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Phase 24: Operation Citadel
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Part 3
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The next phase of the Clone Wars began when the Republic launched Operation Star Hammer – the campaign to liberate the Core and neutralize a the Separatists holdings in the central regions of the Mid Rim. Operation Citadel, launched from Kuat was a vital part of that strategic offensive. While Star Hammer itself achieved strategic success by declining to assault Corellia in its opening phase and instead concentrated on Randon and securing supply lines for its next step in the Mid Rim, Citadel could enjoy no such surprise. The Confederacy strategists always knew that the Republic would sooner or later move to neutralize Neimoidia and secure long contested Balmorra. At best, Admirals Konig and Tuul would have had short lived tactical surprise on their side.
There was no surprise. When Second Assault Fleet left Kuat, an event that long range detection stations at Neimoidia and Balmorra couldn't miss, there was no doubt about the destination, especially when the fleet divided in two distinct task forces…
"The great battles of the Clone Wars"
Czerka Publishing House
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Flag Bridge
Republic battle cruiser Avenger
TF Resolute Flagship
Balmorra
The only thing missing to make this irony any more cutting was Veil, the Sith himself leading the assault on Balmorra. The last time the Republic had to liberate this world, it was from the Sith, after Veil himself was the one to finally break the Old Republic backed resistance and secure it for the Empire. This time around, the Republic was allied with a Sith, fighting against Jedi backed madmen; in a nutshell, newly promoted Real Admiral Georg Tuul had yet another proof that the galaxy had gone insane while no one was paying attention.
"Sensors are clearing up. We've got heavy jamming, multiple point sources at Balmorra, both in orbit and on the surface. We're steadily burning through enemy jamming." Tactical reported.
In the middle of the Flag Bridge, a large holotank showed a detailed map of the system, though right now the only sure thing was the location of large celestial bodies and friendly units. Tuul had his capital ships arranged in a phalanx formation meant to maximize the heavy firepower of his battle cruiser divisions. There were four of them forming the nucleus of his fleet and while old, they had been upgraded as much as time and available resources allowed. Serrated ranks of cruisers – primary Venators with a smattering of Dreadnoughts formed around his heaviest ships, which anchored the formation. In between them, with more than enough space for independent manoeuvring, flew the escorts – hundred and twenty frigates and corvettes. Their primary job was to thin out enemy small craft swarms and intercept any and all ramming attempts.
At the back of the fleet flew ten Acclamators escorting twice their number of converted carriers – that was the planetary assault force, anaemic as it was. The bulk of the ground forces slatted for Operation Star Hammer were still back in friendly space waiting for the navy to establish clear space superiority before deploying to liberate worlds lost during the enemy's grand offensive. That in practice meant that the ground component of Tuul's fleet had a singular purpose – to establish a secure beachhead on Balmorra's surface, a safe place to land additional forces as they became available. The rough plan was that the three Clone Legions and two newly raised divisions should be able to succeed and hold with the help of liberal application of orbital bombardment. That more than anything else demonstrated how the war had grown progressively worse and more vicious. Less than an year ago, such tactics would have been unthinkable, not to mention, politically unacceptable as far as most Republic commanders and their political leadership were concerned.
Nowadays?
Unless the target planet was a friendly one slatted for liberation, liberal application of orbital firepower to conserve friendly ground forces was the SOP.
Honestly, Tuul wasn't sure what to think about that particular mess. What he knew for sure was that if he was one of those poor infantry types, he would be screaming for all the orbital support too when facing overwhelming number of droids, something that was a given. Intelligence, what was left of it anyway, claimed that the enemy has been busy hauling as many droids as possible to hold worlds in the Core and bleed the Republic dry as it tried to liberate them. It was a cold blooded strategy and unfortunately it might even work on the ground. In space, no chance in hell if Georg had anything to say about it!
"We're burning through enemy jamming. Confirming Balmorra SDF – they have been reinforced. Reading fifty percent more battleships compared to best case scenario." Tactical reported in a wry tone.
The best case scenario had been wishful thinking at best, pure fantasy at worst – just like pre-war and early war estimates of the enemy fleet size. Fifty percent about best case was good. That was actually less hardware than Tuul expected to face. The Kuati admiral silently watched and waited for the other shoe to drop. It was possible that the enemy had written off this system and merely had left enough forces to bleed Georg's fleet instead of trying to stop it cold. The enemy deployment made sense in that regard – they CIS fleet was deployed very close to the planet, within the gravity well, which meant that if things went wrong for them, the odds of escape were minimal.
They were also deep within the planetary defence grid and in order to get to them, Tuul would have to come well within its effective range, which was the point.
"The fleet will advance. Three quarters acceleration. Fire plan Besh." Clear up all mines and soft targets first to neutralize as much enemy firepower as fast as possible before concentrating on all those battleships. "Launch fighters, CSP only. Keep twenty five percent in reserve." Tuul continued.
Nearly two thousand Torrents, three wings of the new Z-95 interceptors and a few squadrons of various prototype small craft streaked out of their hangars and took position around and within the fleet.
There was no trace of enemy fighters, nor bombers. Just standard compliment for the already identified battleships would have put them at tens of thousands at least with more stationed on the planet – a potent force, very dangerous one in the days before Guardian. Now? It was entirely possible that every single small craft the CIS had in the region had been either concentrated at Neimoidia or pulled back towards Corellia. Either that or the enemy commander was feeling creative, which admittedly was something to be concerned about.
"Two minutes to effective weapon's range. Still no reaction from the enemy." Tactical reported the obvious. Oh, there were all kinds of targeting sensors sweeping all over the two fleets, however the CIS ships refused to move nor did they launch a single Vulture.
"I don't like this. Cut acceleration to one third and keep your eyes wide open." Tuul ordered. "Push the screen elements fifty thousand kilometres forward and have them engage the light fixed defences first. Release five fighter wings to sweep for mines and weapon satellites."
The plan went off without an accident until the two fleets entered effective firing range of each other. There were mines – swarms of them, hundreds of weapon platforms meant to deal with small craft or if they could concentrate their firepower – be a threat for smaller escorts. They died under a barrage of capital ship firepower, the guns of the escorts and starfighters throwing themselves into the fire and paying the according price. Over a hundred fighters and eleven damaged escorts were the price Tuul paid to open a hole in the defence perimeter and a way straight to the enemy fleet. The butcher's bill would have been much, much higher if the enemy's mobile elements had surged forth.
They didn't. In fact…
"Entering effective weapon's range. Fleet is firing for effect..." And the enemy moved back towards the planet.
"Tugs lit up, they were hidden behind the two defence stations. The stations are slowly moving our way. Fleet is engaging..."
Those stations wouldn't, couldn't last long against Tuul's heavy firepower. They didn't need to – they were a sacrificial offering. The enemy ships – both Luckrehulks and Munificent Frigates alike launched a few turbo-laser salvoes at extreme range before slowly entering Balmorra's atmosphere. What the hell?!
Obviously, this was a part of the enemy commander's brainstorm, it was just that it made no sense… No. It did make a perfect sense in hindsight. He outnumbered this enemy fleet by a significant margin. He had the firepower to engage and destroy them in a conventional engagement. He had to in order to secure the system and move on other objectives. With those ships safely protected by Balmorra's planetary shields and all anti-orbital weaponry that the CIS had built since the planet joined them, Tuul now had two very simple choices – set down for a protracted siege that would neutralize the bulk of his fleet as well as if they were destroyed or heavy damaged. Either that or assault anyway, which would rob him of most of his advantages. Balmorra's atmosphere was going to offer an additional layer of protection for the enemy ships from energy weapons and while this worked both ways, the ground based planetary defences would be powerful enough to extract a frightful toll upon his fleet – and that would be on top of the damage his ships would suffer in passing through the planetary shield. At least Balmorra didn't have one of the newest and most expensive systems that would prevent such an options and require to batter them down first – a long and expensive process in the first place.
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Part 4
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The assault on Neimoidia, which was the core objective of Operation Citadel, was notable for multiple factors. This was the first battle in which Kuat finally deployed its super capital ships and concentrated them in overwhelming numbers. While there were multiple Kuati battle cruisers and Star Dreadnought under the overall command of General Veil, he would only deploy them all together for a single battle during his part of operation Star Hammer. It was at Neimoidia that the galaxy truly saw the might of properly concentrated and competently commanded divisions of super capital ships, an event that would give birth to a new arms race.
Said battle is notable for another event – it was the last time both sides deployed large numbers of conventional small craft – starfighters and bombers, in both offensive and defensive roles. In its aftermath, small craft would play the role of an additional defensive ring around a fleet or converge on crippled enemy capital ships to finish them off. The deployment of new classes of heavy fighters and bombers, and the advent of the so called Mobile Armour would replace starfighters in the strike role relegating them to defensive tools in space.
Third and perhaps most impactful in the short term was the casualties both sides suffered. Confederate resistance both in space, and later on the ground was determined, fanatical even. If the Republic military and political leadership had any illusions about how easy it might have been to recapture the Core, Neimoidia shattered them.
The impact on morale and expectations was most keenly felt among the civilian population because of the final most notable event the Assault of Neimoidia is known for. This was the first battle in the war where the great majority of warship crews and ground forces slated to invade the planet were not Clones…
"The great battles of the Clone Wars"
Czerka Publishing House
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Flag Bridge
Kuati Star Dreadnought Defender
Neimoidia
Hundred and fifty thousand Vulture droids. No matter how you sliced and diced that number, it was an impressive amount of hardware. It wasn't exactly cheap in raw resources, build time nor money. Rough estimates citing pre-war prices put the price of a Venator as an equivalent of about 1200 to 1500 such fighter droids. Mass production, war economy and upgrades to both the Vultures and the Republic cruisers naturally distorted such crude assessment even further.
Still, the first thing that clued Admiral Konig about what bug nest she was about to kick in was the fact that the enemy threw the rough monetary value of a hundred Venators at her force as a mere probing attack. The Vultures didn't make it past the defence rings surrounding her fleet in enough numbers to case any real damage, which was the only good news. They first had to tangle with a spread of heavy capital missiles with antimatter warheads, fuelled by antimatter too. When those detonated within the leading swarms, they vaporized thousands of fighters and left many more drifting dead in space with their internals turned into irradiated wrecks. The remaining droids immediately scattered, spreading out not to remain big juicy targets. That in turn meant significantly reduced casualties by the next two missile salvoes, which was more than acceptable trade-off. The Guardian systems, escorts and thirty thousand Torrent fighters the fleet carried were more than up to the task of shredding the dispersed swarm.
However, reducing the probe didn't come without price. Nearly a thousand starfighters died while throwing themselves at the Vultures, twenty corvettes emerged from the engagement as little more than drifting wrecks leaking air and at least three times their number were damaged to some extent. Still, this was a fair trade – before Guardian and the new missiles, such a droid fighter swarm would have been a deadly threat to Konig's fleet.
The next stage of the battle was up to the Republic small craft. Konig unleashed nearly ten thousand Torrents as an escort for three thousand bombers – nearly half the Y-Wings she had at her disposal. They converged upon the closest Screen obscuring Neimoidia flying on the heels thousands of missiles launched by her capital ships. Small defence stations, weapon platforms and a simply ridiculous amount of mines met the strike craft – those defences had to be cleared out the hard way and Konig's people were up to the task. Antimatter fire, proton torpedoes and even old fashioned fusion warheads lit up Neimoidia's skies as one of the Screens simply shattered under the onslaught.
It took a few moments for the fleet's sensors to cut through enemy jamming, radiation and exotic particles produced by the battle and for the first time in more than a year, the Republic saw Neimoidia clearly. The orbitals around the planet had been turned into a deadly gauntlet. In the visible sector of space alone, Konig could make no less than four Gollan battle stations, hundreds of large defensive platforms of an unknown class – something likely locally designed and certainly locally build, then there were the mobile forces. Behind the destroyed screen hid at least thirty battleships, over a hundred frigates and destroyers… and another hundred thousand Vultures, which were busy accelerating towards her exhausted small craft.
"Pull our fighters and bombers back. Red-line the engines and prepare for emergency deceleration. I want spread of special ammunition to cover our small craft's retreat." Konig wasted no time in issuing orders.
Neimoidia was going to be a very tough nut to crack, as expected and planned for. Too bad, for the enemy, that Belinda didn't forget to pack the biggest hammer the Republic had available.
What followed was the largest furball Admiral Konig had ever seen. While the Separatists kept their capital ships safely within the orbital defences, they continued to feed more and more Vultures into the cauldron. Seeing no other choice, Belinda sent more and more of her escorts into the fray, even whole Venator divisions in order to add the guns of their Guardian systems into the fight. That was when the enemy commander finally released a few divisions of their own capital ships. Konig's saw them emerge from the other side of the planet, coming over its north pole, just skimming over the gravity well. Six Battleships complete with escorts made a hyperspace jump right above the furball and while the Munificent frigates threw themselves into the fray, the Lucrehulks rotated to keep their hangar entrances safe and launched more small craft.
"Two can play this game. Seventh and Eleventh Venator divisions, execute a hyperspace insertion on the flank of those Battleships and return the favour." Konig ordered.
Six Venators and their escorts detached from the top of the Republic formation and soon blinked out of existence. When they emerged on the Lucrehulk's flank, the Venators rotated too in order to present their lower side of to the enemy while their hangar doors opened to disgorge squadrons of fresh Y-Wing bombers. At this range, the enemy Umbrella system couldn't stop them all, especially as it had to content with short range mass torpedo strikes launched from pods added to the Republic escorts.
From then on, the fighting simply grew more vicious and desperate for both sides.