"Operation König Runter" - GSG 9 l 8th of February 1980

**Operation König Runter** - codename for bringing down the primary location of the Red Army Faction, we’ve managed to extract this information from the captured officers of the RAF. Alongside this intelligence has managed to locate what we suspect is a compound the head of their faction uses. And now we are to bring them down, hard and quick.

## Result

The compound was taken over by Federal Border Troops at around 12:15 in the afternoon. However there was a counter-attack launched by the RAF. The unprepared Federal Border Troops fought off the attack with lots of casaulties and only four survivors.

**Federal Border Troops:**

* 11 Members of the GSG 9
* 12 Members of the BGS

**Red Army Faction:**

* ~40 Members of the RAF

After an hour-long firefight in the small village in Bavaria, the result ended up in a **pyhirric victory** for the Federal Border Troops. Out of 23 members, 19 have been killed during the firefight, taking down a confirmed 17 members of the Red Army Faction with them and capturing another 5. The rest of the many members of the RAF have escaped sometime during the firefight, it is assumed that many of them have been wounded however there is no clear way to confirm this.

Four men from the GSG 9 that were left standing were:

* Alexander Berger (Flash) - Wounded in the stomach by a rifle round.
* Sven Zimmermann (Pan)
* Jürgen Ehrlich (Walker)
* Mario Kahn (Matt)

The rest were killed in action, these are the killed members of the GSG 9 task force:

* Torsten Wolff (Nelly) - Shot through the heart by a rifle.
* Jörg Reindel (Admira) - Shot through the back of the head with a rifle.
* Bernhard Heinke (Zen) - Shot through the head and back with a rifle.
* Carsten Sommer (Kev) - Wounded several times before being shot in the face by a rifle.
* Eugen Büscher (Adams) - Died from pistol caliber round that hit him in the throat.
* Björn Heide (Avshalom) - Shot through the heart by a rifle.
* Marcel Runkel (twingo) - Shot in the face by a pistol caliber round.

Twelve other members of the BGS have also died during this operation.

The following members of the Red Army Faction were captured during the operation:

* Marcel Dirks - Supposed co-leader of the Red Army Faction cell within Bavaria.
* Benjamin Enke - Captured
* David Krause - Captured
* Timo Bergs - Captured
* Mattias Zimmermann - Captured

## Aftermath

* The Federal Government has been heavily criticized by the German media that they didn't provide adequate resources and manpower to the BGS, resulting in this loss of life.
* State Funerals were held for all the 19 members of the Bundesgrenzschutz that have lost their lives, and they were buried with highest honours.
* The Bundesgrenzschutz was given more funding, even talks of acquiring heavier equipment such as APCs and more helicopters to deal with insurgency-related situations.
* The Federal government is thinking of allowing the military to act in situations such as these, where a higher number of insurgents poses a significant threat to the civilian population and the stability of the nation.
* A full-scale search of the entire area was conducted by the BGS, involving helicopters, dozens of patrol vehicles, GSG 9, armed borderguards, even Federal and Local police forces, 18 more members of the Red Army Faction were caugh, however the other leader - Mario Rennsing - as well as several accomplices manged to escape, most likely to Czechoslovakia. In this large cleanup operation, dozens of firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, explosives and other was found, if not disabling, at least heavily damaging the Red Army Faction efforts in West Germany