Blue Dawn, 1994

  James G,

80 – Map tidying exercise


After a day spent in resupply and post-combat reorganisation following victory outside Leningrad, the British I Corps today moves onwards. They advance deeper into Western Russia following instructions from General McCaffrey at EURCOM to locate and engage Union forces ahead of them. Away to the south and southeast of Leningrad they advance, finding that resistance as they go onwards. It isn’t that much but it remains and is spread over a large area. Union forces are still fighting for a regime that has lost its capital but remains deadly in its death throws.

Outside the city of Novgorod – once so important in Russian history – tanks and infantry with the 1st Armoured Division engage Union Army reservists in regimental strength who are here to try to stop it from falling under occupation. The British find an opponent just where they want them: out in the open away from urban areas. Artillery opens up following an appearance by the RAF. The 4th Armoured Brigade moves in to finish off what survivors there are. T-55 tanks are blown apart while they are attempting to manoeuvre. Union riflemen, operating without infantry carriers, are run through when they very ineffective cover to protect them. Novgorod is left defenceless in a fight which lasts no more than half an hour. The city itself is bypassed though. It holds no military value and isn’t located alongside the roads which the British are making use of to support their advances. Overflights made above Novgorod by Army Air Corps helicopters don’t see the presence of any more Union forces of any substance within. There are Polish troops coming out of the Baltics and Novgorod will be left for them to eventually reach. The 1st Armoured Division pushes onwards, seeking out more of those willing to fight for Gromov’s regime. They head down towards Tver and reach there later in the day. Once more, there are Union reservists with outclassed armour and unprotected riflemen covering the approaches. Some of them are facing the wrong way, towards Moscow, and they rush to join those positioned to the north of the city. Once more, those attempting to defend a historic Russian city against modern day invaders are out in the open. The upstream reaches of the Volga River run through Tver with bridges downed by American air strikes in previous days. These helpless Union forces have a water barrier between them. The ones in the south soon bunch up when trying to get across the river… leaving themselves open to the RAF as it brings it Harrier GR7s & Tornado GR1s. The 20th Armoured Brigade stays north of the Volga and engages defenders on Tver’s outskirts in another full-on assault making use of their full firepower. British casualties are few, far fewer than in previous fights through the Baltics and outside of Leningrad. They overawe and crush opposition in their wake as if they are ten foot tall supermen. Tver isn’t entered either. Instead, the 1st Armoured Division makes a turn to the east once darkness falls. Further objectives lay that way and, with the 7th Armoured Brigade now out front, they move through the night aiming to reach them by daybreak.

The 3rd Mechanised Division is also out here advancing through Western Russia. British troops go over the Volkhov River with ease once they are underway, engaging defending troops spread along the course of this waterway at distance and blasting them to ruin. During World War Two, the Volkhov was vigorously defended for several years against the Nazis by the Soviets as part of the extended Siege of Leningrad in a heroic stand. None of that is repeated today. Royal Engineers throw crossings over it while around them lightly-armed reservists who tried to defend it are left as dead, wounded or captives. Leading the way, the 11th Mechanised Brigade reaches Tikhvin with ease. This industrial town built around the Transmash Plant, which employs tens of thousands and manufactures military equipment and has received American air attention, sits just off the main road. The 3rd Mechanised Division intends to see that used as its main supply route for onwards movement. The British are taken under fire from out of Tikhvin. They prepare to counterattack defenders on the edges of the town and force surviving opposition into there so follow-up divisional units can best deal with them next because resistance from Tikhvin will be too costly to ignore. However, before the 11th Mechanised Brigade can move on, handing over to the 1st Mechanised Brigade, Tikhvin is surrendered. A white flag is waved from a party of officers who come forward. They claim that they have fulfilled their honour in providing resistance but faced with the overwhelming force that they do, after opening shots have bene fired, the best thing to do now is to surrender to save the further unnecessary loss of life. Such comments are taken respectfully by the British – why do anything else in such circumstances? – and there begins the process of securing weapons and prisoners. Onwards 3rd Mechanised Division units move, striking deeper and deeper into Union territory. They encounter roadblocks set up along the way with riflemen sometimes on their own and at other times supported by either more T-55s or towed BS-3 anti-tank guns. Opposition is nearly always spotted from the air first, and attacked, before those on the ground meet it. The reservists and volunteers being encountered aren’t able to disguise their presence from observation apart from in a few lucky instances where they can spring an ambush. None of this stops the British from getting to the town of Ustyuzhna. The 3rd Mechanised Division reaches them on the lower reaches of the Mologa River by nightfall.

The Mologa feeds into the Rybinsk Reservoir. This is a Stalin-era project of gigantic proportions with the several hydroelectrical dams that it serves untouched by Coalition air attack despite Union fears that they would be. Cities located on the edges of the reservoir and then along the course of the Volga south of here (the river goes into the reservoir and back out again) have been identified as where there are larger Union forces gathering. At Cherepovets & Rybinsk as well as at Kostroma & Yaroslavl, the newly-raised Ninth Army has been identified by Coalition intelligence-gathering efforts. The Ninth Army is one of several large groups of reservists forming up across Western Russia – there are other armies being raised at Gorki, at Samara, in Tatarstan and at Volgograd – into so-called armies as a last-ditch Union effort at this late stage. None of them are ready yet and they don’t all look likely to be capable of being fielded in conflict as the intent is for them to be. However, this is the opposition that the British have been sent off to encounter before can enter the fight. The 1st Armoured Division is approaching Rybinsk while the next objective for the 3rd Mechanised Division is Cherepovets. Before the Ninth Army can finish organising itself, the British are moving towards it. General Mackenzie, in command of the British I Corps, has the 6th Airborne Division as well. They spend today waiting at airheads back in Lithuania in the final stages of preparing to conduct an assault into the Rybinsk Reservoir area alongside the two heavier divisions who’ve made the overland advance. British Paras will make an airdrop come dawn tomorrow as Mackenzie will hit the Ninth Army with all that he has available.


Polish troops with their III Corps move out of the Baltics today also into Western Russia. There are many who are remaining behind due to security tasks including both the securing of lines of communications for Coalition forces as well as stopping the worst excesses of ethnic violence, but the 16th Mechanised Division (victors of Kaliningrad) comes forward. Currently under operational command of the Polish division is the British Army’s 39th Infantry Brigade. Those Britons are late reinforcements for the war and had been primed ready to go into Estonia if the security situation was as bad there as it is inside Latvia. Estonia is reasonably quiet though and the 16th Mechanised Division is far from at full strength with need for their own reinforcements. The British and Poles move towards Velikiye Luki, a large town on Russia’s borders yet far in the rear from where Coalition forces have previously advanced into Western Russia. In a brief description of operations given to President Wałęsa by his military staff, what Polish troops are doing here with this task is part of a large-scale map tidying exercise. Ostrov and Pskov to the north of Velikiye Luki are in Coalition hands while Rzhev to the east was taken by the Canadians on their way towards Moscow. There is a wide stretch of unoccupied territory (including small portions of Belarus and Latvia outside of Russia) directly centred upon the town which has been long bypassed from afar. Whereas there were no Union forces within this area beforehand, wartime mobilisation has seen the gathering of armed opposition now. The Coalition wishes to secure areas as this and rid them of armed resistance to secure lines of communications while ending the regime of Gromov.

The 16th Mechanised Division and the 39th Infantry Brigade find scattered groups of Union forces as they move east. There are roadblocks, attempts at ambushes and engineers conducting demolitions. Enemy activity on the way to Velikiye Luki is bigger than anticipated but still something that the British and Poles are able to blast their way through. Yet, there are no Union defenders of the town itself. The Poles reach the town and find no opposition from anyone here. A local official comes out to meet them and declares the Velikiye Luki is supporting the regime of Primakov now. The Baltic Highway, that road link connecting Riga to Moscow, is now fully in Coalition hands as another vital main supply route when men from the 16th Mechanised Division link up with American troops part of the US V Corps’ rear area near to Staraya Toropa. Outside, the countryside is swept and there are multiple small fights which occur including a big one when the British move up towards Andreapol Airbase. That facility was in the top tier of Union Air Force targets to be struck at when Operation Flaming Phoenix began on the night of July 31st. It was evacuated by the survivors afterwards but now there is intelligence to suggest that troops are there who dug-in in number. Lead by Chieftain-12 tanks (the Queen’s Own Hussars are not yet equipped with newer Challengers), 39th Infantry Brigade lead elements get there with infantrymen from the Green Howards finishing off what opposition there is to be had by Union Army reservists dug-in here waiting on a parachute assault instead of a tank assault. One of the prisoners taken when he threw his hands up fast soon wants to talk to the brigade’s intelligence team.

The major, someone who heard this morning that Moscow fell yesterday, has decided that he will spill his guts about a secret mass weapons horde nearby. A company of Green Howards in the FV-432 tracked infantry carriers go off with Royal Engineers sappers and Intelligence Corps officers to see about this. The prisoner takes them to a camouflaged bunker that has already attracted the attention of American aircraft-dropped bombs but which have only part demolished the entranceway. Care is taken due to worries over unexploded American ordnance and also stored ammunition that might take the opportunity presented to cook off and kill them all. When inside the storage site, that Union officer makes a surprising and uncomfortable revelation. It isn’t just conventional ammunition stored here which has long been written off by his own side as destroyed. There are weapons of mass destruction here too. Chemical shells and tactical nuclear bombs are found in abundance. They’re just sitting here waiting to be uncovered by the Coalition with apparently no one but this one man knowing there are present. When the news goes out, alarm bells are rung. How many other such finds are yet to be uncovered? Where else might a ‘map tidying exercise’ undercover such a disturbing find?

Yep, ready to fight for Mother Russia (and Mother Ukraine) but more loyalties are shifting.
There are still some heavyweight Union forces in the Urals and the Caucasus, but elsewhere those fighting might as well have pee-shooters. Coalition forces spot them from above nearly always now.

The Union is littered with such weapons with many of them sure to vanish. Any use is going to be something that will bring a response for sure. The danger of that is stronger now than at any time before as order collapses.

82 – Baptism of fire


US Army soldiers are now fighting on the eastern slopes of the Urals. The 172nd Infantry Brigade, deployed into Siberia from out of Alaska, engages in combat for the first time since their arrival in Primakov-controlled territory. The fight takes place near to the small city of Kamensk-Uralsky, down the road from Yekaterinburg. It is quite the baptism of fire for them. They join an ongoing battle where Union forces aligned to Primakov are fighting those supporting Gromov. Nowhere else through the civil war gripped Union of Sovereign States has there been a large deployment on the ground like this where the Americans have joined in a fight like this. General Wesley Clark, commanding American forces in Siberia (US Army & US Air Force assets both), hasn’t just thrown the 172nd Infantry Brigade into the unknown though. There has been the presence of Green Berets inside the Urals for some time now and from out of Camp Raven near to Tyumen, the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing has also seen action operating in support of the pro-Primakov side too. Now where Clark has his ground forces involved, he makes sure that they are prepared. There are many liaison officers assigned at multiple levels. A communications set-up between allies is in-place and there has been much pre-deployment emphasis on recognition of allies to avoid friendly-fire. However, difficulties with regards to allies don’t happen to a significant degree today to make the first fight for the 172nd Infantry Brigade what it is. The actions of pro-Gromov forces are those which give the American soldiers here such a memorable first taste of war.

Primakov’s West Siberian Army Group is still on the offensive. The Kurganskaya region has been taken by them and they are on the slopes of the Urals. Opposing them, is what is left of the Urals Front who are answerable to Gromov. The Urals Front is half the size it was when the Coalition invaded the Union out of Eastern Europe, the Arctic & the Black Sea. Whole armies as well as individual smaller units have marched away from their fighting with the WSAG to their doom when charging headlong into Coalition forces. There is no longer any air cover for the Urals Front – Primakov’s air force and the US Air Force are having themselves quite the time – and a complete shut off of supplies has also occurred. The numerical superiority enjoyed by the Urals Front has evaporated. Their forces have taken a terrible beating while withdrawing back towards the mountains from where they were previously out on the Western Siberian Plain with dreams then of marching on Novosibirsk. Still, where they have fallen back to, the terrain here in the Urals allows for Gromov’s forces to mount a defence. Most of that is occurring in the southern reaches of the Urals, on the approaches to the big cities of Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg. Those were in the hands of Primakov before Gromov retook them in June. The Urals Front opened up passage through the mountains to strike east and now the WSAG is attempting to break open the way themselves so they can go west. One of the field armies assigned to the WSAG is the Fifteenth Army. This is a pro-Primakov army which was in the Russian Far East at the start of the civil war. They’ve been in combat for many long months, making their soldiers veterans of many major fights. Retaking Yekaterinburg is the task allotted to the Fifteenth Army and the 172nd Infantry Brigade is under their operational control. Clark is at the Fifteenth Army’s headquarters back in Shadrinsk where he is monitoring their baptism of fire.

The Americans are under the fire of Urals Front artillery, specifically guns belonging to the Forty–First Army’s 126th Motor Rifle Division. Air strikes have knocked out many of the heavy guns that they have but there still remain enough D-30 & 2A65 artillery pieces firing. The 172nd Infantry Brigade has the support of their own guns – a battalion fielding M-119 howitzers – and there is also Fifteenth Army artillery too. Thankfully, there is no presence here of multiple-barrelled rocket-launchers opening up on the 172nd Infantry Brigade: Urals Front units have no munitions for their surviving BM-21 & BM-27 systems. The Fifteenth Army have their own rockets being used on the battlefield today though. Modern-day ‘Stalin’s organs’ (their own BM-21s & BM-27s) launch barrage after barrage of explosive projectiles forward which target enemy rifle units as well as artillery too. Back to those guns firing, for the US Army soldiers here near to Kamensk-Uralsky this is their first time being under heavy artillery fire. All the training in the world can’t match a real world experience like this. They are shelled and casualties come. This occurs while they are on the attack. Around Kamensk-Uralsky, the 172nd Infantry Brigade joins with the 40th Motor Rifle Division in engaging the 126th Motor Rifle Division… with those two Union Army units with different loyalties fielding much the same equipment and all battling for control of their country. The task for the Americans is to operate on the flank of their allies and reach the abandoned airbase to the north of the town. T-64 tanks are shooting at each other throughout industrial areas in the south but the Americans have the objective here in the north. There is a rifle regiment near the airbase and it is they that the 172nd Infantry Brigade fights. War damage and shortages mean that the 126th Motor Rifle Division can only field a limited number of tanks and armoured vehicles. This has left dismounted riflemen for the Americans to go up against though they do have two companies of those tanks from 40th Motor Rifle Division in support of them. The airbases’ defenders are taken under fire. They are spread out in good defensive positions yet ones being pounded from artillery and then aircraft too. The jets which overfly the US Army soldiers as they go into the attack are ‘friendly’ ones: Sukhoi-25 Frogfoot attack-fighters serving Primakov’s regime. It is quite something to be receiving such air support!

When the Frogfoots are clear, and the artillery is shifted under the close direction of artillery liaison teams, into the survivors of that rifle regiment the Americans go. The 172nd Infantry Brigade uses two of its three infantry battalions: one on the left and one on the right with the third being held back. Those friendly T-64s are already in the rear of the enemy out ahead and the Americans seek to catch up with them, going through the chaos in the defender’s positions that they and all of the supporting firepower has done. These are defenders who have survived everything thrown at them. Up from the Crimea (where they really would have been really useful in opposing the US Marines who landed there), the 126th Motor Rifle Division is full of veteran soldiers too. They can fight. Up close to one another, the infantry and riflemen clash. Each side has man-portable heavy weapons with them though many of those in the defender’s hands are tied up engaging those tanks who’ve gotten in behind them. The Americans use their machine guns and anti-armour missiles to tear into their opponents alongside their assault rifles. Thousands of rounds of ammunition are expended. In several places, when fighting moves inside trenches, the fighting goes hand-to-hand. Bayonets are used by each side. Kamensk-Uralsky Airbase is surrounded by interlinked lines of trenches and fortified improvised fighting positions. The 172nd Infantry Brigade moves through them. The artillery shifts on command and those tanks are used extensively as well. There is more air intervention too, this time from A-10 Thunderbolts out of Camp Raven coming in and doing what the Frogfoots did in providing extremely close air support. The defenders are overwhelmed. They are pinned down and, while putting up an excellent effort, they eventually cannot offer any more resistance in the face of this. The regimental staff are all dead and it is left to one of the surviving battalion commanders to call it quits. By that point, only a third of the defenders remain. Weapons are thrown down and hands are thrown up. Surrenders are taken and that third American infantry battalion comes forward to secure the airbase which the 172nd Infantry Brigade has now won control of.

Meanwhile, further fighting takes place for Kamensk-Uralsky between those Union forces answering to the two regimes which claim legitimacy over their nation. Other 126th Motor Rifle Division units face the almost the full might of the 40th Motor Rifle Division in battles of tanks and riflemen with armoured support. It is far more extensive than the fight for the airbase and very costly. The defenders nearly hold but at a key moment, a rush of tanks tearing forward, with the skies seemingly full of aircraft too, opens up their positions. Attacking 40th Motor Rifle Division tanks stream through, storming onto their objectives outside of the city. They’ve opened up the road to Yekaterinburg. Falling back, remnants of the 126th Motor Rifle Division end up inside Kamensk-Uralsky itself where they find themselves trapped by the Americans now behind them. Another major pitched battle looks likely at that time to the distant Clark. It isn’t one which he wishes to see the 172nd Infantry Brigade have. There will be no need though after WSAG artillery blasts the city. Most of the inhabitants are already gone but it is still something that doesn’t sit comfortably with neither Clark nor his staff. However, it works. What is left of the 126th Motor Rifle Division give up before the day’s end. They are trapped and defeated. The main road which runs to Yekaterinburg doesn’t go through the city itself and the damage done here isn’t going to directly effect the war that the WSAG is bringing closer and closer to Gromov. The 172nd Infantry Brigade has also done what it has been brought here to do. They broke open the rear, secured an airbase towards where engineers are already fast at work to see it put to use and helped destroy a major enemy unit standing in the way of the advance into the Ural Mountains. Clark later finds out that another WSAG Fifteenth Army unit, their 33rd Motor Rifle Division, has won victory at Bogdanovich to the north. As Kamensk-Uralsky is, that town is somewhere else that a Forty–First Army division has failed to keep in their hands. Pro-Primakov forces are prising open the way into European Russia beyond the mountains and American forces are playing a part in that. The cost though…

The defeats at Kamensk-Uralsky and the Bogdanovich aren’t the only ones inflicted today. Across the frontlines, the WSAG is on the attack and the Urals Front cannot stop a multitude of loses being incurred. Is it widespread and devastating. Orders go out for further withdrawals to be made, giving up ground to secure better defensive positions. These come from the front commander at Sarapul but are later countermanded. From over at Mulino (near to Gorki) where Gromov and STAVKA are now located, instructions from on high come that there is to be no major withdrawal made. They will not allow for a ‘full-scale retreat in the face of the enemy’ to occur. The Urals Front is allowed to conduct ‘limited retrograde movements’ in ‘extreme circumstances’ but these are where STAVKA say they are to be. In the midst of falling back to better ground from where to fight from and keep the WSAG from breaking through the mountains, Urals Front subordinate units such as the Forty–First Army are told to suddenly halt that. This quickly causes serious problems and there is disaster in selected places. Nizhny Tagil ends up falling to a night-time assault and where the Seventh Guards Army also has a presence in the mountains in the wider area nearby, they see major losses through the hours of darkness and into the next morning too. That loss is the biggest for the Urals Front but far from the only one. The blame for that falls upon STAVKA. Primakov’s aircraft, joined by the Americans where they can, take advantage just like ground forces do in doing extensive damage to forces moving out in the open when given two different sets of opposite orders a few hours apart. Coming from Mulino, Gromov’s military command staff then sends further instructions following that countermanding of the front-wide withdrawals. The Eighth Tank Army is to depart from Bashkortostan with immediate effect and proceed towards Gorki at full speed. This is the Urals Front’s last reserves after the earlier redeployment of the Group of Tank Armies some time back. The Eighth Tank Army had orders to come forward as the rest of the Urals Front fell backwards and would have secured the positions held. Now they are being pulled out and sent charging off towards Coalition armies in the same manner as the Group of Tank Armies were in what is another foolishly mad-dash surely to their doom.

This final order is the straw that breaks the camels back. The general at Sarapul, a long-time Gromov loyalist who has fought against Primakov with just as much hatred as Gromov has done, no longer has any faith in his superior. Gromov has led them all to ruin and will keep doing so until the very end. The general begins the process of seeing how he can bring an end to all of this. Another pillar in the house of cards is tumbling.

It looks the end is near. What a ride!

Good work, James G. The amazing thing is that Primakov is going to get thru this as ruler of Russia and without paying the consequences for Kerrey’s assassination. That’s almost as amazing as there having been no instant sunshine over a major city on either side...