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This piece is a snippet from a story on another forum that I am collaborating on with another writer who previously posted here. I hope it's not inappropriate for me to be posting this here, but I wanted to showcase some of the writing from that story here as well. Any comments are appreciated. Here is the link to the full story: http://alternate-timelines.proboards.com/thread/2413/eagle-guardian-war-2010



Forty-Nine


The Danish government had not considered an amphibious assault on Zealand to be a realistic possibility should war break out, as was happening now, due to the perceived lack of amphibious transport ships available to Moscow in the region. Though several such vessels had been moved to the Baltic Fleet from the Black Sea Fleet earlier in the year, it was thought that this was merely for training and intimidation purposes, or at worst for use against the Baltic States, where any conflict would surely be confined too?

Like many European governments, the Danish leadership had been caught up in wishful thinking, and was not even sure that there would be a war, let alone one fought on Danish territory. The junta in Moscow, however, had different ideas. Zealand sat directly in the Baltic Approaches, and planning for the armed seizure of the island had been underway since the days of Joseph Stalin, remaining constantly updated throughout the Cold War. Denmark was by no means an easy target, but nor did she have much in the way of defensive infrastructure and planning.

NATO’s drafted Eagle Guardian battle plan did not take into account ground fighting in the Baltic Approaches; there were no NATO reinforcements tapped specifically to cover the region, unlike during the Cold War, when an entire NATO command had been in place for its defence.

The initial assault by Russian forces on the Danish island of Zealand occurred shortly after the initial wave of cruise missiles struck their targets. Structured as a rifle company, nearly two hundred men from the 16th Spetsnaz Brigade disembarked from a charter aircraft on the tarmac at Copenhagen International Airport, the largest on the island. Wearing the uniforms of Russian regulars and armed with assault rifles, anti-tank missiles, and mortars, the Spetsnaz troops rapidly secured the airport against minimal resistance.

As the airport was secured, a much larger force of Commando Frogmen, the naval Spetsnaz arm, disembarked from a Ukrainian-flagged freighter ship docked at the city’s main harbour. Their success was similar, though casualties were incurred as they fanned out to secure the port.

Half a dozen Ropucha-class landing ships, as well as numerous other amphibious assault vessels, appeared on the horizon shortly after five in the morning. The Danish government had been moved to a military command post at an Air Force base on the mainland hours before, as word was received that President Obama had been assassinated and then information began flowing in about the commando and terrorist strikes were taking place in both the United States and Europe.

Units from the Royal Danish Army’s 2nd Infantry Brigade moved to react to the invasion, facing harassment from naval gunfire as they did so. Based across Zealand, the formation was equipped with Leopard-2 tanks as well as infantry fighting vehicles and man-portable missiles. The 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion began moving out of its barracks at Antvorskov as the initial Russian landings took place. With command and control in chaos as a result of air, cyber and Spetsnaz operations, the Danish mechanised battalion was routed for Copenhagen, where it expected to meet light resistance from a largely infantry force.

Instead, however, nearly two thousand men from the Baltic Fleet’s 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, equipped with T-80s, as well as BMP-2 fighting vehicles and BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers were now disembarking at the dockyards secured by naval Spetsnaz. Flying from airfields around St. Petersburg, Su-24 Fencer of the Russian Air Force repeatedly bombed targets around Copenhagen as the landings took place. Within the city itself, the Russians were opposed by the Danish 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion, garrisoned at Hovelte.

Russian Marines pushed into the city after repeated airstrikes against their opponents. Opposing the Fencers in the sky above were the F-16s of the Royal Danish Air Force. Though their bases had already come under cruise missile attack, the F-16 pilots had taken to the skies in force and were able to knock down no less than seven Russian strike aircraft. The fighters escorting the strike aircraft repeatedly found themselves engaged with Polish and German fighters while en route for Zealand, thus preventing them from being able to assist the strike fighters. The fighting quickly moved into the city of Copenhagen itself. T-80 tanks belonging to the 336th Guards Brigade’s armoured battalion clashed with Danish Leopard-2s in tight urban engagements, with the Russians pushing further inland by the hour as building after building was raised to the ground.

The Danes resisted fiercely, damaging the harbour facilities where possible but failing to prevent the landing of additional Marines and their heavy armour. There were a few Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters available to the naval infantry, flown from the decks of the small fleet of destroyers and frigates which covered the amphibious assault by specially-trained crews. They provided support with rockets and missiles, but three of their number were knocked down by RDAF F-16s.

The Royal Danish Air Force high command was pressuring the government for permission to bomb the harbours and dockyards that had already fallen into Russian hands, but the government was extremely reluctant to authorise such operations, given the high number of civilians caught up in the area. Nevertheless, they eventually relented, allowing for major airstrikes by Danish and other NATO aircraft to take place in and around Copenhagen; by this time, naval infantry units were in the process of erecting an SA-11 surface-to-air missile battery around the harbour, to provide more effective air cover than the mobile SAMs moving in with the marines.

An attempt was made to crater the runway of Copenhagen International Airport, while the 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion attempted to push southeast and separate the airport from the harbour where the Marines had landed; this effort was a total failure, with T-80 tanks blasting their way through the hastily-assembled defences sitting between the two landing sites. Two tanks and numerous armoured vehicles were knocked out by Danish missile crews as fighting spread throughout the city of Copenhagen. The Danes were struggling to bring about artillery support as well, while Russian troops could call in fires from the destroyer and trio of frigates waiting nearby.

The streets of Copenhagen were alive with gunfire as countless buildings were raised to the ground by repeated naval and aerial bombardments. Numerous bridges were destroyed and fleeing civilians jammed the roads. As the 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion began moving towards Copenhagen, yet another disaster would strike. Russian Su-24 jets roared over the highways down which the convoy of troops were advancing, unleashing not only conventional bombs but two massive thermobaric weapons as well.

Those thermobaric bombs sucked in the oxygen from all around them, sometimes with such force that Danish infantrymen had their lungs torn out through their mouths as they tried to breath. Countless others died in the fires while many were horrifically maimed. In total, nearly four hundred Danish soldiers had died in the attack. The 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion had yet to fire a shot in anger, and yet it was already combat ineffective.

The 2nd Infantry Brigade had two more battalions, but those were ‘cadre’ formations who would need more time mobilising. Soldiers had only been ordered to report to their barracks several hours before the outbreak of fighting, due to the Danish government’s reluctance to engage in activities that might have been seen as provocative towards Moscow. Only as the Dutch and British commandos had stormed a freighter ship crewed by Russian commandos bound for Rotterdam did the Danish government finally order a full mobilisation of its forces, and by then it was already too late.

A smaller, secondary force of about seven hundred marines began landing at Koge, splitting the attention of the Royal Danish Army.

The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, was now joining in the fray after recovering from the initial bombardment, and soon the Tornado strike jets based at airfields along the Baltic coast of Germany were in the air, bombing the Koge landing site though holding back from hitting Copenhagen directly. As dawn broke and fighting continued in the island, German jets were able to sink one of the Ropucha landing ships in a daring low-level airstrike, along with a smaller Air-Cushioned Landing Craft (LCAC). Despite the efforts of the Luftwaffe and the Royal Danish Air Force, however, there was a full brigade of naval infantry fighting on Zealand by morning.

The Danish needed help, and they needed it fast.
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