I'm quite confident most of you have heard the news if not participated in it, but I was entrusted by Herr Weissman to write a report of the occasion. This night was nothing I've ever seen. I have fought against the Libertonians over numerous occasions, some of them even in Hamburg, but it is definitely not the same when they have a whole battlefleet on our doorsteps.
I was off duty when the situation erupted, walking down the streets of Hamburg to find an open pu... I mean a shop. The streets were dark, there were barely any people to be seen out in the cold evening. Good thing I had my temperature-contolled Military coat still on, so didn't freeze to death. All of a sudden, I heard something I never heard before. The Hamburg Planetary Alarm went off. The Rathaus started broadcasting on all loudspeakers ordering the civilians to get to their homes and the Military personell to get to their positions. I was lucky that an APC came by carrying a squad of Sturmtruppen to the Base and the Feldwebel in charge offered to take me along since "pilots were more important in defence" as he phrased it.
Fortunately, I got to the launch pad just in time, but I still had no idea what was going on. There were soldiers and technicans running all around shouting in the comms and at each other, I was trying to reach a CO, but noone responded until Oberfeldwebel Weissman caught me on the comm channel. He quickly told me that a Libertonian battlegroup was spotted on the edge of the system and we were to intercept. I immediately ordered a deck officer to prepare my Snubnose for launch and I got out to the planet's orbit in a minute.
I'm afraid that I have to say the whole situation was anarchic at the beginning. Fighters, cruisers, battleships and even civilian vessels were flying in random directions all around Hamburg, some of them almost even collide with each other. The Libertonians have jammed our communications, we couldn't reach any officers or commanders, so we were left in space with a huge reserve division to control for Oberfeldwebel Weissman, who was in charge.
However, the surprise didn't last long. The Oberfelwebel ordered all ships to proceed to Westfalen in order to be prepared to counter the enemy threat while he tried to negotiate with the Libertonians. He asked them to leave, but the enemy vessels didn't show the slightest intention to do so. They were claiming to retaliate their lost comrades in the raid we pulled off earlier, but they should have learned a lesson from their losses and stayed away.
The negotiations didn't go well, the Libertonians kept pulling in more vessels instead of leaving our Vaterland, so Herr Weissman ordered us to take the trade lane to the Hudson gate, since the enemy ships started gathering a few clicks away from that particular position. My worried and uncomfortable mood quickly switched to rage as I spotted the three Battlecruisers and two Siege cruisers infesting our Vaterland. The capital ships were escorted by one-two gunboats and a remarkably low fighter escort, which consisted merely of two ships (probably two defenders, but I couldn't analise them during the engagement). Some of the Libertonian ships started to flee as soon as they spotted our incoming defence fleet, a gunboat designated as LNS Orlando was the only one I could register.
I have to admit, we were all a bit trigger happy and it almost ended up bad. Most of our ships (mainly the reserve pilots) were looking to grind them up and I was to destroy them before they get more reinforcements aswell. The captain of the RNC Oderschvank kept shouting "Attack! Attack!" on the comms channel, which almost ended up with the loss of the ship. Herr Weissman gave us the go code, but everyone was making a slow approach while the Oderschvank charged onto the enemy with cruise engines. Herr Weissman ordered the captain of the cruiser to cut the cruise engines, but it was too late. The ship was immediately fired upon by the enemy capital ships and was very heavily damaged. Thanks to the skill of the other pilots, the bomber squad quickly caught up and unleashed the real firestorm at the enemy vessels. The reserve pilots were a bit hard to be ordered to focus, so they mainly served as diversion while our bomber squad consistant of Herr Weissman, me and Herr Hauptgefreiter Drum kept the enemy vessels under continued Antimatter bombardment. The RNC Nagold and the battleship RNC Stormholm also caused heavy damage to the enemy vessels with their mortar fire, aiding the bomber squad in their work. Fortunately enough, the enemy vessels didn't seem to focus fire at all, they were shooting randomly at our ships, therefore failing to cause any sufficient damage after our bombers hit them.
The strike craft's first target was the LNS Columbia. For some reason, the RNC Oderschvank started shooting at the Battlecruiser designated as SLICE. Despite that, we managed to cause heavy damage to the Columbia's hull while using the disarray and surprise we caused, the RNC Stormholm got close and finished the job with Mortar fire. The bomber squad was ordered afterwards to focus on the SLICE, while the capital ships split fire on the other enemy capitals. Two siege cruisers, the Paulsurfer and the LNS Denver were destroyed successfully before we finished the SLICE up. The Vallu, another siege cruiser and the Furious Absolution, a LABC were the last ones to be taken down before the Libertonians started to retreat. I told the men not to pursue them so that they can tell back at home how they failed at their task, but Herr Drum and some reserve pilots pursued the Piipu and destroyed it before it got out of the system. The other ship, the Konah was shot down by our ships aswell.
The whole battle lasted for no more than a few minutes. The Military was completely victorious against the invaders. The LNS Orlando, a gunboat was the only one to get away, but it stayed in the system to taunt us afterward. We were to ignore him and returned to our stations to go off duty. There was a smaller celebration following the event, we drank on Herr Weissman for being a successful leader and the rest for being wunderbar pilots. Special thanks goes to the members of the reserve fleet, it would have been harder without them.
Quote:Here's a complete list of participants in the action:
![[Image: RM-Avatar.png]](http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm144/zombie2279/RM-Avatar.png){kind=avatar}