James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:31:44 GMT
One Hundred and Forty Nine
At this point in the war, nearly twenty thousand Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen & women were being held in Russian captivity. As discusses before, their treatment was brutal. Hasty battlefield interrogations run at the battalion and brigade level by Russian officers often involved nothing more sophisticated than savage beatings.
Once a prisoner who might hold military information in his or her head was passed up the chain of command, more sophisticated psychological torture methods were often employed.
Prisoners were then sent either to Belarus or back to Russia proper, where they would endure horrible conditions. Yet, despite all of this, Moscow did inform NATO nations of the names and ranks of most individuals who fell into captivity. This was done through the Red Cross; although Russia did inform that non-governmental organisation of such details, Red Cross personnel were not allowed entry to the POW camps and nor were they informed of the horrors taking place within them.
Moscow solely told the Red Cross the names of the vast majority of its POWs. This was done largely for propaganda purposes, giving Russia a moral point to stand on, at least in Moscow’s eyes. Also, it allowed the Allies to confirm that such a large number of people were in captivity and were now effectively hostages.
Western intelligence agencies were grateful for this as concern mounted throughout Europe about the fates of Allied POWs. Most were Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Americans, or British; amongst them were smaller, but still significant, numbers of Germans, Norwegians, Frenchmen, Danes, Dutchmen, Belgians, Romanians, Spaniards, and Slovaks. A token number of Italians, Portuguese, New Zealanders, Australians, Singaporeans, and others also remained in captivity, mostly downed aircrews rather that troops from large ground formations that had been overrun or otherwise destroyed during the NATO withdrawal.
On two separate occasions, POWs were liberated in Poland.
The first instance of this occurred when the 1st Battalion of the US Army’s 35th Armor Regiment slammed into the rears of a Russian battalion, overwhelming the command post. Here, twenty-six POWs were liberated. All of them were Americans and Poles, captured earlier on and in the process of suffering through rigorous tactical interrogations.
Another ‘accidental’ liberation happened when the British Army’s 20th Armoured Brigade reached a temporary POW cage in northern Poland. Scimitar fighting vehicles supported by dismounted infantrymen stormed the compound, located on a disused airstrip, and recovered the POWs; no Russian POWs were taken, with all of them being shot dead in self-defence, according to the British commander.
Back in Russia, where the vast majority of POWs were being held, a small number of prisoners – those in the fields of intelligence, cryptography, communications, cyber & electronic warfare, and special operations, as well as the crews of certain types of aircraft – were moved from military custody into purposefully-designated penal colonies, amongst hundreds of other political prisoners and POWs.
These particular prisoners were not on any Red Cross lists. Moscow would stringently deny having ever held them in its custody. The truth was that these POWs, generally officers but with some enlisted personnel as well, were designated as holding long-term usefulness through their work.
They held technical knowledge that could be extracted over time and could be used to help the Russian Armed Forces further their capabilities. They could be useful even if Russia lost the ongoing war; information gleaned from them might well give Russian forces an unexpected advantage in a conflict against China or any other potential future aggressor. NATO intelligence was well aware of the fact that many POWs were in custody but had not yet been reported to be as such.
This fact was, naturally, kept quiet by the CIA and also by MI6 and France’s DGSE as well. What the Russians would do to those POWs was a major concern, but there were other issues that would also have to be addressed.
NATO leaders, behind the scenes, knew that people would not accept a peace treaty unless every known POW had been released or rescued from enemy custody. To avoid this issue coming up in the future, the knowledge that certain individuals were alive in Russian custody despite not being any Red Cross lists indicating this was temporarily kept secret.
There would be changes to this in the future and nobody had any intention of leaving those men and women alive in Russian custody, not yet anyway, but there was the question of how they could be extracted; if Moscow refused to send them back, NATO would have only one way of saving them from such a grizzly fate, and that would be by invading the Russian mainland, and that wasn’t going to happen.
There was also the disturbing fact that NATO prisoners in Russian custody, or at least a notable number of them, were going to be charged with war crimes. This was something that the Coalition found unacceptable. Moscow was doing this in response to the Americans beginning criminal proceedings against captured Russian commandos in the US mainland. After his coup last year, President Putin had reinstated the death penalty in Russia, with that being done by firing squad. A small number of criminals had been shot dead, but now captured troops were facing the same threat.
What was there to be done?
One Hundred and Fifty
Norwegian victory at Nordkjosbotn had been something to be proud of and something to celebrate. However, despite that achievement, there remained significant areas of their country under foreign occupation. There were a lot of civilians still trapped behind enemy lines. Prime Minister Stoltenberg used up a lot of political capital in diplomatic efforts among allies to keep them keen on continuing the mission of ridding Norway of the last of the Russians, even if to many those who were left were seen as no longer dangerous. Stoltenberg sold many of the notion of the propaganda value of causing defeats that could be truly seen to be inflicted upon the Russians: the best way to do that was to show them they were beaten but also have that victory known among the wider Coalition too. Norway had been engaged in several diplomatic disputes with allies during the war over certain actions – Israel as part of the Coalition was a matter of contention due to their activities was the main one – but they had success here. NATO and the Coalition would continue the task of liberating Norway.
After a pause following Nordkjosbotn where NATO forces were re-supplied & re-organised, the American-led (they had the numbers) Operation Checkmate got underway. It was a series of multiple, interlinked military moves launched over the weekend. They all connected and shared the common purpose. That was the final defeat of Russian forces inside Norway.
The Norwegian 6th Division advanced from Nordkjosbotn following the E6 highway. They pushed onwards to the village of Kjerkeneset, which sat at the base of the Storfjorden, and then past that up the side of the smaller fjord which became the larger Lyngenfjorden near to Skibotn. This second village was their objective. The Norwegians sought to gain control there in what had been a Cold War projected major defensive position against a Soviet invasion. They were playing the attacker now though coming from the other direction. Like Nordkjosbotn, Skibotn lay where two major roads met. The E6 continued onwards into Finnmark; heading southeast away from Skibotn was the E8 highway that went down to the Finnish border. These roads were important. They were major transport links in a region where there were few of those. In this area, neither was impeded by bridges or by being near to areas of high ground where explosives could bring down the mountainside to block them. The Russians that the Norwegians fought in going from Nordkjosbotn all the way to Skibotn inside of two days were rear-area soldiers with their Sixth Army. There were no frontline soldiers with any of the combat brigades left in any organised fashion beyond the company-level anymore. Instead, it was artillerymen (who had no shells for their guns), missilemen (no SAMs for their launchers), signalmen (much of their equipment smashed up), supply troops (no fuel for their vehicles, burning stocks of dwindling supplies) and so on. They had their rifles and each man had been through combat training upon induction into uniform. Officers and NCOs were instructed to form up rifle units and there were a few man-portable heavy units left. Try as they might, and they did, these Russians couldn’t stop the Norwegians. Those attackers were organised & trained properly for their role, had armour & heavy weapons and too had air cover. Through the Russians the Norwegians went in a series of tough fights but none of which saw them stopped. Only once past Skibotn did they pause, to allow their rear units to come up and deal with the mass of prisoners taken plus start to deal with a tremendous number of enemy wounded as well.
That E8 highway which went from Skibotn not into Finnmark but instead towards Finland followed the course of the valley of the small River Skibotnelva upstream. It went to somewhere known as the ‘Finnish Wedge’. The northernmost part of Finland had what could best described as a finger which pointed towards Norway with the Swedish frontier to the west. In Cold War defensive plans by the Norwegians, the Finnish Wedge too had been foreseen as important as Skibotn and the Lyngenfjorden. Finland and Sweden were neutral in this war. Each had had their airspace and territorial waters violated – by both sides it must be said, despite protestations from each of innocence – and now their borders were crossed. Russian soldiers went over into each country, aiming to seek safety from capture. It was summer but the weather was hardly idea and the terrain remained fatal to many as they tried to avoid crossing points where there were troops from those countries on guard and turning people away. Individuals and small groups were elsewhere but approaching the Finnish Wedge was a larger number of Russians. They came down the E8 and towards Finland. It was in no way an invasion though many of the Russians were armed. The Finns turned them back when they tried to cross the border where the road was and then when others sought passage over the frontier away from that visible point. The Border Guard was supported by the Finnish Army and the Air Force too with them using helicopters to support mobile ground patrols. The Russians weren’t to be allowed in no matter what. Inevitably, a few men slipped through and were disarmed when caught but most were kept out. Verbal instructions were met with warning shots fired skywards. Finland didn’t want conflict with Russia and tight ROE was issued to its men on the border to not shoot unless absolutely necessary, but this was a difficult situation. More and more Russians all escaped from the Norwegians and approached Finland. Difficult conversations were had among politicians down in Helsinki about what to do. A solution was decided upon in a high-level meeting, the result of which Finland aimed to keep secret though would come out in a leak made a few months later. The Finns used a backchannel to let NATO know how many Russians could be found along the E8. It was a quid pro quo for Finland who got something out of this.
Some concern had been expressed in Helsinki that NATO might launch massive air attacks against the Russians there, making more flee towards Finland. Their colleagues had been told that something else would occur. Attached to the Norwegian 6th Division were Germans with their 26th Fallschirmjager Brigade. They’d seen action before though not in this offensive until now. With a battalion assigned to this urgent task, some of them were moved by helicopter lifts but others travelled by tracked vehicles down towards where they could find those Russians. They came ready for a fight and did exchange many shots with plenty of Russian soldiers who refused to put down their weapons – not liking the idea of surrendering to Germans! – but otherwise it was a military police action on a grand scale. Hundreds upon hundreds of POWs were taken. Loot was seized too: these deserting Russians, acting as a mob, had stolen absolutely anything they could of even negligible value. There were civilians recused among them too including many young women. They had suffered gravely among the mob with only worse to come but they were saved. Russian military order had broken down completely with this behaviour, the mass desertion included. These men had been ordered to keep fighting regardless and wait upon reinforcements of combat troops. Others had done so but not all of these who’d fled towards Finland with few managing to get that far.
Operation Rook was the codename for the British-Dutch element of the bigger Checkmate where they made a return to Tromsø. The Royal Marines with the 3rd Commando Brigade was assigned to the American’s 2nd Marine Division: forming their third combat element alongside their 2nd and 8th Regimental Landing Teams (the RLT format was used over brigades here). The Americans moved overland and struck northwards from Nordkjosbotn. They smashed through the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade, going northwards the same way that those Russian marines had previously come south. This brigade was the last major Russian combat unit left in Norway and had been cut off form all of those supporting elements of the Sixth Army. Hit head-on by the US Marines, the 61st Brigade was already doomed. The Americans had the firepower and especially the air cover which they used to great effect. Despite fighting very well, the Russians were crushed by the American advance.
Then the assault commenced on Tromsø.
The Americans helped with helicopter transport support and also loaned their allies some amphibious lift in light of previous losses they had taken. The British and Dutch, joined by some Norwegians too, wouldn’t have been able to undertake Rook without this support. They’d lost too many ships (sunk or significantly damaged) as well as seen many losses of helicopters and landing craft. As it was their ‘assets’ on the line, the Americans had much control over how they were deployed. They drafted a lot of the finer details of Rook, infuriating many of their allies in doing so. It was the way things had to be though. Moreover, seeing as the 3rd Commando Brigade was attached operationally to the 2nd Marine Division, they had the right to do so.
Tromsø didn’t fall easy but still fell. Most of the Russians were on the mainland peninsula trying to hold back the US Marines. Still, losses came to NATO troops involved in seizing the town and the island on which it sat. They wanted the airport there and the port because with them in their hands, more of Northern Norway could be retaken. Seizing Tromsø was also done – and why the Americans had agreed to support in rather than seeing it bypassed – to cut off an escape route for the 61st Brigade. They couldn’t go home to Mother Russia but they could fall back to Tromsø and establish themselves there. The US Marines wanted their enemy counterparts wiped out. Royal Marines, aided by their Dutch allies who they called ‘Cloggies’, fought an infantry fight in Tromsø. It wasn’t easy to win here. They did though, beating a cut off and battered opponent. There were surrenders of a lot of Russian units but others kept on fighting. Once they got their guns and light armour ashore, to support all their air cover and naval gunfire support already in-place, things became easier. Still, it was tough. Norwegian soldiers involved were aghast at the destruction caused and the loss of life among civilians caught up in this. They had their own views on their prime minister and government back in Oslo demanding that Norwegian soil be liberated. Did it have to be done in this fashion? Well… it was. Tromsø was won and much of it left a ruin in the process before final enemy opposition collapsed as Rook was completed.
Russian inability to support their Sixth Army support units and also their Naval Infantry units at the frontlines came due to NATO activity throughout their rear – across occupied Finnmark – and also beyond there too. There were special forces teams active and then the air strikes over the Kola by Task Force 20’s aircraft carriers. NATO had control of the seas and increasingly control of much of the skies. They as well made sure that the ground links across Norway through occupied territory were impossible for the Russians to use.
Once more, historical Cold War factors came into play with regard to Northern Norway. In a NATO-vs.-Soviet conflict, the E6 highway would have supplied the Soviets then like it had been supplying the Russians now. Much effort was put into keeping that road open in 2010 as it would have been during a war in previous decades. Regardless, that highway was shut down as a transport route. It went over bridges and ran beside high ground where demolitions could cause rockfalls. There were countless ambush positions for mines, snipers or air strikes. Russia didn’t have the troops nor other defensive assets to protect the road. It was littered with burnt-out trucks and rotting bodies. Where the E6 close to the Russian border went over the River Tana, the pre-war civilian bridges had long been brought down. In their place, Russian engineers laid pontoon bridges. Those came down too when men on the ground guided-in bombs from high-flying aircraft before then moving in afterwards on the ground to kill engineers aiming to try to repair what they could.
Across in the Kola, Russian reservists had been ordered to form up into a couple of combat brigades. Reserve units of Naval Infantry had been sent into Norway ahead of them on lines-of-communications duties but Russian Army reservists were gathered in depots where they were issued equipment, formed up and preparations were made to march them west. They couldn’t even reach the Norwegian border. TF 20 bombed those depots (Murmansk and Pechenga especially) and also cut transport links. In addition, while the US Marines undertook Operation Checkmate close to Tromsø, the Russians believed that they instead would leave Tromsø alone and instead land in the Kola. US Navy aircraft were hitting targets when guided to them by SEALs: US Marines were expected next. Even when the news came that the 61st Brigade was being destroyed by the 2nd Marine Division, they still believed that ‘more’ US Marines were coming. There were some missing from the ORBAT drawn up by the GRU but the intelligence effort here missed where reservists from the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade were going: that was nowhere near the Kola Peninsula at all.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:39:09 GMT
One Hundred and Fifty One
Reservists with the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, raised from all across the southern United States, were going into battle. They’d been sent to the frontlines after many active duty units had gone to war already, and with more of those formations tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the 4th Brigade was not going to go to Norway like the GRU, and even many of its own members, expected. They had been flown to Norway originally while diplomatic discussions took place between Washington and Tbilisi.
The Marines’ heavy equipment, including Abrams main battle tanks, had then been moved quietly into Georgia by air. It would have been more economical to use ships to do this, but with the Russian fleet still active in the Black Sea, a large number of C-5 Galaxy aircraft had to be used instead. National Guardsmen with the 19th Special Forces Group had been deployed to Georgia shortly before the Marine Reservists, working with the Georgian Army’s five brigades down to the company level.
Russian forces occupied large areas of Georgia and had done so since the war in the summer of 2008. North of the capital city of Tbilisi, the Russia’s 58th Army, with several mechanised divisions and brigades, guarded those territorial gains. Though the capital itself had been captured during the 2008 war, Moscow had withdrawn from Tbilisi the following September, leaving almost forty thousand troops occupying virtually all of Georgia north of the capital.
The decision to go on the offensive in the south was made when units from Russia’s Southern Military District began deploying towards the frontlines in Poland. There were large numbers of well-equipped troops in the south, bordering southern Ukraine and northern Georgia. Those formations, General Petraeus ordered, had to be tied down in place and prevented from moving to Belarus, where their presence could seriously offset his timetable. General Mattis and his corps commanders, Lt.-Generals’ Mike Ryan and Richard Shirreff, all agreed with this assessment, which in turn was sent up the chain of command to the Pentagon.
The US Military was by now decisively engaged on four fronts – Norway, Poland, Sakhalin, and Syria – and partially engaged in two more, those being Libya and Korea, in addition to the ongoing presence of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reservist units such as the 4th Marine Brigade and the 19th Special Forces Group were sent to Georgia with some reluctance from the Joint Chiefs, although the necessity was seen for their deployment.
It was decided that the offensive in Georgia, as yet without a codename, would be aimed at liberating the occupied territories of Georgia proper. The contested territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were to remain unmolested, for now.
Joining the 4th Brigade & the 19th SFG was the 194th Armored Brigade Combat Team, which had been reactivated as a combat unit from a training one. Manned by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans called back to active duty, as well as by training staff and newly-trained recruits, the brigade was somewhat untested, but was well equipped. A herculean effort was made to deploy its tanks and fighting vehicles to Georgia promptly, but eventually the decision was made to launch the offensive before the 194th Brigade was in position.
Their continued deployment was sure to compromise the operation, and the Joint Chiefs figured that surprise was a superior option to a larger force. The 194th would soon see combat, but the Georgian Army, backed by Green Berets and the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, launched its assault before those additional American soldiers were on the ground.
Artillery fire from Georgian guns, supported by Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier strike jets, hit the 58th Army’s positions in the early morning. The Russians were taken largely by surprise, with that deception effort made by the 4th Brigade having been mostly successful, although not totally so. Men were killed in their barracks and in defensive positions alike, but others were already manning their tanks and armoured vehicles in expectation of attack from the south.
The US Marines met with soldiers from the 205th Cossack Motorised Rifle Brigade later on in the day. Dug-in T-80s were able to keep the M1A1s from making any significant progress, and although a few foothills were lost to American advances, the operation was largely met with failure as the Russians refused to budge.
Further west, several Georgian infantry brigades attempted to punch northwards along the coastline, with Green Berets attached to their number. These efforts, similarly, failed to achieve anything beyond minor tactical successes, and an even number of defeats were met when Georgian units went up against well-prepared Russian defences.
The only area in which Allied forces performed well and made significant gains was in the air.
Russian fighter squadrons in the area were challenged by US Air Force F-16s from Romania and Bulgaria, as well as Bulgarian MiG-29s and Italian fighters too. Bombs fell and missiles careened into Russian vehicles, while Russian SAMs fired back in turn and blew numerous Allied warplanes out of the sky. All throughout the day, Coalition ground troops, almost entirely American and Georgian, attempted advance after advance, finding themselves repulsed time and time again with horrendous losses.
One Hundred and Fifty–Two
The national shame of the surrender of the Second Guards Army on the battlefield was something that at first Russia tried to hide. From the Kremlin, there came instructions that no mention was to be made of what had occurred. It was to be as if it never happened…
…then the Americans trumpeted it far and wide. They didn’t just do this in their own country nor around the world but specifically aimed the news of it into Russia. A major propaganda effort was made to tell the Russian people directly of that surrender of tens of thousands of Russian Army soldiers. Using pirated television and radio signals, plus also making use of the internet (bypassing state information controls with ease), the United States told the people of the Rodina what their government refused to. They proved what they had done too. Images, information and interviews of captives were broadcast across Russia.
Putin wasn’t carpet-chewing at this inside the Kremlin but he was pretty mad. Orders were given to shut down that propaganda barrage. He demanded of his defence minister and the generals that an ‘overwhelming’ response be made to all of this. At a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, there was quite the scene made. Several members present were rather taken aback at the behaviour. Putin wasn’t being Putin anymore.
Worse was the come for Russia on the battlefields of Poland in the days afterwards. The last weekend of August would see the loss of the last of Eastern Poland from their military control.
The Second Guards Army had passed through the positions of another field army, the First Guards Tank Army, to launch its attack against the US V Corps. This had been rather complicated to do. It required plenty of on-the-ground coordination to make sure that the incoming troops got where they needed to be, didn’t engage in friendly fire and also were able to go straight into the attack against a surprised opponent. It was all meant to have brought about victory. It didn’t and the Second Guards Army was left surrounded before being blasted to bits. In closing that trap which they made, NATO forces crashed into parts of the First Guards Tank Army which had stepped aside. Those worn-down elements took serious losses. They weren’t given a chance to recover before the V Corps pushed onwards. Whether the trapped Second Guards Army surrendered or not it didn’t matter, NATO was pushing on here and towards the Polish-Belorussian border.
The First Guards Tank Army was unable to stop them. Too much had been stripped away to support that other army. Their opponents had the momentum but, more than that, they had air support. Little of the latter was available to the Russians and Belorussians. There was still that ongoing ‘guerrilla warfare’ effort in the sky with hit-and-run attacks taking place, sometimes which caused grave losses, but it was not enough. There needed to be hundreds of jets in the sky all undertaking coordinated action. Just a few wouldn’t cut it, not when NATO – the Americans especially – could put those hundreds upon hundreds of jets in the sky. Of course, Russian air defences were at work but it wasn’t the same.
Under their air cover, the V Corps drove towards Belarus. They smashed apart all those who stood in their way. Russia would lose another field army though this time without a mass, humiliating surrender. There were small-scale ones which did take place, yes, but no really large ones above battalion-level. They weren’t able to do anything like that because NATO was too quick for them. Moving about with the coordination which their opponents lacked, the V Corps hit hard those they wished to and then pushed others into surrounded pockets. The largest ones of those formed around towns. Throughout Podlachia these pockets formed in places such as Korycin, Lapy and the bigger Bielsk Podlaski. Each of those were at crossroads where it would seem that they would have to be taken by NATO to control those roads. Belorussian troops fell back towards the much larger Bialystok with the aim of making a stand there. They failed to do that when the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment cut them off from doing that but it was a close-run thing. Many Polish civilians could have been trapped in there at their mercy if the US Army hadn’t got there first and then hit the retreating Belorussians from behind.
Russian defensive strategy for keeping NATO away from Belarus depended upon this as a last ditch move. Those towns, full of effective hostages, would stop the onwards Operation Noble Sword advance because they controlled those roads. The V Corps wasn’t about to be held up like that. They went towards the border and aimed to leave those caught behind them to be dealt with by others. The Poles reached the frontier first with the 11th Armoured Cavalry Division getting to Sokolka (another crossroads town) before then carrying on to the villages of Kuznica and Krynki. Within hours, the Americans were on the border as well to the south of them and east of Bialystok. Even further south, French, Italian and Polish forces were going to take longer but they were on their way there too. The First Guards Tank Army had crumbled in their wake, unable to stop them. This included the famous Taman Guards, Russia’s 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, who had their last fight and were eliminated by the American’s 1st Armored & 1st Cavalry Divisions in a rather unequal fight.
Over in Belarus, Lt.–General Chirkin, the Russian supreme commander, who headed up the Western Operational Command, was killed on the Sunday afternoon. A flight of four Belgian F-16s had been taking part in air strikes against dispersed airfields throughout western Belarus. They’d hit a couple but two of the F-16s were heading home still carrying some ordnance due to the last target not being located. Through an act of good fortune, while flying low on the way back to Poland, the flight leader spotted a moving convoy. There were seven armoured vehicles which included a pair of Tunguska anti-air vehicles as well as wheeled & tracked personnel carriers. A quick look saw a mass of radio antenna.
Command column!
The Tunguskas, with their missiles and guns, were engaged and so too were the other vehicles. Bombs were then dropped before the Belgians departed. They knew that they’d hit a valuable target – that level of protection against air threats was quite something – though it wouldn’t become apparent until later on just who they had killed. NATO intelligence efforts would point to the success through enemy communications intercepts.
Chaos came in the wake of Chirkin’s death.
At the time he was being killed, central control was being used when it came to try and save the First Guards Tank Army for an already certain destruction. That wasted effort came just when Chirkin was also overseeing the entry into battle of the Thirty–Sixth Army. Russia had several armies and while not on the same scale as the Cold War, there were still plenty of them… although their numbers weren’t infinite. Like the lost Second Guards Army, this field army had come from the other side of the Urals. It had reserve units among its number and all of the men were untested in battle. They were supposed to stop NATO from breaking into Belarus and do so while inside Poland. They never got there due to Chirkin’s sudden death because their own commander waited for new orders from whomever would replace Chirkin.
Those that did cross the frontier and going into Poland under orders from Chirkin were Belorussian Interior Troops. Many of these paramilitaries were already in Poland and had been taking part in occupation duties but a lot more had received orders to move. They started to do so regardless of what else was going on where their officers followed orders. Plenty of the men in uniform, lightly-armed as they were, had a rough idea of what they were marching into: they were going up against NATO’s armies. The opportunity was taken to desert. More than a thousand did so during the first night. Some were close to the frontlines with NATO forces but others were far away. Still, they abandoned their units. Officers instructed those who stayed behind that families would be punished for all that those who deserted. This wasn’t something that everyone believed. There would be more defections. They would only help open the way into Belarus.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:40:47 GMT
One Hundred and Fifty Three
Debates continued in the capitals of Europe as the fighting went on. While there were disputes between many, both at the level of individual and at that of party, over how far NATO should go in its counteroffensive, and whether or not Russian territory should be seized. There plenty of people who saw the coming attack into Kaliningrad as an unnecessary risk, one which might lead to nuclear escalation, whereas others strongly believed it to be a military necessity. Further disputes took place regarding potential war crimes trials and how far those would go, with the general belief being that President Putin would be impossible to catch, while Belarusian President Lukashenko would be an easier target.
Lithuania’s government had largely been captured in Vilnius when that city had been surrounded. However, some figures, mainly members of parliament along with a few junior cabinet members, had made their way out of the country safely. There had been no organised NATO effort to extract them as had been done with the Latvian government, but enough individuals had made it out either by sea, air, or through the Suwalki Gap right before that strip of land had fallen into Russian hands. This government-in-exile was particularly virulent in its hatred towards Moscow; there were daily calls for rebellion in the occupied homeland, calls that would soon be answered.
Early in the morning, Vilnius was rocked by three explosions. A police station within the Lithuanian capital, currently being used by Russian troops as an occupation headquarters, was blown to smithereens by a smuggled explosive device, which killed ninety-four Russian soldiers.
Similarly, a Russian barracks outside the airport underwent an attack. This was not by a bomb, but rather by a force of nearly fifty men and women on the ground. Amongst them were twelve Green Berets, who had formed the civilians into an organised resistance group. Rocket-propelled grenades were fired into several guard posts and then the resistance fighters and American Special Forces had charged into the barracks room and slaughtered dozens of sleeping enemy personnel before withdrawing.
As dawn broke, resistance personnel, supported by US Army Special Forces and British SAS, struck numerous Russian checkpoints throughout Vilnius with hasty yet effective ambushes. Over three hundred Russian soldiers died during that morning, as attack after attack was mounted throughout the Lithuanian capital.
Many additional civilians took to the streets, armed with Molotov Cocktails and other makeshift weapons, not directly fighting the Russians, but occupying sites of historical importance and vowing to defend them to the death.
The Vilnius uprising was in full swing. Could those within the city capture it and hold it until NATO ground forces arrived?
Behind the British 3rd Mechanised Division came many other NATO units. They had reached the Suwalki Gap now, and liberated the Polish town of Suwalki itself; the task ahead of them was to cross the border into Lithuania and race for the Daugava River. The Germans, with their 1st Panzer Division, and the Americans with their 4th Mechanized Infantry, were the most powerful units to be following behind the British-led 3rd Division, but Croats, Belgians, Spaniards, and Portuguese were beside them in significant numbers. All of them had seen combat and yet more fighting was soon to come as they pushed through the gap into Lithuania.
That operation in itself would not be launched until midnight, however. Throughout the day, NATO units under Lt.-General Shirreff’s command recuperated and prepared for the assault. Reconnaissance units went in ahead of the ground forces. The Brigade Reconnaissance Force belonging to the British Army’s 19th Light Brigade crossed the border into Lithuania and began scouting out pathways for not just the brigade, or even the division, to cross into Lithuania, but for the entire corps.
Similarly, to the north, Polish and Dutch formations prepared to make entry into Kaliningrad. Resistance here was expected to be moderate. The Russians’ main frontline formations in the enclave had been formed into a division pre-war and that division had been beaten up very badly indeed while fighting the Polish 16th Mechanised Division, but enough forces remained in place to cause significant losses, and NATO intelligence showed that naval and air force personnel stationed in supporting roles in Kaliningrad were being forced into ad hoc rifle battalions in the expectation of a NATO invasion.
Meanwhile, in Latvia, the 82nd Airborne Division and its newly-formed counterpart, the British 6th Airmobile Division were holding out. Pressure had been kept up on those two divisions, with the British, along with their Canadian and Belgian allies, in the south at Daugavpils, and the Americans further north along the banks of the river to prevent a Russian withdrawal through Latvia. Both divisions had been able to successfully offset their precarious, bordering on dire, situation.
While the presence of enemy armour had put those light infantry units that were first on the ground into a very vulnerable position, the arrival by air of numerous (if relatively small) heavy units such as the US 170th Brigade and the Canadian 1st Mechanised Brigade Group had made the situation more tenable. With the British Army in position to hold off Belarusian armoured attacks from across the border further south and the Americans continuing to skirmish with Russian paratroopers in their own positions, one of the key worries for the XVIII Airborne Corps was the effective insurgency going on around them, both outside of Allied lines and within the airhead.
This was being mounted largely by Russian ‘volunteers’, including many Cossacks, Tartars, and others. Mortars and small-arms were used by these militia units in coherence with attack helicopters and mechanised infantry from the official Russian Army. Casualties continued to mount, but by now the airport outside Daugavpils was fully functional and, under heavy jamming protection, transport aircraft of the US Air Force, RAF, and the Royal Canadian Air Force were all flying in reinforcements, equipment, and ammunition, as well as evacuating casualties.
The airhead was beginning to look as though it would hold.
One Hundred and Fifty–Four
Benghazi, Libya’s second city across in the eastern half of the country, had been subjected to air attacks by NATO aircraft during Gaddafi’s conflict with the Coalition. There had been bombings of military bases outside the city while within, the military compound of Katiba had been flattened by repeated strikes by the Armee de l’Air. As the French had done with the Bab al-Azizia inside Tripoli, they had struck here at a centre of regime power – physical but also symbolic – right in the middle of the city. Blowing up the fortified Katiba where troops were garrisoned had been seen, heard and felt by those in Benghazi. The repeated attacks came against a backdrop of other violence in the city.
With Libya at war, the country was under immense strain away from the actual conflict that it had already decisively lost. Libya wasn’t exporting oil and wasn’t importing food. There was no money and there was nothing to eat. When the people complained, the regime cracked down. Protests were met with gunfire. A cycle of violence had started with this and wouldn’t cease. In Benghazi, the numbers of the dead from the regime violence against civilians was in the hundreds. The people of city kept on coming out to protest and demand no longer just food but an end to the regime too now. When they did, they were shot at. Places such as one of the city’s central squares, Maydan al Shajara, but also the road outside the mansion which was the home of the city’s mayor would run with blood. Huma Ben Amer was the mayor of Benghazi. She was infamous throughout Libya and had been given the name ‘Huma the Executioner’ after an incident back in 1984 when she impressed Gaddafi by graphically assisting in a hanging of a regime opponent on live television when just an ordinary citizen. Being the ‘right sort’ of character for his revolutionary regime, she had been richly rewarded: Benghazi was her fiefdom to enrich herself from but also oppress. Huma the Executioner had been living up to her apt sobriquet since the war had brought protests. Those who wanted to openly protest were shot down but there too were other actions taken on her orders throughout Benghazi including public executions. Any sign of opposition to the regime – from teenagers with graffiti against the regime to complaints about the lack of electricity leading to people refusing to pay their bills – were met with more violence. The protesters had moved against her opulent home and she had brought in soldiers with machine guns who had then afterwards bayonetted those who survived the fusillade of fire.
On August 29th, getting nowhere with protesting, a dedicated group of regime opponents blew her up. They got her when she was in her armoured car as part of a well-defended convoy. A trio of volunteers using vehicles of their own to crash into the convoy with explosives rigged to them and their cars. Huma the Executioner was dead but so too were many others. From Tripoli, among many of his verbal tirades against the West in recent weeks, Gaddafi had said that attacks against Libya would only ‘embolden terrorists’ and had had specially mentioned Al Qaeda. This wasn’t an Al Qaeda attack but it had all of the hallmarks of one. Gaddafi was correct in what he had said too on matters such as terror groups: all across Libya, they were organising, arming and getting ready to commit attacks similar to the one undertaken in Benghazi by local radicals. Of course, he had other things to say as well. There was bravado concerning how Libya was winning the war along with promises to flood Europe with ‘African refugees’. This second matter was something serious and a threat which could be carried out. He was sure this would break the will of Italy especially to carry on the fight: for many years now, Berlusconi’s government had been having dealings with Gaddafi that made sure that wouldn’t happen. The response to this across Europe was the opposite of what Gaddafi intended though. It only hardened resolve to see the end of his regime… and also go in there and stop that flood from occurring.
After the slaying of Huma the Executioner, that Sunday saw immense trouble take place throughout the city which she had ruled over with an iron fist beforehand. It had been the signal that brought Benghazi out in full revolt. The first shots of the revolution had now been fired, it would be claimed, despite what others would say about those occurring sometime previously. Regardless, Benghazi was alive with revolt. Officials fled and so too did many military officers. Conscript soldiers who had before been firing on civilian protesters, rebelled against the regime. They killed many of their own superiors though the quick-thinking ones made daring escapes out of the city. Things happened very fast. Regime control over Benghazi collapsed pretty quickly. Inside there, several groups would vie for control. The regime had been effective at cracking down on opposition leaders but others remained alive. They were talking and seeking to organise taking over. Big personalities and different priorities were involved in this though. There was too the presence of radicals in Benghazi who would broke no compromise with anyone when it came to sharing the power that they wanted for themselves.
From afar, NATO and the Coalition were watching Benghazi.
At the urging of President Sarkozy, plans were underway to make a landing inside Libya and this would be done in conjunction with Egypt entering the Coalition – the Americans had brokered that deal – while invading Libya too. The situation inside Benghazi was important in all of this because it was the gateway to eastern Libya. The idea was to land here and take control of much of the Cyrenaica region by doing so. Regime control was known to be weak with military forces blown apart. There were access points through the international airport plus also military airfields: further airheads were elsewhere. The French intended to take the lead and land here alongside the Italians and Spanish with Portugal and especially the United States providing assistance afterwards. In distant flank support of the Benghazi landings, the French were too aiming to land at Sirte while the Egyptians would pour across the border going both along the coast to Tobruk but also across the desert to reach Benghazi as well. Doing this was still some time away. The forces assigned were ready but the logistics still needed sorting and there was too the task of gaining further intelligence. Concerns had been expressed about arriving in a dangerous situation where it wasn’t just the Libyan regime as an opponent but others too. Seeing the violence break out so strong, there was now some worry on that latter note. Who were these people who had committed such a lethal terror attack against Benghazi’s mayor? How would they respond to NATO troops arriving in the city?
The operation wasn’t put on hold nor delayed but further attention as being paid to the situation on the ground. Maybe it should have been delayed though and there were some who cautioned that it should be. Politics were pushing for the invasion to get started and intelligence officials came under pressure to deliver the ‘right’ conclusions to match political expectations. This shouldn’t have been done but it was happening nonetheless.
In Lebanon, Israeli forces remained fighting Hezbollah where they met them. They weren’t marching on Beirut nor heading for the Beqaa Valley but instead staying inside the southern half of that nation and fighting against this lone opponent. Lebanese security forces had fled, joining countless civilians in getting away, while Hezbollah stayed where they were. There was increasingly Iranian assistance to them coming from afar despite Israeli efforts to stop that using air strikes far afield while also undertaking commando actions. Airheads for landing supplies of weapons and bringing in volunteers across Lebanon and Syria to join this fight were hit and the Americans kept Iraqi airspace closed but it was through Turkey that Iran had access to support Hezbollah. The Israeli Government was unable to close that Turkish route though carried on doing what it could closer to the frontlines. Hezbollah was losing fighters by the thousands but they kept on fighting. They could no longer fire rockets into northern Israel and had been pushed deep into the Lebanese countryside under the barrage of combined arms warfare yet on they fought. Israeli casualties were far lower than those Hezbollah (and also Lebanese civilians caught in crossfire) had taken. However, they continued to mount with deaths and injuries occurring. The Israeli Defence Forces, the army especially, was a volunteer-based force but still morale sunk. It went down even further when it came to those missing. Hezbollah spent a lot of effort in taking Israeli captives – taking losses of their own aplenty just to snatch people – and then getting them away from the battlefield. Israeli special forces rescued some, taking losses while doing so, and thus stopped the disappearances of them. However, many more vanished. They could have been anywhere: Lebanon, Syria or Iran.
The fighting in Lebanon went on and on with no end in sight to it.
Israel was becoming open to the idea of seeing an ending to the war in Syria. They’d won there, their objectives had been fulfilled. Syria’s air and missile forces had been smashed apart while Russian forces in the country had been all but wiped out with no reinforcement possible. Russia couldn’t help its own gutted forces in-country let alone the Syrian regime. What Netanyahu in Tel Aviv had wanted to see done had been achieved. Hezbollah was a different enemy, one to be destroyed, but bringing down the regime of Assad wasn’t desired. ‘Helping’ Israel understand this had been the recent mission of the Biden Administration. Kerry and Warner had both been active on this matter with the latter, the secretary of state, currently in Israel. Mark Warner spoke of the fears of the United States should the Assad regime come down as well as telling the Israelis that there was no American wish for their own troops to remain fighting inside Syria for much longer. The bigger war with Russia continued and while Israel wouldn’t be abandoned, America wouldn’t be involved in a never-ending war on-the-ground in Syria when all objectives had been met here. Netanyahu wasn’t one to be pushed about by Washington yet he was in agreement. Israel had access to the same information that the Americans had when it came to the internal pressures that Assad was under. There had been protests in many parts of Syria, Damascus especially, over access to food and medicines. The people were hungry and getting desperate. Regime efforts to turn their rage towards the hated ‘Zionists and American Imperialists’ had only been partially-successful. None of this had been helped when protesters had been shot. There was too the long, open Syrian-Iraqi border. In the skies, the US Air Force could close that but over it at ground level across were going fighters for the two wars raging. There were people moving both ways – to the fighting in each country including Syrian nationals going to each – but the movement into Syria worried Tel Aviv and Washington.
No one wanted to see a civil war in Syria though this was for their own purposes, not the people who lived there.
There had already been contact made through backchannels with the Assad regime that Israeli diplomats & intelligence officials had using Jordanian and Saudi intermediaries. These were used again. An approach was made, one which the United States was fully onboard with… and the rest of the Coalition was only partly aware of. Israel was willing to cease the fighting and talk about conditions of a withdrawal. The opening terms were considered by Netanyahu to be generous. The Syrians were expected to be difficult but were thought to be willing to come around in the end. They had to understand the bad situation they were in. They had to be willing to talk, surely?
Whether Assad was willing to or not, it didn’t matter. Things had gone too far. Syria was at breaking point and the regime had run out of time. What had happened in Libya was going to be repeated, though on a far bigger scale. If Israel, the United States and the Coalition thought that they were going to walk away from Syria unscathed, they were dead wrong.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:41:58 GMT
One Hundred and Fifty Five
Following the attempted uprising by the Taliban that had rocked Kabul, the Afghan capital, earlier during the war, NATO and Coalition forces had briefly returned their focus to fighting that long-lasting insurgency. A feeling of victory over Russian forces in the region existed amongst certain Central Command officers following the initial skirmishes along the Afghan-Tajikistan border, which had been followed up with raids by B-52 strategic bombers.
Allied officers had in some cases simply wanted to believe that victory had been achieved over their foes. The 10th Mountain Division, along with Britain’s 4th Mechanised Brigade and several US Marine Corps units, were still positioned along the Afghan border with Moscow’s erstwhile ally, Tajikistan.
The two Russian divisions stationed there, the 7th Guards Air Assault Division & the 201st Motorised Rifle Division, had fought along the border and pushed briefly into several mountain areas of Afghanistan before being pushed back. Those B-52 strikes from Diego Garcia were almost impossible to resist, with Tajikistan’s air defence network almost non-existent even before the Coalition had mounted its first strikes there. It looked, briefly, as though victory had been achieved.
Now, as NATO forces launched their offensives in Poland, Norway, and the Pacific, fighting re-erupted in Central Asia in a spectacular fashion.
The 7th Guards Division, restocked and reinvigorated by air, launched a sudden offensive across the Panj River, moving by helicopter and amphibious BMD fighting vehicles. Almost immediately, Navy SEAL teams positioned in the area caught glimpses of the moving Russian troops. Airstrikes were called in straight away; AV-8B Harrier strike planes of the US Marine Corps came in first, along with Cobra gunships and Army AH-64Ds as well.
More capable F-16s came later, and so too did B-52s from Diego Garcia; those heavy bombers traversed Pakistani airspace, with Islamabad in the full knowledge that their interception would not be tolerated by the US Air Force. While this was seen by many as a display of arrogance, it did allow for strategic air support to arrive within hours of the initial Russian border crossings.
British troops, those belonging to the 4th Mechanised Brigade, moved northwards and were the first to engage the 7th Guards Division on the ground.
Their limited number of tanks were superbly effective against Russian BMD-3s, although the Warrior fighting vehicles and Land Rover vehicles also utilised by the 4th Brigade were largely ineffective against missile-armed BMD fighting vehicles. Tank shells and guided anti-tank missiles screamed across the Afghan mountains, bringing full-scale ‘peer level’ combat to Afghanistan in a way that had not yet been seen throughout the Coalition occupation of that country.
US Marine Corps personnel with their 3rd Regiment quickly moved in by helicopter and assaulted the western flanks of the 7th Division’s advance. Their Huey and Sea Knight helicopters came them superior mobility to the Russians, who had only a few Hind and Hip aircraft, most of which were ruthlessly hunted down and eliminated by the Harrier’s armed with Sidewinder missiles.
The sudden attack by the 3rd Marine Regiment broke the Russian advance up as it neared Kunduz.
The paratroopers suddenly found themselves scrambling to defend their flanks as American troops attacked from the west and British soldiers, much more heavily armed, counterattacked from Kunduz and moved the frontlines northwards, away from the Russians’ objectives.
F-16s then bombed the two main bridges over the Panj that the Russians had used; that was nothing compared to what was coming.
Those B-52s from Diego Garcia again attacked Tajikistan. Armed, like the bombers that had struck in Poland, with various different munitions, primarily Mark-82 cluster bombs, they struck not the 7th Division, but rather the 201st Motorised Division. Already understrength after the previous Coalition air attacks into Tajikistan, the 201st Division came under a truly relentless pummelling as it waited on the northern side of the Panj to exploit the potential successes of the air assault troops.
This time, the 21st Division ceased to exist as a fighting formation. Navy SEALs and German KSK personnel had crossed the border into Tajikistan in several swiftly-authorised helicopter deployments, and hidden in the mountains, they were able to guide in the airstrikes and then report on the damage suffered below, which turned out to be far more extensive than anybody could have anticipated.
Thousands of bombs rained down on the Russian troops, obliterating virtually all of their T-72s, BTRs & BMPs, as well as trucks and command vehicles.
One lucky shot by an undiscovered SA-8 battery managed to shoot down a lumbering and vulnerable B-52, but that single aircraft loss was more than worthy of the damage that had been inflicted.
One Hundred and Fifty–Six
In the years following the war, many films would be released by Hollywood studios which touched upon subjects of the Third World War. One of those was the production Precision. This was meant to be a summer blockbuster, an action film that would rake in loads of money and maybe even awards too. It was a big budget flop. Production issues including the first director leaving midway through filming, distribution issues, a high-profile lawsuit and a personal scandal involving the lead male star on the opening weekend all hurt. Precision was something soon forgotten by many yet a cautionary tale for others about how not to make a war film.
The line ‘Based on a true story’ was used in the production and release of the film. That was stretching things quite a bit! Precision centred upon an attack by Russian commandos in the Panama Canal and the successful effort made by US Navy SEALs to stop them from blocking this wartime strategic waterway. This happened. One of those SEALs, who won the Medal of Honor for his actions yet then inflamed the wrath of the Pentagon (helping to bring about to that lawsuit from others involved in what happened in Panama) when writing a best-selling book about it all, was involved in the making of the film. Despite his presence, not much of the truth of the events were depicted in the screenplay. There was no cooperation from the Pentagon and neither the Panamanian authorities too. The studio didn’t have access to still-secret information post-war and that could have excused some of the film but that former SEAL’s presence didn’t nor some of the other glaring inadequacies with the production. Precision moved the Spetsnaz strike to the opening of the war rather than three plus weeks in. It made out that things were closer than they really were, that the Russians nearly achieved all that they intended to as well. In typical Hollywood fashion, only at the last moment were they stopped. That wasn’t what happened. Because it was a film meant for entertainment – ‘based on a true story’ notwithstanding – it told a different story for dramatic effect. The male lead in the film was one of those SEALs (based on that former US Navy officer who was being sued) who was there but there was a female lead in the form of a stunningly attractive naval intelligence officer: she was fictional. Their relationship, the love story, was just made up. No one like her on-the-ground in Panama was shouting warnings that only the heroic male lead would listen to nor did her daring actions at the last minute save the day. If there had been someone like her present in Panama when the real events happened, she wouldn’t have spent most of her time on the beach in a swimsuit (a shot of that, with a CGI-enhanced cleavage was on the movie promotional poster) nor would the SEAL have had the plentiful time off duty to romance her nor share the many secrets he did. As to the film’s lead baddie, he was an archetypal villain by Hollywood standards. Played by a Scandinavian actor, with a Russian accent mocked by reviewers, he spent much of his time in Panama either at cocktail parties, running across rooftops being chased by the hero and then ogling & leering at the female lead when he took her prisoner before her rescue and her subsequently doing what she did to save the day and get her man. None of the Spetsnaz in Panama had any time for any of that silliness. In the gunfights – among the many explosions – the Russians couldn’t shoot straight despite firing masses of bullets from assault rifles which never needed a new magazine while the Americans always shot true. All of the Russians died in the end of the film, including the baddie right at the end – after he’d told his captive his plan too – while the Americans only had one man shot and he survived too, saved by the male heroic lead among all of his other feats. In reality, as done elsewhere, the Spetsnaz used poison-tipped bullets that took the lives of anyone shot and they could shoot straight too. Eight Americans were killed in Panama along with a whole load of other people as well… none mentioned in the abomination which was Precision. At the end, the male & female leads shared a kiss and then the credits rolled to give a happy ending.
Precision was a terrible film. It was laughable too, not in a good way. There was a wartime Spetsnaz attack in Panama though which a team of SEALs did halt. That film also missed out important bits such as how the Russians got to the Panama Canal, how the Americans discovered that planned attack and also what happened afterwards.
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The Russian commando team came up to Panama from Peru. The Peruvian government had no idea that the Spetsnaz team had staged out of their country. In Lima, like capitals across Latin America, neutrality in the global conflict elsewhere was sought. Even regimes such as Castro’s in Cuba and Chavez’s in Venezuela did all that they could to stay out. They all feared war coming to their shores – public bravado from some aside, especially in the ‘pink tide’ countries – after watching what was happening with Russia. American aircraft had put bombs into the heart of Moscow and smashed the Russian armed forces to pieces. Only a fool would fight the United States unless they had no other choice. There were non-state actors who had a presence in Latin America though, the multi-national drug cartels. For hefty sums of cash as well as access to weaponry, with the added addition of immense stupidity, a couple of the cartel leaders had got involved with the GRU and the SVR. Peru might not be a nation which would spring to mind when thinking of the international drug trade, but it was an important country for that business. The cartels had a presence there and Russia’s intelligence agencies had been making use of their facilities and smuggling routes.
A private aircraft had taken the Spetsnaz to Panama. They’d met there with in-country contacts and been issued with weapons. Their commander was briefed by his GRU superior on the final details of their mission. He was told the truth: things had gotten far more complicated than originally foreseen. The chances of success had been lowered significantly. Nonetheless, the orders still stood. A ship transiting the Panama Canal was to be hijacked and used to block this international waterway for the passage of other ships. In addition, using the cover of that attack, explosives would be employed to then do serious damage to the infrastructure of the canal. Improvised blockships can be a challenge for military engineers to clear yet can be dealt with: Russia was aiming to do more than that.
The final go-order came through and the Russian commandos went into action… and the Americans had their SEALs waiting for them.
The United States’ government agencies had their own wartime contacts with the drug cartels. Things not done in peacetime due to political reasons were now being done in wartime. The Russians had been shown to have made use of them already and therefore the danger that these non-state actors posed classified them as a security threat of the highest order. Those who were willing to work with the United States wouldn’t be targeted for destruction like those who refused to. Organisations such as the CIA, the DIA, the FBI and the NSA used information from the DEA and ICE – so many acronyms! – to establish contact with leaders and senior people in several of the cartels to find out who was working for the Russians and who wasn’t. Information flowed in when the cartels received assurances and also fully understood that the gloves had come off when it came to how the Americans were prepared to act. In a flurry, they were selling each other out. There were many in the DEA and ICE who were left rather unhappy at some of the things that happened and issued dire warnings for the future, but for now at least half of the main drug cartels were working for the United States. Of course, there was much duplicity here – on both sides – but information was flowing. The Peru connection was identified and while late and with little concrete information, those Spetsnaz were identified as having made it to Panama. Their exact location wasn’t known and nor was what they were going to do but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that they posed a threat to the Panama Canal. It was being used by American and Coalition shipping to support the global conflict. Why wouldn’t Russia want to put a dent into that movement of goods that was helping to defeat them? Taken from Task Force Hunter, the combined grouping of special forces & intelligence operatives who’d taken down Obama’s killers but been only partially active since, were SEALs who were flown down to Panama. Both Nunn and Warner had much contact with their opposite numbers down in that small country while Biden personally spoke with President Martinelli. Panama’s leader agreed that the canal needed defending against an attack, one which the Americans told him was imminent, and while there was a lot of back-and-forth due to politics, Panama would cooperate with the United States to stop an attack. This shipping route was the lifeblood of Panama and to see it blocked would damage Panama’s economy (perhaps fatally) as much as it would hurt America’s warfighting capability.
Knowing it likely that the Russians were soon to attack the canal by taking over a ship was one thing; knowing which ship, exactly where and exactly when was something else. Contacts were leaned on heavily by the US Intelligence Community in Panama, Mexico and elsewhere but that information didn’t come until the very last moment. With hours to spare, thanks to a man in Panama who gave his life to get that information to the United States, the SEALs were tipped off.
It was the SS Ocean Goliath that the Russians were to attack as it approached the Gatun Locks after transiting west-to-east through the Panama Canal as part of a convoy of ships laden with military stores. The SEALs were covertly dispatched to the ship as well as the area around those lock gates at the Atlantic side of the canal. When the attack came, the Russians used speedboats while attempting to board the Ocean Goliath. They had a good plan and it should have worked. After taking the ship, they would have killed every crew member aboard then rammed the targeted lock gates while turning the ship sideways before opening the seacocks. Armed men laden with satchel charges were then meant to get off and start blowing up key parts of the infrastructure surrounding the gates’ operation rather than those huge structures themselves. But the Spetsnaz couldn’t get aboard the Ocean Goliath. Snipers aboard spotted them using night-scopes and opened fire. A pair of helicopters turned up and from them mini-guns as well as aloft snipers also fired on the Russians. The two speedboats were sunk and the Russians took terrible losses. They kept on trying, unaware of how many of their men were dead, but failed. So much for how that post-war movie depicted things!
Faced with such murderous defensive fire, the few remaining Spetsnaz eventually abandoned the mission and attempted to flee. The Americans pursued them: it had been agreed that Panamanian security forces would stay out of this though there were conditions attached there. The United States couldn’t do what it wanted inside Panama. Martinelli, a populist, wouldn’t accept that not with the complicated history when it came to America and Panama. Still, the SEALs hunted down those who fled. The killed some more though gained some captives as well. In doing so, they took their own casualties too. One SEAL had been shot when aboard the Ocean Goliath (as in the movie) but seven more were killed when an RPG exploded on contact with the tail rotor of one of the stealthy – and secretive – Black Hawks used in that pursuit, bringing it down into a fiery crash.
Recriminations would come for this despite the successful blunting of that attempted attack. Those across Latin America who had and continued to aid Russia would be on the receiving end of them. It wouldn’t be pretty.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:43:28 GMT
One Hundred and Fifty Seven
As there had been with the assault on Sakhalin, there was much debate about the continuation of Operation Baltic Arrow into Kaliningrad. There were Iskander missile batteries there with nuclear warheads, and although many of those had been blown to pieces by NATO airpower last night, Russia maintained a very large and very capable arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.
If such weapons as those were going to be used, they would be used to defend Kaliningrad, many political figures throughout Europe reasoned. The Americans were more gung ho in their attitude, with NATO's military command structure largely support the concept of a ground invasion of Kaliningrad. Without one, s proper liberation of the Baltic States would be logistically impossible.
However, from the outside, it looked as though at least one of the Baltic States was doing a very good job of liberating itself.
The Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius was in the midst of a NATO (primarily CIA) sponsored rebellion against the occupying Russian forces. Such a thing had been in planning for weeks now, with Green Berets being quietly and efficiently sent into Lithuania and linking up with civilian and militia resistance groups to provide them with weaponry, training, and ammunition.
Some days ago, dissident Lithuanian Army units alongside civilian groups and NATO special operations personnel had sprung into action with bombings and ambushes across the city, which now tied down two full brigades of Belarusian and Russian occupying troops.
The rebels and commandos would mount hit-and-run attacks across the city, destroying convoys with guided missiles before withdrawing into underground safe houses both inside and outside of Vilnius itself. Efforts to track them down only led occupying forces into more traps and ambushes, with numerous helicopters being shot down with shoulder-launched missiles operated by American advisors.
All of this violence saw hundreds of casualties across Vilnius, with yet more of the city being destroyed in the fighting, but it also opened up the way for Allied ground forces to begin punching their way into Kaliningrad.
This was done by the majority of the Allies' I Corps, spearheaded, as usual, by the British 1st Armoured Division and the US 4th Infantry. Those two battle-hardened (by some descriptions, battle-weary) formations opened up the Suwalki Gap and stormed into Lithuania, marking the second stage of Operation Baltic Arrow.
Amongst neither unit were losses particularly high on that day. The Russians were engaged in a deliberate fighting withdrawal, covered by immense artillery strikes. Engagements on the ground occurred when enemy rear-guard units were overrun, but the sheer amount of tactical air power assigned to I Corps today prevented significant losses from being suffered by the Allies.
NATO warplanes, including massive American B-1Bs flying from Spain, dropped thousands of tonnes of munitions on withdrawing Russian ground forces. F-16s & F/A-18s were harassed by a smaller number of Sukhois and MiG-29s throughout the day, but Russian defensive efforts were hampered by the lack of coordination due to the loss of several of the Russian Air Forces' few A-50s. Russia’s air force had taken a ferocious beating throughout the war, and by now, there were few fighters available.
In addition to this, Russia’s surface to air missile systems had taken devastating losses from NATO strikes. Hundreds of missile launching systems were destroyed by tactical air strikes and many more had been taken offline during the NATO air campaign against Belarus and Kaliningrad. The bottom line was that NATO airpower had an almost free reign to strike Russian forces as they withdrew through the Lithuanian countryside at little risk to themselves.
Dutch and Polish mechanised and air assault units, operating under this same air cover, invaded Kaliningrad. The aforementioned political issues here were still prevalent, but the decision was taken to go onwards with this assault by NATO commanders back in Brussels. Had the units taking part in the attack been from some of the more militarily reluctant countries then there might have been an issue, but the Poles, for certain, had no problems with the offensive proceeding here.
The Dutch government was more hesitant, but Holland had been attacked from the skies since the first day of the war, while its soldiers, sailors, and airmen had died in great numbers in Poland; no resistance came from The Hague on this.
Dutch air assault troops yet again mounted attacks using American helicopters as well as those of their own Air Force. This time, losses were heavy, as pre-positioned anti-aircraft batteries engaged the attacking aircraft, with numerous Chinooks, Black Hawks, and Dutch Hueys & NH-90s shot down by systems such as the SA-19 Tunguska and MANPADS.
These casualties, while significant, weren’t enough to deter the Dutch from capturing several major highway nodes against substantial resistance from the shattered remnants of the 1st Motorised Rifle Division, with those units soon being reinforced by Polish tanks.
One Hundred and Fifty–Eight
Operation Noble Sword continued as NATO forces entered Belarus. The US V Corps moved across the border from Poland and entered the territory of Russia’s closest ally. There remained troops of both Belarus and Russia on Polish soil, caught up in pockets of various sizes, but instructions from General Petraeus were that those were to be left behind. SACEUR issued those orders which his subordinates General Mattis – commander of CJTF–East – and General Ryan (who headed the V Corps) followed. There were some misgivings expressed from each of those two other men to their superior about not fully overcoming those forces of the destroyed First Guards Tank Army beforehand, but SACEUR wanted them to continue advancing. That other field army, Russia’s Thirty–Sixth Army, was yet to be fully in-place to stop Noble Sword. Petraeus wanted to catch the Russians on the move.
The V Corps did just that. American and Polish forces led the drive into Belarus with the French following them. This was over the northern and central sections of the border. They went forwards through small-scale but messy fights with Belorussian Border Guards & Interior Troops before then engaging the Russians on a ground of NATO’s choosing. There were two Russian divisions – the 21st Guards and 122nd Guards Motor Rifle Divisions – who were faced by twice the number of opposing NATO formations. That numerical advantage was important on the ground especially since the Russians hadn’t dug-in anywhere. In the skies above, NATO had almost complete control of the air. A few times, Russian fighters might show up but their only real opponent were air defences. More effort was spent on hitting them than allowing attack missions to take place against ground forces for Ryan’s liking but he had the air cover he needed. They were able to help get the Russians where he wanted them. The Polish 11th Armoured Cavalry Division was first into combat followed by the US 1st Cavalry Division. Each of them engaged an opposing division in a mobile battle spread over a huge area of northeastern Belarus. It was a costly fight for both sides. Once it got going, the US 1st Armored Division and also France’s Division Rapiere got involved, taking on the Russians from the flanks and behind too where possible. This was a fight which Russia at once started to lose. Withdrawal orders came from their higher command. They started to fall back from a fight they had only just gotten involved in after being ambushed. This wasn’t easy to do at all though. The V Corps sought to stop a retreat and if they couldn’t stop it, then they’d make the Russian’s pay for trying. The 122nd Guards suffered the most when fighting both the Americans and the French. This was a second-rate formation which had come to Belarus all the way from Siberia. It didn’t have the best of anything: weapons, men or communications. They were fighting some of the best forces that NATO had to offer. Half of the division was lost before the remainder could get away. The 21st Guards – again out of Siberia – did a little bit better in combat though was still forced to run away from the fight. A quarter of their initial strength was gone, left behind dead or prisoner. The retreat was one made in disarray and one which came under furious air attack from above.
The battle of the border had been won by the V Corps and those forces which had already gone across continued their advance into Belarus. Ryan’s command was rather large with more than just those four divisions. There was the still unused US 101st Air Assault Division sitting in Poland. They weren’t yet to see action neither inside Belarus nor against the pockets of enemy forces left inside Poland. They’d be wasted going up against the latter and in the case of the former – entering Belarus – a later operation (drawn up by Mattis’ planning staff) awaited them. A big airmobile move was being readied for them. Previously-engaged NATO units who’d come off worse for wear when stopping the Russians during their earlier advance into Poland were moved closer to the frontlines inside Poland’s Podlachia region. The US 3rd Infantry & German 10th Panzer Divisions remained with the German-Dutch I Corps and set about eliminating those pockets. It was hard going for each of them with the Germans joined by Slovenian troops and the Americans there consisting of many reinforcements which had come from the mainland United States to replace immense earlier losses. This was all not a fight for the V Corps anymore.
In addition to the 101st Air Assault, Ryan had another division of Poles and one of Italians as well. Centring on the occupied Polish city of Biala Podlaska and with the main road linking Brest and Warsaw, Highway-2, through the middle of it, was what was being called the Podlaska-Brest Bulge. NATO forces were on three sides though the Belorussians and Russians caught inside still had an avenue of escape back into Belarus to the east. The Bug River formed the border between the two countries and was the way out of the Bulge should they flee. No order had yet to come for those on the ground there to withdraw. Those were First Guards Tank Army elements from many smashed-up formations, while reaching Brest in recent days was the third of the Thirty–Sixth Army’s divisions. The smaller pockets of resistance left on Polish soil could be, and had been, bypassed by the V Corps but not this one, especially with that fresh 131st Motor Rifle Division sitting around the excellent communications centre of Brest with all of its road links. The Polish 12th Mechanised Division remained fixing in-place the majority of those inside the Bulge – holding a large stretch of the frontlines – but the Italians were ordered by Ryan to go forwards. Mattis had granted the V Corps’ commander his request for the attachment of a reinforcing attacking unit direct from CJTF–East’s central control to see the attack succeed.
It was the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment which led the Italian Division Centauro into Poland. The Blackhorse Cav’ was a training unit of the US Army based in California which had shipped over to Europe early in the war. They’d been guarding the approaches to Warsaw for some time, far in the rear and meant to be the last line of defence against a sudden breakthrough. They’d stayed there when they were needed elsewhere due to the worry that should the Russians make a dash for Warsaw, Polish resistance could have collapsed. Now the Blackhorse Cav’ went into Belarus. They struck to the north of the Bulge: between where the Bug was on the right and the near-impassable Białowieża Forest on the left. The Americans led the Italians towards Brest and through southwestern Belarus. They came right from behind, surprising their opponents by their presence and the rush forward aiming to get to Brest and cut off the Bulge. Italian A-129 Mangusta attack helicopters joined with US Army Apaches in blasting the way forward through flank screen forces. Brest lay ahead and that Russian division scrambled to intercept them. There was going to be a major fight outside of Brest with only one winner due to emerge. Whomever that was would control the fate off all of those Belorussian & Russian forces – in a bad way but still capable of fighting – stuck over in Poland. Commanders on both sides waited for news…
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:44:45 GMT
One Hundred and fifty Nine
Spies, generally, have always operated from embassies and consulates around the world.
Though these personnel often have basic training in terms of firearms handling and survival skills, spooks in general are expected to remain out of the line of fire. Before World War Three, intelligence officers, "case officers", as the CIA coined them, would spend most of their careers at cocktail parties or embassy balls, gaining the trust of sources or "agents" within foreign governments. For American intelligence officers - Civilians with the CIA and military personnel with the Defence Intelligence Agency - this was sometimes punctuated by periods of service in more dangerous parts of the world such as Afghanistan.
The outbreak of global conflict led to a sudden and violent escalation in the normally peaceful spy wars that went on behind the scenes, in neutral countries as well as in ones that were participating in the war. Intelligence officers found themselves facing armed threats from all around.
This began in Stockholm, when Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, attempted to abduct a senior GRU officer as he moved about within the Swedish capital. The Russian officer was believed to hold vital intelligence concerning Moscow's potential plans to drag Scandinavia into the war, and so an operation utilising a covert element known as 'The Increment' was authorised.
Armed men belonging to this paramilitary force, personnel recruited from Britain's military Special Forces contingent, dressed in plain clothes, ambushed the GRU officers' car within Stockholm.
However, the planned 'lifting' of the Russian went awry. A shootout occurred which left four Russians and two British operatives’ dead, along with a pair of Swedish civilians caught in the crossfire. The British personnel sped back to the safety of the embassy, leaving the Foreign Office to deal with the consequences of that. Days later, retaliation occurred; an MI6 case officer stationed in Cairo washed up on the shores of the Nile with her throat cut. From then on, spies were at war just like soldiers were.
The United States' government authorised an operation that would take place at the highest levels of secrecy, involving the CIA's Special Activities Division as well as small contingents from Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. Codenamed Operation Global Reach, the objective of this mission was to neutralise Russia's overseas intelligence gathering capacity with extreme prejudice.
Operation Global Reach was something that would in the future be hotly debated by conspiracy theorists, although the truths of the matter remain classified. Such will be the case for the next 350 years.
In the Austrian capital city of Vienna, a spy was discovered amongst the ranks of the diplomatic staff attached to the American embassy. As part of Operation Global Reach, this man was assassinated by a Delta Force sniper on his way to meet with his Russian handlers.
The official story told by the State Department would always be that the SVR had killed the man after suspecting him to be a double agent. The evidence against him had been gathered illegally and so would not be admissible in court, making the arrest of the traitor a lost cause. CIA psychologists had decided that he was too ideologically set to be turned, and if the man was to be snatched and sent away to a black site somewhere then his absence would eventually be noted; he was an American citizen, after all.
The decision was made to kill the traitor and this was done covertly and professionally.
In Rabat, things would go differently. A team of SEALs assigned to Operation Global Reach were deployed to neutralise an SVR assassination team from Zaslon; the ambush that had been excellently planned only led to a firefight that saw a dozen people killed.
Delta Force operators in Singapore had more success in raiding and shutting down a front company used by the upper echelons of Russian society to launder money. In Hong Kong, a CIA officer was abducted, tortured, and shot by the GRU, revealing information that led to yet another violent shootout when the Russians attempted to neutralise the traitor of their own.
One Hundred and Sixty
The US Army’s Lt.–General Helmick, the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, had asked for reinforcements to come to Latvia to support his multinational force here deep in the Russian rear. The 82nd Airborne Division and the British-led (but multinational) 6th Airmobile Division were unable to fulfil the mission given to Helmick on their own. He didn’t put it in such terms to Mattis and Petraeus but that was the case. The Russians were bypassing the area of control the XVIII Corps had established along the Daugava River – going around his men – and thus their supply lines to forward-deployed forces were still active. Riga was being used by the Russians especially as they sent convoys loaded with ammunition, fuel and other stores through that civilian area with the full knowledge that NATO was weary of bombing ‘friendly’ civilians there. The XVIII Corps had turned back organised Russian & Belorussian units sent against them in major engagements yet had that underestimated local security problem to deal with where there were ‘unfriendly’ civilians plus also foreign militia as well fighting them inside this Baltic nation. Helmick had asked for both the British 2nd Infantry & the US 7th Infantry Divisions. He’d hoped he’d get at least one of them: two seemed too much. There was also the chance that he could have been relieved too and replaced with someone else if his unadmitted failure was deemed as much in Krakow, Brussels or Washington. In a surprise, CJTF–East released both of those light formations to the command of the XVIII Corps. They were flown by air to Central Latvia, taking the routing over the Baltic rather than above Kaliningrad or Lithuania, and sent to the fight. With such a strong reinforcement, a doubling of strength, Mattis and Petraeus demanded more from Helmick.
They wanted him to take Riga.
Liberating the Latvian capital was something which was planned for the XVIII Corps to do when in the field though not so soon. Now political pressure had been brought to bear and Helmick had the instructions to begin the process of doing that. The blockage across a significant portion of the Daugava was being bypassed by the Russians using Riga and that was a part of it yet more than that, the politics of not letting events which had happened in Daugavpils and Jēkabpils occur there drove these orders. There had been some cautionary voices which said an advance upon Riga would bring that level of violence to that larger city as seen in the smaller ones but those weren’t being listened to. The Latvian government-in-exile, plus influential NATO leaders such as Cameron and Sarkozy, won out with their demands there… though it would be American troops marching on Riga. Before the majority of the reinforcements arrived, the 82nd Airborne began that advance. There had spent long parrying attacks by Russian paratroopers who protected the way around the blockage imposed but were now sent forward. The first objective was the town of Kegums, outside of Riga. This lay downstream away to the west of Jēkabpils. The peacetime river crossing there went over a road built into the hydroelectrical plant: something that the Americans had previously bombed and the Latvians had learnt about only after the fact. The Russians had pontoon bridges up to make use of the road connections around Kegums with the 76th Guards Air Assault Division in the way. The Americans moved from their forward outposts and started driving forward. They had tanks, air cover and also an (admittedly smaller) numerical advantage over their opponents. Helmick ordered the 82nd Airborne to get to Kegums within three days and then begin to advance closer to Riga. Near to where the Russian river crossings could be found – and the many dummy crossings that the Russians had set up too – there was also Lielvārde Airbase too. The French had had Mirage-2000s there at the opening of war and taken immense losses with few personnel and fewer aircraft getting away before it was overrun. The Americans would be going for there as well.
American and Russian paratroopers were back in action again, no longer fighting skirmishes but pitched battles. Tough, bloody fighting commenced with the 82nd Airborne going forward but the 76th Guards making it costly for them.
Behind the advance, those airlifts which saw the men of two NATO light divisions arrive in Central Latvia, were used to take out people too. XVIII Corps casualties as well as Russian POWs (injured and uninjured) were flown out. Moreover, on several of those airlifts went civilians. Those who needed medical care joined many children also leaving their home country. Germany, along with Belgium and the Netherlands too, had agreed to take them when Poland said that it was unable to. During the fighting along the Daugava, civilians from outside of the liberated area had flocked inwards despite the danger. They came to the frontlines – some caught up in the crossfire – and sought safety inside. Outside, there had been cases where Russian irregulars had been raping, robbing and murdering their way across the Latvian countryside and through small towns. Professional Russian troops – along with Belorussian security troops – had previously kept things under control but as they were drawn into the fighting, others took advantage. Those internal refugees arrived where there remained gunfire through Daugavpils and Jēkabpils. Explosions occurred too as terrorists actions went on. Far fewer attacks made by Russian-speaking Latvians were taking place: it was all now ‘outsiders’. There were kidnappings of NATO soldiers by these militia and also the use of civilians as human shields. Military police units from several countries had been flown in along with what special forces soldiers could be spared but the situation was unstable and deadly.
The 6th Airmobile with its British, Belgian & Canadian contingents expanded its area of operations as the Americans moved forward. They took over some of the area of responsibility of the 82nd Airborne on the basis that that would only be temporary. Once the two newly-arriving divisions were set up, they could be handling security operations all down the liberated area allowing for the 6th Airmobile to do what it had come here to ultimately do: raid outwards against enemy forces avoiding the Daugavpils-to-Jēkabpils area. Those supply columns and rear area forces for the Twentieth Guards Army fighting down in Kaliningrad and Lithuania were all exposed should the 6th Airmobile be able to concentrate on them rather than what it had been doing. As NATO’s senior people and politicians pushed for the Americans to drive on Riga, they too wanted a major expansion of operations radiating outwards from Daugavpils. If that could have been done, it would already have been done. Those on the ground in Latvia were fighting multiple, capable opponents in several different fights. It wasn’t just the volunteer militia they engaged but Russian paratroopers and Belorussian reservists (with tanks) too. Those opponents had been beaten but not destroyed. Russia’s 345th Guards Regiment and the Belorussians had fallen back after taken major losses. Yet they hadn’t gone away. They’d dug-in with good positions found and also brought up artillery. There were no longer any missile attacks – they appeared to be out of them – but had heavy guns taken from storage. There were D-20 & D-30 howitzers and even far older (World War Two vintage) M-30s as well. The shelling was continuous with casualties caused and a great deal of harassment inflicted. The 6th Airmobile didn’t want to sit still doing nothing as it was believed from far away they were happy to. They were waiting for the opportunity to move outwards and start launching proper, full attacks using all that they had to take their enemy on. That was now going to be coming soon, once the XVIII Corps reinforcements were in-place.
The Americans had their 7th Infantry Division full of all of those reservists, recent retirees and also officers on staff courses or leave etc. They came in first and into Jēkabpils. There was an eagerness from many within the division to get into the fight though some others were more cautious. They knew that the 7th Infantry still needed more of a work-up as a complete division but there was no longer any more time to do that. The orders were for them to take over the liberated zone which the 82nd Airborne had held – relieving the Belgians from the 6th Airmobile which had come north temporarily – and also aid that other, more experienced division in moving on Kegums & Lielvārde first before Riga afterwards. As to the British, they flew into both airheads at Daugavpils and Jēkabpils. The 2nd Infantry Division was formed around units from the Territorial Army though its components weren’t exclusively British reservists nor even only Brits. There was a battalion of British Army regulars in addition to Canadians from their Primary Reserve as well. Still, there were a lot of TA men which came to Latvia though and, like the Americans with the 7th Infantry, they came ‘light’ too. The 2nd Infantry had only one regiment (battalion-sized) of light armoured vehicles and just one other regiment (again, a battalion in reality) of howitzers. Their task wasn’t though to take place in mobile warfare, thankfully, but rather the security and defensive missions that the 6th Airmobile had been undertaking. For the TA soldiers arriving in Latvia, this was going to be an experience indeed.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:46:08 GMT
One Hundred and Sixty One
Throughout the early 2000s, when Iran had been viewed as a principle threat to the United States, American commandos with the Joint Special Operations Command had operated in Peru, carrying surveillance against members of Iran's Quds Force supposedly operating in that region of the world.
Now that Russian Spetsnaz troops had been discovered operating there, JSOC was to return to Peru, this time with much more firepower at its disposal.
US intelligence agencies had a strong presence in Latin America, and had done for decades now. The drug trade had been a long-term focus of numerous organisations, as had the appearance (perceived or real) of Islamic extremist organisations using the region as a staging area for future attacks against the United States.
The initial missions of Operation Southern Comfort, in which Green Berets with the 7th Special Forces Group as well as Navy SEALs had struck at Russian Spetsnaz staging areas in Mexico and Nicaragua to close those rat lines were viewed in a spectacularly negative light by governments in the region. Even so, those same governments were desperate to avoid invoking the wrath of the United States Armed Forces. American commandos were sent into Peru following the incident in the Panama Canal, with the objective of shutting down the rat lines once and for all.
Navy SEALs, men from the same squadron that had prevented the attempted strike on the Panama Canal, mounted a hasty and successful operation against the small airfield which had been used to smuggle the Spetsnaz into Panama. Using MH-6 'Little Bird' helicopters, the Americans struck and rapidly captured the airfield, finding only a small SVR intelligence team present there as a support unit.
A far bloodier battle occurred in Peru, where those Russian commandos had originally landed.
The Americans had operated there before in the early 2000s against possible Iranian activities. Delta Force operators - the SEALs were still working in Panama - launched the strike, supported by members of the 7th Special Forces Group.
Nearly fifty men aboard four Black Hawk helicopters were involved in total in the raid. One chopper was struck by am RPG on approach, crash-landing outside the perimeter of the enemy airfield and denying the assault force a quarter of its assets.
Nevertheless, the remainder of the strike team pursued the assault, which resulted in a heavy firefight in the Peruvian countryside. By the time the dust had settled, two American commandos and five Russians were dead, with seven more in American custody.
Success had been met in closing the rat lines, but Latin America was soon to be up in arms about the numerous incursions across the continent by American troops.
Mexico remained compliant in cooperating with the United States. The border in Texas had been closed, not by order of President Biden, but instead by the governor of that state. The National Guard’s 36th Infantry Division had been used for that task, at least what units of it were not currently deployed overseas. Mexico City wanted trade relations with the United States to remain the same, and it was true that the Mexican security apparatus had failed to even notice the incursion onto its soil of Russian commandos, let alone do anything to stop it.
Nicaragua and Peru were less receptive. Despite being eager to avoid anything that could escalate into open conflict, the governments of both of those countries were furious at the violations of their airspace and territorial integrity by American commandos. Navy SEALs had struck in Nicaragua, and then both naval commandos and Army units had attacked Russian troops in Peru. It was in this country that the Central Intelligence Agency suspected Russian forces were operating with government permission, or at least with the tacit support of certain local authorities.
Questions were raised as to why this could possibly be the case, with even Venezuela and Cuba, with their long-term pro-Russian relations, had failed to act so recklessly, and ultimately there was little the United States could do beyond the continuation of the use of Special Operations Command, and it’s smaller Joint Special Operations Command units.
The Administration in DC was hesitant to get further involved in Latin America, even with the recent engagements between US and Russian troops. There was still a political side to this, with the US needing to maintain friendly relations with many of those nations south of the border. Furthermore, what had been termed Operation Global Reach was causing much controversy in other neutral countries, with assassinations, shootings, and bombings occurring all around the world as American and Russian spies and commandos fought each other from Vienna to Singapore.
A train of thought was emerging that if this continued, neutral nations who might play a part in peace negotiations further down the line would begin to see the United States in an aggressive, or even imperialistic light. The deaths of civilians at the hands of both Russian and American intelligence operations throughout the neutral world only furthered this sentiment; American incursions in Latin America were only to be carried out if they were of absolute importance.
One Hundred and Sixty–Two
From the Turkish capital of Ankara, the previous vitriolic anti-American rhetoric which had come from the president & the prime minister since the failed coup d’état to topple them, one which the hand of US Intelligence had been behind, had remarkably decreased as the weeks of the war had gone by. As August ended, it was now near absent. They hadn’t forgotten what had happened in Ankara but they were no longer making a big deal out of it. Turkey’s self-imposed removal from NATO remained in effect along with the hostility towards non-NATO Coalition members such as Israel. However, Turkey wasn’t about to join the war. Things stayed the same on that matter and this included the closure of the Turkish Straits to warships of any belligerent nation. The US Navy kept a couple of submarines in the Aegean Sea ready to intercept Russia’s Black Sea Fleet should that Turkish position change but the standby assignment for the carrier battle group built around the USS John C. Stennis to launch attacks there was now gone. The Stennis Group could concentrate on Libya. Greece maintained its position as well when it came to its particular chosen status in this war which they wanted no part of. They were still in NATO and from Athens came the continuous assertion that while they would only protect themselves from attack, they hadn’t left that alliance. Their former allies remained furious with the Greeks because of this and wouldn’t suddenly come around to ‘understanding’ Greece’s point of view. However, Greece was making a new friend.
That new friend was Israel. There had been an El Al flight, a cargo-configured Boeing-747, which had been en route back to Israel from the United States laden with military wares. An in-flight emergency saw it divert to Crete and the Greeks assisted with this in an official capacity. International law should have seen the aircraft, cargo and aircrew all interned for the during of the war; the Greek military helped get the aircraft flying once again to make sure that load of munitions was in Israel the next morning. Using funds provided by the United States, Israel soon afterwards struck a behind-the-scenes deal with Greece to buy more munitions. Greek military arsenals were always full of weapons, all intended one day to be used in a war with Turkey. What Israel bought was nothing fancy nor complicated but it was needed: bullets, shells, and ‘dumb’ bombs. When the Americans found out where their emergency financial aid had ended up, they wouldn’t be very happy at all. That money wasn’t mean for arms – other funds were set aside for Israel to buy direct from US arms manufacturers – and neither did they want to see it handed over to a foreign power considered in an unfriendly manner after abandoning their treaty obligations like they had. Greece did all this while looking at the big picture but so that was something Israel was considering too. Turkey would always be a better ally than Greece could ever be yet this was part of a bigger play to eventually bring Ankara back on-side by making friends with their enemy.
With the Stennis Group no longer having to be prepared to race back to the Aegean Sea at any given moment, it was able to fully concentrate on Libya. There was another US Navy carrier too: the USS Ronald Reagan. After crossing the Pacific & Indian Oceans at top speed, the carrier was now in the Red Sea. Libya was still some distance away, but air missions could be launched from here (with support in the skies above Egypt and also on the ground there) before soon enough the Reagan would go through the Suez Canal and enter the Med. at a later date to be even closer.
That transit for this second carrier was for another day. Today, both carriers took part in air strikes against Libya to support the invasion of the nation led by Russia’s ally Colonel Gaddafi. His regime was to be brought to a violent end, it been decided by the plethora of enemies he had made, and as soon as possible.
Invading Libya was a joint NATO and Coalition undertaking. Operation Black Thunder involved the United States, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain as well as Egypt too. Libya had already been attacked intensely by NATO but there had only been a few border skirmishes with Egypt: there was no thinking within Gaddafi that President Mubarak over in Cairo would join the Coalition when Israel was part of that wartime alliance. Gaddafi was also of the belief that there wouldn’t be any invasion too. NATO was never going to invade another Arab country and once again face an assured insurgency in the Middle East. They wouldn’t dare.
He was mistaken.
Egypt’s invasion from the east was deemed ‘Operation Compass #2’ by the UK military attaché in Cairo when he was briefed on it. It was in many ways a re-run of the attack made seventy years earlier by the Western Desert Force (long before that became the British Eighth Army) into Libya. The Egyptians did this on a bigger scale and also added a few twists of their own in 2010 though. They pushed a full combined-arms attack across the desert as well as making airmobile and amphibious landings along the coast. Mersa Matruh and Tobruk fell into Egyptian hands to give them ports and airbases. Ground forces raced along the coastal highway to link up with these entries made deep behind the fast-moving frontlines. Egyptian tanks moved across the desert, far inland, too. They followed the same route taken by the British back in 1940 though had no worries over navigation when they had GPS satellite support. They raced for the distant Gulf of Sirte, aiming to reach there within two days.
The Egyptian Army was a thoroughly professional force. It was well-armed and well-led. The mission given to them was something easily achievable, especially since they had been prepared to do this when surging forces forward near to the border. Crashing through weak defences and then tearing forward, they went through the Libyans like a hot knife through butter. Their own air force, along with the US Navy’s aviation assets – both who had spent many years in joint exercises together planning for war –, cleared the skies of any opposition then made supporting air strikes to support the ground forces that rolled across Cyrenaica. They weren’t going to be stopped. Back in Cairo, where Mubarak took a significant role in overseeing the attack, there were official announcements made to the Egyptian people that Libya was being invaded. What Mubarak didn’t have his people told was that his country was in the Coalition. Officially, Egypt wasn’t so this wasn’t a lie… but it was a mistruth. Egypt might as well have been. Their position was the same as several other Arab nations such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia where they stayed out due to the presence in of Israel in the fight yet did everything behind the scenes which made them vital members of the Coalition. Egypt coordinated its operations fully with NATO during Black Thunder and ‘independent action’ to ‘restore stability’ as Cairo put it officially was a load of baloney.
The Americans were still considering whether they would send one of their divisions of national guardsmen to Libya though if that happened, and it was an if, that would only occur after the initial entry of NATO troops from European countries. They provided air cover from their carriers as well as the US Air Force flying B-52 missions from Spain, but there were no American troops initially on the ground going into Libya.
France, Italy and Spain made the forced entries: Portuguese forces would be right behind them.
Overall control for the invasion troops came from the French-led Rapid Deployment Corps, a NATO command. France had the senior position there and more numerous forces involved overall in absolute manpower. French landings commenced around Sirte. This small city was Gaddafi’s hometown and lay midway along the Libyan coast with Tripoli to the west and Benghazi to the east. Because this was his tribal home, Gaddafi had spent years building up Sirte to what it was today. There was a huge airport – with an unused military role – which lay in the desert to the south and it was here where the 11th Parachute Brigade made entry. Elite paratroopers landed first (less than a battalion) and engaged surprised Libyan forces before the airlift commenced to bring in the rest of the brigade. There was no near for a massive airdrop, not with the few numbers of defenders who had put up such a weak defence. Air strikes from land-based & carrier-based French aircraft were called in as the airhead was fast expanded and contact made with more Libyan troops as French light armoured vehicles started moving on Sirte from behind. There was more fighting in the city. French naval commandoes, veterans of the fight at SHAPE and also other counter-Spetsnaz actions across Europe, had arrived there. No big amphibious assault took place but instead it was a covert entry by frogmen to take port facilities before helicopters brought in men from amphibious ships. Foreign Legion men fought through Sirte, taking over the transport routes to give those coming from the airport the opening they needed to roll in. For all intents, Sirte fell on the first day. Not every metre of ground was occupied but its didn’t have to be in these circumstances when an attack like this was made.
The 11th Parachute Brigade was attached to the wartime divisional command Division Aigle. There were more French forces, two more combat brigades, on their way to land at Sirte and operate from here. The airport had military engineers all over it because French combat aircraft were due to transfer from Sicily to Sirte soon enough. Moreover, three Portuguese brigades were due to soon start arriving too: coming to fight under French command as well. This was all because a far bigger fight than one already had was expected once the Libyans were able to properly react. France expected that coming from the west, from Tripoli and through Misrata, Gaddafi would send his army marching on Sirte. They’d be waiting for everything that Gaddafi would want to throw their way.
At Benghazi, where the city was in open rebellion against Gaddafi’s rule, the Italians and Spanish landed. Spain’s paratroopers were on the Polish/Kaliningrad border but its Marine Brigade (and then later a full division of heavy and light forces) came to Libya. The Spanish amphibious assault south of the city was supported by NATO warships from half a dozen countries. They got ashore, engaged Libyan forces, and moved up towards Benghazi. Nearby, Italian marines from their San Marco Regiment were joined by the Army’s Lagunari Regiment too in making an amphibious assault north of the city. They had significant NATO naval gunfire and air cover to add to Italian fire support assets too. Completing the pincer movement by amphibious forces, they marched on Benghazi as well. Furthermore, Italian paratroopers with their Folgore Brigade did what the French did at Sirte and grabbed a big airport out in the desert. Benghazi’s airport was inland and east of the city. It was taken in a tough fight but a successful one. The lead paratroopers were joined by more airlifted in along with light armoured vehicles. They pushed on Benghazi soon enough. Regime security forces that had withdrawn from the heart of the city when it had erupted with rebellion now had NATO forces attacking them from behind and all sides.
Italy was sending a wartime-formed division to Libya. They had one tasked to Poland which had recently entered Belarus and another, the Division Mantova, was due to enter Cyrenaica through Benghazi just as the Spanish 2nd Infantry Division was too. Those heavy Italian and Spanish forces weren’t entering Libya straight away. It was going to take time and significant effort to get them into Benghazi and then operating, as was the case with French heavy forces away to the west as well. Despite all of their transport assets pooling together, this wasn’t something that NATO would easily do in the blink of an eye. Moving marines and paratroopers in such numbers was a big enough deal. But it was beginning. NATO knew that they would need them. The Libyan military was a mess after weeks of air & missile attacks and some claimed they were all nothing but a paper tiger. Whether that was true was something that would soon be found out. Why else those troops would be needed was the situation on the ground. Black Thunder was something that could be undertaking because Libya was facing internal revolt. There was a belief that the people would welcome NATO forces with open arms.
If they didn’t though, all of these soldiers sent here, along with the Egyptians too it must be noted, were not only going to be fighting Gaddafi’s armies but his people who might have hated him but wouldn’t welcome foreigners either. Time would tell on that and it wouldn’t be long.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:47:35 GMT
One Hundred and Sixty Three
It was approaching the end for Russian forces on Sakhalin.
What remained of the 33rd Motorised Rifle Division was the shell of a once-powerful military unit. With thousands dead and yet more wounded, the Russians were also geographically isolated from reinforcements and resupply. Efforts by the remnants of the Russian Pacific Fleet to move a naval infantry brigade had not only been repulsed; they had been annihilated. Russia’s fleet was at the bottom of the cruel sea, along with thousands upon thousands of marines.
US Marines on Sakhalin had been reinforced, first by Australian soldiers and then by a force scrapped together from the 25th Infantry Division and the 10th Mountain Division. The Coalition’s air superiority was fast becoming air supremacy. Those Russian fighter squadrons which had survived until now had lost virtually all of their AWACS and tanker support, and were now engaged in struggle for survival, and an uphill one at that.
American strike aircraft, firstly from aircraft carriers and from the Korean Peninsula, and then from Sakhalin itself struck Russia night after night, targeting a huge area of land which stretched all the way from Vladivostok and the Chinese border to Kamchatka and the Russian naval and air bases there. The F-111s of the Royal Australian Air Force were infiltrating Russian airspace on a near-constant basis, making the United States Air Force wish it had never retired them in the first place. Losses for the Russians climbed higher and higher while Allied casualty rates, at least in the air, began to fall as more and more air defence systems were eliminated.
The fighting on the ground was bloody and brutal even as the end began.
The 1st Marine Division finally settled into its own positions and allowed the US Army’s follow-on troops to take the lead in the advance. The oil facilities around Nogliki had fallen into Coalition hands or been destroyed, and the city itself along with the airport were now under Allied control.
Partisans continued to fight within Nogliki, killing dozens of Coalition troops for hundreds of losses of their own. Many of these troops were members of the MVD battalion stationed on Sakhalin, while others were from the regular armed forces.
What remained of the 33rd Motorised Rifle Division continued to resist.
Their orders from Moscow was to fight on to the end, to die glorious deaths in defence of the Rodina. To the surprise of many in the West, the Russians planned on doing just that even as their ammunition ran out. Artillery guns and then mortars stopped firing when shells ran out. Rifles and small-arms lasted a little longer. Bayonets and entrenching tools were frequently used by troops from either side as they cleared out foxholes and bunkers.
Men and women, sometimes boys and girls, slayed each other by the thousands in the mud. Day by day and night by night, the Americans would push forward, one murderous artillery barrage or airstrike following another, only to find the entrenched Russian forces waiting to ambush them and then attempt to counterattack. Even the Marine Corps Cobra helicopters providing air support failed to ferret out and eliminate many of the Russian positions.
With their tanks and fighting vehicles almost entirely destroyed, the Russians fought like infantrymen. Tank crews, air defence missile operators, artillerymen, even cooks and clerks, were dug into the hills and woodlands, ambushing American columns with whatever weapons were at their disposal.
The high command of the 33rd Division was almost entirely wiped out by US naval airpower, with the division now commanded by a colonel. Brutal did not even begin to cover it. The US Army troops were forced to halt there advance and bring the Marines back into the fray to boost their firepower or face casualties that would make the continuation of the offensive untenable. Even the Allied commander, General Joseph Dunford, had never seen anything quite so brutal before.
Screams echoed the landscape of Sakhalin as bayonets were thrust into bodies of one’s opponent, or as entrenching tools were raised against skulls. Operation Eastern Gamble was meant to have been a quick and decisive victory, but instead it was turning the island into a bloody hell-scape.
The Russians finally surrendered after weeks of fighting. By this time, only two thousand Russian troops remained alive on the island, many of whom were wounded themselves. The Americans had themselves suffered over five thousand dead, as the Colonel commanding what remained of the Russian formation finally ordered that the white flag be raised.
One Hundred and Sixty–Four
The Allied I Corps poured into Lithuania.
Russian and Belorussian troops assigned to the Twentieth Guards Army couldn’t stop them. Those who stood their ground and tried to were crushed in the flurry of unleashed supporting firepower which came with the advance. Those who fled – correction: conducted tactical withdrawals – were also smashed apart as NATO units chased them on the ground and struck at them from above. From out of the northeastern corner of Poland, through the Suwalki Gap, came an onrush of armour and mechanised infantry setting out to liberate this NATO country from foreign occupation.
The first objective was the Neman River. Rising in Belarus, it ran across southeastern Lithuania before forming part of the border with Kaliningrad and then to the Baltic. The city of Kaunas was on the Neman and Vilnius was just beyond. From a political objective, NATO wanted to see each of them reached as soon as possible: the capital Vilnius especially due to the significance of taking it as well as due to the ongoing rebellion taking place within. Looking at the Neman in military terms, as the Allied I Corps was supposed to be focused on, it provided an excellent barrier to trap retreating enemy forces against. If they could be caught and wiped out on the near side of the river, then it was entirely possible that afterwards NATO tanks could roll onwards all the way to and through Latvia (linking up with the forces there) and keeping on going on the way to Tallinn and the Gulf of Finland. The Russians could read and understand the maps just the same. All along the course of the river, where the bridges had been bombed but the roads still led to, there were fresh Russian troops there. The 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade had been removed from its positions around Minsk and reassigned here. They arrived along the Neman with orders to hold open the way for the Twentieth Guards Army elements caught in southeastern Lithuania to withdraw. Their own escape wasn’t in those mission orders.
Five NATO divisions plus corps attachments moved into Lithuania. They couldn’t operate side-by-side when going north and northeast due to the physical restrictions so there was a delay in getting them all into Lithuania but the Allied I Corps did all it could to make the process as easy and fast as possible. Two British and one American division led the charge with a German one and a Spanish one following. Apart from the US 4th Infantry Division, each of those was full of component parts from other country’s armies in addition to those from what could be called the ‘host’ division. The Belgians and the Canadians sent their troops that they had deployed to Eastern Europe here and overall did what the British did in keeping their forces all within one geographical area, including the Latvia operation. This was done for the purposes of logistics. Back in London, Prime Minister Cameron’s government had pushed for NATO to invade Belarus and bring down the regime in Minsk as well as strongly supporting the French on the notion of invading Libya yet British troops were fighting only in the Baltic States. Britain just couldn’t support wars in multiple separate regions all at once, not when they still had a Norway commitment as well. The Germans here moving into Latvia behind the Americans – with a brigade of Czech troops under the command of their division – entered Lithuania when there was the argument to be made that they too could have been elsewhere: if not going into Belarus with the US V Corps then staying with the Allied I Corps and entering Kaliningrad. Politics came into play though. German troops wouldn’t be going into either of those regions. They would only enter Lithuania.
Driving onwards, the Allied I Corps strove to reach the Neman. The Americans were on the left with the British 1st Armoured Division in the middle and their 3rd Mechanised Division on the right. Brigades and divisions of the Twentieth Guards Army crumbled under the attack. Air power was key to the NATO advance. They shot down what few enemy aircraft took to the skies including armed helicopters too and provided air strikes in support of the ground forces. These included hitting defending forces in the way and also those making a run for it. Then there was the issue of the crossings over the Neuman. As had been seen elsewhere, after NATO air attacks had in recent weeks taken down the road bridges over that river, Russian engineers had moved in. They built real crossings and dummy bridges in the place of the peacetime ones. NATO air strikes hit both alike and more went up in their place. As the Allied I Corps went into Lithuania, rear-area enemy troops moved across them ahead of combat units also making a break to the north. NATO wanted to go over the Neman themselves and it would be easier to roll over those pontoon bridges if they weren’t bombed. However, at the same time, leaving them up for the use of the Allied I Corps would mean for the time being that more of their opponents escaped ready to fight again on the other side. Heated debates with good arguments made for following each approach made took place. The decision on what to do when all the way to the top, as far as SACEUR in the end. Petraeus gave the order eventually to bomb those bridges. NATO had its own bridging engineers and the overall aim was to defeat the Russians and their Belorussian allies on the near side, not the far side of the Neman. NATO rained bombs down upon them.
As they did so, the ground forces got closer to where those bombs fell. There was an unofficial race on between allied forces inside Lithuania to get to the Neuman first. The Americans won that race because they ‘cheated’. Their 4th Infantry was a large division with four combat brigades of tanks and infantry. There was an abundance of helicopter assets and one of the infantry battalions was tasked to be lifted by them to grab several crossing sites on the river. The fought proper air assault troopers once there in the form that the Russian 31st Guards were such but the US Army had spent years fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq with its men undertaking air assault operations many times. The men assigned to the 4th Infantry had far more experience than the Russians did here, men who’d come to Lithuania in trucks not helicopters of their own. At several locations, including close to Kaunas, American troops reached the Neman and grabbed smashed-up crossing sides. They moved only when the rest of their division had won a big fight against the Russian 10th Guards Tank Division near to the Lithuanian town of Marijampole. Tanks raced forward and soon linked up with those exposed forward units. Enemy forces were left in their wake. It would be another day before the British, Belgian and Canadian troops got to the Neman. They did so a little further downstream and east of the Americans. Like their allies, they also sought to get over the river once they reached it to take launch points for further onwards drives beyond. The Spanish moved up right behind the Americans and the Germans followed the British 3rd Mechanised. The Allied I Corps was on the Neman and had caught many of their opponents on the wrong side of it. However, there was still some of the Twentieth Guards Army which had managed to get away.
Now, as to those Germans, where were they soon to go? The 1st Panzer Division received orders to move on Vilnius, striking out as part of the forward advance once it got started again and no longer in the rear. Should they succeed, the Germans were going to liberate the Lithuanian capital.
Entering Lithuania and gobbling up a large area of territory to liberate in the first two days of September, the advance by the main body of the Allied I Corps saw their forward progress outflank Kaliningrad. If left alone, NATO’s advances would be on course to isolate the Russian exclave here. The advance could have looped around to the west, staying inside Lithuania on the northern side of the Neman to reach the Baltic. It was possible. Some political figures and diplomats from European NATO countries had pushed for that option to be undertaken. This wasn’t something that was being done though. The rest of the Allied I Corps went into Kaliningrad alongside Lithuania.
Operation Baltic Arrow maintained a two-pronged frontage. Smaller numbers of NATO forces went into Kaliningrad. There were the Poles and the Dutch involved but also there was the assignment of the Croatians as well taken from the Allied I Corps reserve to join in the fight to take this Russian territory. Defending their own soil, there were few Russian combat forces inside Kaliningrad. The fighting to the south beforehand which had taken place down in Poland had seen NATO attacks push the majority of the retreating Russians into Lithuania rather than back into their own country. This left Kaliningrad open and exposed, especially since their main combat unit left, the 1st Guards Motor Rifle Division, was near destroyed in recent days. Russia had non-combat troops inside Kaliningrad and had also raised reserve units but the Twentieth Guards Army was elsewhere. NATO was aware of this and changed forward.
NATO warships had beaten their way through the extensive naval minefields off the coast and there were no more anti-ship missiles left to fire at them. The entire coastline was exposed to shelling and also air attacks which came in from over the water. There were Russian troops in Baltiysk and also throughout the Sambian Peninsula. They would have been very useful along the territory’s southern border but also inside too. Their orders were for them to repel an amphibious assault… one which was never going to come. The Poles concentrated on their ground offensive with the Dutch joining in that but also expanding their airhead they had taken after their American-supported airmobile assault. Working together, the Poles and the Dutch moved on the city of Kaliningrad. All the roads ran in that direction and around there they found enemy forces to overcome. Those troops here tried to hold back the NATO attack but failed to do this. NATO just kept on coming, blasting their way forward. There was the beginnings of an attempt to try to seal the city to defend it against a siege, but before then, the Poles managed to get some tanks through a small gap which they expanded. Russians efforts to close off the city to stop it falling were undone. It wouldn’t be held as a beacon of resistance. Polish troops had taken Kaliningrad. They also took Chkalovsk Airbase outside the city too, an important military objective whereas the city was really for the sake of politics.
Another big military air facility inside the Kaliningrad exclave was Chernyakhovsk Airbase. This was away to the east and the Croatians reached here. They had a tough time in doing so. Unexpectedly strong Russian resistance, more than had been seen around the city of Kaliningrad, came up against them and the mission was on the verge of failure. Then the Croatians called in friendly air power. NATO aircraft and helicopters, especially the Americans, swept in with a fury and gave them the opening to exploit. Chernyakhovsk fell too. The reason why it had been initially so well defended was due to what was being removed from there ahead of the arrival of the Croatians. From out of the airbase’s nearby buried magazines, ‘special weapons’ had been removed. Nuclear, chemical and even biological warheads for a variety of munitions had been taken out. NATO intelligence organs had seen the security measures protecting the removal but things had happened fast. Like with the decision on the bridges in Lithuania, the decision on whether to intervene there had once again gone all the way up to SACEUR. Launch air strikes and possibly see an accident happen? Let the Russians take those weapons away? Petraeus’ orders had been to not bomb the evacuation effort but strike the defensive screen southwards to allow the Croats to get there on the ground. Special forces teams including those trained in NBC warfare were readied to move in afterwards to facilitate a capture of those special weapons on the move. Petraeus had waited too long though: he’d had to go through several heads of government including his own president. By then, the Russians had pulled out what they needed. It cost them assets of their own which would have been better used elsewhere but removing those weapons rather than letting NATO have them was deemed a priority. What was regarded as a failure at Chernyakhovsk would be a lesson learnt for the future though. Next time NATO got a lead on Russia doing the same – pulling out other special weapons that they knew were inside Kaliningrad – they’d be faster to react. US Rangers would be involved in that.
Whereas in Lithuania NATO had come as liberators, in Kaliningrad they came as conquerors. Of course, officially that wasn’t the case with the latter but that was what they were when all was said and done. Kaliningrad wouldn’t be full of friendly civilians like Lithuania was. Rules of engagement were looser in Kaliningrad and this was especially true when it came to air attacks. Neither the Croats nor the Dutch were keen to commit anything close to what some would deem war crimes though the Poles did things in Kaliningrad that could have been considered as such if one wanted to look for them. Poland did nothing wrong on an official level but unofficially they pushed the envelope pretty far on what was acceptable behaviour and what wasn’t. There was an element of vengeance to this. Officers and soldiers alike followed an unofficial policy of treating the Russians they encountered as hostile. Shots were fired and questions asked later. In Warsaw, the civilian Polish government wasn’t aware; many senior generals were though and took action to protect those lower down the command chain. These war crimes didn’t cover deliberate massacres or efforts at deliberate ethnic cleansing. It wasn’t like that. However, as said, they took the relaxed ROE on fire support near to civilians as far as they could. Civilian curfews were enacted and those who challenged this were treated as partisans.
It was payback for the invasion of Poland.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:48:49 GMT
One Hundred and Sixty Five
NATO forces began their ‘forced entry’ into Belarus. Russian forces in Poland had been overwhelmed, destroyed, or encircled. Now Allied ground forces were initiating the second phase of Operation Noble Sword while I Corps moved into Lithuania and Kaliningrad. The Sword and the Arrow moved took vengeance side-by-side as the Third World War continued, summer slowly turning to autumn amidst the bloodshed.
With American, Polish, and French forces in the lead, V Corps went into Belarus against opposition from what remained of the 1st Guards Tank Army, as well as various Russian and Belarusian units scattered across the country and Belarusian internal security troops and militiamen as well.
The Polish Land Forces remained on V Corps northern flank, battles there being fought by the 11th Armored Cavalry Division with its German-manufactured Leopard-2s. Those Polish tanks smashed aside determined opposition from Belarusian militia units covering the route to Grodno, the first of many major cities that NATO planned to capture in short order. Throughout the day, the Poles fought through various roadside ambushes and skirmishes in Belarusian villages, with opposition being offered at nearly every chance.
Nevertheless, the 11th Division maintained its timetable of reaching Grodno by nightfall, moving to encircle the city rather than drive directly throughout.
To the south, the US 101st Air Assault Division finally went into action. After spending many frustrating weeks sitting on the side lines in the largely untouched western Poland, its members were generally glad to be getting into the fight.
They had heard many stories of Russian war crimes and there was a desire for revenge, one which did not match that of the Poles, but still made the 101st Air Cav a force to be reckoned with.
Acting, as they had trained, as air assault soldiers, the 101st used helicopters – Black Hawks and Chinooks, mainly – to secure the farmland south of Grodno, going up against mainly Belarusian troops but with a smattering of Russian units amongst them. Fighting in the farmland was moderately heavy, with the casualty figures skewed by the shooting down of several helicopters laden with troops. The division performed excellently overall throughout the day, securing transport links for heavier units further behind them.
The 1st Armored Division, next in the row of NATO units, was again thrust into heavy fighting as they faced off against Russian units ahead of them and Belarusian militiamen acting as partisans in their rears.
Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, covered by scout and attack helicopters, fought on through the countryside. General Mattis needed the forces to the south to keep pace with those more successful units in the north to prevent them from being outflanked. Resistance remained stiff until the early afternoon, when Russian units began to give way in a semi-organised manor after numerous air and artillery strikes.
Yet further south, the 1st Cavalry Division pushed forwards, keeping in line with the French Army’s wartime ad hoc division. Resistance was actually weaker than expected for the 1st Cavalry Division, but the small number of artillery attacks that did occur would offset the 1st Cav’s timetables as casualties had to be dealt with and commands reorganised.
Again resistance was composed mainly of Russian forces, though there were Belarusian units present on the roads ahead as well. Many prisoners, mostly Russians rather than Belarusians, were taken as the day wore on and Russian units surrendered at the company level after being outmanoeuvred by the 1st Cavalry Division, whose casualties were significant though not crippling.
The French heavy forces on V Corps southern flank faced a mixture of enemy units. Russian regulars were encountered in small numbers, but the French faced off against far more significant numbers of Belarusian internal security forces and also against some Army units. Unlike the Polish 11th Division, the French Army had decided that it would seize Brest today rather than encircling that city, which would turn out to be a major blunder.
Although the French were able to seize the city in a battle that lasted into the night, this was not without heavy damage being done and major casualties both amongst the French Army and Brest’s civilian population as airstrikes and artillery fire missions were directed upon suspected hot-spots of enemy resistance. The city was defended largely by Belarusian militia forces, reinforced by regular troops and Russian advisors.
Those Russian pockets that remained in Poland, behind V Corps lines, fell victim to heavy airstrikes throughout the day as the Italian Army and the US 3rd Infantry Division sought to reduce them. While no total surrender was reached today, over three thousand men would raise the white flag, and by tomorrow morning, the end would have come for those same Russian units, while NATO forces entering Belarus had made fantastic progress in doing so despite a multitude of losses and the fact that a bloody slog towards Minsk and then to the Russian border itself awaited them.
Many were beginning to wonder what would happen when they got there.
One Hundred and Sixty–Six
With NATO ground forces making significant progress as they moved forward into Kaliningrad, Lithuania and Belarus, plus continued to fight deep inside the heart of Latvia too, supporting air forces increased their operational areas to aid those advances. They went beyond what was deemed the ‘Forward Edge of the Battle Area’ (FEBA) and into Russia proper. Tactical air strikes were made into border regions that took on a different character to the intermittent strategic bombings already underway elsewhere across the Russian Federation.
In the skies above the Pskov and Smolensk Oblasts, bordering the Baltic States and Belarus, NATO aircraft were active. Supply lines for Russian forces desperately fighting a losing battle ran through here. There was crucial rear-area infrastructure to support the ongoing war now in-place throughout these areas. The road and rail links, plus also air facilities, were supporting the fight where forward units were trying to stop NATO getting further forward. Cruise missiles fired from some distance had already hit selected targets but in the first days of September, there were now aircraft present dropping bombs. On the FEBA, they’d focused on hitting troops and armoured vehicles while being engaged by still-dense air defences. Further back, the defences were weaker and the targets not the same either.
These air strikes unintentionally killed Russian civilians alongside the targeted military personnel.
NATO bombing brought about civil unrest. Russia had gone to war to stop such a thing happening but as the war ‘came home’ to the country, this started to occur. In large towns throughout those two oblasts (Russia was federally organised into regions known as oblasts alongside its many semi-independent republics), protests occurred. These were of an anti-war nature and were against the regime in the Kremlin. It had been believed by Putin and his cohorts that the Russian people, as patriotic as anyone else, would rally against NATO. While they weren’t out in the streets supporting the West, they weren’t giving the support for the state that had been anticipated. The FSB moved against protest organisers and Militsiya fired shots into the air to break up the worst of the trouble. Bombs continued to fall though and the people would come out once more calling for an end to the war in which their families, friends and neighbours died because of.
The trouble was the largest in Pskov, Ostrov, Velikiye Luki, Nevel and Smolensk. These towns were hit hard by the NATO air attacks alongside the surrounding rural areas too. Activities to bring it to a close were deemed successful when reports were made up to the Security Council of Russia and it was believed that they wouldn’t reoccur.
Time would tell whether that was true.
The Americans conducted the majority of the air strikes though they weren’t alone. Aircraft with fellow NATO nations but also some of those with Coalition partners joined in with these attacks made too.
The US Air Force was using its F-15E Strike Eagle fleet. Flights of two and four aircraft each time made selected strikes against a whole range of targets all of which were deemed to have a military value. The aircraft carried self-defence weapons as well as their bombs and had to use them on occasion to deal with the few fighters encountered as well as SAM defences. Losses did occur yet they were minimal… unless you were the aircrew involved and then that term took on a different meaning. Regardless, laser-guided bombs slammed into Russian soil. Bridges, supply dumps, communications sites, power facilities and airfields were hit. Russian camouflage measures were used and the maskirovka efforts paid off in a few places. It wasn’t enough to the minimize the destructive nature of what the F-15Es were achieving with their air strikes.
RAF Tornado GR4s joined in. No. 13 Squadron had spent much of the war remaining at home in UK bases flying targeted strikes into the Baltic States behind the lines but had now forward deployed into Poland for the Russia mission. They dropped Paveway bombs on similar targets to the Americans. The French were alongside them with Mirage-2000D aircraft too using guided weapons to make careful strikes where real damage would be done overall. The air forces of other NATO countries were hard-pressed to do this as well but one of the Coalition nations joined in with F-15s and F-16s also on bomb runs. These were from the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF). Based in peacetime in the United States rather than at home, the RSAF had F-15SGs along with F-16Cs & Ds stationed alongside USAF training units in Idaho and Arizona respectively. They’d come to Europe when the Americans transferred over that immense air fleet when the war got going and with the Singaporeans taking part in the fighting above Poland. Now they moved forward, again alongside the Americans, in hitting Russian targets. The aircraft weren’t many in number but they were very capable of undertaking this task. Bombs from them too crashed into Russia proper.
Russian ground-based air defences were arrayed forward and already under significant attack. What they had at home was spread out and based around strategic areas. The air attacks over the Pskov and Smolensk Oblasts really hurt them. There were interceptors still flying in Russian skies though, primarily MiG-31s. These big, powerful aircraft attempted to defeat the air attacks. NATO came in low though and had a lot of external support with AWACS coverage as well as distant jamming. The Foxhounds did not have an easy time of it especially since those aircraft they went up against defended themselves. Flankers and Fulcrums, which would have done much better, were either smoking holes in the ground already or flying elsewhere.
The skies of the western edges of Russia were contested though with NATO still able to operate effectively. They were also able to mount more attacks of a strategic nature, moving northwards with the Americans sending some of their F-15Es even further into the heart of the Rodina. St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (that historic name had long been retained) were hit by these air attacks as they expanded in operating area. More laser-guided bombs crashed into military and civilian dual-use facilities. Back in the United States, at Pentagon press briefings, black-and-white video footage was shown to the media of these.
This is Russia and we’re blowing it to bits while they can’t stop us.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:50:18 GMT
One Hundred and Sixty Seven
NATO wasn’t only focused on fighting in Eastern Europe. Allied forces, spearheaded by amphibious and airborne forces belonging to Italy, France, and Spain, had landed in Libya while the Egyptian Army carried out what had quickly been coined Operation Compass Two.
The objective of this operation was the toppling of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, which had made the terrible mistake of siding with President Putin and his war against NATO.
Operation Black Thunder was revenge for the Libyan Army’s taking of hostages from NATO embassies. Those people had been rescued in a daring American raid known as Operation Midnight Talon (there was going to be a movie about that one day!), but hostages had died in the fighting as had some of their rescuers.
The United States Army was largely absent from Operation Black Thunder, however, being fully committed in Europe and Asia. The toppling of Gaddafi was to be led by France and supported by other NATO nations which had bases on the Mediterranean Sea.
The French Army rapidly moved to expand its beachhead at Sirte. Paratroopers had gone in there and they had been followed quickly by additional forces. Those included the 9th Marine Brigade, along with the remainder of the 11th Airborne Brigade. More troops would be behind them.
It would take an estimated seventy-two hours to bring France’s second wartime divisional command into Libya, and then the advance could begin in earnest. Until then, the French were playing it safe, safer than expected. A drive on Tripoli was to be mounted soon enough, with that being launched along the coast by the French-led NATO Rapid Deployment Corps.
Meanwhile, the Spanish and Italian militaries liberated Benghazi after mopping up the final pockets of Libyan resistance within that coastal city. Regime forces had already withdrawn in bulk yesterday and the airport had been captured, but some small units remained cut off within Benghazi itself until today. A somewhat surprising success was met for the Libyans when a regime artillery unit managed to launch a short bombardment against Benghazi’s airport, with those guns swiftly being supressed by Allied warplanes, but not before inflicting some casualties amongst the Italian Army.
Rebel forces fighting in opposition to Gadaffi had no particular love for NATO, but there was a common enemy to be defeated in Tripoli and at least for now there were relatively few clashes between NATO troops and rebel elements. Across Libya, Gadaffi’s forces were facing attacks from all sides as Egyptian forces hit them from the east and NATO troops from the south.
The Allied air campaign had been extremely effective so far. Libya’s air force was wiped out, and the few jets that remained found themselves fighting with American F/A-18s or Egyptian MiG-21s and F-16s whose pilots were far superior in training.
Almost no air-to-air losses were sustained by the Allies, except for a single Egyptian F-4 and an unlucky French Air Force Mirage-2000. Ground-to-air missiles were of more concern, but many of those had been destroyed by intensive defence suppression missions and those few that remained were on the run or in hiding to avoid destruction themselves.
Even lumbering B-52s were allowed to operate over Libya given the lack of air defences available.
Those colossal warplanes were loaded up with unguided cluster bombs used to destroy larger enemy formations wherever they were detected, while a strike using B-52s was also launched upon the hapless city of Tripoli in a show of force against the regime, targeted at military facilities but also killing dozens of civilians as well in a series of unfortunate accidents.
Operation Compass Two, meanwhile, was proceeding apace, as Egyptian forces charged through the desert, covered by US Navy airpower from the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan. America-made M1 Abrams tanks were used here along with older M-60s and Russian-built T-62s. The latter vehicles were outgunned by Libyan T-90s but the Egyptian crews were infinitely better trained, and with total air supremacy, there was nothing Gadaffi’s forces could do to stop them.
Bombs rained across the desert while Egyptian tanks slaughtered their opponents at long range and then dismounted infantrymen cleared out the remnants of Libyan opposition in the vast desert. The Egyptians had thrown six divisions and two separate brigades over the border, most of them armoured and mechanized infantry units with totally overwhelming firepower superiority.
The end was fast approaching for Colonel Gadhafi.
Part Eight
One Hundred and Sixty–Eight
Norwegian diplomatic efforts remained ongoing to keep its NATO allies committed to completing the liberation of every inch of their country. There remained moves from abroad to transfer combat units elsewhere now that the Russians had been beaten yet from Oslo, Prime Minister Stoltenberg carried on using up much political capital to not see them leave. The Russian Sixth Army had been destroyed and the war had moved onwards into the Kola Peninsula. However, there were still occupying armed foreigners in Northern Norway. Throughout the Finnmark region, there were isolated garrisons which could be found where there were air & naval links as well as through several towns along major roads. This concentration around transportation links had been done to secure the rear far from the frontlines. Those Russians who’d been defeated in a combined NATO effort around Bardufoss–Tromsø–Skibotn, where the frontlines had been, had relied upon those in the rear such as these to keep them in the fight. That fight was over but not for those spread across Finnmark. They remained where they were, surrounded by Norwegian civilians. Norway wanted to liberate its territory, free its people and wipe out the last of that occupation.
They still had the support form their allies to do this.
Alongside the Germans who moved with them in support, the Norwegians moved up towards Alta first. The Brigade Nord had fought that valiant battle there last month before making its ‘great escape’ afterwards all the way back to Narvik. Now they returned as part of the Norwegian 6th Division and also did the German Fallschirmjager. Russian soldiers around Alta hadn’t received any orders in a week. They were cut off and all alone. They could have surrendered: entrees were made to them to get them to give in with promises made of good treatment. The Norwegians weren’t feeling generous in doing this. Their aim was to save the trapped people of Alta from a battle for their town. Unfortunately, without new orders, the senior Russian officer in Alta, obeyed his standing ones. Those were to repel any attack to take the airport, the harbour and Alta’s road connections. Every man who could hold one was issued a rifle. There were no longer any clerks, cooks, drivers, engineers and so on here: just riflemen. The Germans worked around the Russian’s flank and blocked their rear to stop a retreat before the Norwegians moved in. It took a day. Alta afterwards returned to Norwegian hands. It was a ruin and there were civilian casualties everywhere. They celebrated down in Oslo as another town was liberated yet there were starting to be some tough questions asked there among members of the government at such an approach. Couldn’t something else have been done rather than a full combined arms assault as was seen there?
Once Alta had been taken, there was an immediate move onwards to Lakselv too. The Germans marched off first, getting underway fast. Winter came early in Norway and with that the snow. Every day waiting around was a day wasted. Before they could get to the other town to make an assault there, the 26th Fallschirmjager Brigade was halted. They reported to the Norwegians and it was them who gave the word for this. Why, the German brigade commander asked, are we stopping?
Politics came the answer.
Down in Oslo, the recriminations from what had occurred at Alta had come. Lakselv was a smaller town than Alta but wartime had seen many more civilians concentrated there. Intelligence efforts pointed to those people being right in the firing line of a fight for Lakselv. The Germans were to stop and wait for larger forces to come up with the hope that when faced with an overwhelming force, and aware of that, the Russians in the town would surrender rather than fight off what they might think was just a raiding force. The idea had value from a military sense though it really was a political fudge. It was said that Stoltenberg and his government had gotten a case of the ‘wobbly knees’. Criticism of the delay in making the attack was still occurring when there came a party of Russians which walked out of Lakselv. There were four officers and a trio of NCOs who marched up to the Norwegians under a white flag. They were surrendering. Lakselv – plus the airstrip at Banak nearby – wasn’t going to have to be fought over. Some would claim that the show of force strategy had worked while others stated that it was all about the condition of that garrison. Regardless as to who was right and who was wrong, those civilians gathered in Lakselv weren’t going to be caught right in the middle of a battle.
The Norwegians had convinced the Americans, the British & the Dutch to stay in-country too where they would also carry on the fight as well. The US II Marine Expeditionary Force – which controlled the 2nd Marine Division alongside the Anglo-Dutch 3rd Royal Marines Commando Brigade – could have had a very important role fighting over in the Kola or possibility sent to somewhere like Arkhangelsk (the Pentagon planners had been looking over their maps and making notations) but it remained in Norway. Russia’s marines had been defeated around Tromsø but that victory had been costly to achieve. Thankfully, there was nothing like the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade elsewhere left in Norway as an opponent across Finnmark. The scattered coastal garrisons which the II MEF was sent against now did have some Naval Infantry present with a couple of dispersed companies but mainly it was supporting soldiers that the Russians had left.
From Tromsø, NATO sent their own marines against both Hammerfest and Honningsvåg. These coastal towns had their own airstrips and harbours with both near to the North Cape. Aircraft had already bombed the Russians there and warships had shelled them when NATO’s navies went towards the Barents Sea yet afterwards those present had dug-in well. They’d been bypassed and posed no real conceivable threat. However, the II MEF was tasked to retake each place and destroy the defending forces.
The Royal Marines and the Korps Mariniers assaulted Hammerfest. Only part of the 3rd Brigade was involved and even then, NATO forces had a significant numerical advantage here. They took their time though. There was no need to hurry here as far as the British and Dutch were concerned: the Russians weren’t going anywhere. They were worn down through the use of firepower and then a series of strong raids to break open their other defensive positions. Russian return fire was wild and inaccurate. Their Naval Infantry did well but other so-called riflemen were no good at shooting straight as well as holding their lines when faced with veteran soldiers. Hammerfest’s defences crumbled. The 3rd Brigade wasn’t looking for a final bloody fight and had planned to hold back a massive assault but gaps opened up in the enemy lines. A couple of companies of 45 Commando found those holes and pushed inwards before turning to hit Russians who were still fighting from behind. Hammerfest’s defenders didn’t fall back into the centre of the town, surrounded by civilians, but instead either surrendered or died on the frontlines. Pushed through those holes created, the Dutch marched into Hammerfest proper. That near uncontested move saw the last resistance crumble at the sight of this sure defeat with bigger surrenders occurring, including the Naval Infantry troops. Hammerfest had fallen.
The defenders of Honningsvåg didn’t collapse as easily. The US Marines had a real fight on their hands there when after using their supporting firepower to rush a capture of the town, the defenders fled inland. Honningsvåg was in the southeastern corner of the island of Magerøya and getting inland from there should have been something cut off due to the geography of the island. However, many Russians fled when the Americans took their eye off the ball. There was nowhere for them to go though once they’d run from Honningsvåg. The North Cape itself was on the far side of the island but in the main Magerøya was empty. Let them go, the regimental landing team commander said: no, came his superior’s instructions, hunt them down and eliminate them as a threat less they return. US Marines fought skirmish after skirmish across this island at the top of the world where they battled those Russians who’d already run away. Cover from Harriers and SeaCobras came as well as their own landed artillery and naval gunfire support. Many Russians threw up their hands, having enough of this, but there were still some who fought on. They’d lost and this was hopeless. There was no point! Still, certain soldiers fired their rifles against the Americans who hunted them down. Shots were exchanged again and again until, finally, there were no more foolish ones who wanted to carry on the fight and die like all that those who already had. The Americans ended up with a lot of prisoners from those who saw the error of their ways yet there were the bodies of the dead to deal with: theirs and their opponents. It was all for nothing, many of the US Marines, men and officers, would say afterwards, nothing at all.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:51:43 GMT
One Hundred and Sixty Nine
While the Russian Navy had effectively been destroyed as a fighting force, a few submarines had survived the utter annihilation faced by the remainder of the once powerful Russian fleet. Those vessels which had survived until now were generally diesel-electric powered submarines, somewhat quieter than submarines powered instead by nuclear reactors. NATO had hunted the Russian fleet across the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea, and the Pacific.
Dozens of Russian warships and submarines had been sent to the bottom of the ocean, often taking their whole crews down with them. NATO losses had been very heavy indeed, but the United States Navy could still field a functional fighting force, albeit one much smaller than the pre-war fleet. There would be major concerns from Taiwan and Japan following the war about the US Navy’s continued ability to deter the PLA. Nevertheless, the US Navy was not only still in this fight, but it was also taking the fight to Russia. Aircraft carriers allowed Navy aircraft to strike the Kola Peninsula and the Russian Far East day in and day out.
In the Mediterranean, there was one Russian submarine which had managed to evade the NATO destroyers and frigates trawling for their stealthy underwater foe.
Kaluga had been transferred from the Pacific Fleet to the Black Sea Squadron back in July, prior to the outbreak of World War Three. Designed to fight in enclosed waters such as the Mediterranean Sea, she was in her element here.
Where US and French Maritime Patrol Aircraft and anti-submarine warfare ships had successfully sunk many more Russian submarines here in the Mediterranean, Kaluga had avoided such a fate more by hiding than by fighting. She had, on the fifth day of the war, torpedoed and sunk a French destroyer before disappearing beneath the waves once again.
Some efforts had been made to track the movements of the Sixth Fleet out there in the Mediterranean as it began air operations against Libya, but the captain of the Kaluga was not about to risk his vessel trying to repeat the impressive feat of a nuclear-powered Oscar-II submarine in sinking an American aircraft carrier out there in the North Atlantic.
Such a thing required a much more heavily-armed submarine than his little but tenacious Kilo.
In spite of this, Kaluga’s skipper was desperate to achieve something in this war. By now he figured that Russia was destined to lose, but that did not mean that he would not do his duty to the Rodina, and on a more personal level, the captain wanted to make a name for himself and for his boat. It was not so much a desire for fame, but rather the need to be able to say that he and his boys had done something worthwhile in the great war of 2010.
Kaluga slowly fell into position behind the NATO strike force that was currently pounding Libyan forces as the ground invasion of that country took place. There were Spanish and Italian Harrier jump jets flying from those countries’ light carriers, along with an assortment of destroyers and frigates providing escort from the United States Navy, the French Navy, the Egyptian Navy, and, naturally, the Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese Navies.
No matter what their eventual fate was to be, the captain told his crew, today they would make history.
They would have stories told of their bravery in infiltrating the NATO fleet and sinking their warships, stories which their children and grandchildren would one day hear. For some, seeking glory, this was comfort, while for others the thought of drowning within the suffocating confines of the submarine was a harrowing thought that made them want to run. Many wished they had joined the Army instead; at least in a land battle one can surrender, something that is impossible aboard a warship like Kaluga.
Silent and unseen by the anti-submarine warfare escorts, Kaluga unleashed her torpedoes, aimed at the Spanish Navy’s flagship, and the largest vessel that the Russian submarine had been able to locate, the Principe de Austrias.
Four torpedoes streaked towards the Spanish aircraft carrier. Evasive manoeuvres were initiated immediately and decoys rapidly deployed into the water. Three torpedoes struck home, the fourth having failed to find its target due to a mechanical issue. All three of those Russian weapons detonated with huge explosions, causing fires to surge through the heart of the Principe de Austrias. Ammunition and fuel stocks quickly cooked off below decks, causing a fourth explosion, initiated in the hull of the ship, to occur and blast through her flight deck. The Spanish Navy lost its aircraft carrier in less than twenty minutes, along with 791 or her 830-strong crew.
Diving deep below the water, Kaluga’s crew rapidly reloaded her tubes with more torpedoes. As an intensive anti-submarine hunt was launched to locate the vessel, Kaluga fired another spread of torpedoes, sinking the frigate USS Reuben James, moments before a Mark 54 torpedo from a patrolling Seahawk helicopter finally homed in on Kaluga and sent her to the bottom.
One Hundred and Seventy
NATO’s invasion of Belarus continued unabated. Opposition to the advance deep into the territory of Russia’s closest ally couldn’t stop the US V Corps – with its multinational components – getting deeper and heading eastwards. There was no chance now that they could be pushed back out, over the border in Poland. Belarus’ armies had been lost there and Russian forces fighting inside the country were on the verge of defeat themselves. The orders for the V Corps was to conduct a broad front advance to the east with Minsk the first objective though the Russian-Belorussian border being the end goal. Maybe they would go further afterwards though at the moment, that distant frontier was the planned stop line.
Across eastern Belarus, the fight moved further and further away from the Polish-Belorussian border. Russia’s Thirty-Sixth Army fell apart trying to stop the movement. Their orders were to fight a mobile defensive battle and counterattack where possible. They were outnumbered three-to-one. In the skies, NATO aircraft reigned supreme with only SAMs as a worry now. Where were Russia’s fighters? What were left had been recalled back into Russian skies. Belorussian reservists and militia units fought isolated and unfair engagements with superior forces who ran rings around them, pounded them from above and then moved in to sweep up what was left.
If things carried on like this, NATO would be in Minsk within a week and on that border with Russia not long afterwards.
In the northeast, only part of the US Army’s 101st Air Assault Division had taken part in that airmobile assault to secure the approaches to the city of Grodno as well as the crossings over the River Neman nearby. The whole division, all four brigades, was meant to be involved though the rapidity which success had come there for the lead two brigades meant that the other two were kept back. There was the intention for everyone else to be used again in another similar operation, here in the northeast too, and soon enough. The only issue was enemy air defences. The losses of several transport helicopters to MANPADs had seen heavy casualties inflicted. No guarantee could come that there would be no lone soldier with a man-portable SAM but better defences were needed to guard against them next time around.
The Poles with their 11th Armoured Cavalry Division, the two American heavy divisions – the 1st Armored & 1st Cavalry – and the French Division Rapiere formed that ‘broad front’ of the main advance going through the centre. This was a huge force, not just in combat power but with the external firepower supporting it and then the logistical tail behind. Hundreds upon hundreds of tanks, armoured vehicles, self-propelled guns and a lot of other vehicles drove forwards with tens of thousands of soldiers inside them. They pushed towards the River Shchara. This ran across their line of advance and wasn’t itself much of a defensive position that could be used to stop them though it was surrounded by more of the many forests which littered Belarus. The denseness of terrain like this especially in summer was favourable for a defender and NATO was well-aware that the Shchara position was something that Russia was going to try to hold based upon the cover provided in the forests rather than fighting out in the open. As the V Corps pushed towards that river, aircraft streamed overhead dropping bombs. Visual sighting of the enemy were rare. Instead, target selection was done by infrared and radar images. The area was generally free of civilians too which allowed for the liberal use of a lot of explosives. Napalm, fuel-air bombs and WP was dropped as well. Following the barrage came those ground units who battled their way through scattered though often deadly opposition to reach the river and then get over it. After the night of September 4th, the Shchara was no longer a barrier to the advance. It was crossed and the V Corps pushed onwards. They came in behind the town of Slonim to surround it and the defenders pushed into there but focused on moving onwards still. The communications centre of Baranavichy was next. Rail links converged upon that town and there was that significant, though smashed-up, airfield outside of it.
Baranavichy lay on the road to Minsk too.
In the southwest, Brest had fallen in recent days when French units detached from their division used the distraction of the Italians engaging Russian forces nearby to sweep in there and take it. There had been preparations underway to make it a ‘fortress city’, one to reflect its history as such. It fell before those could occur though at a significant cost. The Italians – and the US Army’s 11th Cav’ which had aided them in entering Belarus – pushed on afterwards. The Americans moved down along the Polish-Ukrainian border engaging anyone who stood in their way in what was in many ways a large raiding operation. Ukrainian troops were on the other side of the border and watching them do this. In Krakow, Brussels and Washington, what happened here was regarded with significance: they wanted the Ukrainians, who’d been on their best behaviour for sometime now since Operation Crowbar in the Crimea, to understand that should they forget who was the strong and who was the weak, they would pay. Around the town of Kobryń, east of Brest, the Italians moved against what was left of Russia’s 131st Motor Rifle Division that hadn’t been already lost. Another communications centre, where transportation links converged, Kobryń was somewhere that the Italians couldn’t yet reach. The Russians remained on the withdrawal, just not as dramatic here as elsewhere.
Advances with Operation Noble Sword in these early days of September to drive so far into Belarus saw the final surrenders of those left on the wrong side of the border in Poland. The smaller pockets had all fallen but there now came the final collapse of the Podlaska-Brest Bulge / Pocket. What was left of the once proud First Guards Tank Army, full of some of the best Russian and Belorussian troops, gave in. NATO units assigned to the German-Dutch I Corps overcame resistance to the breaking of the outer lines with American, German and Polish troops all involved. Other defenders started dropping their rifles and throwing up their arms.
The senior Russian general, a man who had in his mind fears of what Putin and his cohorts would do to him, didn’t want to surrender but his hand was forced by this. Attacking from all four sides, NATO tanks sliced right into the middle with lead German units making stunning progress. They should have been stopped by anti-tank teams but their Leopard-2s kept on coming past men who’d discarded their weapons. It was their progress, supported by others it must be said, which convinced the general to give in. They’d torn apart what he had left of fighting forces. His own tanks had no ammunition nor fuel while the 10th Panzer Division had plenty. However, he wouldn’t surrender to a German though. There was a dispute over this and a Pole was found instead. The surrender eventually came though after many more deaths than were necessary had occurred because of one man’s pride based upon historic hatred.
Another huge number of POWs had fallen once more into NATO hands. At the end of August, it had been what was left of the Second Guards Army. Now a second field army had surrendered with thousands of men to be disarmed, gathered up, transported away from the frontlines, guarded and provided for. With the latter, there was much medical attention needed for those POWs. International law drove NATO responsibility on this and it was no easy task. It had to be done though. Military police units which were called upon for the security task of those POWs, those taken in that big surrender yet others falling into NATO hands in the fantastic multitude of other engagements. They were sorting through the prisoners as well looking for special forces personnel, officers from key fields and suspected war criminals: these POWs tried to hide among others, fearful of the treatment which they would face.
Where such NATO military police units would have been useful in the numbers that they were tied up with duties in Poland was over in Belarus. The security situation inside this country was far more difficult than foreseen when Noble Sword was planned. Belarus was being liberated, such was NATO’s official position. It was an invasion in reality and those on the ground knew that.
Belorussians fought to defend their nation.
There had been protests against the regime for several years and ones this year and last had been part of the general period of crisis which led to this war. Calls from governments in the West for Lukashenko to stand down and for democracy – real democracy – to occur in Belarus had helped drive Russia’s decision to go to war. Once the fighting started, NATO heads of government had decreed that the Minsk regime must fall when the nation was liberated. It was one of their major war goals, only secondary to the liberation of the Baltic States. The expectation was that once NATO armies rolled in, the Belorussian people would rise up in revolt. Not in their hundreds like they had done in protests against the regime, but in their hundreds of thousands. They did come out to fight in September but it was against those invading their country. Nationalism had a big role in this – the people were defending their country out of a sense of patriotism – but so did external influences. Belorussians hadn’t taken much note of their own regime’s lies about supposed NATO war crimes. However, Russia’s FSB had been busy with black propaganda which sunk in with many across Belarus. The Germans were coming! This played well in Belarus. There weren’t German troops entering the country like it was 1941 again but many believed that they were. The Americans, the British (who also weren’t with the UC V Corps) and the Poles were also sold as foreign invaders about to rape and pillage across Belarus. ‘Evidence’ of intent was shown beforehand with promises of more to come. They’d bomb and gas civilians once more, it was said, unless you can stop them.
Should NATO have stopped at the border after liberating Polish soil, the Minsk regime would have regretted all the arms it supplied to its people to fight those invaders. They could have turned those weapons upon Lukashenko. However, the foreign invaders came and those weapons were used against them. Militia groups formed up ready to fight but there were also lone volunteers who were out to act independently too. Their weaponry wasn’t very heavy – assault rifles, sniper rifles, RPGs and such like – yet it was still useful. Fights came against frontline NATO units which tore through anyone who stood in their way. It was against secondary forces, the supporting network for the V Corps, where these patriotic volunteers had real success. They attacked the supply lines and NATO units not directly engaged in the bigger battles. Pinpricks on their own, these were taking place with greater frequency. NATO took serious casualties. Their men had strict ROE when it came to dealing with armed attacks – which varied from national army to another though – and fought back where they could.
Alongside those who actively defended their nation, far more Belorussians provided a different kind of resistance. There was no welcome for NATO’s armies who said they were here to liberate them. Non-violent actions took place with hostility shown everywhere. Every action taken by the armed foreigners who were in their towns and villages was treated as an insult to their national pride. Cooperation wouldn’t come when it came to helping NATO with anything at all, not even when there were efforts made to try to dismantle the oppressive arms of the state.
Belarus and its people were showing how unwelcome they were to this apparent liberation to bring them freedom.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:52:53 GMT
One Hundred and Seventy One
Moving adjacent to the American-led V Corps under General Ryan, Lt.-General Shirreff's I Corps pushed on with its northerly offensive, Operation Baltic Arrow, moving deep into Lithuania and occupying major parts of Kaliningrad in the process of doing so.
Most concerning to those at the top levels of NATO's command structure was the presence of those Iskander missiles within Kaliningrad.
Airstrikes had been called in to neutralise many of them while others had fallen victim to ground assaults. General Mattis at CJTF-East called in some of his Special Forces assets to get the job done and bring an end to the imminent tactical nuclear threat. US Rangers performed that task very well indeed, capturing the known missile batteries and finding the locations of others, after which B-52s and F-15Es were called in to finish the job. Allied commanders felt confident enough that the immediate threat of nuclear weapons usage had passed as Ranger units directed in precision airstrikes across Kaliningrad.
Those American commandos were followed closely by the Polish and Dutch ground forces which formed the northern prong of I Corps' advance.
Though the number and quantity of Russian troops fighting in Kaliningrad was diminishing, resistance became stiffer as the 16th Mechanised Division led the attack. This was Russian soil being fought over, just like Sakhalin was, and the enemy was a determined one despite the superiority of NATO forces now bearing down on them. Heavy urban battles occurred in Kaliningrad throughout the day as Allied troops slowly gained more ground at a major cost in both men and material.
Though the fighting in Kaliningrad did not incur the same truly horrendous casualty rates as Sakhalin, it was nearly as brutal and no quarter was shown by either side. Progress was made by the Poles and the Dutch units to their south as well, but the need to cater for the basic needs of Russian civilians in Kaliningrad slowed the advance yet further.
Much of the enclave's water and power supplies had been cut off or destroyed during the fighting, and although NATO and Russia were at war, international law placed responsibility for civilians in occupied territory firmly in the hands of the occupier. This was a responsibility which the Dutch took rather more seriously than the Poles, though at the official level, all NATO forces were under strict orders to adhere to international law.
The situation was somewhat different on Lithuania as the bulk of I Corps' formations liberated town after town across the western countryside amidst opposition from Russian forces. Airpower again came into play here as efforts were made to knock out the remaining mobile SAM batteries and carry out large-scale airstrikes against the forces that remained active in Lithuania. British Harriers took part in this effort, and so too did Tornados belonging to the RAF and the Luftwaffe, as well as American, Dutch, Danish, and Belgian F-16s.
Russian units found themselves more and more isolated as NATO forces manoeuvred expertly against the. The US 4th Infantry Division again spearheaded this advance after winning the unofficial race to the last major objective. Vilnius was to be the next target, and the British 1st Armoured Division took its objective of reaching the Lithuanian capital first very seriously.
The Neman River had been successfully crossed, firstly by the Americans and then by the remainder of I Corps. The British, Belgians, and Canadians with the 3rd Mechanised Division had come across strait after them alongside the 1st Panzer Division, bringing NATO up to full strength on the eastern bank of that river. NATO ground forces again clashed with what was left of the 20th Guards Army, now a shadow of its former self.
Those Russian units dug-in on the eastern sides of the Neman had spent the better part of last night under relentless air attack, leaving them open to a strike on the ground. Said strike was led by the US 4th Infantry Division once again, with the Germans in their 1st Panzer Division also playing a prominent role in the offensive throughout the day.
Enemy air attacks were few and far between, although several Russian helicopters were able to sneak close enough to Allied advance units to engage them with anti-tank missiles, using the terrain for cover. Those aircraft were dealt with quickly by the arrival of NATO warplanes, however, and although casualties were significant, the Alliance continued its advance.
Vilnius, still behind Russian lines, was slowly but surely raised to the ground as the uprising in that city continued. Its tenants, aided by NATO commandos and airpower, fought hard to regain control over the Lithuanian city. This effort was aided by broadcasts from the Lithuanian government-in-exile urging the people to continue their fight back against the occupiers even as many thousands of civilians and soldiers alike became casualties. Block-by-block, Vilnius was falling into the hands of the Lithuanian resistance; at what cost would the city fall?
One Hundred and Seventy–Two
The Russian Navy’s submarine arm had been rather effective during the war at not just attacking NATO vessels – warships and civilian ships – but more than that tying-up protective assets. The Russian Army had killed NATO soldiers aplenty, the Russian Air Force had caused waves of destruction (primarily with cruise missile attacks) and the surface flotilla of the Russian Navy had died an inglorious death. However, with its submarines, Russia was able to strike at sea as well as have a large opposing force dedicated to defending against it. NATO had to be prepared to protect its own assets everywhere whereas the lesser numbers of Russian submarines available strike where they did. NATO began the process of eliminating most of them since the start of the war. A month into the conflict, there weren’t many of them left. It had taken a lot of effort, and significant casualties of their own were caused, but NATO had sunk dozens of them. Quiet they might be and armed too with some very fancy weapons yet NATO had the advantage over Russia. Their boats were even better and the crews trained to a far higher standard.
When it came to sub-hunting, away from using its own submarines to go after the Russian ones, of which NATO especially the Americans had so many, Russia’s wartime opponents were able to dominate that field too. Russian boats operated far from their homeland and into what NATO would consider its own waters. In and above them, they would use their ships, helicopters and aircraft to hunt to extinction the efforts of Russian submarines to remain active. They had all of the advantages in that. It was all quite unfair…
…but when was war supposed to be fair?
The Kilo-class submarine RFS Vologda was one of the last few Russian boats active and at sea. It had sailed after war had been declared and initially took some time to see action. It had been in the English Channel where this effective weapon of war had been employed. Attacks against NATO shipping had been made by the Vologda in a flurry of activity before then the boat had ‘disappeared’. There was no magic involved in that disappearance though. Instead, a voyage had been made away from the stretch of water between Britain and France where the submarine had previously had much success to go back out into open waters. Kilo-class boats weren’t nuclear-powered vessels and so the Vologda needed to recharge her batteries by surfacing. This was done over several nights – a little bit at a time – in the North Sea. There were several close calls with NATO anti-submarine forces but the Russian submarine avoided those.
Then there had been a return staged back into the English Channel once more.
NATO threw everything including the kitchen sink at trying to get at the Vologda. They had warships, submarines, aircraft and helicopters. Military assets of more than half a dozen nations were involved. An attack was undertaken by the Russian submarine off Calais at the start of her second raid where she hit another one of those cross-Channel ferries being used for military purposes. That ship was sunk within sight of land and took her cargo of military vehicles to the sea-bottom. This alerted NATO to her presence but the Vologda was able to evade detection. Running once more from all of that effort being expended to kill her, the little boat hid again. This time it was off the British coast in shallow waters rather than out in the open sea where the Vologda escaped to. The Sussex shoreline included such places as Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton. Russia’s submarine stayed away from them directly though always near to land as ever-so-slowly the boat moved westwards further along the Channel and far away from the distant hunting of her.
A new attack was made at the time of the captain’s choosing, back out in deeper water again. HMS Monmouth, a Royal Navy frigate assigned to protect the English Channel, had the tables turned on her as she sought to locate the Vologda. A lone torpedo impacted her and ripped off her bow. She would start to sink as her crew abandoned ship. Her killer got away unscathed.
This was the fourth kill of the war made by the Vologda: two frigates (one American, one British) and two ferries. The Russians believed they had killed a further pair of frigates as well though those ships had survived. These six attacks had seen the usage of ten torpedoes in total. Upon setting sail for war, there had been eighteen carried in the magazines. This meant that before a return home, taking several with her to fight during that journey if necessary, there remained a few more torpedoes to be used before then by the Russian boat. Sinking ships carrying military goods remained the priority and there were those in the Channel. A burst transmission via a satellite link-up told the Vologda that several convoys of ships laden with war cargo from North America was inbound for Western European ports. The US Army National Guard was inbound and they didn’t travel light!
Back to targeting ships heading for French ports the Russian submarine went once again. Sinking the Monmouth only increased NATO efforts to find her killer but the Vologda’s captain had his orders. He struck off Cherbourg. A trio of ships forming the tail-end of a convoy were fired upon and so too was a French destroyer in-place to screen against an attack. That destroyer evaded the two torpedoes fired against her but the civilian ships were easy targets. Each was hit with fatal kills made. Afterwards, that was it for the Vologda. It was time to go home.
Batteries were recharged in the Celtic Sea, southwest of mainland Britain. The Vologda then went up the western coastline of Ireland.
She made slow but steady progress through neutral waters as she headed northwards. The captain had received another report from home. He was informed that the Northern Fleet’s submarine bases in the Kola Peninsula had come under significant air and missile attack. There was a multi-carrier naval task force in the Barents Sea.
With three torpedoes aboard, no anti-ship missiles and all alone in terms of any form of support, the Vologda today left Irish waters off Donegal and headed for the GIUK Gap. There was still a long way to go, on towards an uneven battle indeed. Come up behind the Americans, the orders ran for this Russian boat, and attack their carriers from the rear before then sailing home as heroes.
Didn’t that sound fun?
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:54:01 GMT
One Hundred and Seventy Three
Major Dan Jarvis had fought before, serving numerous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. This war was a very different one, however. In the weeks since World War III had begun, Jarvis had led his men into action first at Copenhagen and then here in Latvia. Both times, the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment had deployed from the air, straight into the heart of battle. Jarvis and his rifle company had slogged their way through the Danish capital for nearly a week. By the end of it, Jarvis had seen sixteen of his men killed and thirty-nine injured; two more had simply vanished.
After the fighting there in Denmark was over, the whole of the 16th Air Assault Brigade had been granted the chance to recuperate from their losses, with reservists and newly-trained troops being introduced to the ranks of 2 PARA to boost its numbers after the casualties seen beforehand in Copenhagen. They’d then dropped down into the Latvian city of Daugavpils from RAF C-130 Hercules transport planes, again landing in the thick of it.
Enemy positions had to be overwhelmed and barracks seized as 2 PARA made to seize the nearby international airport. Efforts to do just that had almost been halted before dawn when an anti-aircraft gun was turned on the British soldiers on the ground, pinning down two companies and killing over a dozen soldiers.
Jarvis had led a bayonet charge which had seen that machine-gun nest not only overrun, but turned against Russian troops arriving at the airport in their trucks and light armoured vehicles to great efficiency.
Jarvis stood on that same airstrip now, holding his rifle as a dozen Russian Prisoners of War sat on the grassy field beside the runway, under guard, of course. They were to be extracted when the next C-130 came in to drop off supplies and men to keep up the fight here in Latvia.
Although NATO ground forces hadn’t yet taken Vilnius, let alone liberated that country and crossed the border into Latvia where the XVIII Airborne Corps was grimly holding out, Jarvis was confident that he and his men would be able to stand their ground until the cavalry arrived.
His feelings had changed since their initial parachute insertion, when their task seemed like an impossible or at least a superbly difficult one. American, British, Polish, Dutch, German, Spanish, Canadian, Belgian, and Croatian troops were rolling onwards in their tanks, slicing through even the most determined Russian opposition. World War III, Major Jarvis knew, was far from over, but for the first time he felt that the end was in sight, at least partially.
Helicopters belonging to the Army Air Corps and tanks brought in by the Canadians after their brigade-group had become part of the newly-formed, historically-named 6th Airmobile Division had solidified those thoughts. Several days ago, Jarvis had been leading a company of two hundred-odd riflemen fighting beside a platoon of Canadian Leopard-2s as they held off Belarusian armoured vehicles, with British Scimitar tracks joining in those peripheral engagements as well.
2 PARA had also faced a gruesome fight with pro-Russian militia groups organised by the Kremlin. Their tactics were more recognisable to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans amongst the XVIII Corps than those of the Russian Ground & Air Forces were. Mortars and improvised bombs had been used in abundance, along with surface-to-air missiles. Teams from both 2 PARA and the RAF Regiment had gone after those militia units with varying degrees of success; however those fights ended, it was never without bloodshed.
The occasional artillery bombardments made by professional Russian troops were the worst thing to go through, however. Using old BM-21s and more modern BM-26s, as well as self-propelled howitzers and mortars of their own, the Russians were able to pummel the airborne troops, who could respond mainly only with their small 105mm guns.
NATO airpower had been devoted to striking those Russian and Belarusian artillery units and had done well there. Jarvis had witnessed airstrikes being carried out by RAF Harriers, Danish and American F-16s, and even by those huge American B-1B strategic bombers. He had even called a few strikes in himself, working alongside RAF Regiment officers trained as Forward Air Controllers or FACs.
Though the end was within reach, it would take one last, bloody push before the combined NATO armies could get there.
One Hundred and Seventy–Four
History would call it the Battle of Sirte. The vast majority of the fighting took place outside of that Libyan coastal city in the desert though there was some scattered fighting within Sirte. The Western media had a small presence there and Al Jazeera had a camera crew in Sirte too. Thus, it would be the ‘Battle of Sirte’ and not the ‘Fight on the Misrata-Benghazi Highway’.
Gaddafi sent his army down that highway after forces from the western half of the country had assembled in the Misrata area. They moved towards Sirte with Gaddafi’s firm instructions to his field commanders to retake his ‘home’ city. There were French troops there, maybe some Portuguese as well with both supported by the Americans out to sea and in the skies. Sirte would be liberated and those European neo-colonial invaders – he’d called them as such on Al Jazeera; hoping those words would reach far and wide – driven back into the sea or afterwards marched back across the desert to Tripoli in chains. After Sirte, it would to be Benghazi where Gaddafi’s army was meant to go, but Sirte was to be dealt with first.
The approach of Libya’s rag-tag army didn’t come as a surprise to no one. Gaddafi had boastfully announced its attack… though had been doing so repeatedly for several days beforehand. American and NATO reconnaissance assets monitored its gathering and the activities around Misrata it had undertaken before it started moving. The Libyans were attacked long before they started rolling. The gathering of strength there was a tempting target and its intention was known. However, when it started moving on Sirte, those distant attacks were increased. The Libyans were attempting to move under a rolling air defence screen to try to stop air and missile attacks. As the Russians had found to their sorrow in Poland, this was a difficult thing to do. Putin’s armies struggled: Gaddafi’s armies failed miserably. The Libyans were out in the open and away from civilian areas. Significant fire power was unleashed against them. The Americans had only one carrier involved today – the USS John C. Stennis had its aircraft in the sky though the USS Ronald Reagan was transiting the Suez Canal – but the French, the Italians, the Portuguese and the Spanish all had aircraft flying. The Egyptians, using F-16s and Mirage-Vs & -2000s, got in on the act too with their own attacks made. Mobile SAM-launchers and anti-aircraft guns were unable to do much when they came under direct attack themselves but more than that their whole rolling network of vehicles – radar vans, communications sets etc – were hit as well. As these were struck from above, so too was everything else moving.
Gaddafi had spent years equipping Libya with fancy military equipment. Much of it was Soviet-era gear though there were also some modern Russian pieces including a few Western-sourced armoured vehicles as well. Much of this spent its lifetime in Libyan service sitting unused. Libya didn’t have the manpower, trained or otherwise, to operate it all properly. Gaddafi’s army was always a paper tiger: Libya under him had for years used military threats, terror attacks and commando forces in the main in activities rather than all of its tanks, tracked armoured vehicles, self-propelled guns and such like. Now much of that had been removed from its long storage, crewed with regulars and reservists to be sent into a battle. The Libyan Army had never operated like this, even in exercises. The ‘Army of Liberation’ coming down from Misrata deserved its description of a rag-tag force. Among the organised battalions of armour, mechanised infantry and artillery there were many lighter forces. Libya’s commandos were mobile and so too were Gaddafi’s mercenaries. Back during the Cold War, he’d sent his Islamic Legion to war elsewhere in Africa though in recent years such a once much-used force had been drawn down. The Islamic Legion was back though, Gaddafi had declared to the world, and would fight for Sirte. It wasn’t formed of volunteers nor even real mercenaries. Instead, black Africans from across the continent had long been lured to Libya with the promises of riches for work: they were meant to send their money back home to families. Arab Libya exploited them and made them effective slaves. When the crisis erupted with the West in the summer of 2010, Gaddafi re-established the Islamic Legion. Labourers and servants from across the nation were handed rifles, cash and vehicles. They were promised more too as long as they fought. There was no other choice for them either. First out of Misrata were hundreds of pick-up trucks laden with lightly-armed men given no protection. As many as a dozen – a tight fit – were loaded into each these vehicles and sent out ahead. There were Libyan commandos (their operations led by one of Gaddafi’s sons) among them, hiding among the crazy columns, and it was they who would get to Sirte to fight there. As to the Islamic Legion, NATO and Coalition aircraft blew them apart.
The rest of the Libyan force was right behind. Seemingly hundreds of vehicles broke down and many others got lost when leaving the highway. Others came onwards, charging towards the French. Few of these men had ever fired the weapons mounted on their tanks & armoured vehicles while the infantry carried had never met a ‘real’ opponent. There were a lot of them though. Should they have crashed into the French and made a serious fight of it, a fair one too, they still would have lost but they would have killed many of them too. The Coalition didn’t want to see that happen.
Libyan commandos out ahead – those who weren’t blown up alongside the Islamic Legion – reported that the French were withdrawing from forward position and running back to Sirte. Chase them, came the orders, and take Sirte. That was only half done. The commandos raced ahead and appeared to open the way into Sirte for the juggernaut coming behind them. All that they had achieved though was to lead thousands of Libyan soldiers to their deaths.
On two sides on land, off the coast and in the sky, the Coalition boxed the Libyans into a kill box. The air attacks increased. Naval shelling took place followed by land-based guns. The Libyans ran into anti-tank minefields and found that along the highway, there was a scattering of bobby-traps to bring vehicles to a fiery halt which blocked the way for everyone else. The Libyans came to a halt. At that moment, the air strikes lifted and in came a mass of opposing armour. The French had light armoured vehicles though had also brought in some heavier tanks too. The numbers of these were impressive but nothing on the scale that the Egyptians had brought to the fight. Egypt’s army was believed by Gaddafi to be at Ajdabiya, maybe Brega at best… at the very least a hundred miles away from Sirte. They’d crossed the desert though and formed the southern side of the kill box.
The massacre outside of Sirte would go on for almost two days. The Libyans wouldn’t officially surrender. Thousands deserted while others did surrender but many more didn’t. They fought on. The Coalition had believed that the Army of Liberation would crumble under such a barrage but continuing defensive fire came. That was responded to by overwhelming force by the Egyptians especially who had orders from Mubarak back in Cairo to destroy the Libyans for good. Sarkozy in Paris was in the same mood to see the same thing done though when detailed reports came back to him of the mass of Libyan casualties, so many of them the Islamic Legion ‘mercenaries’ but also Libyan conscripts from poor families, he baulked at the idea of carrying on. The Egyptians did though. They littered the desert with death. Portuguese forces inside Sirte were readied to go forward to help in rounding up prisoners but they were eventually held back too because walking into the amount of firepower being used would mean certain death for anyone caught by stray explosive rounds.
Finally, the barrage would cease. The Army of Liberation was no more. Gaddafi’s regime still boasted thousands more troops but this was their very best – a sorry show it had been – and it was no more.
Far from Sirte, Italian and Spanish forces around Benghazi worked with the Egyptians to aid the Libyan rebels in securing Cyrenaica. Eastern Libya was relatively ‘quiet’ in comparison. Gaddafi’s loyalists were hunted down aided by locals who wanted to join in the fight, including often trying to kill prisoners taken by their new allies from abroad. Airbases were worked on to get them operational through Cyrenaica and there was also the transport of many military stores too. The Coalition was building its rear base on the ground in Libya here with the logistical infrastructure to support a long campaign in the country. Gaddafi still held the west – Tripolitania – and Libya wasn’t yet beaten. While this rear area occupation continued, the NATO forces were becoming more and more uneasy. The Egyptians were rather blasé about the issue of so many armed and radical locals but the Italians and the Spanish weren’t. The French and Americans (both having non-combat units in the east) were becoming aware of the issue too. The radicalisation was continuing. Gaddafi’s rule had been thrown off but there were murmurs of discontent about ‘crusaders’. Governments back home in European capitals issued instructions for their forces not to provoke the locals though the opposite approach was taken in Washington.
The CIA and Green Berets undertook several raids against some of these locals. They tried to keep it quiet and only informed their allies after the fact, stating that they were hunting Al Qaeda. You couldn’t keep things like this quiet…not from anyone.
War still raged elsewhere in the Middle East. Lebanon remained a battlefield and so did much of southern Syria. Assad’s war with Israel had been lost while Hezbollah had fought Israel to a standstill – something hotly denied in Tel Aviv – as each of them engaged the other across the ruined nation which was Lebanon.
In a wider sense, nothing had changed in the past week. Israel was still trying to use Jordan as a conduit to get Assad to end the war and a return to the status quo ante. Biden, who was regretting more every day the decision to send American troops into Syria, kept the pressure up here on Netanyahu to force a solution though in Tel Aviv, Israel’s PM wanted the same thing despite the bluster of saying he wouldn’t be told what to do. Israeli casualties – the dead, injured and missing – were staggering and causing domestic problems for him. Israel wanted out of the war in Lebanon too. A deal with Hezbollah was considered impossible but to stop the fighting was desired. Iranian interference continued and Israel remained active in trying to stop prisoners being spirited away at the behest of Tehran. Turkey kept up the pretence of disinterest though its military forces remained on alert. Leaks from Ankara spoke of ‘Turkish peacekeepers’ in Lebanon: neither America, Israel nor the unofficial Coalition partner nations across the Middle East wanted to see that happen especially due the recently-increasing Turkish-Iranian relations. In Iraq, where there had been all that trouble since the Third World War started – some said it would have happened anyway; others strongly disagreed – there were still foreign fighters crossing into Syria than no one had yet been able to stop.
Assad was waited upon to give a reply to the Jordanians about ending the fighting in his country. In Amman, the waited. They waited in Tel Aviv and Washington too. No reply came though.
It started to become clear why. As had been seen in Libya, the regime was coming under attack from within. News had been slow to come out and when it did it was all initially fragmented, which alone looked like not much, but a wider picture was being seen. Syria had its own rebels. Some were anti-Assad, other were Jihadists. They were fighting Assad’s security forces and Syria’s leader, the only figure who could conceivably bring an end to the war here, had his attention fully on that now. His regime wouldn’t be the house of cards like Libya was though, not by a long shot.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:55:57 GMT
One Hundred and Seventy Five
In the Far East, the intensity of the Allied air campaign was beginning to slacken. American carrier-based fighters were doing the heavy-lifting there, but the Royal Australian Air Force was also flying its F-111s and its F/A-18s from South Korea and from occupied airfields on Sakhalin as well.
Sakhalin had fallen now with the large-scale surrenders taking place there, at least by Russian regulars, and the need to strike Russian forces in support of the amphibious operations in the Far East had diminished greatly, replaced by the desire for a continued campaign against Russian lines of communication running westwards. The majority of targets belonging to the Far East Army Command had already been destroyed, however, and many units stationed here in the east had gone west by this point in the fighting.
However, to the west, the same could not be said. Airstrikes into Russia had been expanded greatly with tactical air operations now formally crossing this border. F-16s and F/A-18s carried out defence suppression strikes on a near-permanent basis, with SEAD patrols up in the air over western Russia to 'splash' these targets whenever they made the fatal mistake of turning on their radars.
Meanwhile, F-15E Strike Eagle fighters along with European Tornados pummelled Russian forces as they moved across the imaginary line running down from St Petersburg and past Smolensk. Losses were falling as the days went on, although some major incidents would occur as long as Russian air defences kept up their brave if ultimately futile efforts to stop the bombardment. One such incident saw an RAF Tornado strike plane engaged by an SA-15 battery near St Petersburg, with the burning jet crashing down into the centre of Russia's second city.
Further north, tactical airstrikes were carried out at the hands of the US Navy. Some Tomahawk cruise missiles were used here as well but their numbers had been greatly depleted and the US task force up there in the Norwegian Sea was running out of such weapons, leaving the campaign largely in the hands of Hornet and Super Hornet crews.
The success of Global Strike Command's vaunted B-52s in targeting Kola echoed by the Navy strike planes flying directly into Russian airspace almost unopposed as SAM radars went offline in the name of self-preservation. Few enemy fighters even got off of the ground; those that did were forces to operate without AWACS support against their attackers.
More strategic operations also took place against Russia. Those few B-2 stealth bombers in the American inventory were really making a name for themselves in World War III, despite a trio of losses to Russian defence forces. Flying deeper into Russian airspace than any other aircraft, the Spirits again visited Moscow, this time targeting the Communications Ministry as well as several military command posts located outside of the city.
Success was met at every turn here as GBUs lit up the night sky across the Russian capital, well-defended as it was. Another B-2 risked penetrating deep into Russia from the Black Sea. This operation was as controversial as it was risky.
The stealth bomber was nearly blown out of the sky by what few MiG-31s remained active as she neared her target. Engels Air Base had been targeted before with the B-2s striking the airfield and destroying five of the Russian Air Forces’ irreplaceable elite, Tu-160 Blackjack bombers, the very same aircraft which had boldly penetrated American airspace and attacked targets across the eastern portion of the continental United States.
The stealth bomber launched AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons at Engels, this time targeting not the Blackjacks, but specifically the airfields’ own infrastructure. Hundreds of bomblets separated from the main formation of the JSOWs and rained down upon Engels; fires danced across the airfield as hundreds of personnel fell victim to shrapnel wounds.
A trio of Tu-95 Bear bombers were taken out as well, a fact which was confirmed by post-strike reconnaissance. This was something of a happy coincidence, with the Bears thought to have been long-since dispersed elsewhere. This was in fact true for the majority of Russia’s Bear bombers, but a few of them remained at Engels…until those B-2s and their JSOWs showed up. Wirth the destruction of the Bears so too came the obliteration of ground personnel and their equipment.
Since the strikes on Seattle and the Eastern Seaboard, Russia had not been able to directly attack the American mainland with conventional forces. Russia’s arsenal of cruise missiles, like its arsenal of everything else, had become greatly depleted and now air attacks against Russian soil were a daily event…and Moscow needed to strike back.
One Hundred and Seventy–Six
‘Moscow needed to strike back’ was certainly true. A plan to do so was already in the making but one now given urgent attention from the Kremlin. The Security Council of Russia gave their approval to begin something that would bring with it many worrying risks though at the same time promises of great reward too. It was called Operation Volk (Wolf).
The Russian army would do in early September what it had done back in early August: launch a massive surprise attack. Coming out of cover, two field armies, with troops brought in from far away, would strike forwards and aim to get behind NATO forces to either crush them or cause them to surrender. It had worked before – well… depending on your opinion there – and was intended to work again. It would be a war-winning move which would bring the war to a successful close. Moscow would then afterwards approach the West aiming to get them to talk terms.
Where was Russia to launch its surprise attack? In Belarus and Poland.
Where would it be launched from? The Ukraine.
Volk called for the Thirty-Fifth Army (Far East based troops who had left there as Sakhalin fell) and the Forty-Ninth Army (from the North Caucasus; men not involved in fighting the Georgians and the Americans) to travel through the neutral Ukraine, go around the Pripet Marshes and then enter Belarus from out of northwestern Ukraine. One field army would advance northwards to retake occupied Belorussian soil; the other would move northwest, passing through southwestern Belarus, and into Poland. Kovel in the Ukraine would be the staging post with Brest the first objective in Belarus. Earlier ideas to launch the attack into Poland direct from the Ukraine had been scuppered by Kiev but the second strike was planned to quickly reach Polish soil after crossing only a small portion of Belarus.
NATO and the US V Corps fighting in Belarus would be hit from the flank and surrounded from behind. Where the German-Dutch I Corps remained on Polish soil behind them, they would be crushed by the attack moving against them. Russian troops would feint for another drive towards Warsaw once more but instead focus their Polish operation on going through the Podlachia region. Moreover, to support the twin strikes in the rear, NATO forces at the frontlines were to be met with an early distraction where Russian Airborne Troops taken from the last of the central reserve would join in the fighting around places such as Baronovichi and Kobryń first. Each of those were currently being held. Russian thinking was that once NATO saw Russia committing what they believed where its last reserves, elite troops too, that would be the most that could be done. They would take their eyes off elsewhere.
Volk was a good plan… on paper anyway. There were many difficulties in getting it underway though. The Kremlin was told that it could begin on September 8th (they made the decision on the 4th) and this meant getting an extraordinarily large number of component pieces into place first. Those two Russian armies had recently arrived in Western Russia: now they had to be sent though the Ukraine and towards Kovel. When they moved, they had to do so with speed yet also as little fuss as possible. Success depended upon them not being spotted with it being made clear by the generals to the politicians that if they were, the border crossing would be opposed and Russia’s last gasp attack defeated.
Going through the Ukraine quietly was done for another reason too. In Kiev, President Yanukovych had been bullied into allowing for this to happen but he wanted to afterwards claim that his country hadn’t known. That was how he intended to sell things whether the Russians met success or failure: we didn’t know. Such was the reason why Poland wasn’t going to be invaded direct out of the Ukraine. If that had occurred, Yanukovych had stated that his country would be forced into the war. Russian troops arriving into Belarus after supposedly illegally crossing Ukrainian territory was something that he believed he could claim with a straight face: NATO would be furious but not as much as if they went direct into Poland. Ukrainian forces wouldn’t provide any assistance to the crossing of the Russian forces through their territory either, not openly anyway. This would mean that the Russians would have to do everything themselves too.
In Moscow and Kiev, it was assumed that they could do this without NATO realising what had happened until their troops in Belarus came under attack… maybe even believing that the Thirty-Fifth & Forty-Ninth Armies had gone through the Pripet Marshes and stayed in Belorussian territory all along. Maybe.
In recent weeks, with the Ukraine ‘behaving’ in NATO eyes, there had been a reduction in the surveillance undertaken of the country by them. There hadn’t been any overflights of reconnaissance drones and the Americans had their satellites looking elsewhere too. There were still NATO troops from several different nations in the bordering countries but they no longer had much air cover directly assigned to them after the war in Transnistria had finished. Yanukovych didn’t want a war with NATO, hence his restrictions on what Putin had wanted done at first, but he no longer believed that the West could launch a war against him, not with everything else going on. Moreover, in Kiev, like in Moscow, there was the confidence that Volk would succeed.
The DGSE – France’s foreign intelligence service – had their spy still active in Moscow. The Ukrainian military attaché to Russia remained based at the embassy in the city which had been repeatedly bombed by American stealth bombers. The general had witnessed those strikes and their aftereffects. He had many times worried that the same would happen to Kiev too at some point if his nation did something stupid. Such was the reason why he was spying for the French.
He wasn’t spying on his own country though: he had told the DGSE when he first agreed to work for them that he would do no harm to the Ukraine. Nods and assurances had come from his handlers to this. That was an agreement which they had no intention of honouring in the long-term. It would be a foolish thing to keep to. The intention was for the general to eventually do that either by being talked into it or made to understand that if he didn’t do as asked, he risked exposure. The DGSE was full of professionals and would do that the right way so as to not get him to call their bluff. Anything like that was in the future though. The general hadn’t been working for the French for very long. Only after Yanukovych had been put into place through Russian overt interference in the recent presidential election had be approached the DGSE with his conditions attached. From him had come one of the last-minute warnings sent to NATO of impending war and during the conflict he had given France much intelligence. There was information which flowed through his hands that NATO was eager to be informed of. They asked for more things though, information which he couldn’t get his hands on.
The embassy was being watched by the Russian FSB. The general was being monitored too. He was no fool and his handlers had provided him with some help to avoid detection but it was a dangerous game he was playing. Contact with the DGSE was made through cut-outs, all of whom were Russian nationals before then passed to a French spy operating under deep cover in Moscow. Passing information one way and messages back the other way was no easy process and time-consuming due to the worry that the FSB would catch on.
If they found one link in the chain, then the general was pretty sure he’d be ‘disappeared’.
The Ukrainian Embassy wasn’t involved in the planning for Volk. Neither the ambassador nor the military attaché were party to the concept let alone any of the political factors when it came to Yanukovych doing all that he could to keep the Ukraine neutral while allowing for that new Russian attack on NATO. Moscow and Kiev arranged that at a president-to-president level and also between military commanders-in-chief. However, there was some supposedly unrelated information which came through the embassy. There were bits and pieces concerning transportation access, the meeting of military officers to act as liaisons and such like. The general saw much of this. Naturally, he took an interest in what was going on. He had all the information in front of him that something like Volk was going to happen (the exact details not there though) should he be able to put it together. He just had to see it. If he did so, and that was a big if, then he would face a difficult personal decision.
Tell the DGSE and see what that brought for his country, or do as Yanukovych was going to do and pretend ignorance while again seeing what they would bring for his beloved Ukraine. Which one would he do? Would he understand what was going on before then? If he did, could he get the word out in time?
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
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Post by James G on Jul 14, 2019 12:57:23 GMT
One Hundred and Seventy Seven
That war-winning counterattack the Russians were set to launch wasn’t going to happen yet. Despite the requests of some in Putin’s inner circle, the troops needed weren’t place and NATO wasn’t in the right position either for offensive operations to commence. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t any fighting in Belarus, however. NATO forces were driving hard on Minsk, the Belarusian capital, against resistance that was of varying quality and quantity alike. Given its dire situation, Moscow was prepared to throw Lukashenko under the bus if need be. Putin saw his ally to the west as a chess piece, something that could be sacrificed in negotiations when the counteroffensive successfully cut off NATO’s V Corps and left the bulk of the American and French heavy forces encircled in enemy territory.
The Americans could be whittled down in negotiations if they were on the back foot, and so too could their European allies. Giving them Belarus would be enough to placate the Americans and satisfy their thirst for vengeance. Until the counterattack, however, the fight continued. In northern Belarus, the Polish 11th Armored Cavalry Division made a daring armoured thrust towards Lida with the intention of opening up the road to Minsk. The so-called ‘Lida Gap’ had been scouted out by NATO reconnaissance satellites and was seen both by Mattis and Petraeus as being the quickest route to the Belarusian capital.
The Poles went into the Lida Gap with their Leopard-2s and armoured fighting vehicles in the lead, smashing aside Belarusian forces that fought in opposition. The Battle of the Lida Gap was a major event, one that saw artillery and airpower utilised in support of the ground attack. American Apache gunships circled above the battlefield while a team of Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group carried out reconnaissance ahead of the main force. F-16s and A-10s in the air blew apart enemy troop concentrations on the ground and what followed as a massacre for the Belarusians. Equipped with light anti-tank weapons and some T-72s, the Polish ‘thunder runs’ broke the spirit of the defenders despite Lukashenko’s imposition of his ‘collective punishment’ policy for families of soldiers who were thought to be involved in treasonable activity.
The Americans hit the Lida Gap from the south, seizing the woodlands inside which additional enemy troopers were concealed as well as the highways needed for the Polish armour to swing southwards towards Minsk. The 101st Air Cavalry Division utilised its Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters to transport two full infantry brigade combat teams into the fray, escorted by AH-64D gunships and fighter cover as well. The Americans’ luck did not hold, however, despite the success of the Polish armoured formation to the north.
The low-flying helicopters were immensely vulnerable to troops equipped with even primitive anti-aircraft missiles. Using systems such as the SA-7 and SA-14, Belarusian troops belonging to commando forces engaged the choppers. ZSU-32 anti-aircraft guns utilised by an air defence regiment which had withdrawn with 1st Guards Tank Army assisted in the effort despite facing destruction at the hands of Hellfire missiles launched from the supporting gunships. American drone surveillance efforts had failed to ascertain the number of anti-aircraft weapons positioned north of the now-famed Lida Gap. No less than twelve helicopters were downed, including a pair of CH-47 Chinooks, each of which took fifty men down with them when they crashed and burned.
For almost the next six hours, helicopters landed and withdrew to pick up more troops. Losses mounted as the 101st Division cleared the woodlands against scattered but determined opposition. US Air Force warplanes dropped cluster munitions in the trees, setting off a colossal forest fire that would further detriment the war effort of both sides. The countryside was secured by nightfall despite the resistance faced by the Americans, nonetheless. Casualties stood at over two hundred dead on the part of the Americans. Somebody was going to pay for those mistakes, fairly or otherwise.
In central Belarus, V Corps heavy armoured forces, the best that NATO had, pushed on towards Minsk regardless of the events playing out to the north. The main goal for today was the capture of Baranovichi, and with it a major airbase located near to that small city. The 1st Armored Division had the task of accomplishing this, and it aimed to do so with minimal losses. However, contradictory orders came all the way from Lt.-General Ryan at corps HQ which demanded the Old Ironsides reach Baranovichi as soon as possible, countermanding the division commander’s casualty averse instructions. Lives were lost that day that didn’t need to be lost. 1st Armored Division could have approached with more caution and taken more time, but a full-scale attack on the city had been demanded of them.
Though the division had been bloodied during the fighting so far (its casualty numbers were the third largest of any US formation during the war) it remained a highly effective fighting force with experienced soldiers and good, modern equipment that functioned properly despite having been damaged in battle. T-80s from what remained of the 5th Guards Tank Division, a formation that had been devastated by the wrath of American airpower, tried to stop the US Army’s armoured onslaught. Local militiamen dug into Baranovichi itself to defend the city. The Americans fought their way through the remnants of the 5th Division – effectively an understrength regiment in all but name – and made it to the airfield before swinging into Baranovichi itself from two different directions along the P99 & P108 Highways.
The Americans’ M1A2 tanks were vulnerable here to missile fire, with three of those vehicles knocked out by the militiamen. This urban fighting was more akin to the combat some of those American soldiers, mainly NCOs and mid-grade field officers, had been a part of in Iraq during the occupation there. The militiamen in Belarus were better-armed and had some Russian advisors working within their ranks but they were dramatically less fanatical than the Americans’ opponents in Iraq had been.
The result was the seizure of most of Baranovichi by the end of the day, albeit at considerable cost to the attackers. Nevertheless, over four hundred POWs were taken by the Americans, for a total of fifty-seven US Army deaths.
In southern Belarus, the French forces, with the US 1st Cavalry Division to the north, were advancing up along the Ukrainian border. Something was about to happen here that they did not yet know about, but in keeping with their orders, the Allied units, with the Italians covering their rear, drove on Pinsk against a mixed-bag of resistance efforts. Everything from professional troops with T-72s to roadside Improvised Explosive Devices planted by guerrillas harried the advancing troops. Even so, the advance couldn’t be stopped. Despite everything the Belarusians (and Russians too) threw at them, the two Allied divisions kept pushing onwards.
Airpower was the key to these successes, with most defences against this now rendered inoperable. Bombs devastated the countryside from numerous types of aircraft from all across Europe, including Slovakian and Polish MiG-29s built back in Russia herself.
One of the more prominent successes of the day was the rescue of over five hundred POWs from a camp north of Pinsk by members of the 10th Special Forces Group. The facility had been located by Belgian warplanes returning from a strike to the east, and then French Special Forces had been assigned to reconnoitre the location before those ‘Cowboy’ Americans showed up in their Osprey multipurpose aircraft and stormed the camp.
It looked like NATO had gotten the better of the days fighting across Belarus.
One Hundred and Seventy–Eight
In eastern Lithuania, the Allied I Corps continued its advance. The Neman River had been reached and crossed by lead units already. Further crossings were made as more of Lithuania was liberated. Russian and Belorussian troops attached to the shattered but still-functioning Twentieth Guards Army carried on fighting in some places yet elsewhere they surrendered. None of the latter were large scale. However, every time enemy forces laid down their arms, lives were saved: theirs, those of NATO forces and Lithuanian civilians. Around the city of Kaunas, Spanish troops moving to surround it with the belief that those inside would shut themselves in for a siege were shocked not at the sudden surrender instead but the numbers of the few available men who’d been ordered to do that yet instead choose to give up. Only three hundred odd Belorussians were there, all of whom laid down their arms. Kaunas was saved from a fight over it. As to those POWs, they were reservists with no mood among them to die here. There had been some violence before their surrender though. Almost a dozen Belorussian KGB officers – Belarus’ state security service had never changed its name after the fall of the Soviet Union – had been shot dead before the surrender. Curious, the Spanish on-scene commander asked the senior live captive why this had happened. He was told that they had been once more threatening the lives of family members of the soldiers back home and this time, enough had been enough. The decision was taken to kill those men after their communications were cut with the belief that no word would come as to what had happened in Lithuania.
Spanish troops with their 1st Infantry Division had to fight elsewhere though. They were alongside the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division on the northern side of the Neman. There were enemy troops encountered in multiple locations and while they were defeated each time they stood, it was no easy task to keep moving. Things were a little easier on the right-hand side of the corps’ advance. The two British divisions and another of Germans (each with multiple attachments from other countries) all drove towards the Belorussian border. On the way was the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. It remained in revolt against the Russian troops occupying it. They should have been pulled out long ago but orders from Moscow said that they had to stay: holding the Lithuanian capital had been important for propaganda purposes. Now the city was liberated fully. The German 1st Panzer Division had a brigade of Czech troops along with two of its own and there were also small numbers of Lithuanians brought along as advisers too. Contact was established with the rebels inside the city as well as the CIA advisers – officers from the Special Activities Division; men who had had an unpleasant time in Vilnius where losing two of their comrades – who aided their rebellion. Most of the fighting which the 1st Panzer undertook was outside of the city but there were still some inside too. Breaking the Russians, doing what the Lithuanians had been unable to do, came when tanks were used. Leopard-2 tanks blasted shells into the lower parts of several barricaded buildings to bring them down atop the men inside. At the sight of this, other Russians opted to run. They braved Lithuanian snipers and then encountered Czechs outside. A lase surrender was made, a trap to get away, and many Czech soldiers were slain. When reinforcements arrived, and those Russians involved were caught, the Czechs could have taken their revenge: others would have made excuses for them should they have. The Czechs didn’t though to their immense credit. They took prisoner those murderers. Elsewhere, the British 1st Armoured & 3rd Mechanised Divisions fought alongside Belgians and Canadians through the border region. Belorussian efforts to stop the approach of NATO forces close to their country – unawares that large parts of Belarus were already occupied – weren’t successful. They slowed down the NATO units attacking them but couldn’t stop them. The Lithuanian-Belorussian border would be first reached by British troops with the 7th Armoured Brigade and then not long afterwards elsewhere by men with the Canadian 5th Mechanized Brigade–Group too.
Russian troops had escaped in number from eastern Lithuania though. The Twentieth Guards Army was in disarray in many places but other bits were intact enough to withdraw. They faced air attacks and the Americans were moving to start a pursuit but for now they were running. They headed northwards deeper into Lithuania.
Other Allied I Corps elements were in Kaliningrad and pushing to reach western Lithuania from there. Once more, the Neman River was a physical barrier which would have to be crossed before that could be achieved. Moreover, while Russian resistance inside Kaliningrad was weak, it was still present. They’d lost but still they fought thus delaying the progress northwards here. The Poles, the Dutch and the Croats pushed onwards. They had received recent reinforcements. Another Dutch brigade – the 13th Mechanised, taken from the German-Dutch I Corps (leaving it with no troops from the Netherlands under command) – had arrived as well as the Franco-German Brigade which had moved down from Denmark. They were needed in Kaliningrad. Forward progress with the advance onward was stalled. Air power was available with lesser restrictions on the deployment of the heaviest of weapons that was seen over in Lithuania, but there was still the need for much NATO air attention to be focused there. In Kaliningrad, despite being bombed from the air, the Russians were able to force NATO troops to pay a heavy price for what they were taking. American special operations took place while that was going on. Their Rangers conducted smaller missions than before yet carried on trying to secure as many caches of WMDs either still in-place or on the move. Things went very well with a few operations but also badly wrong with others.
A significant distance away from where the I Corps was fighting, there were still NATO forces in Latvia. The US XVIII Airborne Corps – multinational in components now – was engaged in fighting still through this further Baltic nation. Their overall mission since they had arrived in Latvia had been to block the Daugava River so the Twentieth Guards Army would first see its supply lines cut and then have any line of retreat through Latvia blocked too. The Russians had been uncooperative. They’d bypassed the blocking positions to try to move supplies forward despite the NATO presence on the ground and its control of the skies. They’d sent troops to overcome the XVIII Corps and while that had failed, this had kept those along the Daugava busy. Now, the Twentieth Guards Army was retreating northwards out of Lithuania. There was room for them to enter Belarus – northeast of where the I Corps was fighting in eastern Lithuania – to avoid the XVIII Corps but it wasn’t much space in terms of width. In addition, the communications links ran northwards.
With the recent reinforcements, the XVIII Corps had finally secured its position stretching down the Daugava. Militia volunteers had been near wiped out and attempts by Russian paratroopers and airmobile troops, as well as Belorussian tanks, to do the same to them had failed. The Americans with their 82nd Airborne Division were fighting outside of Riga and aiming to do what the Germans had just done to their south and liberate an occupied capital of a NATO country. The British, Belgians and Canadians (like in Lithuania, initial circumstances but later logistical concerns brought them together in joint efforts) were undertaking missions away from their secured area to hit enemy forces far outside. Belgian paratroopers with their Light Brigade, attached to the British 6th Airmobile Division, had even gone down into Lithuania when raiding from far Daugavpils. As the Russians now made their withdrawal from southern parts of Lithuania and looked certain to fall back through Latvia, those Belgians out in forward exposed positions weren’t pulled back. They were reinforced instead. Daugavpils and downstream along the river were left in the hands of those many British TA troops which had arrived while the 6th Airmobile (including its Canadian tanks) set itself up on favourable ground near to and also along the Latvian-Lithuanian border. There was also the US 7th Infantry Division. Stood up last month on German soil and brought in recent days into Latvia to join the XVIII Corps, they too went towards blocking positions forward from the Daugava. The narrow Nemunėlis River was on the same border that the 6th Airmobile was on and that waterway had a good road running behind it allowing for lateral communications.
Both NATO formations were tasked to fight there against the Twentieth Guards Army should it come this way as feared it might and then fall back to the Daugava if need be. The 82nd Airborne had taken Lielvārde Airbase on the way to closing in upon Riga. From there, NATO combat aircraft were flying to support those on the ground. The XVIII Corps retained its mission to hold the line. The commander of CJTF–East, General Mattis, had been instructed by SACEUR to have the corps commander understand that this was the priority. Petraeus still was under pressure from the politicians to have Riga taken as soon as possible but they had been made to understand the bigger picture here. If what was left of the Twentieth Guards Army did come through Latvia and didn’t go eastwards, either before or afterwards, it would keep going northwards. Estonia was where Operation Baltic Arrow was due to eventually see both the I & XVIII Corps go to and it would be far easier to do that without the Russians being able to withdraw to there. Catching them in Lithuania or directing them away from Latvia was the immediate goal but Petraeus would do all that could be done to have them held on the Daugava if need be. Riga was a political goal and a distraction would could be indulged for now but not if the remains of that Russian field army came into Latvia.
While suspected, it was unknown if the Russians were going to withdraw to Latvia. NATO was right to be concerned that that was due to happen for their orders were to fall back northwards, not eastwards. The Daugava would be a position fought for.
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