Post by lordroel on Jun 16, 2017 7:04:33 GMT
“Oskar Fincher likes to call the Hainan War a battle between two bald men over a comb.
He is wrong. It is two bald men fighting over a wig.”
Dutch minister of foreign affairs Dries van Agt.
With the Indian Democratic People's Republic starting to show cracks after their defeat in Afghanistan, China began to feel secure enough to look outwards instead of constantly guarding its borders. In doing so, it encountered much the same problem Japan had fifty years earlier, namely being walled in by Brazilian Allies and military bases. Despite the apparent sturdiness of their restriction, Beijing saw possible openings. The Dutch Commonwealth may be one of the world's dominant superpowers on paper, in practice it was not nearly as united as India had been led to belief.
With the United Provinces a shadow of its former glory, Brazil and Indonesia were regularly competing for dominance of the commonwealth. When those two were not at each others throat, talks were usually dominated by an Asian member asking for military support or an African member begging for help handling the latest refugee crisis (or both, in the case of Angola), to the point that the Brazilian prime minister infamously had his country withdraw from the common defence treaty.
The Chinese were thus certain that they would be able to get away with conquering Hainan and possible Formosa if they won quickly enough, reasoning that neither Brazil nor Indonesia would be willing to fight a protracted war for the Commonwealth’s smallest members.
On the 1st of March, 1984, the RCAN declared war on Hainan and launched a surprise attack an hour later. Much of the Hainan Naval and Air Defence Force were wiped out in the first hours of the war, the rest choose to retreat to Ceylon or join in operation Zaklamp. Assured in their naval and air dominance, Chinese troops landed on Hainan on the 10th, where they met by minimal resistance. With their enemy vulnerable, the Hainan Defence Force launched their ambush.
Using the remaining corvettes and ground-based cruise missiles, they launched an all-out attack on the landing site. Despite the strategic victory they managed to earn by destroying dozens of transports and killing upward of 25.000 men, it came at a heavy prices. Of the seven corvettes that took part in the attack, only one survived after beaching herself. Despite the precious time operation Zaklamp had bought the Hainan Defence Force to fortify their position, it was all for naught. After a week of heavy fighting the governor of Hainan officially surrendered. Most soldiers followed his que, but many went into hiding to join the growing resistance movement.
With their first goal reached and without the rest of the Commonwealth doing anything meaningful to stop them, China attacked Formosa. Only the United Provinces were organizing a relief force, and it would be three months before they arrived and even then their naval power was not considered a meaningful threat. In the bleak time, the submarine Hr.Ms. Walrus managed to earn an important propaganda victory by sneaking up on the Chinese invasion fleet and torpedoing ten ships, including the RCANs only carrier, the Liaoning. With the removal of of much of their naval air power and Indonesia unofficially helping Formosa with the deployment of two squadrons of fighters, the invasion became much more difficult.
Difficult but not impossible.
For the next three months, Ceylon was under constant attack from the air and (occasionally) from the sea, with international press likening the battle to the Battle of Norway fought fourty years previous.
Unlike Brazil and Indonesia, the United Provinces began organising a relief force the moment the prime minister received news of the invasion. This was not an easy task, for the military had been hampered by repeated budget cuts and the navy hoarding all the funding to keep the fleet modern.
Even then the force was a shadow of the RNs past, with only half of its ships being modern and the other half consisting of everything that could fight. The army was even forced to rent armoured vehicles from Germany and scavenge a museum for support equipment.
Undeterred, admiral Rudolf ten Boom sailed out to the Pacific anyway.
When they finally arrived, they were met by a Chinese fleet waiting for them. The battle would reestablish the Dutch navy as world class, with the Chinese being forced to withdraw after suffering dozens of losses. In the pursuit, the majority of their fleet would be wiped out by a combination of Dutch airstrikes and missile barrages.
With naval superiority ensured, the relief force where free to land as they saw fit. While special force units such as the BLD and KCT destroyed radar and missile sites, the marines were landing on the beaches. De Ruyter’s Boekanier jump jets would become invaluable during the war. Able to take off and land from short runways, they provided ground forces with rapid air support, recon and acting as fighters in a pinch.
The battle for air superiority would be an endless fight of back-and-forth, with AA systems and De Seventien Provincien’s airwing securing air control long enough for bombers, gunships and AWACs to arrive from Formosa and support ground forces in pushing forward. Those aircraft would then be chased away the moment Chinese fighters arrived, by which point the whole circle would begin anew.
Despite the seeming stalemate of the conflict, the United Provinces were actually winning the war, with China losing both soldiers and ground at a far faster rate than the Dutch. Efforts to ship reinforcements to Hainan regulary ended massacres, with submarines and frigates picking of both the cargo ships and their escorts at will.
After one month of fighting, the vital Qionghai Air Base finally fell back in Dutch hands, who quickly began work on repairing it. The victory marked the begining of the end of the war.
With an airfield on Hainan itself and fighters now being able to provide aircover around the clock , the Chinese war effort began to collapse in on itself. The final blow came on July the 5th, when Haikou was liberated by the 2nd army corps.
With no hope of victory and being guaranteed humane treatment as POWs, the last Chinese forces on Hainan officially surrendered the next day.
With their offensive power spent and Indonesia finally breaking their political deadlock to send a carrier group to join the Dutch fleet, Beijing admitted defeat.
With their confidence and world power status restored, the UP felt secure enough to take a more active role in League of European Nations policy making. No longer would the League be dominated solely by Spanish or German interests. Dutch support would secure international intervention in the Yugoslav and the West African Federation civil wars.
At home prime minister Lubbers used his popularity to push through a series of economic reforms and an enlarged military budget.
After the war, owning werchandise featuring Wallie the Walrus became a minor sign of patriotism as nationalism surged.