Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

Well i do hope the people do not put all Kennedy into the Ted pile, JFK was a good one, despite his flaws.

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April 1982:

April 2nd saw Guatemala invade the neighbouring territory of Belize. The subsequent Belize War thus commenced with Guatemala engaged in open warfare with the United Kingdom afterwards. The Guatemalans should have waited much longer to be more organised though they were prodded to strike when they did by their foreign support. A major post-revolution military reformation was taking place with the armed forces of Guatemala at the time of the invasion and that was something that wasn’t planned to be completed before the end of the year at the earliest. Regardless, Guatemalan troops were sent over the border. Belize was to be liberated from foreign colonial rule and then annexed into the new Guatemala being built here in Central America. Guatemala went to war when it wasn’t ready, though the question had to be would it ever be truly ready for what was to come during the war that was started with Britain over a little stretch of land which most of the world had never heard of before let alone could find on a map?

The invasion commenced with two main attacks: one in the front and one in the rear. Cuban advisers planned this out for the Guatemalans though let them get on with it themselves. That frontal attack took place when the Brigada de Independencia struck across the frontier on land with a combined arms assault to cross into Belize, engage British and BDF troops which they would encounter and then push onto the colonial capital in the planned city of Belmopan. There was an unfinished road which was meant to link Guatemala to Belize City on the coast when it was finished – the road had been a matter long of contention due to its incompleteness – and that was meant to be the invasion corridor for the Independence Brigade to use to get up to Belmopan and then on towards to the former capital on the Caribbean shoreline. The Guatemalans focused on following that natural route deep into Belize despite it being the most obvious way: there was no other course to follow though. Armoured vehicles and a lot of infantry moved into Belize in this frontal attack. They engaged British and local Belize forces. Both the Gurkhas and the BDF fought a fighting withdrawal near the border and conducted flank attacks too. Guatemalan artillery had woken them up when the invasion commenced though had terrible accuracy. MiG-23 jets in the sky wearing the markings of Guatemala though flown by Cuban advisers (in Guatemalan uniform) were present as well, dropping bombs and making strafing runs. This external firepower was in support of the drive on Belmopan made by the Independence Brigade who pushed deep into Belize on that first day of the war. They took the defenders by surprise though that was a surprise which didn’t last very long. Parts of Belize came under Guatemalan occupation. Yet the Guatemalans paid dear for it. The defenders had their own artillery and air support too. There wasn’t much of it but it was put to use. The RAF Harriers were in action though events back in Belize City saw the need for them to relocate away from there: it brought them closer to the frontlines where they could bomb and strafe the Guatemalans. Soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Wales, a British Army infantry battle-group, fought alongside the Gurkhas and BDF. They had support from a detachment of armoured vehicles of their own though the two infantry companies fighting out of the forward base in Belmopan did have a tough time. Those MiG-23s improved their accuracy as the day went on. One was shot down by a Harrier and another lost to a Javelin missile fired from the ground, but the others caused a lot of death and destruction on the ground: they killed a lot of young Welshmen far from home. The Guatemalans were far short of Belmopan when darkness fell though had penetrated deep into Belize and pushed the defenders back and out of the way. The commander of the Independence Brigade was ordered to hold his position overnight and attack again in the morning. That night was a bloody one for those invaders as the defenders – tired but very motivated – engaged in attacks against a static force throughout the hours of darkness while at the same time guiding in more Harrier strikes from the three – of initially six – aircraft left available for combat operations.

The Harriers (assigned to No.1417 Flight) were flying from outside of Belmopan because Belize City had been assaulted by the Brigada Revolucionaria. This was another ad hoc unit with the Revolutionary Brigade being a merger of many different smaller formations all for their one mission. They made an assault on the Caribbean coast of Belize when the border attack commenced though arrived throughout the day using various means of travel and sustaining many losses in fighting to take over Belize City. The assault commenced with the arrival at the civilian airport of an aircraft supposedly coming up on a civil flight from Panama: the Cuban An-26 military transport (with Guatemalan markings) had come from much closer though. Once on the ground and with the airport authorities quick to alert the BDF, those passengers inside that aircraft were even quicker. Guatemalan commandos – plus their Cuban and Nicaraguan trainers wearing the ‘correct’ uniforms – poured out of the aircraft. There was a company of seventy men all of whom were supposed to undertake a brilliantly successful mission here to capture the airport intact… and then launch an attack into Belize City itself. That was quite the ask. Once the men were out, without clearance the An-26 took off and headed back to Guatemala. More aircraft were meant to be coming in afterwards bringing in what parts of the Revolutionary Brigade not being brought by sealift. At the airport and then on the edges of Belize City, the Guatemalans fought with the BDF. There was a counterattack made towards the airport but man-portable heavy weapons brought with the commandos drove back to BDF. British troops – the rest of the Royal Regiment of Wales – then arrived. This third company from that battalion group stationed in Belize had been on alert and while the Guatemalan strike was quite something, they forestalled the attempted rushing of Belize City. The platoon-sized detachment sent forward was stopped cold by British bullets. A counterattack was then made towards the airport by superior numbers – Welshmen covering the BDF – yet there were more aircraft in the sky. A pair of MiG-23s turned up and while one was shot down by a Harrier that had got airborne, the other destroyed that RAF aircraft with a missile shot and then bombed the defenders on the ground. More aircraft were coming in too, this time further transports from up out of Guatemala and they consisted of a wide variety of civilian aircraft pressed into military service and laden with invading troops. Two Harriers had meanwhile flown westwards towards the border but another Harrier came up to intercept this airborne flotilla. Unfortunately, before there could be a turkey shoot, a man-portable missile came up from the ground and blew the starboard wing off that aircraft: the pilot ejected from his doomed aircraft. Air support for the British was thus cancelled.

Over the next few hours, hundreds of Guatemalans arrived at the airport. More then came in by sea with small freighters arriving at the port. There was no set-piece amphibious assault across defended or undefended beaches, just troops getting off ships which arrived in the harbour. The BDF was run all over the city trying to fight them off and also support the company of British regular infantry which fell back from the airport first towards the city then away to the south when the numbers of invaders were appreciated. 1417 Flight had to abandon its facilities and one Harrier was unable to get off the ground due to a major maintenance issue: it was blown up to deny it to the Guatemalans. The Revolutionary Brigade engaged in urban fights with the local defenders, men who covered the British retreat yet also fought to defend their own nation. The Guatemalans were hampered by lack of serious heavy weapons and an opponent who knew the ground. Still, the city was occupied by nightfall. As to the airport, it was bombed by a Harrier doing some damage yet a lot of it was left intact for further Guatemalan use. That An-26 which had brought in the first men made two more flights in and out again. Leaving for the last time, it came under attack seconds after wheels-up. A BDF infantryman fired his M72 rocket-launcher straight upwards as the aircraft flew above him over the city. The unguided 66mm shell – designed to take out tanks (though out of date now) – exploded on contact with that Cuban aircraft and brought it down, letting the An-26 crash into the water just offshore. It was a lucky shot and one of the final acts of resistance by the last of the BDF scattered elements caught in Belize City as it finally fell.

Half a world away, a lion was about to roar in response. The defenders of Belize weren’t finished but they were cut off, left holding much ground and still capable of fighting. Britain was going to have to be fast to save them and stop all of Belize being taken though. Help from allies would be needed in doing so.

Sorry, I still post on AH.com, lordroel; force of habit...

Allies for the UK in the region will not be that many. Several island nations of the Commonwealth have worked with the UK to help Belize towards independence.

James

Well that didn't start too well. Britain got caught napping again and that sneak attack by air and sea capturing the former capital and that will make liberation markedly more difficult, especially since I think that means the main forces defending against the overland attack will have their supply lines threatened and might even need to worry about being attacked from the rear.

When you meantion the Guatemalan artillery being terrible do you mean its terribly destructive on the defenders or terribly organised and hence of minimal effectiveness?

One point that comes to mind is if there is clandestine assistance to Britain by people in the US military/intelligence service and it comes out I can see a s**t-storm in the US as Kennedy might seek to remove them and a lot of other people oppose this. Presuming your working up to some situation where the US is actually invaded? In which case anything which divides it deeply might help towards that end.