| “ | Attacking from all sides, the Soviets launch a naval assault on San Francisco. The PsiCorps division has requested the complete elimination of the city's anti-aircraft defenses in order to proceed with their work on Alcatraz Island. | ” |
| —Mission description |
Golden Gate is the second mission of the Act One Soviet campaign.
Background
With the "staggering" success in New York City, Soviet Command had decided to slightly shift the gears for the Soviet General, this time to a naval role in the Western United States.
While the American Pacific Fleet was extremely powerful, fortunately they were far away to pose any immediate threat to the Soviet forces poised to assault San Francisco. The same couldn't be said, however, about the California State Fleet and the U.S. Coast Guard, as they had enough numbers and weapons to endanger Soviet naval landings. Furthermore, while the American's massive laser shore guns were preemptively eliminated at the start of the war, another coastal defenses, primarily Grand Cannons, were still functional.
The General was thus charged with eliminating both threats, as the Far East Soviet Fleet (Pacific) wasn't as large or powerful as the Western Fleet (Atlantic), so its loss would be more painfully felt. The General was also informed there wouldn't be any MCVs available for him, so he'd need to be careful with his ground forces and to not be overzealous in using Dreadnoughts to eliminate both Allied bases on both sides of the Golden Gate bridge.
In addition to his mission objectives, the Soviet Commander also received a peculiar request from PsiCorps, requesting that anti-air defenses be neutralized on Alcatraz Island, as they'd be airdropped there for an undisclosed operation of theirs.
Events
Arrival of the General's assault fleet was signaled with the destruction of the Golden Gate bridge by a Kirov Airship, which was shortly shot down by Allied Aegis Cruisers. This flotilla was a combination of Seawolves, Typhoon submarines and Dreadnoughts with enough ammunition to bombard both the coastal defenses and the Allied bases. The remaining forces would later be mopped up by ground forces coming from both extremes of the Allied perimeter (top left and bottom right corners) as well as landings via Borillos and Zübr transports which the General held direct control.
The Soviet fleet's passage across the Golden Gate river was all but a peaceful one, especially with the California State Fleet and Coast Guard everywhere and occasionally reinforced. Almost half of what was supposed to be the Dreadnoughts escort was sunk in ship-to-ship battles, while the Grand Cannons were shot down in 'focused' fire, as most of the V4 rockets were destroyed by the rockets of nearby IFVs stationed by.
San Francisco landing
The landings started shortly afterwards, but ground resistance appeared to have been much far fiercer than its naval one. Both 'ground teams' were forced to hold their position as the Dreadnoughts bombarded both defenses ceaselessly, while the remaining ships were ordered by the General to rush towards the Naval Yards between both main lands and Alcatraz and destroy them. Despite Soviet losses, the Allies weren't able to deploy further Allied vessels, by then, and thus were ordered to rejoin the Dreadnoughts to protect them. The Soviet ground forces were only able to advance once most of the defenses were bombarded to oblivion. The timely arrival of an engineering team allowed the Soviets to capture one of the Allied bases and assemble enough forces to neuter the disadvantage of an unavailable Soviet base for the General.
Securing the Alcatraz Island
The actual issue came with Alcatraz itself, especially as its anti-air defenses were so much comprised of Patriot Missile Batteries as Aeroblaze AA vehicles whose laser cannons could make short work of Dreadnought missiles, and were at an enough safe distance from a direct attack via Seawolves. A small advantage was only found in exploiting the island's defenses' dependance on the city's power grid, which was quickly shut down with the destruction of its power plants. The Aeroblazes would be dealt with hours later, as well as much of the American resistance, only under through intense firepower. As Alcatraz was secured, PsiCorps moved in for its mission, with the General receiving praise from Yuri himself.
Aftermath
The capture of San Francisco proved of incredible importance for the Soviet forces, much beyond territory control – one of the destroyed American base's records indicated President Dugan had evacuated D.C. and was secret in San Antonio, Texas. And given American resistance was being much fiercer than expected, the Union determined another moral crumbling strike had to be delivered, and thus the Soviet General would be given this particular honor.
As for Alcatraz, PsiCorps would eventually turn it into a base of operations, as well as a test bed for an experimental weapon of theirs, called the Psychic Dominator. It'd eventually be used by Yuri in his resurgence.
Walkthrough
Trivia
- Yuri's speech near the end of the mission is voiced by Jake "The Voice" Parr.
- Curiously enough, this mission would do well in Red Alert 2 as a precursor to Yuri's Revenge, given both the first Allied and Soviet missions of the expansion pack do take place in San Francisco and both involve destroying the Psychic Dominator installed in Alcatraz as the final objective.
