Blight on the Big Apple

""

Background
With the death of Field Marshal Bingham and the destruction of the bulk of the Allied fleets at Easter Island, the survival of the Allied Nations hung on a knife's edge. With Europe conquered by the Soviet Union, the Allied military in tatters and their will nearly broken, it was decided by the unnamed Soviet Commander and his intelligence aide Dasha that the time to strike was now. With Cherdenko dead and the Politburo in disarray, the Commander, already a hero amongst the Soviet populace, took command of the Union and prepared to launch a crushing blow against the Allies in hopes of ending their resistance once and for all.

To do this, the Soviets directed their efforts at breaking the city of New York, perhaps the greatest bastion of capitalist imperialism the world had ever known. As the massive Soviet armada sailed for Manhattan Island, the Commander made preparations to bring down the Statue of Liberty, the hollow symbol of Allied freedom. Should the Statue be destroyed, the Soviets were convinced that the Allies would soon capitulate and beg for peace. Meanwhile, as word of the Soviet invasion reached the Allied leaders, President Ackerman sent all remaining forces to the city in order to beat the Red Menace back. For the Allies then, this was their final stand. They would throw back the tides of socialism here or die trying, and had no intentions whatsoever of giving the Soviets an easy time of it.

Force Composition
The Soviets attacked New York City with a massive force, as numerous divisons of ground troops stormed the city's defenses, supported by large numbers of armoured units, aircraft and ships. Hundreds of Soviet vessels steamed into the harbor, including numerous Dreadnought craft. The Union had spared no expense planning their invasion, and the entire Soviet arsenal had been rolled out in order to deliver the crushing blow, including the dreaded Vacuum Imploder device. Rather than having all of these forces deployed at once, they were sent to the battle in three distinct waves, each softening up Allied resistance so as to allow the main force to land safely.

The Allies, meanwhile, had been battered and beaten by many Soviet and Imperial attacks over the course of the war, and many of the regiments were operating under-strength and facing combat exhaustion, while their arsenals had been largely depleted. That being said, however, they still managed to field several divisions worth of infantry and armour at the battle, supported by whatever aerial squadrons had survived the fighting in Europe. The grand majority of these units were stationed either on Liberty Island next to the famous Statue, or deployed to support the Allied garrison at Fort Bradley adjacent to the New York Stock Exchange. The waters surrounding Liberty Island were defended by the remnants of the Allied Navy, only several score vessels strong, but including their famed Aircraft Carriers and Assault Destroyers. Liberty Island also found itself home to a Chronosphere device as well as a Proton Collider, though the latter was destroyed before it could be used against the Soviet invaders.

Acts of Terror
"The Allies are on High Alert but I landed in some Terror Drones!"
 * Advisor

Before the main Soviet force could land and begin their assault on New York City, the powerful Allied military base at Fort Bradley would have to be eliminated. The base's garrison controlled downtown New York, and the Soviets could not hope to succeed if their invasion forces were destroyed upon landing by the Allied defenders. As such, the Soviet Commander elected to begin his invasion by deployed numerous swarms of Terror Drones into the city, in hopes of spreading confusion and chaos amongst the populace while terminating as many of the Bradley troops as possible.

The plan worked, as immediately after landing, the Terror Drones began their grisly work, killing civilians, ambushing Allied military personnel and vehicles, and disrupting Fort Bradley's production and resource gathering operations. The attacks were so sudden and diffuse that the Allied forces had no idea where the real attack was coming from, and entire companies of men were sent on wild goose chases trying to hunt the robotic menaces down. As a result, the defenders of Fort Bradley were confused and scattered, relatively easy prey for the arrival of the Soviet vanguard.

The Sack of Fort Bradley
With the Allied defense of New York in chaos, the Soviet Commander, aided by his ruthless comrade Moskvin, were able to deploy several regiments worth of men and armour to destroy Fort Bradley once and for all. Spearheaded by a company of the devastating Tesla Tanks, the vanguard caught many of the scattered Allied units off-guard and annihilated them in piecemeal fashion, before storming Fort Bradley under the cover of bombardment by Kirov Airships. Had the Soviets attacked in full-force, it was likely that they would have suffered tremendously at the hands of the Allies and lost the element of surprise. As such, the conquest of Fort Bradley was a fairly swift affair, and though hundreds of Soviet men and vehicles were lost in the bitter street-to-street fighting and the assault on the base itself, Fort Bradley was destroyed within a matter of hours. Though Allied units that survived rallied around the New York Stock Exchange building, while the Soviet vanguard began sacking civilian homes and ransacking the ruins of the base for supplies and resources. With the Allied resistance in the city itself largely pacified, the Soviets were able to land the bulk of their invasion force.

"You Reds have gone too far, but this time, we're ready for you! Bring it!"
 * Ackerman

Ashes of Liberty
"Seems like old times, huh, you Commie scum!"
 * Tanya, as she began sinking the four dreadnoughts

With Manhattan cleared of Allied defenders, the main attack force moved in and began setting up shop, while the Soviet armada launched an assault on Liberty Island. Through the efforts of the Allied Navy and Tanya, the initial strike was repelled, with a few dozen ships including four Dreadnoughts going to the bottom of the harbor before they withdrew. The Allies immediately began counter-attacking, using airdrops and the Chronosphere to send their forces at the Russian positions, but the Soviets were dug in well, and these attacks were repulsed, if not without casualties. Their forces ready, the Soviets began their inexorable push towards the Statue of Liberty, using a combined arms approach to minimize losses and drive the Allies back. Thousands of lives were lost as the Allied and Soviet ships and planes clashed, with dozens of vessels sunk and hundreds of aircraft shot out of the sky in the first few minutes of the fighting. Agent Tanya managed to sabotage several vessels before being brought down by a force of infantry under the direct command of Moskvin himself. Soviet Akula subs managed to outflank the Allied Navy and cripple many of their ships still under repair, though, turning the tide in favor of the Motherland. Near the ruins of Fort Bradley, meanwhile, the Soviets seized control of the NYSE, with the wealth of an entire nation now in the hands of the Russians.

As the first Soviet ground forces began storming the shores of Liberty Island and dying by their hundreds, Ackerman authorized the use of the Proton Collider, hoping to break the back of the Soviet offensive and give his own troops a chance to take the initiative again. Unfortunately, an eleventh-hour bombing by a brave Soviet Twinblade squadron put the machine out of business, while inch by bloody inch, the Communist forces managed to push their way onto Liberty Island. After hours of bloody struggle, and the loss of thousands of men on both sides, the Soviets were victorious. A hastily transported force of Apocalypse Tanks managed to crush the last of the tenacious Allied defenders, and their combined firepower, plus the bombardment from anchored Dreadnoughts, was sufficient to crush the Statue of Liberty and bring it down, once and for all.

Aftermath and Consequences
"To you comrade. The Future is yours!"
 * Dasha

The USSR was victorious, at long last. The war that had begun as a desperate attempt by a battered nation to merely survive had morphed into a successful campaign of world domination. Both the capitalist ideology of the Allies and the feudal superstitions of the Empire left outdated and defeated by the Communist theories of the Soviets, as the global Communist revolution predicted by Marx and first given form by Lenin had finally come to pass. The Commander, fresh off of the success he had achieved in New York, was made Premier of the Soviet Union, which now encircled the entire globe, while the city itself was renamed Commandergrad, and a giant statue of Lenin erected where Lady Liberty once stood.

Behind the Scenes
The scene in which Tanya sinks the four Soviet Dreadnoughts is a deliberate allusion to the first Allied mission of Red Alert 2, in which Tanya does much the same.

The Statue of Liberty was destroyed again only this time rebuilt as Lenin.

This is the second appearance of Fort Bradley in the Red Alert universe, the first being in the Allied Campaign of Red Alert 2. Unlike in the previous game, this appearance of the base sees it being destroyed by the Soviets.

The New York Stock Exchange building can be captured in a similar manner as an Oil Derrick, but with much greater resource bonuses, as it gives you 1000 dollars for the initial capture, and 100 dollars ever few seconds after that.