1. Storming the palace
As the 2BG under the direct command of Colonel Boyarinov approached the palace, it had to eliminate guard positions while under heavy fire. Here, a Grom commando prepares to throw an RGD-5 grenade into a shelter being used by defenders from the Security Brigade while in the foreground Boyarinov calls up the unit’s BMP personnel carriers for a last dash to the palace entrance. Note the PS-1 suppressor on the grenadier’s AKMS – though obviously the time for subtlety is over – and the NSP-3 nightsight on the SVD sniper rifle carried by the lead soldier. The third carries an AK-47. A ZSU-23-4 self-propelled anti-air gun of 11BG has started to lay down withering suppressive fire on the upper storey of the palace with its quad 23mm autocannon. Given that the Soviets jammed all landline and radio traffic during the attack, the defenders have let off a flare in the hope of summoning aid from loyal DRA forces, but they too had been neutralized ahead of time.
2. Inside the palace
The Soviet commanders had expected the assault to be as bloody inside the palace as outside it, and they were right. Some Afghans fled or surrendered, but more put up a fierce resistance, even if often outgunned. Here, a collection of Amin loyalists are putting up a last-ditch defence of one of the main stairwells. A plain-clothes officer from Amin’s personal protection detail – evident from his use of a German-made Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, exclusively reserved for them – has just shot one attacker. With his colleagues, including a soldier of the 37th Commando Brigade in their distinctive camouflage, being armed only with PM pistols and a single SKS rifle in the hands of a Sarandoy security trooper, though, they will not be able to hold back the main force from 3BG, especially as one of the Moslem Battalion soldiers is bringing up a PKM machine gun. The banner is the shortlived Khalq flag, that was replaced with a national one the following year, and the dead man on the stairs was a Khalq official, evident from the party pin on his lapel.
3. Death of Amin
The Soviets had no plans to take Amin prisoner. Debilitated by his attempted poisoning, he missed the opportunity to flee from the palace when the assault started, unwilling to believe the Soviets had turned against him. Here, still showing the signs of the IV drip on which he was placed to purge the poisons, he is executed by soldiers of the 2nd Combat Group, one firing a burst into his back after a warrant officer from Grom confirmed Amin’s identity from a photo he carried for this purpose. The shooter carries a folding-stock AKMS-47 and the soldier guarding the door an AKM-47, dated by the standards of Soviet Spetsnaz, but carried to blend in with the Afghan soldiers they were imitating. The white armbands they wore were precisely to identify members of the attacking force. The latter also wears the bulky 6B1 armoured vest, first issued in 1957, but worn by many of the assault team as the best available to them at the time. The Grom operator is wearing the uniform of a Sarandoy security trooper (note the red collar tabs) and carries an APS Stechkin machine pistol, with its distinctive long, rigid holster, which could be used as a stock. On the floor sprawls the unfortunate Col. Dr Viktor Kuznechenkov, a Soviet military physician assigned to Amin’s staff, who had not been warned of the attack, and who was accidentally killed in the crossfire.
t1aro
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kosak4
. Книжка, я так понимаю, вот эта:
Dr.Schmeisser
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