Battlefield Pacific

Operation Nordic Thunder

Command Sergeant Major Luke Childers walked up to Lieutenant Colonel Alex Schoolman, who was squinting as he looked off in the distance with his field glasses, trying to see if he could spot any enemy tanks or other armored vehicles. His squadron was screening for a much larger tank force that was a couple of kilometers behind him, waiting for the word to advance forward and smash into the Russian lines once Schoolman’s unit found the enemy.

“What are your thoughts, Sergeant Major? You see anything?” he asked, hoping that Childers’ trained eyes might see something he was missing.

Childers scanned to the right with his own field glasses and then zoomed in on something that caught his eye. “There you are,” he said under his breath. A smile crept across his face.

“Yes, Sir. To my three o’clock, near the edge of those trees,” Childers responded. “If you look close enough, you’ll see the barrel from what’s probably a T-90.” He pointed in the direction of where the enemy tank was lurking.

“Good eye, Sergeant Major,” Schoolman said. He turned to some of the soldiers standing behind him. “Someone plot the grid to that location and send it back to brigade. Let’s see if we can get some artillery fire in that tree line and smoke these guys out of their position,” he ordered.

A flurry of activity happened around them as one of the soldiers guided one of the Stryker vehicles forward so they could use the laser range finder on the 105mm cannon. In a few minutes, they had the exact grid of the enemy tank. They relayed that to the artillery battalion for a fire mission to hit the tree line and see what else they could stir up. Five minutes later, they heard the whistling sounds of artillery rounds flying overhead toward the enemy lines.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Geysers of dirt and tree parts billowed upward. Several large secondary explosions flashed in the woods. Then the counterbattery fire kicked in. The distinct whistles of enemy artillery raced over their heads in the direction of their own artillery battalion.

A loud whoosh rushed in the opposite direction. A pair of A-10 Warthogs flew in and strafed the forest, hitting several other tanks. Their attack was swiftly followed by multiple streams of antiaircraft fire as the Russian gunners tried to swat the tank busters from the sky. The 25mm and 30mm rounds crisscrossed the sky, intermixed with a few MANPADS that flew after the aircraft.

As the artillery duel continued and Allied warplanes took turns softening up the Russian lines, the mechanical sound of tanks — dozens upon dozens of tanks — and the low rumbling that shook the ground got closer and louder as the Allied tanks moved forward to their attack positions. Finnish and German tanks moved forward first; they would lead the assault, supported by American Apache gunships and the 2^nd Cavalry Regiment. A battalion of American Abrams tanks were being held in reserve while the rest of the 1^st Armored Division was further north of their position near Tillola.

Turning to look behind them, Childers almost felt a chill run down his back as he saw columns of German Leopard II tanks with their black Iron Crosses painted on them, advancing toward the Russians. They started to change their formation from a single-file column to a full-abreast attack line. While the first line formed, a second line of German tanks formed up and was quickly followed by a third line, this time a Finnish unit. The three armored lines were quickly being followed up by column after column of infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

“This is going to be an epic battle,” Sergeant Major Childers thought with glee.

He snapped a couple of pictures from his miniature camera. When he could, he had been sneaking pictures with his digital camera, documenting his participation in the war. Aside from a few mementos for himself, he thought they might hold some historical value someday.

Explosions reverberated through the air as Oberstleutnant Hermann Wulf’s 25^th Panzergrenadier Battalion of forty-four Puma infantry fighting vehicles raced to keep up with the Panzers that were charging right into the Russian lines. Sitting behind the gunner, Wulf was looking at the video monitor display of what was happening in front of them. He could see red-hot tank rounds crisscrossing back and forth between the two opposing forces.

Bam! Boom!

Their vehicle was rocked by a near-miss, forcing Wulf to grab for something to hold on to. The driver of the vehicle somehow managed to keep them from rolling over. The soldier manning the vehicle’s 30mm autocannon fired at an unseen target. Then a slew of bullets hit their armored shell, reminding them that the enemy also got a vote in the fighting. This was by no means going to be a one-sided fight.

Wulf’s radio crackled. “Oberstleutnant, the Panzers are breaking to the right. It looks like they found a hole in the enemy lines. Should we follow them or dismount and fight here?” asked one of his company commanders.

“No, stay with the Panzers,” Wulf answered. “Our mission is to support their advance and keep the Russian infantry off their backs. We’ll let the Finns deal with this group of Russians.” Their driver did his best to follow the group of tanks that were now rushing through a hole in the enemy lines.

Wulf looked at the video image being relayed to his screen from the small aerial drone a thousand meters above them. The drone was giving him a wide top-down view of the battle happening around them. He could see several of his vehicles had been destroyed, while many others were heavily engaged with an unseen enemy at the edges of their flanks. Seeing them fighting off to the side meant they were doing their job, keeping the Russian infantry from getting too close to the tanks and firing off their RPGs and other antitank weapons.

Scanning further ahead of where the Panzers were headed, he saw several strong points that might prove challenging for the tanks to overcome. He signaled to the Air Force LNO traveling with him to see if they could get some air support to hit those units.

“Move the drone higher, I want to get us a better overview of the battle,” he said to the young soldier manning the battalion’s eye in the sky.

Boom!

Another explosion rocked their vehicle, slapping it with shrapnel as they continued to keep up with the tanks. The gunner let loose a series of short bursts from their main gun at a target Wulf couldn’t see.

When the drone reached one thousand meters, he saw a cluster of Russian tanks forming up on the opposite side of a small village they were approaching. Spotting the unit, Wulf looked up the frequency to the Panzer unit closest to them, then sent them a quick message, alerting to what he had found. The Panzer unit adjusted their approach to the village while an artillery strike was ordered in.

Looking at the scene unfolding around them was almost like watching a video game or movie; yet this was very real. Groups of tanks and soldiers on the ground were moving into positions to attack and kill each other, and here he sat, in his armored vehicle, observing it. In minutes, he saw a series of elongated tubes slam into the ground, hitting some of the buildings in the small village, blowing them apart as the rocket artillery pummeled the combatants. Minutes turned to hours, and the day turned to night before the battle was finally over, leaving behind a trail of burnt-out wrecks of armored vehicles and torn and twisted bodies.

The tank battle between the German 21^st Panzer Brigade and the Russian 3^rd Motor Rifle Division and 1^st Separate Guards Tank Brigade raged on for nearly six hours as both sides fought viciously before the Russians were forced to withdraw. Once the US 1^st Armored Division punched through the Russian lines at Tillola, the Russians had to pull their armor group back to the Russian border and the positions their engineers had been busy building the past several months.

Operation Nordic Thunder would continue for another two months as the Allies fought hard in northern Finland and Norway to push the Russians’ northern operation back to the Russian border. While the fighting had been fierce, it had accomplished its goal of removing the Russians from the Nordic countries and forcing the Russians to divert forces from Western Europe to strengthen their northern border or face the likelihood of a possible threat to St. Petersburg. While the number of troops involved in Nordic Thunder paled in comparison to the armies being assembled on the Continent, it kept the Russians from being able to commit to a large summer offensive as they had to divert significant numbers of reinforcements to keep the Allies from pressing into Russia proper and potentially threatening their second-most-important city.