Battle for Vista Futura

The **Battle for Vista Futura** was a "historical event" in New and Improved Solís.

## Brief description

The battle was codenamed **Operaciòn Chave** (Operation Key). The battle itself was a massive offensive launched by the Army of Chaos against the fortified positions and supply lines of the Black Hand.

The battle cut off the city from the territory of the central government of Solis, causing morale to take a serious hit; supplies to the front, which arrived via the I-80 highway from El Molino, now passed through a thin but fortified strip of rebel territory, becoming increasingly rare and forced the troops to abandon their positions and retreat further north, through thin isolated streets where they were easy targets of enemy aviation and battleships.

## Background

After the fall of Nueva Voz, which had led to the collapse of the resistance of the Black Hand and the sanity of Espinoza, the front line stretched between the sea and the hills near Mina Vendaval, with the only path through a thin field between these two. The fighting was in a stalemate, as the most capable generals of the Black Hand (in charge of the defense of Nueva Voz) had been killed or captured in the battle; the survivors had instead been executed for failing their task. There were only General Carlos Pacheco de Navarra, in charge of defense along the front, and the very young and inexperienced Ambrosio Sandoval, stationed to defend the hills and the only road that crossed them.

Sandoval tried to make the most of the height advantage: the hills, although not suitable for fortification, were carpeted with trenches and bunkers, with cannons hidden in the rocky ravines and machine guns camouflaged in the bushes. The so-called Sandoval Line arose without difficulty, as the impact of the liberation of Nueva Voz shattered against the troops of Pacheco de Navarra. The situation reached a complete standstill when the bridges over the gulf were blown up and the AoC command realized that they could not break through.

General Rodriguez decided to start preparations for the so-called Operaciòn Chave (Operation Key, referring to the importance of Vista Futura as a door to I-80 and government supplies, which had to be opened by the attack as by a key): it was based on plans by General Morales but applied to a much more different context. Its core was the launch of an artillery barrage in the hills and the intervention of a few special troops to extinguish the resistance; afterwards the breakthrough of the front would follow, carried out by the motorized and mechanized columns of the armada.
The execution of the plan was repeatedly slowed down by the occasional bombing of the Black Hand, but the stacking of troops was achieved successfully.

## Fielded troops

Army of Chaos:

* 9th and 15th Infantry Division
* 31st and 32nd Special Forces Company
* 1st artillery regiment

Black Hand:

* 4th Anti-Tank Division and 8th Mountain Infantry Division (on the defense line)
* 6th Infantry Division, 2nd Tank Regiment, 5th Artillery Brigade (inside the city)

## The Battle

### Start of the battle

At 5:15 am, 45 minutes before the H Hour, all of the 1st Regiment's guns (which included modified Warchief and Prizefighter tanks, Longbow self-propelled guns and fixed guns) simultaneously opened fire on the fortifications of the Sandoval line, with a bombardment that lasted until 6 am, and transformed the hill into a cloud of smoke and dust. Around 5:50 am, the 32nd Company began to climb the hill and assaulted the positions, still under artillery fire. The division surrendered almost immediately, but various pockets of resistance in the most resistant bunkers forced the cannons to almost shoot at their own soldiers.
The order to advance was given at 7:31 am, only an hour and a half after the arrival of the special forces; the flag of the revolution had already been hoisted over the mountains, and had been waving proudly for twenty minutes or more, but only then had the situation been deemed safe enough to advance.

Soon, the reconnaissance units of the 15th division of the Armada do Chaos approached Fazenda Pereira, a small farm about a hundred meters from the village of Nò Correido, vital for entering Vista Futura. There, the first troops were forced to a halt by pressing machine gun fire from a Warchief Assault Tank; after nearly half an hour, with the advance of the first IFVs, the tank cannon began to shoot at the road and supply columns, blocking the advance until one of the IFVs hit it and managed to cause enough internal fragmentation, with a blow that caused the innermost part of the armor to flake and chip, hurling a tornado of shrapnel on the crew, causing a fire to the fuel depots and at the same time killing the tank commander and the gunner. The advance of the Army of Chaos, however, remained slow and stunted as the commanders of the column tried to ensure they had destroyed the enemy danger and the remaining soldiers of the Black Hand continued to fire on the footed infantry. It was now after 8:45, and so Josè Oliveira, commander of the armored vehicle IFV-762, described the infernal situation as follows:

"*It had been at least two hours since we left, or so it seemed to me, and we had been standing there for what felt almost an hour and a half. The sun was starting to beat down hard, more and more straight on our heads, and the mountains were blocking the wind. The machine guns fired for minutes or for a single second, at a distance of a few meters or less, as if they went at random ... the tank on the farm was still, it was smoking and had not fired for at least fifteen minutes, or more. It was half on fire, fuel had come out of a crack in the welds and was dripping like hot lava onto the already destroyed lawn. The smoke was black, dark, and cast an even blacker shadow on the ground and on the wagons ... it was horrible.*"

After defeating the enemy in the farm, the troops sped up and soon were under fire in the outskirts of the city, which composed of small, 2 story houses. Finally, after almost two hours of incessant fighting in the villas, the Army of Chaos managed to extinguish the fierce resistance of the 6th Infantry Division, in charge of the south side of the city, forcing the two regiments involved to a desperate retreat between the trenches of debris blocking the road. The soldiers, greedy for blood and victory, chased the fugitives through Plaza de Audiciòn, the main square of the city: a large empty space between the Thiago Maradona stadium and Via Nueva, the avenue better known as Rìo de Casas, or River of Homes. The square had been emptied of all the benches and potted plants used in place of the flower beds under construction, and of the old glories only a colossal statue of an infantryman built by Espinoza remained; in their place sandbags, long coils of barbed wire and some anti-tank obstacles had been piled, which slowed the inexperienced pursuers and blocked them under inaccurate, but pressing rifle fire that exterminated the vanguards of the regiment and forced the other soldiers, including tanks and APCs, to stop in the rain of bullets. The soldiers tried in vain to advance, protected by the vehicles and the cover fire of the machine guns, but were only able to identify the shooters; they were camouflaged among the ruins of the stadium stands.

### Battle around the stadium

Blocked in one of the most fundamental points for the advance, the officers of the 15th Division advanced the 1st Prizefighter platoon; of the vehicles, one was destroyed in an ambush and the other swerved to engage the enemy tank, leaving only two of the vehicles to fight. These were IFV-561, a vehicle almost brand new, and IFV-208, a vehicle produced at the beginning of the war which had already seen several battles and had spent a lot of time in maintenance. The vehicle was decorated with a revolutionary flag, hung on the left side, and the name given to it by the crew, Judie in honor of the famous Beatles song Hey Jude. The crew consisted of commander Manuel Bolilla, gunner Raul Sosa, and driver Robin Silva, replacement for the wounded Alberto Santos.

IFV-561 was the first to attack, hitting the stands on the right side and devastating the enemy defense. At that point, he began firing on the cannon on the left side, but was prevented by the position; then he decided to cross the street, moving to the side of the stadium and slowly rotating the turret towards the target. IFV-208 instead marched to the other side of the stadium, approaching the entrance between the wall and the stands.

Suddenly, at an estimated time between 9:32 am and 9:39 am, a shot from the 120mm caliber cannon struck IFV-561's side armor, ripping it open and sending a cloud of shrapnel into the crew compartment and pipes. fuel. The gunner was killed on the spot, while the driver was so badly injured that he was stuck in the impending fire. The commander, on the other hand, managed to drag himself out of the vehicle, albeit seriously injured and with severe leg fractures and a missing foot. The vehicle, after a few seconds of empty space in which it began to lose fuel, caught fire under the fire of a machine gun, killing the driver. IFV-208, alerted by the cannon, stopped and the commander sighted a Warchief Assault Tank, with the identification number CB-91, stationed behind the stadium wall; soldiers of the regiment were immediately alerted, including war photographer Benito Vazquez. Vazquez, who had almost fallen from grace at the AoC command after destroying some of the most precious photos of the battle for Nueva Voz, was in desperate need of redemption, and climbed the statue in the square to get a perfect view of the two vehicles in dispute.

As Vazquez began recording, Sosa fired a shot from the 88mm cannon without waiting for Bolilla's order, hitting the side armor of the tracks. The plates were torn apart, and the debris got stuck between the tracks; in addition, some stray shards hit them and caused sufficient damage to completely block the vehicle. CB-91, in response, fired a too hasty cannon round at IFV-208's aiming systems and windows; both were devastated, filling commander Bolilla with shrapnel and seriously injuring Sosa, while Silva went in full reverse and brought the vehicle to safety behind the houses, where Bolilla died of wounds in the throat and lungs, while Sosa first attempted to kill himself because of remorse and then accepted the help of the field doctors.

Without the protection of the IFV, the infantry was again exposed to the shooting of the Black Hand, whose infantry reopened fire with various weapons on the square, further reinforced by a 40mm MK19 grenade launcher, which wreaked havoc in the trenches and pits of the Army of Chaos and forced the command to send tanks. Attacking the stadium was the tank nicknamed MBT-32: the last of a very few vehicles built at the Casquillos Vacios factory, commanded by tank ace Pablo Carner and driven by expert mechanic and truck driver Luis Dessi. The conscript Santiago Marques was in command of the cannon.

MBT-32 circled the wreck of IFV-561, firing a shot at CB-91 that shattered the cartridge case at the rear of the tank and freed shrapnel in the turret; the commander was killed and the driver attempted a desperate escape through the turret hatches, while the gunner remained in his post and fired a shot at the enemy turret: the cannon shot penetrated sideways and gutted much of the armor, sending the crew of MBT-32 into a panic and slowing down the tank. The gunner accidentally fired a high-explosive shot at the hull, which shook from top to bottom and was thrown against the wall. The gunner, stunned and injured by the shock wave, escaped from the turret and was taken prisoner by the MBT-32 crew and then taken back to the rear. Immediately after the victory, the trucks and armored cars of the 15th Division drove through the blackened grass and craters that had been the football field; the commands of the Black Hand, meanwhile, crossed the streets under attack by artillery, attempting a desperate escape towards Esteponita. The troops, on the other hand, tried to prevent the total breakthrough of the Armada.

### Battle for the "number 13"

Around 2:39 pm the columns of the 15th Division, stacked between the stadium and the central avenue Via Prima, suffered scattered fire from machine guns and various rifle shooting, with scattered explosions reported by some officers against some IFVs and against Cavalry vans, deprived of their machine gunners. It was only after several minutes of doubts and difficulties that it was possible to trace the source of the shots: a residential complex in ruins, hit and partially set on fire by the gunners, consisting of a high 5-storey building and a small, short warehouse overlooking Via Prima. The shots came from the shed, devastated by fire, which was the only part of the complex visible to the division, and was unsuccessfully attacked by the infantry; the IFVs were forced to retreat north of the stadium to support the tanks in the attack on the road to Bajo la Nariz.

The situation became unbearable around 3:07 pm, when it was realized that the crucial Via Prima could not be attacked without destroying the casemate; whereupon, more or less at the same time, two IFVs, an AAV and two Warrior vans attacked the complex, whose entrance was located at number 13 in via Giovanni Brombeis; with the same name would have been known the palace, from whose windows the soldiers of the 1st and 3rd platoons of the 6th division opened fire with machine guns, RPG missile launchers and rifles; the completely unexpected resistance caused several casualties in both foot and vehicle infantry, while one of the IFVs and the AAV were nearly fatally damaged by the RPGs. The two platoons continued a tenacious and desperate fire until 4:48 pm, at which time armored reinforcements (including MBT-32) replaced the two destroyed vehicles and opened fire on N ° 13, breaking the resistance of the defenders and giving time infantry to break down the gates of the complex.

Cleaning up the shed on Via Prima was easy, squeezed as they were between two sides by the furious machine guns of the Army of Chaos; however, the infantrymen were left alone in the attack on the palace, an attack in which they suffered several times the ambushes and bypasses of the much more experienced soldiers of the 1st platoon, made up of veterans of the urban battle at Nueva Voz Norte. The victims left on the burnt floors of N ° 13 were many, and they would have continued to accumulate without the death of the commander of the 1st platoon, Eusèbio Pessoa, after which most of the soldiers surrendered.

With the road to the I-80 open, the soldiers of the Armada do Chaos began to celebrate the victory, hoisting the yellow-red-green tricolor on the statue of the Plaza de Audicione, with a celebratory video prepared for the television propaganda channels. . The defeat of the Black Hand seemed even more certain, when the garrison of an entire neighborhood abandoned its equipment in the hands of the enemy and surrendered, isolating much of the 6th Division in the disputed north of the city.

### Battle for the *Ayuntamiento*

The battle, however, was by no means over. Indeed, it was perhaps not even halfway through. Nos. 2, 3, and 4 had been abandoned on Via Nueva, but the forces of the Mano Negra had gathered at 19 on Via Perez-Quinones, on the corner with Via Pereira. It was the seat of the town hall of the city, at the same time its political, economic (with the headquarters of the city bank and the two largest stock exchanges of the state) and social centre, with a large hotel of the Triunfo Espinosa chain on the upper floors and a large shopping center at ground level. The 5th Infantry Regiment had taken its seat there, chased guests and civilian customers out of the burning and half destroyed building, and now awaited the arrival of the enemy forces.

However, the first to attack them were not the inexperienced infantry of the armada they expected, but an almost torrential rain of artillery shells fired by 8 IFVs, two MBTs (including MBT-32), and 6 self-propelled Longbows that made close fire on the town hall, which soon was an almost single cloud of smoke and fire, enveloped in a whirlwind of splinters of white concrete and blades of blue glass. The soldiers described the bombing on N ° 19, colloquially known as *Ayuntamiento:*

"*It was a deafening blaze, louder than cannons. The fire howled and roared like a living creature, hurling debris everywhere: pieces of chairs, burning or even whole paper, shreds of curtains and clothes; yet, every time we tried to approach in the silence of the cannons, there was always a machine gun or a rifle to sweep the road and block them, and then the violence of the cannon fire would start again ... it was an alternation of failed attacks and cannons, at least until the vehicles had to withdraw and then it was up to us.*"

After almost an hour of assaults by infantrymen and furious bombardments, the Longbow self-propelled guns came under attack by enemy infantry and air forces, which destroyed 4 in a short time; the survivors were forced to retreat, while the wagons and IFVs had to be sent to the vicinity of the stadium to support the assault towards the north of the city; it fell to the 31st special forces company to attack the interior of the building, in a furious fight room by room, office by office, until the collapse of the upper floors of the hotel which transformed the lower ones into a hell of collapsed ceilings, fires, fragments of concrete and heaps of plaster. The corridors became slippery and filled with blood, sweat and steamy debris, while what remained of the fire extinguishing systems tried to spit its last reserves of water on the raging fires. Of the 259 men who left, just 60 returned; they took just 20 prisoners with them, while the others were abandoned in the burning rubble. The whole hotel collapsed on the burning corridors of the town hall, taking with it the offices of the banks and part of the offices; the entire 15th regiment was exterminated in the operation. The city, after the furious hours of battle, was devastated; dozens of fires had developed, including bombed-out buildings and streets flooded with fuel and wrecked vehicles.

### Ending of the battle

The Black Hand, as the *Ayuntamiento* collapsed, realized their defeat and fled the city. They were chased by the Army of Chaos for a short distance, being defeated in Esteponita and in a nearby farm; still, General Rodriguez ordered them to stop as to avoid spreading out and exhausting its troops before the attacks on the south-western Vaivenes and the Ojo de la Pradera base. Part of the Black Hand troops were moved to the hills on the north-west of the fallen city, as to avoid a breakthrough; though they left the main road less defended, and were repeatedly attacked by the airforce and artillery during their movements, which eventually resulted in the Black Hand's defeat several weeks later.

## Controversies

The battle, although it was the Army of Chaos’s greatest strategic success, was also one of the most controversial. The accusations of war crimes, the repression of the press and trials, and above all the approval of the high commands were the basis of a wave of discontent and revolts against the rebels.

The violence was not in the least comparable to that of other bloody operations of the Armada do Chaos; the cruel siege of Aguaclara remained in first place in the "ranking" from its conclusion until the end of the war, having caused 4,877 civilian victims and destroyed between 60 and 70% of the city, as well as causing irreparable damage to the whole region, almost totaling its economy. In terms of sheer violence and uselessness, the greatest failure of the armada was the attempted rebellion in Distrito Capital, which led to the barbaric massacre of 172 civilians by the Black Hand and the destruction of the village of Costa Consuelo, as well as the farms and fields of Granja Toque Dorado. However, the attack on Vista Futura was launched at a time when the action of the "liberators" was increasingly seen as one of conquest. Also, at the time, the large news stations (Solìs Hoy, El Periòdico do Lago Bonito, Jornal da Capital) had resumed their action at full speed, free from the (partially self-imposed) censorship that had marked the conquest of all editorial offices, and were therefore able to spread uncensored news.