13th Royal Infantry Division
Sarna News
| |
| Thirteenth Royal Infantry Division | |
| Disbanded | 2784[1] |
| Nickname | The Superstition Division[2] |
| Affiliation | Star League |
| Parent Command | XXXV Corps |
The Thirteenth Royal Infantry Division was a part of the Star League Defense Force Regular Army. It was one of the SLDF's Royal units, which consisted of troops from the Terran Hegemony.
History[edit]
The Thirteenth Royal Infantry Division twice won the SLDF's Martial Olympiad, once in 2664 and again in 2684. The Thirteenth was one of the most rigorously trained units in the SLDF, and often received experimental equipment for testing and evaluation. Their evaluation was critical, and despite having their Divisional headquarters on Midway, no equipment was ever leaked to the DCMS. (The Internal Security Force is known to have dispatched at least one boarding party to take a supply JumpShip but marines attached to the Thirteenth prevented the takeover.) Widespread rumors suggested that the Thirteenth was one of the units used to evaluate Nighthawk power armor, but these remain unconfirmed. The Thirteenth is known to have conducted secret weapons tests in the Draconis Rift however.[3]
In 2762, new XXXV Corps Commanding Officer Farzad Ahmad reassigned the Thirteenth from their station on Midway—a world they had garrisoned for decades—to Iijima, a move that caused some grumbling within the ranks.[4]
In 2764, the unit was assigned, as a part of the XXXV Corps, Fifteenth Army, to District 2 of the Draconis Combine Military Region but was moved to an undisclosed are of the Periphery in 2765 to take part in the Periphery Uprising. The Thirteenth survived the war and the Hegemony Campaign.[5]
Post-Exodus[edit]
For many years the Inner Sphere assumed that the Thirteenth had joined the Exodus, and communications logs indicate that the Thirteenth told General Kerensky that they would be joining after making a stop in the Draconis Rift, likely to the research facility at SLSC K7V.7449.[6] Examining Clan records showed that the Thirteenth never joined the Exodus.[3] Instead the unit remained in the Inner Sphere rather than join Operation EXODUS, secretly working for the fledgling ComStar.[5][7] Subsequent publications released in the thirty-first and thirty-second centuries revealed that the Thirteenth almost certainly formed the basis of the "mercenaries" used to create the Fifth ComStar Expeditionary Division in 2784.[1]
In 2788, the Thirteenth took part in Operation SILVER SHIELD when along with the Third Striker Regiment they assaulted two former SLDF Mechanized Infantry divisions in the Amazon rainforest on Terra.[7] Following SILVER SHIELD the vast majority of the Expeditionary Divisions were demobilized and their equipment cached for the future, forming the basis of the later Com Guards.[8]
Officers[edit]
| Rank | Name | Command | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commanding Officers of the 13th Royal Infantry Division | |||
| Major General | Jeffry Bragg | 2764[2] | |
Tactics[edit]
Unknown.
Composition History[edit]
As an SLDF Infantry division, the Sixtieth would have been formed from two brigades of grunt infantry and a brigade of light BattleMech regiments.[9]
References[edit]
- ↑ a b First Succession War, p. 34: "Those Left Behind (Continued)"
- ↑ a b Field Manual: SLDF, p. 185: "13th Royal Infantry Division"
- ↑ a b Era Report: 2750, p. 56: "Thirteenth Royal Infantry Division (The Superstition Division)"
- ↑ Field Manual: SLDF, p. 184: "XXXV Corps - Command"
- ↑ a b The Star League, p. 148: "Fifteenth Army"
- ↑ Interstellar Expeditions: Interstellar Players 3, p. 10: "Notable Expeditions of IE and its Predecessors"
- ↑ a b ComStar, p. 13
- ↑ Historical: Liberation of Terra Volume 2, p. 117: "ComStar and the Com Guard"
- ↑ The Star League, p. 133: "Divisions - Infantry Division"