Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

I assume they are Cubans rather than Nicaraguans. The mis-drops in the story of mine cover both in that area.

I've seen that before and forgot about it. I will look through. For Soviet information I usually use www.ww2.dk/new/newindex.htm
The one you have linked has WarPact info and that will be very useful. Thank you.

No problem, was really looking for Cuban Cold War orbats as i wanted to know if the Cuban 2nd Airborne Brigade you mention was real ore not when i found it, also these might also come in handy.

Warsaw Pact Orbats

Cold War Soviet 

Cold War East German

Cold War Polish 

Cold War Czech 

Cold War Hungarian 

Cold War Bulgarian 

Cold War Romanian 

American,British and Canadian Orbats

Cold War British

Cold War U.S. 

Cold War Canadian

At least it has not been bombed ore nuked.

Wonder who will be worse, the Soviets ore Cubans.

(156)

17th September 1984:

Texan national guardsmen from their 2nd Brigade of the 49th Armored Division were spread along the northern side of the Lower Valley of the Rio Grande from Brownsville up to Falcon Reservoir. Their task wasn’t to guard the border to stop an attack coming over from Mexico. Instead, they were providing security around the refugee camps which had sprung up as well aiding the shelter of those tens of thousands of people who’d fled revolution and civil war in their country. The national guardsmen had first come to the border earlier in the year with their tanks and other heavy weapons but returned those soon enough. Their mission didn’t need such equipment. The state government in Austin wanted them to aid in the costly task of ensuring that anarchy didn’t come to the refugee camps and also that those in them had access to clean water, food, medical care and shelter from the elements; they did this alongside FEMA and state agencies. Naturally, there was some thinking and sketch planning about how the brigade could fight to defend Texas because the men who served were soldiers yet there was no real work done on that. They weren’t in a position to do so and the task they had was more than enough to keep them occupied. In addition, the Mexicans would never be stupid enough to try and come north and mess with Texas.

The Mexicans didn’t come north. Two brigades of Soviet troops did instead. These units had moved into Mexico in the past few weeks with the 7th Motorised Rifle Brigade being long-stationed in Cuba and the 39th Landing-assault Brigade usually garrisoned in the western part of the Ukraine both moving covertly into Mexico. They had been in hiding until this afternoon. Now they were out in the open, moving from positions just back from the border and into the attack. The 7th Brigade was on the left with the 39th Brigade on the right. Attachments had come to each from their peacetime organisation in the form of engineers and Spetsnaz detachments; brigades, instead a standard division, was used as well due to the complexity of the mission. They went into the attack to take control of the northern side of the river while eliminating all opposition which stood in their way. That control meant securing the crossings over the Rio Grande, the trio of civilian airports inside Texas and also the Port of Brownsville.

Warning came to the national guardsmen through their brigade headquarters from the Fifth United States Army based up in Fort San Houston in San Antonio rather than their divisional field base. There were communication difficulties with the 49th Division, those being commando actions. San Antonio had been hit too though with less Soviet success there. The warning contained the message that the border was about to be crossed by non-Mexican forces. It was short and brief. On the back of it came the Soviet attack. There was a mass of helicopters in the sky and then armoured vehicles, including a battalion of T-62 tanks, which smashed into them. The alert hadn’t given the national guardsmen any time nor anything like the information which they needed. Still, they fought back. They managed to shoot down several of the transport helicopters bringing airmobile troops into the airport at Harlingen and delay the assault there somewhat. In addition, when the tracked & wheeled armoured vehicles carrying the men of the 7th Brigade went across the river at the Reynosa-Hidalgo crossing, several were knocked out of action… unfortunately those Soviet tanks came across to and put an end to resistance from the volunteer part-time with their fire-power. The national guardsmen dented the attack in places yet couldn’t stop it. Both Soviet brigades got over the Rio Grande and started securing the whole area. They had those bridges intact – with more to quickly begin the construction of – and also the airports too which could handle big transport aircraft bringing in men from Cuba. The Port of Brownsville was taken as well with the facilities on the edge of that city as well as the shipping canal and Port Isabel on the coast. These excellent transport links here just inside the United States along with the fantastic roads too would all benefit Soviet needs far more than anything that could be found just back over the border inside Mexico.

The 7th Brigade moved onwards from its Hidalgo bridgehead, striking deeper and heading northwards. There was to be a link-up made with the paratroopers around Corpus Christi by nightfall. The 39th Brigade was more spread out and didn’t charge forwards. Instead, the task of these men inside South Texas was to crush pockets of disorganised resistance all over the place and round up prisoners. There was a lot of work for them to do. Their control over the airports allowed for the first flights to arrive coming from Cuba though also up from Mexico too. Fighting troops were on their way in but ahead of them were specialists from various different fields of engineering, communications and military intelligence. The Lower Valley was to be the scene of a major initial concentration of Soviet military forces for their operations inside America and the groundwork was underway to maintain and support that. The GRU was at first in charge of security though there also came KGB units as well: the latter would have different ideas of what security was than the GRU had.


Other Texan national guardsmen with another brigade from the 49th Division were located north of Falcon Reservoir all the way up the border as far as the Amistad Reservoir near the Big Bend. They had an identical mission to those to their south where and they also weren’t in a position to defend the border against a major armed attack. Mexicans didn’t cross the border to engage them around Laredo, Eagle Pass and Del Rio nor did any Soviet troops. Along this stretch of the Rio Grande, it was Cubans who acme across instead. Those Cubans were from their 5th Reconnaissance Brigade, a formation converted last year from the basis of the disbanded 43rd Infantry Division. They came in helicopters (no where near as many as the Soviets had) as well as light armoured vehicles; others were on foot. The way was being opened for the Cuban Second Army to move into Texas from the Monterrey-Saltillo area with those heavy forces still some distance way but needing the way opened for them. That the brigade out ahead did. Again, the national guardsmen fought well but they weren’t in any position to repel that attack which came. Laughlin AFB near Del Rio was overrun so that it could become a Cuban airbase on American soil and the civilian airport at Laredo would assist with the forward movement of troops. The seized bridges over the Rio Grande were the real prizes for the Cubans though.

El Paso was the scene of another Soviet assault on the border using light forces. Here there was the use of their troops to open the way for the Nicaraguan First Army (which included Guatemalans) to get into New Mexico. Those heavy forces of the field army were moving northwards, due to arrive at dawn tomorrow, but for now the 66th Motorised Rifle Brigade as well as the 234th Guards Parachute Regiment – detached from its parent division sent to Albuquerque – crossed through the Pass of the North. El Paso was one hell of a fight. New Mexico national guardsmen were in the firing line around the city which the 66th Brigade (they’d been in Cuba all year) moved against and they weren’t the rollover which they could have been. As to the paratroopers, they were sent into action via helicopters and landed at both El Paso’s airport plus the neighbouring Biggs Army Airfield… which served Fort Bliss. Regular US Army troops based at Fort Bliss included the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment plus an assortment of air defence and support units. ‘Repel an armed cross-border incursion by forces unknown’ was the gist of the emergency message sent to Fort Bliss. Those there gave that a very good attempt. Biggs was retaken – and destroyed in the process – by the time darkness came. The Soviet paratroopers fell back towards the airport and were joined by the 66th Brigade who had some tanks with them who could engage the Cav’ units better. The 234th Regiment took extraordinary losses from what was an ill-prepared opponent who had problems of their own in manoeuvring and inability to use extensive firepower in an area full of friendly civilians yet had numbers on their side at the beginning. A pair of Nicaraguan motorised rifle divisions, complete with more tanks plus a lot of heavy guns, were to arrive in the morning and they would be needed for the Pass of the North had only been partially forced open. The numbers would be with them by that point.

US Marines around Yuma and Arizonan national guardsmen in the southwestern part of Arizona were engaged by another Soviet unit: the 38th Guards Landing-assault Brigade. The 38th Brigade was a heli-borne formation though had some of their own armoured vehicles as well which they used in a ground attack rather than having them air-lifted forward. Furthermore, attached to the brigade was a battalion of East German paratroopers used today in the airmobile role as well. Due to local geography of where the border ran, the Soviets and East Germans attacked in an eastwards direction when they assaulted MCAS Yuma plus the facilities available at the Yuma Army Proving Ground. The Marines fought hard and didn’t give up their base without a very bloody fight indeed. They extracted major casualties from the 38th Brigade before attempting to make a fighting withdrawal out of their lost airbase. Soviet light armour, plenty of their tracked BMD-1s and BTR-Ds, cut off a retreat eastwards after their dash up from San Luis and so the attempt was made for the Marines which were still able to fight to head northwards. Once again, they ran into trouble. The East Germans were staging from out of their captured airhead at Laguna Army Airfield and cut that escape route too. The town of Yuma as well as nearby communities became a battlefield instead. The Marines and the scattered national guardsmen were caught in the middle… so too were many civilians. Fighting continued through the hours of darkness. The airheads at Yuma and Laguna were in Soviet and East German hands but a major price had come in terms of their own casualties during their operations here.

The California Army National Guard had a brigade from their 40th Infantry Division inside the Imperial Valley north of Mexicali. The Cuban 4th Reconnaissance Brigade (again, a former infantry division converted into a new role) attacked there with support on the ground from some Revolutionary Mexico troops under local Cuban control. The US Navy training airbase NAS El Centro was assaulted by a company of Cubans in helicopters though the main effort was directed through the Mexicali-Calexico border crossing. Border Patrol agents were gunned down and over came the Cuban Army. They then spread out, heading for where national guardsmen could be found as well as linking up with the men at El Centro. The Imperial Valley was a fertile agricultural area below the Salton Sea surrounded by the Colorado Desert. The road and rail connections in this area were good and the terrain nice and flat. The Cubans moved fast while securing those transportation links including the small and barely-used Holtville Airport as well: that and El Centro would soon be home to Cuban combat aircraft. They took prisoners among those who surrendered after scattered fighting from a surprised opponent. The Mexicans who followed them didn’t take prisoners, especially among anyone not in uniform who looked vaguely Hispanic. They were ‘traitors to the Mexican revolution’… or just local civilians who had Hispanic background. The brigade commander, a career Cuban Army officer who had a dedication to Cuba’s own revolution, wasn’t prepared to put up with that because it was pure murder. Shooting the Mexicans was his first thought but he understood there would be recriminations personally for doing that. He had the Mexican detachments soon sent back over the border to ‘continue to secure Mexicali’ rather than see their presence anymore in Calexico. That unpleasantness aside, access to the Imperial Valley was now held open for the soon-arriving Cuban First Army to properly invade California through the back door.


Far away from the US-Mexican border, Soviet forces were making further inroads when it came to isolating and thus eliminating American forces in Alaska. Taking the whole state head-on with a full-scale invasion was rather the daunting task and would require a massive force to be involved when the defending forces which they would encounter were smaller but could make use of the terrain very well to fight. The Soviets wanted Alaska to be unavailable as a base of operations for activity against them. The best way to do that was to cut off those inside and make sure that the military bases there weren’t used for American strikes against the Soviet homeland. After a siege had taken place, then later the whole of Alaska would be moved against.

Soviet naval infantry – their marines – started landing through the Aleutians chain and also on Kodiak Island. The 55th Naval Infantry Division was involved in this, at the head of the Sixty–Seventh Army Corps which would command all forces (a later-arriving motorised rifle division plus those paratroopers already in) eventually tasked for the Alaska mission. Staged landings were to take place with the naval infantry like they were with the whole corps. Soviet amphibious assault capability was limited in terms of ships despite having many naval infantry troops under command throughout their armed forces. The Soviet Pacific Fleet was assembling many ships to lift most of the 55th Division to Alaska protected by a battle fleet – which would certainly get a battle with the US Navy indeed soon enough – but before then clandestine efforts were used to get the first of the naval infantry in where they would take airheads plus ports at lightly-defended sites.

Disguised civilian ships started depositing company-sized groups of naval infantry on Adak and Shemya Islands. NAS Adak used by the US Navy and the US Air Force’s Eareckson AFB were these targets in the Aleutian Islands. There were surprised defenders at these sites who got no warning of what was coming their way due to communications being cut right after the nuclear attack on the mainland had taken place some time beforehand. Supposedly-innocent ships came nearby and from them Soviet naval infantry made assaults against each. Adak and Eareckson were taken. Then there was the airport on Kodiak Island, closer to the Alaskan mainland. That was a civilian facility used by the Coast Guard too. Another ship was used to have naval infantry get close and then make an attack to overrun the targeted site. Kodiak would, like the other two captured sites spread along the Aleutian Islands chain, soon see more men flown in before combat aircraft would be based at them. The Soviet squeeze on Alaska could now begin.

BTW, with an invasion from Mexico, I can see an increase in hate crimes against innocent Hispanics outside of the war zones (like in, say, New York, Miami, et. al.)...

Waiting for more...

Thank you. More to come soon.




I hadn't thought of that. You're probably unfortunately correct on that.




Thank you. Most days I should be able to write an update or even two.