Yesterda's War 5 - Untimely Conflicts, page 22
The Brigade commander and his company commanders selected the best of their men to make this drop. They all nervously sat in their paratroop seats during the flight, checking their weapons and equipment once last time while they waited for the green light to prepare for their jump.
Eventually, the jumpmaster ordered everyone to stand and attach their static lines to the steel cable that ran the length of the Dakota’s cargo compartment. Captain Solon was at the head of the line, waiting for the jumpmaster to open the side door in preparation for the jump.
A red light suddenly illuminated and the jumpmaster immediately opened the paratroop door. A few seconds later, the red light went off and a green light came on.
The jumpmaster quickly called out to the paratrooper in the front of the line.
“Saltar!”
Captain Solon leapt out of the paratroop door of the old C-47 Dakota, followed immediately by a line of twenty-seven other heavily armed troops. Because the drop occurred at less than two hundred meters altitude, none of the troops carried a reserve chute. The planners of the operation knew that at such a low altitude, there would never be enough time for a reserve parachute to be deployed in time.
The Argentine paratroop company commander immediately breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the sudden yank of his canopy opening. The sky above him was filled with a nightmarish scene of lines of tracers, punctuated by the images of burning transports going across the night sky like fiery comets, eclipsed by Hector’s parachute canopy above him.
He floated downward for only a few seconds before he heard his pack dangling below him slam into the ground. That was the only warning that Hector had that he was about to reach the ground. Hector silently thanked God that he was already in the proper paratroop landing position when his boots touched the ground.
“Oooof” Hector grunted as he landed toes first, then rolled over to spread out and reduce the impact of landing. Just as soon as he stopped rolling, the Argentine company commander quickly released his parachute harness, gathered up his chute and then ran towards where his pack had landed.
Hector’s Argentine-produced FN FAL battle rifle had been strapped to him throughout the drop in a special case. He also carried a licensed copy of the Colt M1911A1 45 caliber pistol as his sidearm. But Hector’s pack carried much of his ammunition, food, water and a variety of pyrotechnics, like virtually all of his fellow paratroopers.
In the darkness, it was very difficult for the paratroopers to find each other and get organized. But like most soldiers, when Captain Solon heard the sound of small arms fire in the general direction of the targeted airfield, he instinctively knew to move towards the battle. He would surely find more of his paratroopers along the way.
Within the first twenty minutes, Captain Solon had encountered three more Argentine paratroopers, two from his stick and a third from another company. They verified their identities after being challenged by Hector and providing the appropriate passphrase.
“Cabo, Have you found any other paratroopers since you landed?” Captain Solon asked Corporal Luis Aragon.
“No, Capitan. But it does appear that there must be others closer to the aeropuerto, Señor. You can hear the gunfire, clearly.”
“Then we must go and join our compadres. Failure is not an option for us. We will go and make our nation proud of us. Carga hacia Adelante!” Hector ordered the others as he ran towards the sound of the guns, weapons at the ready.
Hector had landed over a mile away from the Brazilian airfield perimeter, but eventually, he and the soldiers that he had gathered on the way finally reached the perimeter fence. They encountered five additional men waiting just outside while one of them was busy cutting a hole in the fence.
Hector quietly approached and took charge of this group, immediately doubling the size of his group of paratroopers.
“Sergento, how many of these men here have explosives with them still?” Hector asked the senior enlisted paratrooper now in his team, Alfonso Gutierra.
“Si, Capitan. Each of us has a satchel charge and several fragmentation hand grenades. We also have a pair of thermite grenades and three rifle grenades.
“We have four more satchel charges in addition to our standard complement of hand grenades. While this is not ideal, we have enough to destroy or disable multiple aircraft. Once we have finished penetrating the perimeter fence and reaching the enemy aircraft, we will need to focus on their combat aircraft first.
The intelligence photographs showed that most of the enemy’s combat aircraft are either inside of hangars or are in protected revetments. That will make it difficult for explosions from one aircraft to spread to others. So that we will have to do the best that we can.
Use only one satchel charge or grenade per aircraft. We cannot afford to waste any on the enemy defenders. Put the explosives in the cockpit or engine intake. If you run out of explosives, then shoot into the engine intake with your weapon to ruin the engine. The more aircraft that we can destroy or heavily damage, the better that it will be for our compadres fighting elsewhere.
Is everything clear?” Hector asked the other paratroopers just as the breach in the fence was finally complete.
“Si, Capitan!” The others quietly affirmed.
“Now, let’s go raise as much hell as possible. You all are already heroes that your families will be very proud of.” Hector said as he popped through the hole in the fence and ran towards a taxiway and its line of revetments, followed closely by the other eight paratroopers.
The amount of automatic weapons fire, combined with sporadic explosions, made it clear to Hector that his team was not the only one that had penetrated the perimeter. But apparently, Hector’s men had come in from an unexpected direction because he soon saw a Brazilian machine gun emplacement, protected by stacks of sandbags in front of him.
But the Brazilian machine gunners were facing away from the direction that Hector and the others were approaching. The Brazilians were firing towards what was probably other Argentine paratroopers.
Hector did not want to waste any of their grenades or other explosives on the Brazilian emplacement. But it needed to be neutralized before he and the others could reach their target. Also, by taking out the machine gun, Hector would be saving the lives of other Argentine paratroopers and allowing them to complete their mission as well.
So, Hector pulled out his bayonet and silently motioned for the others in his team to do the same. Then, the paratroopers all moved quickly towards the emplacement with either bayonets on the ends of their FAL rifles or in their hands. With all of the noises of gunfire and explosions, the paratroopers were able to reach the machine gun bunker without be in seen or heard until they were directly upon the four Brazilian soldiers manning it. The Brazilians were quickly overwhelmed.
Ironically, the Brazilian Army soldiers protecting the airfields were also armed with their own version of the FN FAL. The same was true for the Brazilians manning their machine-gun nests with the same FN MAG machine gun that the Argentine soldiers employed. Several of these machine guns were dropped by parachute for use by the Argentine paratroopers during the raid. So Hector and his team were able to easily operate the newly captured weapons and acquire more ammunition for their own weapons.
“Capitan, my regular weapon is the squad machine gun like this one. I could cover you from here while you attack the enemy aircraft.” Cabo Enrique Esteban told Hector after they made a quick inventory of the weapons and ammunition that they had captured.
“Bueno, Cabo. The others and I will move up to destroy the enemy warplanes.” Hector quickly said before moving ahead with the rest of his team.
The first aircraft that they encountered was a French-built Super Mystere jet fighter-bomber. Hector immediately armed a grenade and tossed it through the warplane’s nose intake before running toward the next revetment. The grenade exploded deep within the fuselage that immediately started a fire that eventually engulfed the aircraft.
The next three revetments also contained more of the Brazilian Air Force’s most modern jets. Hector’s men similarly destroyed them. The explosions and fires soon drew the attention of Brazilian soldiers. Hector discovered this when he suddenly heard a machine gun open fire behind him.
At first, he dove to the ground, expecting that the airfield’s defenders had discovered him and were firing at him and his men. But then, Hector saw half a dozen Brazilian soldiers lying on the ground. He looked over towards the machine gun nest where he had left Cabo Esteban. Enrique was waving at Hector to let him know that the threat had been dealt with.
Hector and his men ran towards the next line of aircraft. These were former American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers that had been purchased after the end of the Pacific War. These aircraft had been heavily modified as strafers with more than a dozen heavy machineguns firing forward. Attacks by these aircraft had inflicted heavy casualties upon Argentine troops along the border with Brazil.
Hector could see the aggressive tigershark’s mouth that had been painted on the nose of each of the bombers, accentuating the aircraft’s heavy armament. These large aircraft soon became the targets of the high explosive satchel charges that the paratroopers carried.
Hector and his team ran from the burning bombers looking for more targets. By now, they had used up all of their satchel charges and most of their grenades as well. As the morning sun had started to rise in the sky, Brazilian troops had started to flood onto the airfield to hunt down the Argentine paratroopers. Several dozen plumes of smoke rose into the sky from the wreckage of burning aircraft all over the airfield.
During the course of the night, Hector had lost half of his men due to enemy fire. But they kept on their mission of destruction. But now, they had lost the cover of night.
“What are we going to do now, Capitan? We can no longer move around without being seen.”
“We simply find covered positions and hope that we can avoid being found until nightfall, then try to slip away.” Hector told his remaining paratroopers.
Moving away from the airfield itself, Hector and his men were between buildings when a sudden burst of automatic fire cut down two of his remaining paratroopers. Hector and Corporal Aragon were able to get away from the hidden attackers and find cover. But there was no place left for them to go now.
Hector and Luis lay on the ground firing their last rounds at the growing number of Brazilian soldiers that were moving towards them. All of the others who had breached the airfield fence with Captain Solon were either now dead or had been captured.
“Luis, I think that it is time for us to surrender. We have done all that we can do now.” The paratroop captain said as he looked over at the long row of burning and exploding aircraft that they had accounted for. An Argentine AN-2 biplane also lay burning at the end of a runway after having been struck by heavy machine gunfire. That plane had been Hector’s only hope of escape for himself and his surviving paratroopers. Now, that hope had been dashed.
Si, Capitan. We have done what we came for.” Luis said as he somehow came up with a white handkerchief and began to tie it on the end of his empty rifle. Luis then lifted up the muzzle of his rifle and began to wave it in the air.
“Fique de pé! Mãos para cima!” The approaching Brazilian soldiers called out.
While neither Hector nor Luis understood Portuguese. They got the general idea of what they were being ordered to do. So they slowly got up to their feet with their hands held high over their heads, holding their useless weapons in their hands.
Two of the Brazilian soldiers pointed their rifles directly at the two Argentine paratroops while the rest of the Brazilians roughly disarmed their prisoners. Hector could tell from their voices how angry they were as his captors forced him and Luis to their knees. For a few moments, Hector was afraid that they were about to be shot.
Hector breathed a sigh of relief when he felt his hands being yanked behind his back and bound with rope. The same was done to the Argentine corporal next to him before both of them were then yanked to their feet.
Hector was then prodded to walk towards a group of buildings. He and Luis saw a couple of other Argentine paratroopers, but they were being led into another room. Hector smiled when one of them looked at him and mouthed the word “Bueno éxito”.
‘Great success!’
This gave Hector great peace of mind, even as he was shuffled into another room to be interrogated.
Chapter Thirty-One:
Cavill Industries Headquarters
Derby, Western Territories, Australia.
March 22, 1965
James Cavill was in his office working on some production documents when his oldest sister walked in. He looked up and quickly said ‘Hello’.
“I see that you are keeping busy, James.”
“You know already just how much work we have left to do for our plans to build six more nuclear reactor power plants in Australia and our new space launch vehicles, much less dealing with the incoming requests for bids on military equipment coming in all of the time. The situation with Beatrice set us back quite a bit, unfortunately.”
“At least we have Sarah back to help after she took some time off for maternity leave. I’m afraid that I am still going to be adding some more to your workload though, James. We just received a message from the Argentine government. They also want to purchase new equipment from us.” Judith told her younger brother.
“That was very quick. I was under the impression that peace negotiations were still underway. I would have thought that the Argentines would have waited at least until then before purchasing new warplanes.” James replied.
“Actually, they are much more interested in purchasing some of our AeroPacket transport aircraft. They have mentioned a total of seventeen aircraft so far with two of the requested aircraft also being of our new Titan tactical jet transports.”
“That actually makes sense considering that they lost almost their entire transport aircraft fleet in that crazy commando raid on three of the Brazilian Air Force’s primary airfields.”
“True, but that move turned the course of the entire conflict for Argentina. For the loss of two-thirds of a brigade of paratroopers and over a dozen transport aircraft, Argentina was able to gut virtually the entire land-based portion of the Brazilian Air Force. That gave control of the air back to Argentina. Argentina and Uruguay took full advantage of this, launched a new ground offense and forced Brazil to not only withdraw its troops back within its own borders but also to come to the negotiation table for peace talks.”
“Yes, Brazil certainly had Argentina on the ropes up to that point. I suppose that transport aircraft are a lot cheaper than state of the art jet fighters too.” James commented.
“Oh, I’m sure that Argentina and Brazil both will be in the market for new combat aircraft as well as armored vehicles and warships to replace combat losses. Both sides took some heavy losses and were reminded of the false economy of purchasing other countries’ cast-offs.”
“But Argentina still taught the Brazilians a lesson about how daring tactics can overcome material inferiority. No one would have guessed that Argentina would risk all of those troops in what was essentially a suicide mission.”
“You have to remember that for those men, it was a fight for their honor though. The paratroopers that survived that battle are going to come home as heroes.” Judith noted.
“They are also going to be very busy soon. The Argentine Army is going to have to use the survivors of the raid as cadre to train an entirely new corps of paratroopers.”
“That’s not all. Along with the request for fifteen AeroPackets, the Argentine military also expressed interest in some of our rotary-wing craft as well. Maybe they are interested in having the means of bringing their troops back home in something other than a prisoner exchange?”
That doesn’t surprise me at all. We will just have to see what they want and what we can produce for them. The Argentine Navy took some serious losses too, including heavy damage to their aircraft carrier. I would not be surprised at all if they come to us for replacements for their naval units and possibly also to obtain new jet fighter-bombers as well..”
“Argentina won’t be the only combatant looking to replace combat losses. Uruguay and Brazil will both be back in the market as well. But we have deliberately reduced our focus on major end items for military systems so that we can focus more on our space projects. So, Argentina may have to go elsewhere. Of course, our subsidiaries in England could benefit if the Argentines look there.” Judith noted.
“I’m not so sure about that. England and Argentina still have a standing disagreement concerning the Falkland Islands, not that such disputes have always gotten in the way of business. I remember reading from the database that the British had actually sold the Argentine Navy a pair of modern guided-missile destroyers only a few years before Argentina decided to invade the Falkland Islands in Father’s timeline.”
“I suspect that this time, the Royal Navy will be in far better condition to deter Argentina from any military adventures against the Falklands this time, thanks to our assistance.” Judith commented.
“I certainly hope so. Anyway, Brazil will probably go back to France though to replace their combat losses. They already have an existing business relationship and support infrastructure in Brazil.” James replied.
“That’s true. But they are going to have to replace almost all of their major surface warships in addition to enhancing their submarine force to counter the Argentine submarines. That means the purchase of new-build vessels, not just someone else’s second-hand warships. You can be certain that both nations will want to obtain all of the advantages that state-of-the-art military equipment can offer.”
