Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

Well that wasn't good. There's the hint that only half the US counter-strike has been seen and handled but the US losses, albeit less than the Cubans, are more than they can afford with the current crisis on and so many forces overseas. The Americans are going to realise its not going to be easy defeating the LAComs however, let alone the Soviets who are coming. Possibly, presuming losses aren't so heavy in the 2nd part of the pincer, the Americans will be forced to do what the Soviets feared, pulling back to trade distance for time and stretching the enemy supply lines.

Sounds like it was tight in the air as well, which was better for the Reds than I would have expected. Hopefully they still took markedly heavier losses.

Well, it sounds like the Soviets will learn the meaning of the words "Don't Mess With Texas.", methinks...

Ask not what your country can do for you...

(167)

21st–25th September 1984:

Ellington Field ANGB up near Houston joined Bergstrom AFB outside Austin as hives over US air activity. From the two of them, the US Air Force, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard aircraft were flying all over South Texas. Aircraft from both were tasked in support of the III Corps in the Castroville-Hondo fight against the Cubans but also to interdict Soviet activity everywhere below San Antonio too. The Americans were very busy in the skies conducting fighter sweeps, going after transport aircraft incoming from Cuba and also making attacks against the Rio Grande bridges plus where the Soviets were flying from when they could. Twelfth Air Force had more assets spread elsewhere back through Texas and into Louisiana as well as Oklahoma yet Bergstrom and Ellington Field were their frontline stations in the air war. The Fifth Army requested air support and that was given to them. At the same time, the US Air Force still had its own priorities as well. Problems with inter-service cooperation were still present despite the initial strong connection in Texas and now Raven Rock stamping their feet demanding everything run smoothly. Years of rivalry and bad feeling were never going to just evaporate. The US Army wanted jets over their tanks and that was given where possible though there were still those bridges to be bombed and MiGs to be shot out of the sky too, which the US Air Force wanted to do more than anything else. That they did. They filled the skies over South Texas with their jets, keeping the Soviets away from their bases as well. MiG kills came aplenty and the Rio Grande was a favoured target for bombs. The Soviets had taken those US Navy airbases all around Corpus Christi to fly from: NAS Chase Field was clobbered – though the F-16s did hit far more of the training jets left behind there than MiGs – and quite a bit of damage was also done to NAS Kingsville, admittedly at a high cost. Texas’ two Air National Guard F-4 squadrons, one home-based at Ellington Field and the other which had been forced to abandon Kelly AFB, were in the sky and going into action alongside their regular colleagues. Their losses racked up due to the pilots pushing them pretty far south and most of those came from SAMs. It was SAMs which were more of a problem for the Americans and their air activity more than enemy fighters. The Soviets had shipped many of them in. There were tactical ones and increasingly strategic ones, including the very best that they had in the form of the SA-12. One of those had shown up in Mexico right before the balloon went up; several systems were now in Texas. This was the Soviet Army’s premier air defence weapon – air denial might be a better term – and while it might not have had great success against American aircraft coming in low, its high-altitude performance in addition to the range was excellent. Combatting the SA-12 was soon high on the list of priorities for the US Air Force.

Corpus Christi and Brownsville both had SA-12s set up to defend them. The launchers were mobile vehicles and so were the associated radar vehicles & command trailers. Finding the elements of the air defence network had to be done before those could be destroyed. The Soviets were using all sorts of deception to hide them. They were also defending their strategic SAMs with tactical SAMs, as found out by the loss of a pair of F-16s on consecutive days searching low and ready to show the Soviet what Iron Hand was all about. Where were the dedicated Wild Weasel aircraft whose task this should have been? One wing was pre-war based in West Germany and the other had been deployed in late August from its California base to the Korean Peninsula. The Wild Weasels were missed over Texas. Maybe the Soviets had got lucky with what they did but maybe it had been an ambush, a clever lure coordinated by a propeller-driven aircraft often circling above South Texas and flying from Matamoros Airport over in Mexico. That aircraft was identified as an electronic warfare version of the Ilyushin-18 Coot. The Texan national guardsmen in their Phantoms wanted to shoot it down but instead a flight of F-15s were given that mission. They got past the Soviet fighter screen by taking the long way around: going over the Edwards Plateau, above the Rio Grande (a border can be crossed both ways), shedding their drop tanks in Mexican skies and then coming at that aircraft from behind back over Texas. Down that aircraft went along with its MiG-23 escorts as well. A near-immediate effect was felt when it came to the electronic picture, one more than believed would come. That aircraft had been up to a lot but was now just a smear on the ground in the Lower Valley. Operation Phoenix had been the name of that small but vital mission, something celebrated afterwards for the success it brought. The Americans were sure that afterwards they managed to if not destroy then at least do a lot of damage to the air defences around Corpus Christi when their next air attack went that way to hit what SAM systems could be found plus get at NAS Corpus Christi and the city’s airport as well. A trio of Soviet transports were lined up on the ground at the airport, just begging for the bombs which fell upon them. Your wish is granted, courtesy of the US Air Force! Nonetheless, there was still the arrival into Texas afterwards of more SAMs and more fighters making use of captured airbases. The air war being fought wasn’t going to be won in just the one victory like that. The Soviets were managing to increase their air operations as they became fully-established in Texas and the Americans just couldn’t have everything their own way. There was also the concern over the security of the airbases which they were operating from. Soviet forces on the ground in Texas, which seemed to have been content to have remained idle after their advances on the war’s first day and let the Cubans do all the fighting, then started moving again. How much air support did the US Army want? They could suddenly have as much as they wanted following the loss of Randolph AFB – being used as a forward site – and then the movements of enemy armour going northeast.


The entry into South Texas by Soviet forces had been commanded by the Fifteenth Guards Airborne Corps, a wartime formation established to supervise the border crossing. Once the Eighth Tank Army arrived from Cuba, the Fifteenth Corps was meant to disband with its assets attached to that field army as well as elsewhere through the joint Cuban-Soviet Northern Front. There was an airborne division under command along with an airmobile brigade and a motorised rifle brigade all waiting for heavy divisions of the Soviet Army to get into Texas and start moving. While waiting, the Fifteenth Corps wasn’t to be idle and was to conduct ‘aggressive reconnaissance’ instead. That was done, especially since there were delays with the Eighth Tank Army getting across the Gulf of Mexico. Those US Marines bombed when moving down from Houston had halted outside of Rosenberg, with the Brazos River behind them. Between that small brigade and the Soviet outposts north of Corpus Christi there were no major American forces. River bridges and harbour facilities there were many of; American troops there were only scattered special forces detachments that the GRU units at Fifteen Corps HQ in Alice were getting signs of. They were wiring those places for demolition ahead of air-drops of explosives. The whole area was rife with Green Berets ready to blow things up but not yet doing so. Civilian militia were organising while many more civilians streamed in the direction of Houston. The US Army was nowhere to be seen. Aggressive reconnaissance was decided to be done, that way rather than up towards San Antonio after the Cubans dealt with what was there. Port Lavaca and Point Comfort – small but useful harbour facilities – were within reach and so too were bridges over the San Antonio, Guadalupe and Lavaca Rivers. Spetsnaz units out ahead, which had been engaging American forces, were alerted to step up their actions ahead of what the Fifteenth Corps sent their way. All of that vital infrastructure should have been blown by now, the Soviets believed, and if it wasn’t then they were going to take it. It would help speed up the war by taking it.

The 7th Motorised Rifle Brigade and the 350th Guards Parachute Regiment were sent forward. The former had made that breath-taking advance coming into Texas from over the Rio Grande – Reynosa to George West in under twelve hours – while the latter had been the 103rd Guards Airborne Division’s third regiment follow-up and had yet to see combat. The paratroopers had their armoured vehicles with them and were to the right, closer to the coast, of the 7th Brigade who were further inland. Go no further than the Colorado River was the order because otherwise American air activity that close to Ellington Field was believed to be capable of destroying two units which weren’t meant to be lost in such a fashion. The air defence network was going to struggle to cover then going that far, any further would be impossible. The two formations started moving at dawn on the 23rd. They headed northeast not knowing that the US Marines at Rosenberg were no longer staying there in defence nor all alone either.

The 5th Infantry Division, the left-hand pincer of the US III Corps’ attack into South Texas, was moving southwest while the 1st Cavalry & 2nd Armored Division came unstuck over near San Antonio. The Marine reservists of their 2nd Brigade was attached to the division to act as its third brigade: there wasn’t one assigned in peacetime and the Louisiana national guardsmen who should have formed that had been taking too long to get moving. The Americans got sufficient warning of the Soviets coming towards them though without knowing the intent of their opponents. That didn’t matter. The 5th Infantry Division sought to engage them and did so in the early afternoon. The fight took place between the towns of Edna and Victoria. The 7th Brigade did far better in it than their Soviet Airborne comrades. The 350th Regiment took terrible losses when the professional US Army got at them from distance and then let the US Marines finish them off. As to the Soviet Army, that brigade beat a raid retreat when its lead elements were hit at extraordinary range by accurate American tank fire. Part of the brigade was left on the wrong side of the Guadalupe River while the rest managed a lucky escape as they blew those bridges which they had only just taken. The Americans were fast to set up their own crossings and pour across the river to give chase. The panicked retreat was something special to see, especially from above as aircraft from both sides were all over the battlefield. If it was running back west as fast as possible, it was Soviet. If it was charging forward that way, it was American. The Soviets withdrew back past Victoria. The 5th Division wanted to follow, to finish what had been started. Orders came from the Fifth Army, not their III Corps command, to halt. That order was protested in very strong terms. Why the **** not!? III Corps’ eastern pincer had just started making their own retreat, back up into Texas Hill Country after the Highway-90 fight. The 5th Division was driving head-on into the viper’s nest without support if it continued. It would be lost if it carried on charging forwards like it was.

The US Army division was left frustrated and impotent, looking at the possibility of having to withdraw itself due to having gone so far forward already. As to the US Marines which had come with them, they were too busy to be concerned about matters like that for now. The 350th Regiment had lost the vast majority of its armoured vehicles, all those BMD-1s & BTR-Ds hit by shells from M-60s, but the paratroopers had been fast to dismount. They engaged the marine reservists who came at them and carried on fighting even when they were shelled by heavy guns and then attacked from above by armed helicopters. They made a tactical retreat off the battlefield, moving towards the sea but making their opponents pay for every inch of ground. The two different sets of dismounted troops fought throughout the evening and into the night. The Soviets had wanted Port Lavaca and Point Comfort and they got there. The marine reservists split their centre and forced the two parts of the dwindling 350th Regiment back towards those harbours. Aircraft flown by US Marines showed up and then so did some A-10s flown by the US Air Force who engaged infantry like they did tanks: with everything they had. The Soviet Airborne fought to the bitter end. Those at Point Comfort were overcome in the early hours; those at Port Lavaca by dawn. The harbours would be denied to both sides when the Green Berets who’d been at each had been unable to save the Soviets from then destroying most of the infrastructure before they were finished off. Afterwards, having won a hard victory and trying to put themselves back together, the marine reservists were told what the soldiers at Victoria had already been informed of: due to loses elsewhere, they were withdrawing.

  Would agree.  It sounds like, given the success of the Soviets and allies in getting their forces into position and failure to prevent massively reinforcements arriving from Cuba the US forces are going to be worn down before reinforcements can arrive and a lot of ground will have to be given up.  Could even possibly see the Soviets reaching the Mississippi which would be a big blow both politically and economically.

I would want to say Texas shall rise again, but with the damage done to the state i wonder in what form, another great update James.

  Well their still finding WWII bombs in both Britain and Germany, probably other areas as well and the old Western front of WWI is continuing to turn up deadly surprises on a frequent basis so this is likely to be the case in any area in the US or other regions that is heavilt fought over.  Let alone the demolitions and booby-traps that a force being driven out of an area but with any time to prepare will lay.  This will be especially crucial in built up areas or of strategic importance.  You might even end up with the decision that some former urban centres could be abandon and people settled elsewhere as the cheaper and safer option to seeking to clear the ruins of dangerous devices.