Last Minute War ETO (id:#61652)

(ASL Journal #10 ID: J148)   [next]   [previous]

Nižná Rybnica, Slovakia 1939-03-24 (2 others)

Overview:

At dawn on March 23, 1939 Hungary suddenly attacked Slovakia from Carpatho-Ukraine with instructions being to "proceed as far to the west as possible". Hungary attacked Slovakia without any declaration of war, catching the Slovak army unprepared, because many Slovak soldiers were in transit from the Czech region and had not reached their Slovak units yet. Despite the awful confusion caused by the hurried mobilization and desperate shortage of officers, the Slovak force in Michalovce had coalesced sufficiently to attempt a counterattack by the following day. This was largely due to Czech Major Kubíček, who had taken over command from Haššik and begun to get a better grip on the situation. Because they were based on a widely available civilian truck, spares were soon found to repair five of the sabotaged OA vz.30 armoured cars in Prešov, and they reached Michalovce at 5:30 am on March 24. Their Czech crews had been replaced by scratch teams of Slovak signallers from other technical armed forces. They were immediately sent on a reconnaissance mission to Budkovce, some 15 km south of Michalovce, but could not find any trace of the Hungarians. It was decided to counterattack eastwards where the most advanced Hungarian outpost was known to be some 10 km away at Závadka. The road-bound armoured cars engaged the Hungarian pocket from the front whilst Slovak infantry worked round their flanks. Soon they forced the heavily outnumbered Hungarians to fall back from Závadka towards their main line on the River Okna/Akna, just in front of Nižná Rybnica.

Defender: Hungarian (24th Independent Brigade)  

Errata (source)