle divisions which the Soviets would send in first and leave the tank divisions stuck on the other side of the Red River. The cost of error could have been a loss further on the scale that the US Army had just struck against the Soviet Army. Where they sat over in Texas, they were soon under American air attack. The fighting north of the river came to a close and air power shifted south. Control of the air had come to the Americans. They hadn’t expected that such a thing would occur so soon and almost out of the blue, but it had. They had more aircraft available and Soviet losses during their first day in Oklahoma had been severe. Wild Weasel teams went after SAM launchers – the Soviets seemed to have an endless (it wasn’t) supply of them – but they were running out of fighters. The weeks following the fight in Oklahoma saw the tank divisions come under air attack after air attack. They were moved backwards to lessen the damage done while they were inactive. This brought them out of what cover they had. The Americans lined up their aircraft in the sky above Oklahoma and sent them south into Texas on bomb & missile runs. The US Army could have done worse damage on the battlefield – or maybe they wouldn’t have if things had gone wrong – but the US Air Force now had their turn to cause epic amounts of destruction especially when the supply of ground-based air defences was shown to have a limit to it too.

Those Soviets tanks would never see Oklahoma.

The fallout from the defeat, where certain victory suddenly became a horrendous and humiliating loss, came. The field army commander and most of his staff were for the chop. Upwards this went too with the Northern Front HQ seeing men removed from command, arrested and then shot. The Soviet Air Force had its commanders culled in addition. As to the GRU and the KGB – from where all of that assurance of victory came due to their supposed intelligence coup – those responsible initially got away with it. They managed to point to the ‘failings’ of those in the military. Getting away with this for now was different from getting away with it forever though. The fate of many of those who had allowed themselves to be duped occurred due to what happened when the supporting attack into unoccupied eastern parts of Texas – conducted by the Twenty–Eighth Army – came apart even worse than what was seen in Oklahoma. Defeat for the Soviet Army occurred in the Sooner State; utter annihilation was witnessed in the Lone Star State.

the American forces in the section destroyed two motor rifle divisions and both degraded and push the rest of 7th tank army away form the southern shoreline of the red river. the army now can attack from their positions south of the red river instead of doing a combat assault over the river. james, does the soviet army units in this sector have a backup defensive line or are we looking at them trying a mobile defense because of them bugging out.