The Battle For Whiteridge Begins

The Battle For Whiteridge began with a massive artillery barrage of the city's defences by the Scyllian 12th Armoured regiment's Basilisks and Griffons. The attack was devised by Major-General Lenord and his advisors, commander in chief of all Imperial forces on Myrentas II. This now consisted of six Imperial regiments, two of which were armoured.

The plan was relatively simple. A massive barrage of artillery would destroy the enemy defenses in the city. Once lifted the bombardment would be followed by simultaneous assaults by the Librain 101st and Librian 57th Regiments, both infantry. Only once this massive assault had taken the city would the armour of the Scyllian 12th Regiment and the Librian 4th Armoured Division follow up into the dense terrain of Whiteridge.

At 06:00 on 1612.006 M42 the artillery began a bombardment lasting 2 hours. At 08:00 the Librians attacked, 20,000 men committed to driving the few hundred Iron Warrior defenders out of their defences. Things started to go wrong immediately as the dense rubble terrain slowed down the imperial advance. By 10am the attack was well behind schedule. Things came to a head around 2pm when the Librian 101st encountered stiff resistance as they attempted to take a vital road crossing.

The Librian infantry were flung into the attack taking horrendous casualties but the Iron Warriors were slowly forced back. The imperial forces brought up Leman Russ and Basilisks in close support but these were vulnerable and many were destroyed by concealed havoc squads hiding in the ruins. To make things worse the traitor legion would sporadically attack with its attack bike squadrons, taking heavy casualties but throwing the Librians into panicked retreat, cutting down anyone who got in their way. Meanwhile several chimeras rushing to support the assault found the going tough and bogged down in the difficult ground.

By the end of the day the Librians had taken 7450 men killed or wounded, lost 64 tanks and 15 artillery pieces. The attack had stalled in the city suburbs and the imperial forces were forced to dig in in their new positions. Only a quarter of the day's objectives had fallen and many of those now faced imminent counter attack. As night fell the armoured regiments were finally brought up in assault but the attack had been a failure.