Battle of Cholame (2788)

The Battle of Cholame would be the largest single naval offensive between the Federated Suns and Draconis Combine during the First Succession War.

Overview

The opening years of the First Succession War saw the Federated Suns pushed to the brink, the AFFS mistakenly focusing its full attention on the Capellan Confederation as the more imminent threat when the war erupted, only to watch the DCMS surge over the denuded border. First Prince John Davion first attempted to stem the Combine invasion in 2788 by striking the Kurita flank using the troops intended for the Capellan offensive , but while initially successful the thrust collapsed at Cartago and the First Prince barely escaped with his life.

The Federated Suns would spend the next two years on the defensive, as the DCMS advanced deeper and deeper into the Davion-space, reaching as far as Kestrel, just two jumps from New Avalon. His people and military increasingly desperate, Prince John knew he had to do something, attempting a second major counteroffensive in 2790. Gathering up majority of the AFFS' remaining WarShips and a large volume of auxiliary vessels, the First Prince directed Admiral Kenneth Jones to cross the front-lines into Kurita-held space, not to win back worlds but purely to destroy as many as the Combine's naval forces as he could in the hopes of forcing the Kurtian troops to slow their attacks.

Commanding his two-hundred plus vessel task-force from the FedSun Navy's flagship, the Defender-class FSS Golden Lion, Jones' troops struck eleven Kurita-occupied systems from Imbrial III to New Valencia in quick succession, destroying or capturing every Kurita vessel they encountered, attacking what ground forces they could find and even resupplying embattled AFFS forces and resistance groups along the way. This first wave of attacks proving highly successful, Jones signaled his fleet to rendezvous in the Cholame system before heading back to Rosamond in Davion controlled space. Abandoned by the FedSuns early during the war and reportedly one of the many minor worlds bypassed by Kuritan forces, the one-system world seemed ideal as a rest and rendezvous point.

In truth it was anything but. Thanks to ISF infiltrators operating within the DMI, the Federated Suns were unaware that the Combine's invasion armada had chosen Cholame as its own redoubt and lay in wait for the Davion forces. As soon as Admiral Jones' fleet entered the system, Kurita AeroSpace Fighters immediately attacked the shocked Davion forces with a group of Kurita WarShips close behind. The largest naval campaign either nation had ever fought, the battle would last a full six weeks as Admiral Jones darted between the system's jump points, desperately trying to buy enough time for at least some of his ships to escape. Ultimately over a hundred Davion WarShips, from small corvettes to the Golden Lion itself had been lost, along with a equally large number of DropShips and AeroSpace Fighters, less than a quarter of Jones' fleet able to flee. The only small comfort to the Davion forces was the fact that they had taken an equal number of Kurita WarShips with them.

The failure of mission and losses suffered would contribute to the constant setbacks suffered by the Federated Suns during the 2790s, the nation virtually on the verge of total collapse until the Kentares Massacre both reinvigorated the AFFS while demoralizing the DCMS. The Battle of Cholame was also notable for Kurtian fighters destruction of a Davion Titan-class DropShip, the last surviving Titan in Great House hands.

Bibolography

• Field Report 2765: AFFS
• Handbook: House Davion
• Handbook: House Kurita
• House Davion (The Federated Suns)
• Technical Readout: 3057