The Belorussian army had received the classic Red Army treatment in the early afternoon, a mass barrage by artillery, interjected with airstrike's. This had gone on unabated for three hours’ before the enemy armour had bulldozered forward to the riverbanks.
The Belorussians 1st Motor Rifle Regiment on the western bank had taken a heavy beating; infantrymen who had scrimped on the digging of trenches now wished they had not bluffed the way when the officers had come to inspect their work. Bending their knees as they stood in the firebay’s, to make the trench seem deeper than it was.
Those that weren’t immobile with fear, huddled at the bottoms of their trenches, took every opportunity to hack away at the earth whilst staying below the parapet of the trench. High explosive screamed into and moaned over their positions, isolating them from help. Airburst shells flung splinters of red-hot steel down onto unprotected heads, crouched in their holes.
02 delay fuses dug deep into the earth before exploding, throwing men bodily out of nearby trenches with their earthquake effect, or collapsing the trench walls on the occupants. Shells fused ‘Super Quick’, detonated on striking the treetops, wiping away natural cover and adding spears of timber to the airburst’s harvest.
New trees on the riverbanks that had grown in place of those destroyed in battles in 1941 and 43 went the way of their ancestors. Old trunks, which carried the scars of the earlier conflicts soon, bore fresh ones, or were splintered and scattered.
The barrage eventually came to include WP and white phosphorus rounds among the falling HE shells. The Geneva Convention forbids the use of WP as a weapon, limiting it to the provision of smoke screens, but there never seem to any observers around to enforce the rule.
WP burns on contact with the air, only immersion in water will quench it but it burns again once if brought into the air once more. WP will burn clean through a man, igniting his clothing and equipment as it does so. The particles have to be removed with non-metallic objects, preferably whilst immersed. If inhaled it will burn from the inside out.
Those defenders not under overhead cover, in the shelter of undamaged shelter bays, suffered miserable ends. Panicked out of their trenches they were soon cut down by shrapnel, if they remained in the trench their comrades often did the merciful act, ending their suffering with a bullet or entrenching tool. Whichever way they died, their fate added to the fear and mounting panic felt by those who remained.
The addition of WP hailed the coming of the enemy assault, using the smoke for cover, they advanced upon the banks. What direct fire weapons remained, undamaged in the forward Belorussian defences, had little effect on thinning the enemy ranks and none at all in slowing their charge.
Artillery fire on the western banks shifted to the rear, preventing Belorussian reinforcement, and AFVs and infantry took over direct fire suppression of the opposite bank.
This was the moment for the Belorussian artillery and ground attack aircraft to strike, whilst the enemy was amassed on the eastern bank and its approaches.
Belorussian Su-17 Fitters swept in from the west, intending to drop their CBU and napalm loads upon the enemy forces.
On the Belorussian airfields to the south, the air assets had dispersed where possible in the day following the attempted coup. Earlier this day, those aircraft that could refuel from NATO aerial tankers had loaded with ordnance and flown west. The NATO air forces attempted to make up for their armies inability to assist on the ground by refuelling the stacked combat aircraft that awaited the enemies attack upon their homeland.
Johar Kegin was one of the Belorussian pilots, the flight commander of four Su-17Ds, recently modified to perform a function that the original designers had not intended, aerial refuelling.
The hard points along the wings carried weapons, on the fuselage below the cockpit were two AA-8 Aphid air-air missiles for self-defence.
With the coming of the afternoon the air bases at Baranovichi, Lida and Roscha came under attack from air launched stand-off missiles, quickly followed up with direct attacks by fighter-bombers targeting runways, stores and maintenance areas. The air bases SA-10 Grumble derivative, the S-300 PMU1 Favorit systems, had been stood-to in readiness, the S-300s anti-cruise and anti-ballistic 46N6E missiles could engage the incoming from a range of 93 miles. Unfortunately, at Lida and Baranovichi the saboteurs had been at work before defecting to the communist side. The 83M6E2 command systems Tombstone 3D surveillance radars there were down; technicians were still working furiously to repair them when the attacks began.
At Roscha the story was different, the 83M6E2-command system was capable of attacking targets approaching at up to 2700m per second simultaneously, and the airfields three self-propelled 5P85S 8x8 TELs, transporter-erector-launcher vehicles quad launchers moved into the vertical plane as the threat was picked up 150 miles out.
Once launched, the single-stage missiles accelerated to their maximum 2km per second speeds and guided from the ground they singled out their individual targets, ranged at altitudes of 200 to 1000ft. Behind the first wave of attackers came a second and third, loosing off their missiles before going to afterburner and fleeing east. Each wave of attackers launched thirty missiles at the airbases, as the defenders scrambled to attach fresh launch canisters on the TELs.
All twelve ready missiles were launched at the first wave of incoming, killing all ten attacking air launched weapons but no fresh missiles were ready for the second wave and only four for the third. All ten missiles of the second wave were aimed at Roscha’s air defence command and control centre, they struck as the defenders launched on the third wave, the second wave of attacking missiles being within minimum range by that time. When the command centre went off the air the four Favorits in the air switched to their CLAM SHELL internal radar for guidance, normally used for the terminal stage of the intercept and with far less range. Only one acquired an incoming cruise missile, its frame absorbed 19g of lateral force as it banked hard to intercept. Five miles out from Roscha the Favorits 145kg warhead obliterated the attacker.
With the Belarus long-range defences silenced, fighter-bombers sped in to drop their ordnance on specified targets. To meet them on the ground the Belorussian airfield defence forces had shoulder launched SA-7 SAMs and ZSU-23-4 Self-Propelled 23mm AA and ZSU-55-2 Self-Propelled 55mm AA vehicles. The ZSUs were the primary targets but seventeen attackers fell to their guns before they were all silenced.
On the ground at Lida the scene was that of chaos, on the flight line those unserviceable aircraft that had remained now burned, their smoke and flames joined those of the fires at the tank farm, control tower and hangers. Airfield defence troops with small arms aimed twelve to sixteen aircraft lengths ahead of the attackers as they screamed overhead. SAMs left smoky trails in the air as they chased or sped to intercept approaching fighter-bombers. In and around Lida thirteen attackers lay burning, a further five limped home trailing smoke before the attacks finished.