Firestorm: Red Thunder

General Leadgend settled into the seat in the Mi24. He had had to leave his veterans in the Ruhr to take command of newly raised troops in the homeland. US forces had pushed through the Hof Corridor and were heading for Berlin! They had to be stopped but would green troops with equipment long in storage or still fresh from the factory and untried be up to the task? There was only one way to find out. The ground outside was rushing closer. Battle would soon be joined.

It was still an hour before dawn when the recon zug at the head of his advancing column reported encountering US forces! Without time to wait for the full force to arrive the forward elements deployed, spreading out to fix the location of the invaders. Soon recon BMPs on the right flank reported contact with and destruction of enemy APCs. Infantry pushed forward toward a prominent hill.

The Americans moved their tanks forward and opened fire. How they advanced so rapidly through Hof now became apparent, they had dramatically improved their night vision equipment and firepower of their weapons. Our infantry were cut down like wheat and the guns of their tanks found us no matter the excellence of our camouflage.

Now that the Americans had revealed their positions by firing our forces surged forward to destroy them. But the inexperienced East German troops had trouble finding the range in the dark and the old ammunition supplied often failed to penetrate the american's armour. Our tanks had formed a column to advance but when the firing stopped the Americans were still there almost untouched!

Again the Americans fired a devastating volley and we lost more vehicles. However the companies and platoons held on with their last vehicles and our tanks and BMP1s raced to get flanking shots.

Again our under trained troops failed to hit the american tanks however the BMPs and PKMs thinned out their infantry on the right.

Daylight finally dawned but only in time for the americans destroy our flanking forces. With our T72s burning and the rest of the force still to arrive the few remaining tanks turned and fled leaving the fight to our infantry.

After the tanks had left the remaining BMPs took out some M901s and their infantry on the right but a last desperate attempt to destroy some M163s on the left by our infantry failed in a hail of 20mm cannon fire and nothing was left to stop the American tanks occupying their objectives.