[chico20854]

November 30, 1997

Unofficially,

The month of November closes out with the world continuing to be convulsed by the ongoing strategic nuclear exchange.

The Soviets responded to the bomber and ICBM attacks on their northern air defenses and military headquarters with attacks on SAC bases, additional NATO command posts as well as extending the long-running anti-petroleum campaign to American refineries.

Another pair of SS-24 missiles were fired from silos of the 165th Missile Regiment, 60th Missile Division in Tatischevo near Saratov in the Volga region of Russia, each carrying ten 550-kilot warheads. DSP and Navstar satellites picked up the launches within seconds and relayed the news to NORAD headquarters in Colorado (communications having been restored overnight). A few moments later the missiles were picked up by radars at Flyingdales Moor in the UK and at Thule, Greenland. President Munson was notified, but there was nothing he could do but pray that they were not headed for him and for the souls of those that would be lost. A few minutes later the MIRVs began to land across the north-central US and Canada. Officially, K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was hit by a single warhead that tore the base’s support buildings apart as well as destroying the 410th Bomb Wing headquarters and three B-52Hs and a KC-135 that were undergoing maintenance in the base’s hangars. Winnipeg, Manitoba, home of the Canadian Army’s Training Command, was hit with two warheads. The bulk of the warheads, however, struck North Dakota. Grand Forks and Minot Air Force Bases were plastered with 15 warheads between them (two of the Soviet warheads failed to arrive for still-unknown reasons). The headquarters of the 321st Strategic Missile Wing and 319th Strategic Bombing Wing were hit at Grand Forks, while Minot lost the 57th Air Division Headquarters, 91st Strategic Missile Wing and 5th Strategic Bombing Wing to a combination of ground and air bursts.

Another missile, a SS-18 Mod 5 from the 59th Missile Division’s 496th Missile Regiment, targeted the Norfolk, Virginia area with six 150-kiloton MIRVs. Unofficially, two struck CINCLANT’s headquarters in Norfolk, two roasted the docks at Portsmouth, loaded with munitions, cargo and vehicles for transit to the war zone and the massed ships awaiting Convoy 314. One MIRV hit Langley Air Force Base and its air defense control center and F-15 interceptors, while the last targeted the Army’s Fort Monroe, the scandal-plagued headquarters of Training and Doctrine Command. Officially, despite severe damage to the port facilities at Norfolk and Newport News the military garrisons in the area remained operating. (Many - Forts Eustice and Story, the Little Creek amphibious base, Oceana Naval Air Station, the CIA training camp at Camp Perry - were outside the blast radius of the strikes).

A one megaton thermonuclear warhead airburst over the gas and oil fields and the refineries to the west of Corpus Christi. Several smaller warheads detonated in the air over other refineries in the vicinity. Blast damage to the city's buildings three to six miles away was relatively light, but oil storage and refining facilities throughout the area were ignited by the thermal pulse, and the wind, fanned to hurricane force by the explosion's updraft, created a petrochemical firestorm far more devastating than the nuclear blast itself. The larger buildings suffered relatively little damage from the airburst three miles to the west. All wooden frame houses collapsed and burned, and most brick buildings were severely damaged. Reinforced concrete structures throughout the city were almost untouched, however, though every window was smashed and there was some damage from fire. Damage was worse in the western portion of the city, where the petroleum firestorm leveled tank farms, pipelines, and oil field structures, and the industrial plants and refineries to the west and south were razed or turned into twisted skeleton forests of steel beams and girders. Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, an important training base and aircraft and helicopter repair facility, was lightly damaged during the nuclear attack, and most of the aircraft survived. The mile-long Harbor Bridge sustained only minor structural damage from the nuclear airburst four miles to the southwest. Other areas, particularly the outlying suburbs and nearby towns to the east and north, sustained little damage. The firestorm which swept through the region west of Corpus Christi touched the town of Aranas Pass as well, as the nuclear blast's thermal flash and secondary fires ignited oil and gas in storage tanks and facilities along the coast. Some refinery facilities suffered only light damage. Other refineries and storage terminals were leveled when fires touched off leaking pipelines, creating secondary chemical explosions and fires nearly as devastating as the nuclear blast which caused them. Casualties were over 40,000 dead and 100,000 injured.

America's nuclear power plants had been shut down for safety reasons before the strikes (if a nuke plant's control circuitry were to be fried by EMP while it was functioning, an accident would be almost unavoidable). No one was willing to start one up again while there was still a chance of EMP damage. Some conventional power plants (those with “black-start” capability, generally sufficient diesel generators to start the turbines and operate the control center, or hydropower plants) were repaired, and limited power came back. But the grid was down, and it was not possible to get it where it was most needed.

FEMA personnel revised the long-standing plans to evacuate city residents to move the population closer to the food producing areas and even out labor and distribution shortages by distributing the population more evenly across the country. The program, a classic example of bureaucratic wisdom and farsightedness, ignored such minor concerns as the availability of fuel, blockage of major road arteries by breakdowns or accidents, traffic control for millions of vehicles, or the willingness of lightly populated host communities to accommodate and feed millions of dispossessed city dwellers.

Unofficially,

Other attacks continued to batter American allies. A pair of submarine-launched cruise missiles incinerated the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik and the nearby NATO air base at Keflavik. A SS-N-18 missile launched by the Delta III-class SSBN K-496 hit the air base at Lajes in the Azores with a single 450-kiloton warhead. Other missiles from the same boat hit NATO’s IBERLANT headquarters at Oieras outside of Lisbon, the NATO air training base at Beja, Portugal and the refinery at Sines, Portugal, source of two thirds of Portugal’s petroleum.

Misawa Air Base, Japan was the target for a Soviet 100kT nuclear warhead. Fortunately, the missile overshot and detonated 20 miles out to sea. The resulting tsunami caused damage all along the Japanese coast near the base.

The nuclear attacks on the United States, Canada and elsewhere reverberated throughout the Caribbean and Central America. SOUTHCOM temporarily was cut off from communications after the attacks and immediately moved to secure all petroleum storage facilities in Panama, ignoring the objections of the Panamanian government. Gasoline rationing was immediately put in place throughout the country and the Panama Canal Zone. All crossing points into the Zone were closed and only those who work in the Zone itself were allowed to enter. JTF-Bravo in Honduras also secured the fuel supplies at Soto Cano AFB as well.

All reservists (mostly older retirees by this point of the war) and Junior ROTC units in the Zone were immediately called to report for duty. Every ship transiting the Canal was boarded, with SOUTHCOM seizing three ships that have vital military stores on board including the Liberian-flagged tanker Poseidon Cherry carrying 40,000 tons of gasoline and diesel fuel to Chile, the Marshall Island-flag freighter Frannie F. loaded with Argentine wheat headed for Mexico and the Freedom-class ship Tampa Freedom loaded with twelve Stingray tanks, a battery of M-102 105mm howitzers and six UH-1 Huey helicopters bound for the Philippines.

A coordinated Soviet attack on the Panama Canal failed to damage the Canal, with a Soviet missile being shot down over the Gulf of Mexico by Patriot missiles and three nuclear tipped cruise missiles fired by the last operational Soviet submarine in the Caribbean, the intercepted by F-15 and F-16 fighters.

The Headquarters, 347th Strategic Missile Squadron (the sole operator of the Midgetman road-mobile small ICBM) deploys from the cantonment area of Nellis Air Force Base to the Desert Rock airfield deep in the Nellis Air Force Base range complex, bringing with it a large stock of food, fuel and spare parts.

The Canadian Air Force dispatches a CP-121 anti-submarine aircraft to the Arctic coast to hunt for the Soviet submarine Barrikada. The sub’s location had been relayed to the Canadians after NORAD detected its SLBM launch; the aged aircraft was all that could be found to conduct the difficult search in the Arctic night’s frozen seas.

SAC was active as well, executing retaliatory strikes ordered by President Munson. To compensate for the loss of America’s last satellite launch facility at Vandenburg Air Force Base American missiles destroyed the reconnaissance satellite launch facility at Plesetsk with six MIRVs from two Minuteman III missiles from the 91st Strategic Missile Wing (making it off before the base was hit) and the rocket launch facility and testing center at Kapustin Yar, which received three warheads from another of the 91st's Minuteman IIIs. Tiring of the unrelenting attacks and angered by the attacks on Camp David and the PEFs (he had just received the first photos of the area around Camp David), he ordered further attacks on the Communist Party’s apparatus. The deep underground shelter under Zhiguli Mountain that harbored General Secretary Sauronski was pounded with a 9-meagton B53 bomb (the largest weapon in America’s arsenal) dropped by a B-52, and three recreation areas frequented by high Party officials (at Valdai, Foros and Shuiskaya Chupa in Karelia, near the Finnish border) received 5-kiloton airbursts from Air-Launched Cruise Missiles. Finally, to retaliate for the continued ICBM strikes on the US, SAC launched its first attacks on a Soviet missile base, hitting the Dombarovskiy missile base, home of the 13th Missile Division and 64 SS-18 silos. A B-2 approached the division’s area, unleashing a hail of ten SRAM II missiles, each with a 100-kiloton W89 warhead. Set for ground bursts, the missiles destroyed the missile control center for each of the division’s ten constituent regiments.

RainbowSix reports that,

The remnants of HM government that could be safely moved to the bunker, which was codenamed EYEGLASS, met. The group, the War Cabinet, passed the Emergency Powers Act, which suspended the normal procedures of Parliament and transferred much of the powers of Government to the Regional Government Headquarters (RGHQs). The same Act also authorised the armed forces to take action to assist the civil authorities; officially it was accompanied by a royal declaration imposing martial law.

RainbowSix continued that each RGHQ was headed by a Regional Commissioner, who was assisted by a staff that included civil servants and Military personnel. As other towns and cities suffered the same fate as London in the days that followed the RGHQ’s began to introduce a range of measures authorised by the Emergency Powers Act. Armed troops, many of whom were conscripts partway through their basic training, took to the streets to maintain law and order whilst other units, wearing NBC suits, began to incinerate unburied corpses in an effort to halt the spread of disease. In the north the 5th Division’s proposed move to Europe was placed on hold, the division’s troops urgently needed to try to maintain order. Meanwhile other Army units had begun to collect those Members of Parliament who had managed to survive the attacks;

Merchant ships off the coast of the British Isles who sent out distress calls were instructed by surviving coast guard personnel to make for the relatively safe anchorage of Scapa Flow in Orkney, a former Royal Navy anchorage that was closed as a Navy base in 1956, and over a dozen abandoned commercial cargo ships and tankers from the British and international merchant fleet anchored there. Unofficially, they joined the remnants of the NATO naval support force which had re-occupied the facility in 1996, which had turned out to be of vital importance in the Battle of the Norwegian Sea and the 1997 Battles of the Atlantic.


Elsewhere, Officially, the lead candidate in the St Petersburg New America committee to challenge Augusta Fitzleigh-Warren's leadership of the cell dies in a car accident.

In Boston, the survivors of the Congress of North Banks Fishermen bombings were under no delusions that the bombings were accidental. With CNBF resolve weakened, UBF thugs, organized as "rioters," overran and destroyed CNBF offices in 15 towns. Carlucci's victory was complete and his power secure.

Unofficially, the 29th Infantry Division (Light) detaches a battalion (3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry, Virginia National Guard) to secure Socotra Island airfield, already hit several times by USN and USAF aircraft.

Despite the disorder ashore, the new light frigate USS Hurst heads to sea on its maiden operational voyage. Due to the shortages of aircraft, she carries a pre-war Coast Guard HU-65 Dolphin helicopter. While a capable aircraft, it is optimized for surface search and has minimal anti-surface and anti-submarine abilities.

A guard at the Albuquerque City jail, angered by the nuclear attacks on USA, enters the cell of Autumn Lotus, the woman convicted of aiding a Soviet spetsnaz team in the spring, and shoots her dead.