10th Skye Rangers

Insignia of the Skye Rangers
Tenth Skye Rangers
Formed 2821–2830
Disbanded April 2786[1]
Second Succession War
3058
Nickname Black Watch[2]
Affiliation Federated Suns
Parent Command Skye Rangers

History[edit]

Star League Era[edit]

The Tenth Skye Rangers were stationed on Altoona in 2765. They relieved the Fifteenth Skye Rangers, who were glad to leave.[3]

First Succession War[edit]

The Tenth Skye Rangers were involved in Operation ELBOW JOINT, the preemptive LCAF strike on Bolan in March 2785. Following the capture of the jump point station and a battle in space between Lyran and Free Worlds League WarShips, the Eleventh and Fourteenth Arcturan Guards were dropped on Bolan on March 14, 2785. When the Lyrans arrived, two regiments of the Bolan Defenders — Colonel Salam Tutt's Sixth Bolan Defenders and the Tenth Bolan Defenders under the command of Colonel Henri Balkichek — were already dispersed across the major continents on Bolan, with half the garrison actively engaged in wargames. Tutt responded to the invasion by sending an emergency HPG broadcast and deployed the bulk of the Tenth to defend Mumbai, the planetary capital city, while moving a battalion of the Sixth to support the forces at Mumbai from Quetta, a port city also located on the Sakété continent. Another battalion of the Tenth was assigned a third of the Sixth's supporting elements and tasked with defending Calcutta, the largest city on the Kashmir continent. The remaining two 'Mech battalions from the Defenders were assigned to defending the Overwatch, while the remaining support elements were dotted around townships on Kashmir and Sakété in company strength units, defending such major townships as Multan, Peshawar, Sibi, Sukkur, and Vadora. While there were also security forces and a local militia, Tutt ordered them to avoid engaging the Lyran forces, and instead report all contacts with the enemy and provide information on the location and disposition of Lyran units.[4]

The Arcturan Guards regiments landed and swiftly took the city of Peshawar, wiping out the defenders and holding in place, leading Tutt to believe that they were readying an assault on Calcutta. Johonson ordered his ground forces to stay mobile to avoid the risk of being trapped by either artillery or orbital bombardment, but also ordered them to strike hard and fast at the League troop concentrations in Quetta and Calcutta, while fighters and assault DropShips conducted sweeps and bombing missions over the towns near both targets. This was followed on March 16, by the arrival of the Tenth Skye Rangers. Their arrival heralded by the orbital bombardment of the Quetta spaceport by the Commonwealth-class cruiser LCS Furillo, intended to destroy the Bolan Defenders DropShips located at the spaceport while also crippling the Defenders' primary refueling point for their aerospace forces. With the forces around Quetta left in chaos, the Eleventh Arcturan Guards made a suborbital deployment from their position to a new point between Quetta and Mumbai, with air support from the Rangers giving the Lyran forces control of the skies; the Eleventh then struck at Mumbai, and by the end of March 17, both Calcutta and Mumbai were under siege and heavily damaged, with the Defenders frantically trying to find safe locations, while losing artillery duels with the Lyran forces. The next morning, the Fourteenth Arcturan Guards assaulted Calcutta, leaving the city surrounded.[4]

Lieutenant Colonel Omar Malak, the commanding officer of the 101st Assault Battalion,[5] had turned Calcutta into a city filled with traps and attempted to lure the Lyran forces into those traps, but the Lyran commanding officer, Leutnant-General Baron Richart Johonson had other ideas; he gathered together his aerospace forces and conducted a massive firebombing operation against Calcutta on the morning of March 18, killing twenty thousand civilians and destroying the 101st.[4][5]

Incensed by the attack on Calcutta, Tutt ordered the League-class destroyer FWLS Talwar to bombard the LCAF DropShips, still mostly grounded at Peshawar, even as Johonson was demanding his surrender; Tutt then reiterated that the Defenders would fight the Commonwealth to the last breath before cutting off communications. Tutt ordered his field commanders to leave their positions and attack Lyran forces directly, while ordering his surviving combat elements and noncombatant personnel at the Overwatch to evacuate by DropShip, before ordering the deployment of the Overwatch's nuclear arsenal in a scorched-earth attack. Johonson ordered his troops besieging the various FWLM positions to disengage and disperse, while redeploying his WarShips to bombard the Overwatch and its various weapons positions.[4][5] Tutt's last-ditch strikes left Mumbai a burning nuclear ruin, along with the cities of Calcutta, Quetta, and Peshawar, and the nuclear bombardment and exchanges on Sabari left the island an uninhabitable radioactive ruin that was still a scorched wasteland in the thirty-first century. A battalion from the Sixth Bolan Defenders managed to retreat to Zdice, but the Tenth was destroyed on Bolan. The defense of Bolan had cost the Lyran forces two-thirds of the Tenth Skye Rangers, a third each of the Eleventh and Fourteenth Arcturan Guards, two Mako-class corvettes, with two more Makos and a Commonwealth left heavily damaged; lost along with the Tenth and the bulk of the Sixth Bolan Defenders were three League-class destroyers and an Aegis-class heavy cruiser. Between three to eight million civilians died in the nuclear engagements.[4]

The Tenth Skye Rangers were on Altoona when the Free Worlds League retaliated; in another campaign that saw the extensive use of weapons of mass destruction, Altoona was invaded by the remains of the Sixth Bolan Defenders[6] in March[1] 2786,[6][1] and the assault saw the Tenth destroyed as an operational command[6] by the end of April.[1]

Second Succession War[edit]

The Tenth was rebuilt in the years between the end of the First Succession War in 2821[7] and the beginning of the Second Succession War in 2830.[8] The Tenth was stationed on Hesperus II alongside the rebuilt Ninth Arcturan Guards in April 2853, when the DCMS launched the offensive that became the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Battles of Hesperus. With the Draconis Combine Admiralty quickly establishing aerospace superiority by deploying a flotilla that included all of its surviving WarShips, the Combine forces spent five months wearing down the Tenth and the other defenders on Hesperus with air attacks and raids, before landing eight regiments on South Whitman. The DCMS then launched a grinding, grueling operation intended to wear down the defenders, keeping up the constant tempo of battles by rotating units into and out of the front line. By October, both the Tenth Skye Rangers and the Ninth were in ruins; it was only the intervention of company staff from Defiance Industries using locally manufactured equipment and the arrival of the Tharkad-class battlecruiser Invincible that prevented the conquest of Hesperus.[9] By the end of the Second Succession War in 2864, the Tenth was an inactive command once more.[8]

Third Succession War[edit]

The Tenth raided Shiloh at some point between 3007 and 3017; accompanying the Rangers was the mercenary unit Snord's Irregulars, following a request from Cranston Snord to join the raid. Snord's interest in Shiloh was the rare stone crystals mined there during the Star League era, and given his reputation as a troublemaker, the Rangers were happy to allow the Regulars to spend their time scouting the Fald Plains. Snord did identify a shuksam deposit after a few weeks, but had to fight a running battle with League forces to successfully extract a quantity of the crystals.[10]

Clan Invasion[edit]

In 3056, nearly the entire 'Mech force of the Tenth Skye Rangers defected from the Federated Commonwealth and joined the Free Skye Movement. These 'Mechs and MechWarriors were grouped together with defecting conventional assets from the Fourth Skye Rangers to form the Fourth Skye Guards. This new unit attacked Glengarry in 3056.[11]

This mass defection was the final insult to the LAAF High Command. The Tenth had long had a troubled relationship with the High Command and after the defection, the LAAF turned the Tenth into a "sink unit." Soldiers who had a future in the LAAF were transferred to other units, and the LAAF transferred recent graduates, troublemakers, and politically powerless soldiers into the unit.[12] The Tenth fought Clan Jade Falcon forces on Coventry in 3058. After the Falcons invaded, the Tenth forces took serious losses and conducted guerrilla operations until they were reinforced by other units. These losses, coupled with their history of unreliable politics, led to the LAAF's decision not to rebuild the unit after the Coventry campaign.

Officers[edit]

Rank Name Command
Commanding Officers of the Tenth Skye Rangers
Colonel Herb Enders 3025[13]
Leftenant General Tjuti Bakkish 3050–3058[14][15][12]

Other Officers[edit]

Tactics[edit]

During the Falcon Incursion, the Tenth made extensive use of scouts, which allowed them to move swiftly from one location to another.[12]

Composition History[edit]

2765[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regiment/Regular/Reliable)[3]

- At this point in time the Tenth Rangers was stationed on Altoona.

2786[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regular/Reliable)[7]

- At this point in time the Tenth was a lightweight regiment and was at full strength, stationed on Altoona.[7] The unit was destroyed during the war.

2830[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regular/Fanatical)[8]

- At this point in time the Tenth was a medium-weight regiment operating at just one-quarter of full strength and stationed on Skye.[8]

3025[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regiment/Veteran/Questionable)[20]

  • CO: Colonel Herb Enders
Note: At this point in time the unit was stationed on Solaris.

3040[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regiment/Veteran/Questionable)[21]

Note: At this point in time the command was stationed on Zaniah.[21]

3050[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regiment/Veteran/Questionable)[14]

  • CO: Leftenant General Tjuti Bakkish[14]
Note: At this point in time the command was stationed on Zaniah.[14]

3054[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regiment/Veteran/Questionable)[15]

  • CO: Leftenant General Tjuti Bakkish[15]
Note: At this point in time the command was stationed on New Kyoto.[15]

3058[edit]

Tenth Skye Rangers (Regiment/Regular/Questionable)[12]

  • CO: Leftenant General Tjuti Bakkish[12]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 First Succession War, p. 114: "Timeline of the First Succession War"
  2. ↑ House Steiner (The Lyran Commonwealth), p. 61: "Regimental Nicknames"
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Field Report 2765: LCAF, pp. 18–19: "Skye Rangers" - Regimental Status
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 First Succession War, pp. 17–21: "The Bolan Offensive"
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Interstellar Operations, pp. 226–229: "Falling Into Fire"
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 First Succession War, pp. 70–71: "The Bolan Thumb Campaign"
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 First Succession War, p. 139: "Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces"
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Second Succession War, p. 99: "Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces"
  9. ↑ Second Succession War, p. 72: "The Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Battles of Hesperus"
  10. ↑ Cranston Snord's Irregulars, pp. 26–27: "Operation Road Runner"
  11. ↑ Historical Turning Points: Glengarry, p. 8
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Operational Turning Points: Falcon Incursion, p. 11
  13. ↑ House Steiner (The Lyran Commonwealth), p. 117
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 20 Year Update, p. 27
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Objective Raids, p. 19
  16. ↑ The Battle of Coventry, p. 50
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 The Battle of Coventry, p. 55
  18. ↑ Operational Turning Points: Falcon Incursion, pp. 8, 29
  19. ↑ Kell Hounds (sourcebook), p. 16
  20. ↑ House Steiner (The Lyran Commonwealth), p. 119
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Historical: War of 3039, p. 138
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Malicious Intent, ch. 24
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 The Battle of Coventry, p. 8: "Guerrilla Warfare"
  24. ↑ Malicious Intent, ch. 12
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 The Battle of Coventry, p. 7: "Coventry"

Bibliography[edit]

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