On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[Targan]

My bad! I should have caught that...

I read that when a ship is decommissioned the name is released although the hull number is not. (i.e. the battleship USS South Dakota BB-57 when decommissioned became the ex-South Dakota, freeing the name up for the new USS South Dakota SSN-790). Usually the old ship is long gone by the time the name is reused - there hasn't been a USS Kansas in 100 years!

So the old Decatur-class destroyer should have been renamed before being recommissioned.

Ship losses have been high enough by that stage in the war that the newer Arleigh Burke-class USS John Paul Jones may have already been destroyed and the older Decatur-class destroyer USS John Paul Jones got to keep its name.

[shrike6]

Ship losses have been high enough by that stage in the war that the newer Arleigh Burke-class USS John Paul Jones may have already been destroyed and the older Decatur-class destroyer USS John Paul Jones got to keep its name. Fair point, but since it hasnt been talked about it. I would assume its still active at this point.

[stilleto69]

I solved that issue by using the US Navy ship listing, that was created by Chico & the DC Working Group a while back. I have it listed as DDG-32 USS Stroddard and attached to SP 1 (CVL-34 USS Oriskany CVGB). But to your point, I did have both CA-148 USS Newport News & SSN-750 USS Newport News active at the same time. I figured US Naval Intelligence would leave a couple of duplicates in place just to mess with the Soviets. I also used the classic Star Trek trick of just adding a "II" to distinguish the difference, i.e. CVL-31 USS Bon Homme Richard and LHD-6 USS Bon Homme Richard II. Just my 2 cents, for what its worth. :)

[chico20854]

November 4, 1997

A single SS-17 Spanker ICBM is launched from southern Siberia (I have central Russia) and releases four MIRVs high over the Korean Peninsula. 500 kiloton warheads detonate over Seoul, Incheon and Kunsan, wreaking havoc and killing, in total, hundreds of thousands of civilians. Fortunately, the fourth warhead (also targeting Seoul) fails to detonate.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship St Paul Freedom is delivered in Beaumont, Texas. It was the last of the class delivered from the city, with four others under construction when Beaumont was struck by Soviet nukes later in the month. Ironically, the production of Phalanx CIWS anti-missile systems has now increased enough that the ship is the last delivered without one of the systems installed as standard equipment.

The 1st Brigade, 17th Airborne Division completes Rotation 97-11 at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Polk, Louisiana and declared combat ready. No immediate orders are issued, the unit placed on standby for deployment overseas when sufficient stocks of equipment have been assembled in theater and assigned civil security and disaster relief duties in the interim.

The British expert team arrives at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and is escorted to the heavily-guarded aircraft shelter that holds the captured Soviet SS-23 warhead. They are joined several hours later by a team of American engineers and scientists, and by midnight they feel confident disconnecting the warhead's conventional explosive, rendering it much less likely to detonate, although still not "safe".

The fires in Rotterdam have largely burned themselves out, allowing civil defense teams to assess the radioactivity and plan to clear roads so an evaluation of the damage to the refinery, chemical plant and port can be done.

In Bremerhaven, Germany the local defense leadership begins to hear increasing complaints about the side effects of the unusual defense measures in place to deceive Soviet intelligence. To make it appear that the port city was hit by a missile that actually landed offshore, city authorities have been burning a series of barges loaded with old tires. The dense, choking smoke covers the city and creates a very real refugee stream fleeing the city. This allows the port to quietly unload freighters carrying vital supplies and equipment.

In Poland, XI Corps renews its attacks, which are coordinated with a breakout drive by the German V Korps. Supported by four tactical nuclear strikes on Soviet troop concentrations, the German force is able to evacuate the city, leaving behind a fiendish collection of booby traps and damaged buildings. Wroclaw's industry and indeed much of its basic infrastructure has been thoroughly destroyed.

To the north, NATO forces complete the evacuation of Poznan; Pact forces driving west ot the north and south had created a large salient that was at risk of being cut off.

The remnants of the Red Banner Northern Fleet rally to defeat the great barrier that has defined the war in the Atlantic Ocean - the GIUK Gap. In a coordinated series of strikes, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles strike Keflavik, Iceland and Argentia, terminuses of the SOSUS hydrophone arrays on the sea floor as well as bases for NATO maritime patrol aircraft and air defense interceptors. Simultaneously, teams of Naval Spetsnaz frogmen cut the cables linking the SOSUS arrays to the continental US and Scotland and attach a limpet mine to the T-AGOS long-range sonar ship USNS Able, in harbor in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Lead elements of the 82nd Airborne Division and their Kurdish allies enter the town of Maragheh, driving out the Soviet garrison detachment.

[chico20854]

If I were to start this effort over from scratch I keep myself organized a little differently.

Right now I have about 10 Orbat excel spreadsheets - Pact Ground units, Soviet submarines, NATO cargo ships, the USAF, non-US NATO surface ships, and so on, as well as a pair of location spreadsheets - steel mills, C3I facilities, airbases, SAM sites, ICBM silos, refineries, power plants, etc - one for NATO and one for the Pact. They also contain details about the opposition's nuclear arsenals - range, yield, CEP, numbers built and deployed, etc. I keep notes in all these sheets on what happens with individual entries, ie "nuked 9/19/97" or "sank the Omaha Freedom on 7/19/97 with three torps". I also have draft vehicle guides in various stages of completion, four word docs for the US (Armored divisions, infantry divisions, independent regiments/brigades and corps/army HQs), one for the Soviets and about 6-8 for allies. And then there's all the v1 canon material and documents that some others here have shared to mine.

But its unwieldy to work with... I usually have 6-10 windows open in excel and two to four in Word, plus three google map windows and a wikipedia page, plus acrobat with Janes' Fighting Ships or some such. When I have time to include photos that's another couple windows going on my screen.

So if I was to start this from scratch I would probably construct a military unit database that would have air, ground and naval units from all combatant nations in it. I might also build a location database, or, if I had the technical skill, put it all in to one master file. It would certainly make things easier to work with and maybe prevent foul-ups like two USS John Paul Jones or Newport News!

So just a peak behind the curtain!

Enjoy the weekend!

[shrike6]

Its hard to keep track of the many detailed moving parts in your story. One of my favorite authors WEB Griffin had errors out the wazoo in his Brotherhood series. Dont feel bad about it. Your only human like the rest of us, just correct it and move on.

[chico20854]

November 5, 1997

The replica USS Constitution enters the South Atlantic for filming the next season of the sitcom "Darwin Was a Monkey's Uncle".

Military units from Eire move into the Northern Irish border counties - the Second Irish Civil War has begun.

Unofficially,

The commander of the 36th Engineer Group (Combat) orders his troops to take offline six hydropower plants between Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee, partially dismantling them and shielding their transformers and control components in underground storage. His independent move (not sanctioned by higher command) incurs the wrath of the Tennessee Valley Authority, owner of the plants, but the colonel's troops have control of the plants.

The Forrest Sherman-class destroyer USS Manley is returned to service at the Mayport Naval Station, Florida and begins local patrolling pending formation of another convoy.

The USS New Jersey battle group is ordered southwest from the vicinity of Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

The 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Protection) Division, en route to occupation duty in Austria, pauses for resupply in Bratislava before crossing the border. Local authorities are reluctant to part with their meagre supplies of food and fuel and have very little ammunition (from police stockpiles) to provide Soviet troops, despite orders from Praha to furnish the Soviet division with everything it needs.

In Bavaria, the Danish Expeditionary Corps (an ad-hoc higher headquarters that is commanding the hodgepodge of Danish units that are fighting in the region) drives southwest, hoping to drive the Italians out of the city of Ulm.

A USAF C-23 light transport flies the captured Soviet warhead to the UK after it is decided to examine it at the British Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.

SACLANT scrambles to seal the gap blown in the defenses of the GIUK Gap. The carriers Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt as well as the escort carriers Langley and Shangri-La are rushed to the area despite the dire state of their air wings and escort force. The light carrier Cabot, in harbor in the Netherlands recovering from its first operational voyage, is ordered to make ready with all due haste. Convoy 306 is routed to the south to avoid the anticipated (relative) flood of Soviet submarines and raiders, and two of the US Navy's remaining attack submarines are ordered into the breach.

The 82nd Airborne Division's center of gravity begins to move south. To avoid presenting a nuclear target the 82nd's battalions operate on a dispersed scale, the division exerting an area of influence that Soviet troops cannot enter rather than holding solid front lines. (Any Soviet units that enter the 82nd's area of control soon find themselves under attack from dismounted infantry from all directions, and that their supporting supply vehicles are shot to pieces before they can reach them).

[chico20854]

There's an article on the Freedom class ships coming out in the next issue of the fanzine, which I understand might be coming out in the next week or so! Stats, backstory, deck plans.

I received word that we're hoping for the next issue this week!

[chico20854]

November 6, 1997

The 6th Marine Division is activated using surviving personnel of the 4th (my 1st) Marine Division as a command and training cadre.

Fanya Ayn Wilkerson, the young American journalist that has become a legend in XVIII Airborne Corps, returns to the US for a well-deserved break following six months in combat covering the 82nd Airborne Division, including two combat drops with the division's pathfinders. She reunites with her husband and young son.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Oakland Freedom is delivered in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Irish troops clash with scattered and isolated RUC and UDR outposts as they seek to link up with IRA troops. Britain has cut off Eire from deliveries of petroleum and declared a naval blockade. France, sticking to its strict neutrality (despite Eire's protests that its intervention is a peacekeeping move to protect Ulster's Catholics and not part of the wider war), halts the export of fuel to the Irish Republic, unwilling to engage in a naval confrontation with the British.

Following a quick three days in port, the Missouri battle group heads back to sea, headed northeast along the Japanese coast.

The Luftwaffe's 12th Luftjaeger Regiment completes two weeks of familiarization training, integration of additional Luftwaffe airbase security troops and augmentation with Army NCOs recovering from wounds suffered in Poland, and is subordinated to the Army and thrown into action against the combined Italian and Warsaw Pact forces in Bavaria.

In Poland, following the evacuation of Poznan and Wroclaw, NATO forces are able to form a straighter front line, allowing more units to be pulled back to reinforce defenses along the Oder-Niesse line.

American Pershing II missiles strike six air bases in Ukraine and Byelorussia that intelligence indicates have been repaired and are being used by Soviet nuclear bombers.

A Soviet submarine (the Foxtrot-class B-821) spots the USS Coral Sea operating in the Baltic east of Lolland and radios its location to Leningrad. The transmission is located by nearby shore stations and a Marineflieger (German Navy) Breguet Atlantique patrol aircraft and a Danish Lynx helicopter sortie to intercept the sub. They soon find the Foxtrot at shallow depth (the Baltic not being very deep and the clear lanes through the defensive minefields limited) and sink her. However, the sighting of the carrier is of considerable tactical value, and the Soviets dispatch a pair of aircraft to respond; a Tu-16MR Badger-D naval reconniassance plane and a single Su-24 bomber from the 305th Bomber Aviation Regiment. With the Badger orbiting at high altitude over the eastern Baltic providing updated location information, the lone bomber, flying at 3m altitude, approaches the carrier to within 4 km, when it pitches up, releases a single bomb and turns back to home. The nuclear munition does not score a direct hit, but detonates slightly more than 200 meters off the carrier's starboard side. The blast rips the ship's island off, crushes the hull and blows the ship's aircraft off the deck into the sea; it begins sinking even before the munitions and fuel aboard start to burn. Within 15 minutes it has sunk below the waves. The destroyer Mitscher, providing close-in protection to the carrier, is also severely damaged by the blast and sinks six hours later.

Once again asserting that a 1859 Treaty has been abrogated, Guatemalan troops moving to the border with Belize. The Belizian government mobilizes its two infantry battalions and issues an urgent plea for help from Britain, its former colonizer and guarantor of its independence since 1981. British Forces Belize, which in prewar days included infantry, artillery and support units as well as a flight of Harriers and helicopters, has been reduced to 50 men operating a jungle training school and several officers seconded to the Belizian Defense Force.

[chico20854]

November 7, 1997

In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art's directors remove most of the paintings, transferring them to underground vaults on Long Island.

Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, an important transportation hub and industrial town (home of the Vitkovice Iron Works), is destroyed by a 200 kt nuclear bomb (unofficially) dropped by an American F-111 fighter-bomber, one of only a few dozen remaining.

Unofficially,

The light frigate USS Mosely is delivered in Mobile, Alabama and manned by a mix of USN and USCG personnel.

US Army authorities approve the resumption of AT-4 production at the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant.

In the mountains of North Korea, the remnants of the North Korean Peoples Army attempts to sustain their advance using their fairly successful tactics developed pre-war: take advantage of night and poor weather to infiltrate the Allied lines and attack from the rear. The easternmost American formation is the 41st Infantry Division (Light), which abuts a South Korean unit to its east. The ROK troops, while tough and skilled, display less initiative than the Americans and operate more rigidly. The 41st suffers the loss of one of its newest privates, Joseph P. Snoofie, who, not the brightest soldier, doesn't realize that the inscription "front towards enemy" on his Claymore mine means that he should face that side away from his fighting position.

The first technical assessment team arrives at the ruins of the Rotterdam refinery. Their initial assessment is that there is very left remaining to salvage following the blast and subsequent fire and that it will be several years and over a billion Dutch guilders to rebuild it.

Responding to the need for trained NCOs and technical experts, the Southwestern TVD command orders the return of the leadership of the 42nd Guards Tank Division to the Ukraine. The unit, which started the war as a training unit, leaves its junior soldiers and much of its equipment behind, to be distributed to other units, and moves to Chernigov.

NATO naval and civilian salvage and rescue craft move to the site of the sunken USS Coral Sea in an attempt to save what remains. The remainder of the Coral Sea battle group has suffered varying levels of damage and is evacuated from the area to Danish and German shipyard facilities for emergency repairs under a cover of NATO fighter aircraft protecting the flotilla from a Soviet follow-up attack.

The Sierra-class attack submarine K-534, which has been patrolling the Indian Ocean for many months, successfully intercepts the Diego Garcia supply ship, the Galveston Bay, and sinks it with a pair of torpedoes. The loss of the ship impairs the base's long-term viability, but USAF airlifters can provide any immediately needed critical items.

[chico20854]

I have never looked forward to Thanksgiving more.

Is started pulling together canon on the TDM and aftermath... so far I'm at about 15 pages. Hang on guys, it's going to be a long, rough ride!

[chico20854]

November 8, 1997

To impede the arrival of additional reinforcements from the US by way of Japan, the east coast ROK port cities of Busan and Ulsan are targeted for destruction. The Echo II-class sub K-34 surfaces in the early morning hours in the Sea of Japan and launches two nuclear-tipped P-1000 Vulkan cruise missiles, one each at Busan and Ulsan. Several minutes later, the 350 kt warhead aboard the first P-1000 detonates over Busan, wrecking the port and badly damaging the eastern half of the city. The missile targeting Ulsan suffers a critical engine failure soon after launch and crashes into the sea well short of the Korean coast (the warhead did not explode). A JDF P-3 Orion, on routine ASW patrol over the Sea of Japan, spots the smoky missile launch signatures on the western horizon and closes at speed to investigate. K-34 has difficulty retracting one of its missile launch tubes, delaying its escape. It attempts to submerge just as the JDF P-3 arrives overhead. The P-3 drops two Mk. 46 homing torpedoes, both of which track and hit the crash-diving K-34, sinking it along with all hands.

Unofficially,

Alarmed at the growing losses at the front, collapsing Soviet economy, massive damage already endured from NATO nuclear strikes and the utter impossibility of retaking East Germany, the Politburo confronts General Secretary Sauronski, demanding he reach out to seek a negotiated and immediate end to the war. The "peace faction" - composed of the Minister of Defense and nearly all the civilian members of the Politburo - argue that the USSR is in a better position than it was prewar, for while East Germany has been lost, the USSR now controls China, Romania, Jugoslavia, Austria and Turkey, and that the potential for a disastrous continuation or escalation of the nuclear war has the potential to destroy the USSR and the Communist Party. The opposition - Secretary General Sauronski, KGB Chairman Yangel and the aged ideologue Nikolai Kozlov - decry the defeatism of the peace faction and boldly claim that Western resistance is collapsing and that victory is nearly at hand.

Another Forrest Sherman-class destroyer, the USS Bigelow, is recommissioned in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

To provide more trained and combat capable small units to battered units at the front, the Army staff in Washington directs the "Bravo Company transfer" - all combat battalions in the strategic reserve (the 46th ID, 49th AD, 194th Armored Brigade, 197th Infantry Brigade and 13th Armored Cavalry Regiment) plus the 193rd Infantry Brigade in Panama - are to transfer their complete B Companies to the front and to stand up a new B Company with new replacements being sent from the training base. The battalions are to identify their highest performing soldiers in the remaining companies and promote them to leadership positions to staff out the new companies.

The nuclear attack forces the delay of the trial of the former commander of the battleship Missouri, charged with dereliction of duty for the unauthorized release of a nuclear missile in October.

Tensions grow higher in Bratislava as the 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Protection) Division's commander demands resupply from the city authorities in Bratislava. The Soviet general is forcefully ejected from the town hall after a confrontation with the city's Communist Party chief.

The American XI Corps and German V Korps evacuate Legnica, Poland after thoroughly demolishing the former Soviet Northern Group of Forces and Western TVD headquarters complex and the nearby command bunker. To the north II British Corps defends Gorzów Wielkopolski, a town which it captured in May, holding on only by the determined efforts of its artillery gunners and intrepid Harrier jump-jet pilots who bombard the attacking Soviets with cluster bombs, rockets and iron bombs.

A team of engineers, contracting experts and civilian experts (American expats employed by the Saudi state oil company) arrive in Aden, Yemen to assess the condition of the city's refinery, which, thankfully, was only lightly damaged in the fighting for the city.

[chico20854]

November 9, 1997

The US responds to the nuclear attack on Pusan by launching a single Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missile from the USS George Washington Carver at the Soviet port and naval complex of Vladivostok. (unofficially) The eight MIRVs aboard all function, destroying the docks (three warheads), Pacific Fleet headquarters (two warheads), PVO headquarters (two warheads) and the ship repair yard (one warhead). American nuclear bombs will return to Vladivostok in the weeks ahead, but for now the city is crippled.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Seattle Freedom is delivered in Portland, Oregon.

The troop ship General Patch completes reactivation and is towed, with only a caretaker crew, to Atlantic City, New Jersey to serve as FEMA emergency housing. While thought is given to using the ship in its designed purpose, the decision is made to continue shipping replacements to Europe by air, using the many intact airfields in the UK, rather than cram thousands of recruits into a single hull, vulnerable to Soviet submarines and raiders, and uncertain as to the condition of any European port large enough to dock the 600-foot long ship.

The defense attorneys for the former commander of the battleship Missouri request a change of venue to the continental US, concerned about their personal safety (and that of their client) in a region increasingly targeted by Soviet nuclear weapons.

The commander of the 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Security) Division arrays his troops around vital sites in the city of Bratislava in an attempt to intimidate city authorities into releasing supplies to his unit. He dispatches battalions to the city's local and regional government buildings, the telephone exchange, refinery, truck plant, military academy and airfield.

In southern Germany, the US VII Corps comes under pressure on its northern flank as an attack from the Soviet 41st Army, heading south out of Nuremburg, begins.

As the 82nd Airborne moves south and they and their Kurdish allies rove across northwestern Iran disrupting Transcaucasian Front's rear area, General Suryakin orders 7th Army north to, initially, secure a supply line and following that to combat the marauding American force.

The Politburo is in turmoil as the various factions struggle for dominance. Sauronski and the KGB hold the upper hand, however, and one of the peace faction's leaders, Chairman of the Trade Union Council Ivan Maksimov, is arrested by the KGB and transported to the notorious Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. His children - sons serving as a fighter battalion commander in Iran, another son in a tank regiment in Poland and his daughter's husband serving in an air defense battery outside Moscow - are relieved of their commands and ordered to return to the capital, clearly a signal that they are to at least serve as hostages.

Britain dispatches reinforcements to Belize. The first two aircraft are British Air 767s carrying Territorial Army infantrymen from the 4th Battalion, The Kings Own Border Regiment, whose home defense duties are taken over by recently raised Home Service Force companies. 1st Battery, Royal Artillery, a training unit, is mobilized as well and moves to RAF Brize Norton to load on board one of the UK's odder transport aircraft, a chartered former RAF Shorts Belfast. Another of the gargantuan aircraft arrives to load the three Gazelle light helicopters of 25 Helicopter Flight for the transit to Central America.

[chico20854]

November 10, 1997

Nothing official for today! Unofficially,

The 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment completes Rotation 97-9 at NTC-3 at the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona and is declared combat ready.

The US Navy continues its cycle of rapidly bringing 1950s-era destroyers back into service as the USS Morton is recommissioned, under the command of Commander Michelle Lamberton, an experienced officer that previously commanded the landing ship USS Boulder

The officers of the 12th Motor-Rifle Division, battered in action in China and North Korea, return to their pre-war garrisons in Mongolia and prepare to activate a new division. The division's command structure is a shell, with some regiments commanded by captains and the entire reconnaissance battalion missing.

The last Allied troops cross the Taedong River, departing the northern half of the largely ruined city of Pyongyang and demolishing the remaining bridges to slow the Soviet and North Korean advance. On the east coast, Wonsan comes under heavy attack; the presence of the cruiser USS Des Moines is crtical to the city's defense.

The battleships Missouri and New Jersey rendevous north of Japan and pass through the Japanese-held Kurile Islands.

The Dutch 9th Amphibious Combat Group completes its initial training period and is rushed to the front, assigned to duty in the Baltic attached to the US 5th Marine Division as a tenth line infantry battalion.

In a remarkable feat of lucky timing, American forces unleash a Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missile on Bratislava-area industrial sites - the refinery, truck plant, military academy, airfield and regional government headquarters. The Soviet 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Protection) Division, which has units at all of these locations, is destroyed in the strikes.

The British I Corps counterattacks west of Nuremberg, catching the 30th Guards Motor-Rifle Division in the flank and stalling the Soviet attack, saving US VII Corps from a disastrous flank attack.

In Iran, III MEF goes on the offensive against the supply-starved 40th Army. The lead attacks are from the Australian Brigade, whose tanks have superior gunners to the tired Soviet conscripts that have replaced the Afghanistan veterans that were lost in the earlier months of the campaign. The Soviets put up resistance that can be described as "slightly more than token", falling back in near-panic to the relative safety of the Zagros Mountains.

At the Tblisi electronics plant, the engineers are proud to have completed their prototype of a production SS-23 guidance package. It is immediately sent to Moscow for testing, while the Tblisi plant begins to tool up for an initial production run. In Moscow, the power struggle within the Politburo has played out, with three members of the peace faction fleeing the city and the Minister of Defense announcing his immediate retirement.

Guatemalan forces cross the border with Belize, immediately becoming engaged in fierce firefights with Belizian Defense Force (BDF) and police outposts. The posts are overrun after several hours of fierce fighting, giving time for word to reach the capital. The BDF dispatches two infantry companies to hold the road that cross the border, leaving companies to secure the airports and the harbor in Belize City, while again appealing to the UK for assistance and calling on the United Nations and Organization of American States to condemn the attack and lead efforts to restore the tiny Caribbean nation's borders. (The UN has been moribund since war broke out between Security Council members China and Russia in 1995, but many nations still participate).

[chico20854]

November 11, 1997

Survivors of the Dutch 304th Infantry Brigade, largely destroyed in the nuclear attack on Rotterdam on October 14, are reformed in the town of Edam, northeast of Amsterdam. Pitifully understrength, the "brigade" is only a few companies strong and is assigned only local security and relief duties.

Unofficially,

The first American war-built light frigate, the USS Poole, is commissioned and placed on duty at Norfolk, Viginia after two months of post-delivery workups and training. The ship is assigned convoy escort duty. It is assigned a newly-delivered SH-2G anti-submarine helicopter; due to shortages only a single one of the ship's eight Harpoon missile launch tubes is loaded.

The American Essex-class carrier Oriskany, construction of which started in 1944 and originally commissioned in 1950, decommissioned in 1976, is recommissioned once again at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. Present at the ceremony are the ship's commanding officer when she was decommissioned in 1976 and over a dozen "plank owners" - original crewmen from when she was commissioned in 1950. Its air wing, CVW-56, is training inland at NAS Fallon, Nevada. While Oriskany last operated F-8 and A-7s, the declining A-7 inventory is being used by larger fleet carriers, forcing CVW-56 to use older A-4s culled from training squadrons and the nearly empty AMARC in Arizona.

The battleships New Jersey and Missouri arrive off the coast of Sakhalin Island and begin pounding Soviet targets - ports, air defense radars, army garrisons, the airfields and transportation hubs. The Soviets in the region are so depleted by the nuclear attack on Vladivostok, months of action in the area and Japanese invasion of the Kuriles that they offer only feeble resistance.

The Soviet 30th Guards Motor-Rifle Division struggles to hold its positions, facing the British 1st Armoured Division on its west flank and the US 36th Infantry Division to the south. As the day drags on the 3rd Brigade, 1st US Armored Division arrives on the field and the Soviet formation is forced to give way. It is able to buy time to escape by calling down a strike by a nuclear-tipped SS-21 missile on the lead American battalions; the attack does little physical damage but throws the Americans off balance.

40th Army discovers that the mountains offer less protection than they had hoped as 1st and 4th Marine Air Wings' surviving helicopters are used to insert dismounted patrols of Gurkhas and Marines to hunt isolated Soviet detachments and capture key passes.

The 238th Rear Area Protection Division is ordered to complete its mobilization, a process that had been delayed innumerable times since it began activating and training in late 1996. The flood of refugees from the cities in the Volga region provide an abundance of recruits, but there are only three battalions worth of BTR-152 APCs and a single battalion of T-34/85s in the division’s stores. Nonetheless, the unit is sent by road to perform occupation duties in captured territories in Austria and southern Germany, freeing up other occupation forces for service at the front.

[chico20854]

November 12, 1997

The nuclear exchange finally reaches the Persian Gulf region when Soviet ICBMs target the oil export facility at Kharg Island in the Gulf.

Unofficially,

The Freedom ship Honolulu Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas.

North Korean troops infiltrate the South Korean lines southwest of Wonsan and secure a solid blocking position, cutting off the South Korean division (a reserve division) holding the sector. The Soviets take advantage of the unit's isolation, pounding it with a half dozen nuclear weapons and it disintegrates. Soviet and North Korean light troops bypass the shell-shocked South Koreans and pour through the gap in the lines and reach the coastal road, cutting Wonsan off.

The light frigate USS Newell is delivered in Pascagoula, Mississippi and manned by a mix of USN and USCG personnel.

The US Navy continues its reactivation of mothballed combatants, with the recommissioning of the USS Decatur DDG-31, an aged guided-missile destroyer. (When it decommissioned in 1983 its name was released, ultimately used for a new USS Decatur, DDG-73. That ship was sunk in December 1996, making the name available for once again for the 1950s-built ship).

The judge presiding over the court martial of the former commander of the USS Missouri, in a long opinion detailing the long history of the JAG Corps in combat over many centuries, nonetheless notes the unprecedented threat that the trial is operating under and approves the change of venue to Bremerton, Washington.

Meanwhile, the officer's former command and its sister ship New Jersey remain off the coast of Sakhalin, pounding additional targets. The Soviet Pacific Fleet takes advantage of the opportunity to dispatch a number of resupply vessels to the beleaguered Aleutian Front.

The Dutch 9th Amphibious Combat Group launches a raid on a Soviet mobile air defense radar site west of Utska, Poland in its combat debut.

In southern Germany, the British I Corps continues its attack on the Soviet 14th Army. Supported by Allied tactical aircraft and a nuclear strike on the Soviet supply lines, the corps makes gains and by nightfall has the city of Nuremberg in sight.

The US Navy dispatches a trio of P-3 Orion patrol aircraft from Ascension Island in an attempt to locate the Soviet raider that attacked McMurdo Station, Antarctica the prior week. The task is nearly impossible, with tens of thousands of miles of iceberg-clogged ocean to search.

The lead battalions of the Soviet 7th Army arrive in the region south of Tabriz, deploying cautiously to try to locate the American paratrooper force.

British infantry arrive at the front in Belize, where their LAW80 anti-tank rockets and Milan platoon are able to halt the small Guatemalan armored force (a platoon of M41 Walker Bulldog tanks and a contingent of V-100 APCs) that had proved critical in defeating the light infantry of the Belizian Defense Force. As the sun sets, the first British artillery arrives within range; its aged M-56 pack howitzers (pulled from storage and rushed to Belize) the first fire support the BDF has enjoyed in this short war.

[cawest]

so will the Brits or Belize, recover any of the Guatemalan M41 Walker Bulldog tanks. if they do so who will crew them? just recovering the turrets and co-aux much less the main guns could be useful..

[Ursus Maior]

The Danish had an interesting M41 improvement fielded during the late Cold War: the M41 DK-1 featured a NBC protection system, an external laser rangefinder, and thermal imaging equipment. They also came with skirts and stowage, if I remember correctly.

[chico20854]

so will the Brits or Belize, recover any of the Guatemalan M41 Walker Bulldog tanks. if they do so who will crew them? just recovering the turrets and co-aux much less the main guns could be useful..

I think it is unlikely just given the composition of the British and BDF force. The British battalion is a Territorial Army unit pulled from home defense duties. They have mostly Land Rovers with maybe a handful of Bedford trucks, but nothing powerful enough to tow a disabled light tank while their maintenance team lacks the tools, expertise, manpower and spares to work on it. Belize is a poor country so I think it is unlikely that there would be much similar capacity on the civilian side. If they retain control of the battlefield!

With that said, it might be possible for one or more of the knocked out tanks, if they didn't burn, to be emplaced as pillboxes at key points, or even in the jungle yards from where they were stopped.

[chico20854]

November 13, 1997

Nothing in canon for today!

The seventh R-5D hypersonic spy plane is completed in Palmdale, California.

Irish forces in Northern Ireland have linked up with IRA paramilitaries in South Armagh but have made no real move to drive out the UDR and RUC garrison of Armagh, the county town. The Irish force has not attempted operations on this scale ever and is struggling to maintain momentum while learning how to support and sustain an effort this large.

Allied forces in eastern North Korea scramble to try to dislodge the enemy troops that are blocking the road south of Wonsan while the naval command once again hastily organizes a fleet to evacuate the surrounded force should that prove necessary.

Meanwhile, in South Korea the Soviet nuclear strikes are disrupting the war effort. Production at South Korean munitions plants has largely halted as their workforces join tens of thousands of civilians fleeing urban areas for the perceived safety of the countryside. The refugee flows result in massive traffic jams that block northbound military supply convoys. The nation's Combat Police and Civil Defense forces are overwhelmed; desperate Combat Police commanders try to clear the roads with gunfire. The effort instead results in panicked civilians, wild rumors and roads blocked by abandoned and shot-up vehicles.

The former commander of the USS Missouri and his defense team are evacuated from Japan aboard a US Navy C-9 aircraft, accompanied by a USN guard detachment.

The battleship task force off the Russian Far Eastern coast moves around the north coast of Sakhalin and slashes into the ferry route between the island and the mainland. After sinking two ferries, they move to demolish the ferry ports on both ends of the route with gunfire from their 16-inch and 5-inch guns.

The British I Corps continues its counter-offensive in southern Germany, reinforced with artillery and the US 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment from the adjacent US VII Corps. The British 2nd Infantry Division passes through the 1st Armoured Division's lines to enter the city of Nuremberg, engaging the retreating Soviet and Czech occupation force.

Soviet occupation forces in the Balkans continue to suffer from widespread local resistance from NATO-supported partisans. The remnants of the Jugoslav and Romanian armies and local defense militias, the American 71st Airborne Brigade and Green Beret detachments all undertake constant raids on isolated outposts and supply convoys, partly out of a desire to continue to resist and partly to capture food, fuel and ammunition. The USAF and CIA fly low level supply flights supporting isolated friendly detachments, and Special Forces A-teams call in lucrative targets for sea-based nuclear weapons in the Mediterranean. All this unrest causes the Southwestern TVD to recall major elements of the Southern Front from Thrace to bolster the occupation forces further north.

The Allied airborne force in Iran continues its move south, capturing the town of Bukan as the final elements of the 82nd Airborne Division prepare to abandon their last positions in Tabriz. The division's engineers supervise the demolition of the air base's runway, fuel tanks, hangars and other key infrastructure; they have already dismantled the secondary airstrip they had established shortly after arriving in the area.

The fallout of the unrest in the Politburo continues, with the resignation or sidelining of all the remaining members of the so-called peace faction. One of the members who fled the capital, GOSPLAN head Yuri Sigayev, is arrested in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on charges of economic sabotage of the war effort.

[chico20854]

November 14, 1997

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

The twin light frigates Howard D. Crow and Petit exit the Gulf of St Lawrence to commence their first mission, an escort of Convoy 310.

The 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment is ordered held at the Yuma Proving Ground pending allocation of adequate equipment prior to movement to a theater of war. The regimental commander is grateful for the opportunity for his command to engage in additional training prior to deployment. His adjudant polls commanders for recommended personnel changes, relieving those who the recently-completed NTC rotation has demonstrated as not being up to the task and promoting those that demonstrated potential.

Due to an atmospheric anomoly possibly caused by the nuclear exchange, a radio message from the 139th (my 119th) Motor-Rifle Division is received at the Headquarters, 1st Far Eastern Front. The 139th, a poorly trained and equipped mobilization-only division thought lost since July, reports that it is deep in the Chinese interior and has been reduced to a battalion in strength. It is the last contact the Red Army has with the unit.

In North Korea, the evacuation of Allied forces in Wonsan becomes more chaotic as panicking civilians rush aboard the motley collection of fishing boats, tugs, small freighters and amphibious craft that the ROK naval command has commandeered into an evacuation fleet. Offshore, the guns of the USS Des Moines augment the embattled defenders of the city's perimeter; the heavy cruiser strikes a heavy blow when its onboard helicopter locates the commander of the Soviet 247th Motor-Rifle Division (using an unsecured radio) and wipes him out with one of the ship's tactical nuclear rounds. Despite the loss, the 247th holds its blocking positions, although the unit's planned attacks on the southern perimeter fail to launch.

Their magazines emptying and their fuel tanks running dry, the battleships Missouri and New Jersey conclude their attacks on Sakhalin Island and the Siberian coast opposite it. They travel south through the Strait of Tartary, heading for friendly Japanese territory. As they depart, a Soviet mobile coast defense missile battery looses a volley of SSC-1 anti-ship missiles at the American force. The escorting Aegis destroyers shoot down all but one, which strikes the frigate USS Gray. The missile's 2000-pound warhead tears the frigate's stern apart and tosses the ship's helicopter about in its hangar, igniting a massive blaze. The ship slips under the waves a few hours later.

The 25th Missile Brigade, a former East German Army Scud missile unit, is down to a handful of (non-nuclear) missiles. (The Soviets never allowed the East Germans access to chemical or nuclear warheads). NATO commanders, busy targeting American-built nuclear delivery systems, are too busy to assign the brigade targets and the German government has the brigade withdrawn to the Ruhr, where its remaining TELs (Transporter-Erector-Launcher trucks) are parked in a disused warehouse.

The American 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment battles to recapture its peacetime headquarters, Merrell Barracks in Nuremberg. The firefight adds to the damage the garrison's buildings proudly displayed (the original damage the result of Allied attacks on the former SS barracks during and immediately after World War Two). The American troopers are enraged to discover that the Soviet occupiers have looted the Regimental Museum, and that several historic artifacts (including Patton Silver, the Dragoon Book and several original oils by Stivers, Troianni, etc.) are missing.

NATO forces have largely evacuated all the territory they captured in the spring and summer invasion of Poland, falling back to mostly derelict defensive positions opposite Oder River crossings they occupied over the prior winter.

In the central Atlantic, the Sierra III-class attack sub K-231 completes over a week's patrolling of a remote area of the ocean, failing to detect any NATO or neutral ship traffic. It relays the news to Murmansk, where the Red Banner Northern Fleet orders the Typhoon-class boomer TK-20 and its Akula-class escort K-461 to the area.

Convoy 306 transits the English Channel after dark, concluding a long voyage that included a drastic diversion south to avoid a massive hole blasted in NATO's defenses of the North Atlantic west of Iceland.

A new head of GOSPLAN, the Soviet planning body responsible for control of the command economy, is named. As an indication of the new direction coming from the Kremlin the nominee is a Party official that has spent most of his career in the branch of the Party responsible for indoctrination and mass mobilization; he has no prior economic or industrial experience.

Belizian and British forces stop another Guatemalan assault along the road from the border to the capital city of Belmopan. The British and Belizian light infantry, guided by the instructors of the British Jungle Warfare School, adopt tactics similar to the Finns, striking road-bound units from trackless wooded terrain, then fading away before the enemy can respond. In the commerical capital, Belize City, the last elements of the British Force, 43 Battery, Royal Artillery, a light air defense unit equipped with captured Soviet ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns and obsolescent Blowpipe missiles, arrives.

[chico20854]

November 15, 1997

Nothing in canon for today. Unofficially,

At the ministerial level, NATO political leaders raise a delicate subject - the status of the Jugoslav, Romanian, Turkish and Free Polish delegations, all of whom have had their territory overrun by Pact troops and are largely out of the war. After several hours of uncomfortable discussion the decision is reached to continue to allow them to participate in NATO decision making, as the Alliance still has an obligation to seek those countries' liberation.

The final FEMA emergency strategic stockpile is fully loaded and sealed up. This one, at Cardigan Mountain State Forest in New Hampshire, is the 37th one completed; plans for an additional 13 are ultimately not completed due to the nuclear exchange.

The first Soviet trawlers, patrol boats and small freighters that surged out of Petropavlovsk last week arrive in Anchorage, Alaska, bringing vitally needed supplies to the 25th Corps.

With the KGB network in the UK in tatters after months of hunts by the Army and MI 5, a fresh team of agents is dispatched from Moscow. They are flown to Turin, Italy, where they begin their covert trek to the UK.

The Soviet 30th Army, receiving reports of the numbers of Allied troops fleeing Wonsan and the immense damage to the city being inflicted by the fighting and Allied demolition teams, decides to hasten the capture of the city by detonating a Scud missile above the city. The resulting blast and fire from the 300-kiloton detontation destroys much that is left, swamps many of the small craft in the harbor and hastens the collapse of the defense. As night falls, the commander of the USS Des Moines brings the ship into the outer harbor, where it takes on over a thousand desperate soldiers and civilians who reach the cruiser from small craft or are rescued by the ship's boats.

The carrier USS Oriskany completes loading of stores and spares and begins her first voyage in 20 years.

In Singapore, the Freedom-class cargo ship Kansas Freedom is loaded with over 100 tank containers loaded with JP-5, the final cargo that can be hastily assembled for a voyage to Diego Garcia to replace what was en-route to the island garrison aboard the Galveston Bay, sunk last week.

The American battleship force arrives in Hakodate, Japan, where it refuels and the US Navy ammunition ship USNS Mount Hood can more rapidly transfer some of the nation's rapidly dwindling stock of 16-inch shells to the battlewagons.

The Dutch 9th Amphibious Combat Group, recovered from its raid on a Soviet air defense radar, assumes a position along the front lines on the western shore of the Szczecin Lagoon.

Refugee flows disrupt Central Europe as thousands of desperate Poles try to cross into Germany ahead of avenging Communist authorities; the flow of civilians on foot slows down NATO military traffic to and from the Oder bridgeheads. On the opposite side of the lines the Polish communist authorities are carrying out several campaigns simultaneously - a hunt for collaborators and spies, a drive to mobilize civilians to make emergency repairs to the war-ravaged nation's transportation, industrial, power and water systems, and mass relocation of the surviving population into areas that can sustain them as well as be carefully watched by loyal forces. To the west, a steady stream of German and Dutch civilians, fleeing nuclear attacks (or the potential of a nuclear attack) on their home, heads for the Belgian and French borders. The French and Belgian authorities conduct a careful screening of the refugees, but the basic humanity of the French and Belgian populations demands that the aged, young and helpless be granted refuge from a horrible situation.

Aircraft from the USS John F Kennedy battle group continue to range over Jugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria and Italy, striking a variety of industrial, communications and transportation targets and enemy troop concentrations with nuclear bombs.

To the east, the USS Nassau and USS Wisconsin withdraw from the southern Turkish coast, unable to meaningfully influence the situation ashore, where the remnants of 16th Air Force continue to fly attack missions from Incirlik Air Base, stiking Soviet targets in the Balkans, Transcaucasia and interdicting Soviet shipping in the Black Sea.

While the first ships of Convoy 306 arrive off ports in the North Sea, ships from Convoy 304 are still at anchor awaiting unloading berths at the remaining intact European harbors.

The new head of GOSPLAN delivers an address to the organization's staff and representatives of the various central ministries associated with industrial production. His speech calls for greater efforts from the workforce, calling on managers to inspire their workers to superhuman efforts in devotion to the victory of the workers in the worldwide class struggle. Privately, most of the laisson officers are disgusted, noting that his address fails to offer solutions to the myriad real problems faced by the Soviet economy - the cutoff of foreign trade, the loss of millions of workers to the war, nuclear attacks wiping out Kiev, Minsk and numerous other western cities, widespread ethnic and worker unrest, countrywide shortages of basic materials and much more.

The Guatemalan high command, dismayed by the Army's lack of progress in Belize, orders the air force and navy to get involved in the fighting. The Air Force redeploys several of its A-37 light attack aircraft and helicopters to airfields in the northeast, while the elite airborne force is rallied from its scattered garrisons (where they have been fighting Communist guerrillas) to the capital.

[shrike6]

The "Light Frigates" that keep on popping about is this ship class notional? If so are we going to see the stats printed in a future issue of the newsletter like the Freedom class?

[chico20854]

November 16, 1997

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Fresno Freedom is delivered in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

The KGB agent team departs Turin and is driven to a remote sector of the Franco-Italian border, where the six new spies are able to cross undetected on foot in the darkness.

With the eastern end of the Allied line in disarray - as exhausted and demoralized South Korean troops fall back to the safety of the prewar DMZ - Allied forces in the west, under intense pressure by the Soviet 35th Army, begin to withdraw from the Kaesong River line. I and IX US Corps engineers have surveyed surviving prewar North Korean fortifications between Pyongyang and the DMZ, identifying some positions that can be used to hold off the advancing Soviets and their North Korean allies/clients.

The Chief of Staff of the 25th Infantry Division (Light), the senior surviving officer, begins reforming the unit at Camp Casey and Camp Hovey, facilities used by the 2nd Infantry Division in peacetime. The unit is initially assigned only survivors of the division's escape from encirclement and tactical nuclear strikes; 8th Army's G-1 (Personnel Officer) has determined that the best use of new replacements is to maintain the strength of units on the line rather than trying to rebuild the shattered 25th.

The Kansas Freedom sails from Singapore with a cargo of vitally needed supplies for Diego Garcia. The ship is relying on speed and a routing away from normally travelled sealanes, along with occasional overflights from friendly maritime patrol aircraft, for protection on the way.

As Pact forces close on the Oder River bridges become ever more important. NATO forces strike several of the Wisla crossings in an attempt to slow the flow of supplies and reinforcements to the front, while Western TVD tries to assemble remaining tactical bridging assets for the planned upcoming assault crossing of the Oder.

With Merrell Barracks in Nuremburg secure, the Colonel of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment receives confirmation that the regiment's artifacts are in fact missing. He assigns the entire unit a secondary mission to recover them; the officers raise a bounty of nearly $5,000 for their recovery. The regimental Command Sergeant Major offers his own special package of sweeteners - exemption from the guard and duty rosters, choice assignments within the regiment as well as certain material rewards - to the bounty. The regimental commander offers an on-the-spot one grade promotion to any soldier below the rank of 1st Lieutenant, Chief Warrant Officer or Staff Sergeant that recovers the items.

The soldiers of the 353rd Engineer Group (Combat) return to Fort Hood, Texas following two weeks of leave. Nine soldiers desert.

In Chernigov, Ukraine the 42nd Guards Training Tank Division, its leadership and some of its equipment returned from the Romanian Front, accepts its first contingent of new trainees, teenagers from eastern Ukraine whose teachers and local military commissions have identified as exhibiting leadership or technical potential. The division aims to take the raw talent and transform them into "instant sergeants" or tank or artillery crewmen for the Southwestern TVD.

In Belize, the day is another one of stalemate as the Guatemalan commanders struggle to sustain their troops with food and ammunition following the prior days' action and British and Belizian forces improve their defensive positions.

[chico20854]

The "Light Frigates" that keep on popping about is this ship class notional? If so are we going to see the stats printed in a future issue of the newsletter like the Freedom class?

No, they're additional Coast Guard Bear/Famous-class medium endurance cutters, delivered with the defense features the USCG cutters were designed to be augmented with in wartime - a towed array sonar, two quad Harpoon launchers, some additional electronics and a LAMPS-1 SH-2 helicopter instead of the Dauphin. While they were disliked IRL as poor sea boats and there were questions about the ships' stability if all that armament was fitted, I posit that they were put back into production anyway, as they were cheaper and offered some decent capability while small enough to be produced at second-tier shipyards, such as the many smaller yards along the Gulf Coast that primarily build offshore oilfield support boats in peacetime.

[shrike6]

No, they're additional Coast Guard Bear/Famous-class medium endurance cutters, delivered with the defense features the USCG cutters were designed to be augmented with in wartime - a towed array sonar, two quad Harpoon launchers, some additional electronics and a LAMPS-1 SH-2 helicopter instead of the Dauphin. While they were disliked IRL as poor sea boats and there were questions about the ships' stability if all that armament was fitted, I posit that they were put back into production anyway, as they were cheaper and offered some decent capability while small enough to be produced at second-tier shipyards, such as the many smaller yards along the Gulf Coast that primarily build offshore oilfield support boats in peacetime.

I'll admit I scanned through a couple of months of entries after surgery to catch back up and probably missed where you put that. Interesting though, not a bad way to add more ships during wartime.

[cawest]

I think it is unlikely just given the composition of the British and BDF force. The British battalion is a Territorial Army unit pulled from home defense duties. They have mostly Land Rovers with maybe a handful of Bedford trucks, but nothing powerful enough to tow a disabled light tank while their maintenance team lacks the tools, expertise, manpower and spares to work on it. Belize is a poor country so I think it is unlikely that there would be much similar capacity on the civilian side. If they retain control of the battlefield!

With that said, it might be possible for one or more of the knocked out tanks, if they didn't burn, to be emplaced as pillboxes at key points, or even in the jungle yards from where they were stopped.

its your story, but the M41 comes in at 23tons. a 25ton wrecker (its standard for semis) could pull one. i don't think that they will have many, but it could be a way to fluff some being recovered if not totally returned to service. could be a good money sink for the goverment.

[chico20854]

November 17, 1997

The American paratroops receive some welcome assistance from Kurdish irregulars in the Orumiyeh area.

Unofficially,

The freshly resupplied troops of the Soviet 25th Corps launch an attack on X US Corps' positions outside Fairbanks, Alaska, kicked off with a pair of tactical nuclear artillery rounds. The attack forces the American troops back; to protect the vulnerable civilian population from a winter of privation in the freezing Arctic weather X Corps abandons most of the city without a fight, falling back to defensive positions at Fort Wainwright and Eileson Air Force Base on the city's east side.

The KGB agent team destined for the UK links up with a sympathizer controlled by the KGB's Nice cell, who picks them up in his commercial van (carrying a variety of weapons, surveillance gear, supplies and communications equipment) and begins to travel to Normandy.

HM Government orders an acceleration of the annual technical inspection of the UK Steam Reserve, a collection of decommissioned steam locomotives kept in ready storage at various sites around the UK for emergency post-nuclear service. (They are entirely mechanical, immune to the effects of Electro-Magnetic Pulse and are not reliant on refined petroleum for fuel).

South Korean Special Forces troops sheltering in the remote mountains of North Korea identify a Soviet supply convoy heading south and report the movement. A nearby F-16 of the ROK 162nd Tactical Fighter Squadron arrives shortly thereafter and blankets the trucks with cluster bombs, depriving the 30th Army of much of what it needs to fight for two days.

The USS Des Moines arrives in the South Korean port of Pohang and discharges its massive load of passengers evacuated from Wonsan, North Korea.

The battleship USS Missouri heads back to sea, heading for the Yellow Sea to support the embattled Allied forces fighting in North Korea.

With final pre-deployment checks completed (a quick medical check, confirmation of wills and issuing personal weapons), the troops of the 353rd Engineer Group (Combat) (US Army Reserve) board a pair of requisitioned 747 jetliners at Fort Hood Army Airfield and depart for Europe.

The Guatemalan Air Force enters the war in Belize after several days of preparation. (The Air Force had been left out of planning because of inter-service rivalry, with the Army commander overly confident that his forces would be able to overrun Belize without Air Force assistance, clearing the way for future political advancement as a victorious general). Demonstrating the lack of coordination between the Army and Air Force, a flight of A-37s, flying at low level and 95 mph, flies down the road from the Guatemalan border. The pilots are unable to identify the camouflaged British positions, so they turn to the alternative target, the BDF headquarters in Belmopan. That facility is protected by a pair of emplaced machineguns, which succeed in distracting the pilots in their strafing run and damaging one of the slow-moving converted trainers. The sorties achieve very little of any consequence, and the skies over Belize are clear for the rest of the day.

[chico20854]

November 18, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

The 8th Armored Cavalry Regiment completes Rotation 97-11 at NTC-2 at the Yakima Training Center and is declared combat ready.

The carrier USS Oriskany suffers an engineering casualty and lies dead in the water for 12 hours off the Catalina Islands.

Another KGB agent meets with the van driver at a highway rest stop south of Nantes, France and takes over driving the KGB team's van to the English Channel.

South Korean troops of the ROK VIII and III begin to rebuild a defense line along the prewar DMZ along the east coast of the Korean Peninsula. Military Police block all roads leading south and maintain active patrolling of the countryside (along with the patrols of the civilian police), sweeping all stragglers and deserters up and directing them to the battered units furiously rebuilding the prewar defensive positions.

Polish government authorities try to summon the remnants of their four territorial pontoon regiments to replace some of the bridges across the Wisla destroyed by NATO strikes and replace the tactical and assault bridges that Soviet and Polish Army units have thrown across the river, freeing those assets up for use in the upcoming planned Oder assault. Western TVD designates a site north of Świebodzin as the concentration site for the bridging and the troops to operate them, under the umbrella command of the Soviet 5th Pontoon Engineer Regiment.

The NATO counterattack from Nuremburg peters out as the British I Corps and US VII Corps' fuel tanks begin to run dry, a consequence of the destruction of the petroleum import facilities in Rotterdam and repeated nuclear strikes on pumping stations and tank farms of the Central European Pipeline System, the backbone of the NATO fuel distribution network in Germany.

The Greek Type 209 submarine Proteus attacks an American resupply convoy supporting the USS John F Kennedy battlegroup south of Crete. The modern, quiet diesel boat is fortunate to have the convoy''s escort pass overhead without detecting it, placing it in position to launch torpedoes from all eight tubes. Three ships are hit - the frigate USS Antrim, ammunition ship USNS Santa Barbara and the aged oiler USNS Kawashiwi. All three ships end up going under, the oiler taking 17 hours to succumb to fire.

The 353rd Engineer Group (Combat) (US Army Reserve) arrives at Einhoven Airport, the Netherlands. The group commander is livid when he learns that the ship flagged to carry his unit's equipment (the large sealift ship USNS Sisler) has experienced engine trouble and is not expected to load for another 10-12 days. His unit is moved to several holding camps outside Amsterdam to acclimatize.

In midmorning, the Guatemalan Air Force appears over Belize once again. This time the A-37s are escorting a mixed bag of helicopters carrying paratroops to assault the Belize International Airport. The helicopters land, disgorging their paratroops into a hail of withering fire from the defending force of Belizian reserve infantry and British headquarters and support troops. The A-37s loitering overhead are unable to distinguish friendly from enemy ground troops and are forced to resorting to strafing the parked transport and liason aircraft that constitutte the Belizian Defense Force's Air Branch. Within four hours the last Guatemalan troops are surrounded; most chose to surrender rather than be killed. Five Guatemalan UH-1-type helicopters are lost in the assault.

[chico20854]

November 19, 1997

Lieutenant Commander Michael Sacks, U.S. Navy, wounded in one of the earliest actions of the war, is released from the Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland.

Unofficially,

Various sources report an increased possibility of a Soviet nuclear attack on the UK. The Prime Minister, having received considerable criticism for his rushed evacuations during previous false alarms since July and reluctant to panic the population, is reluctant to order another full implementation of Operation Peripheral. Instead, after some discussion it is decided that the Royal Family will leave London for their estate at Sandringham in Norfolk, accompanied by the Home Secretary. As a precautionary measure, other senior members of the Government quietly leave the Capital for secure locations throughout the southeast of England.

Eluding authorities with a skillful application of cash, a fishing boat departs Dieppe with the KGB agent team destined for the UK aboard.

The 7th Infantry Division (Light) receives four infantry companies and a 105mm artillery battery as reinforcements from the 193rd Infantry Brigade in Panama, part of the "Bravo Company Transfer" initiated the week prior.

Her propulsion system working again, USS Oriskany continues her workups, landing A-4s of VA-175.

In Europe, the recipients of the "Bravo Company Transfer" are the 43rd Infantry Division (from the 46th), the 3rd Armored Division (from the 49th) and the 8th Infantry Division (receiving companies from the 194th Armored Brigade).

As allied units return to East Germany the opportunity presents itself for soldiers, exhausted by months of fierce combat and whose units have suffered greatly, to become separated from their units, either intentionally or not. Military Police units establish screens to round up these wayward soldiers and return them to duty, either in their own units or some other nearby, understrength unit.

With the interruption to its supply of fuel and ammunition from yesterday's attack on its replenishment group, the John F Kennedy battle group is forced to scale back operations over Turkey and the Balkans and head to the central Mediterranean for replenishment. The battleship Wisconsin increases its activity in the region, beginning a foray into the Aegean raiding Greek positions in the islands. (Her supply of Tomahawk land-attack missiles has been depleted and the launchers cannot be reloaded underway).

To support the 82nd Airborne Division, a nearly constant flow of C-130s and smaller transport aircraft ferry supplies into northwestern Iran, landing on hastily constructed airstrips, straight stretches of highway or dropping them from low level. This situation creates a plethora of targets for Soviet fighters, demanding a concerted effort to maintain an Allied combat air patrol over the area. Saudi officials are unwilling to extend their F-15 and Tornado force so far from home territory, as are most of its GCC allies. The Iranian Air Force contributes what sorties it can, and over the objections of their commanders the F/A-18s of the 1st and 4th Marine Air Wings make an appearance over the region. The final force brought in is the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, whose F-15E strike fighters possess superior air-to-air capabilities to those of the dedicated F-15C interceptors of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing. This diversion, however, decreases the interdiction effort directed to keeping up the pressure on Soviet supply lines.

More unrest troubles the USSR as peasants in the Vologda region refuse to hand over the produce from their private plots to authorities, noting that their local collective farm did its best to fulfill its norms even in the face of no spare parts for the (overaged and worn out) tractors and cutbacks in fertilizer and fuel.

[ToughOmbres]

November 19, 1997

Lieutenant Commander Michael Sacks, U.S. Navy, wounded in one of the earliest actions of the war, is released from the Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland.

Unofficially,

Various sources report an increased possibility of a Soviet nuclear attack on the UK. The Prime Minister, having received considerable criticism for his rushed evacuations during previous false alarms since July and reluctant to panic the population, is reluctant to order another full implementation of Operation Peripheral. Instead, after some discussion it is decided that the Royal Family will leave London for their estate at Sandringham in Norfolk, accompanied by the Home Secretary. As a precautionary measure, other senior members of the Government quietly leave the Capital for secure locations throughout the southeast of England.

Eluding authorities with a skillful application of cash, a fishing boat departs Dieppe with the KGB agent team destined for the UK aboard.

The 7th Infantry Division (Light) receives four infantry companies and a 105mm artillery battery as reinforcements from the 193rd Infantry Brigade in Panama, part of the "Bravo Company Transfer" initiated the week prior.

Her propulsion system working again, USS Oriskany continues her workups, landing A-4s of VA-175.

In Europe, the recipients of the "Bravo Company Transfer" are the 43rd Infantry Division (from the 46th), the 3rd Armored Division (from the 49th) and the 8th Infantry Division (receiving companies from the 194th Armored Brigade).

As allied units return to East Germany the opportunity presents itself for soldiers, exhausted by months of fierce combat and whose units have suffered greatly, to become separated from their units, either intentionally or not. Military Police units establish screens to round up these wayward soldiers and return them to duty, either in their own units or some other nearby, understrength unit.

With the interruption to its supply of fuel and ammunition from yesterday's attack on its replenishment group, the John F Kennedy battle group is forced to scale back operations over Turkey and the Balkans and head to the central Mediterranean for replenishment. The battleship Wisconsin increases its activity in the region, beginning a foray into the Aegean raiding Greek positions in the islands. (Her supply of Tomahawk land-attack missiles has been depleted and the launchers cannot be reloaded underway).

To support the 82nd Airborne Division, a nearly constant flow of C-130s and smaller transport aircraft ferry supplies into northwestern Iran, landing on hastily constructed airstrips, straight stretches of highway or dropping them from low level. This situation creates a plethora of targets for Soviet fighters, demanding a concerted effort to maintain an Allied combat air patrol over the area. Saudi officials are unwilling to extend their F-15 and Tornado force so far from home territory, as are most of its GCC allies. The Iranian Air Force contributes what sorties it can, and over the objections of their commanders the F/A-18s of the 1st and 4th Marine Air Wings make an appearance over the region. The final force brought in is the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, whose F-15E strike fighters possess superior air-to-air capabilities to those of the dedicated F-15C interceptors of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing. This diversion, however, decreases the interdiction effort directed to keeping up the pressure on Soviet supply lines.

More unrest troubles the USSR as peasants in the Vologda region refuse to hand over the produce from their private plots to authorities, noting that their local collective farm did its best to fulfill its norms even in the face of no spare parts for the (overaged and worn out) tractors and cutbacks in fertilizer and fuel.

More great updates per usual. It strikes me that even before the TDM the conflict was approaching the broken-back level where each side was heavily damaged yet continued to pursue victory-(this is even before strategic nuclear weapons were flying) More than one pundit "back in the day" posited that a NATO/WP conflict would quickly become just that.

[ToughOmbres]

If I were to start this effort over from scratch I keep myself organized a little differently.

Right now I have about 10 Orbat excel spreadsheets - Pact Ground units, Soviet submarines, NATO cargo ships, the USAF, non-US NATO surface ships, and so on, as well as a pair of location spreadsheets - steel mills, C3I facilities, airbases, SAM sites, ICBM silos, refineries, power plants, etc - one for NATO and one for the Pact. They also contain details about the opposition's nuclear arsenals - range, yield, CEP, numbers built and deployed, etc. I keep notes in all these sheets on what happens with individual entries, ie "nuked 9/19/97" or "sank the Omaha Freedom on 7/19/97 with three torps". I also have draft vehicle guides in various stages of completion, four word docs for the US (Armored divisions, infantry divisions, independent regiments/brigades and corps/army HQs), one for the Soviets and about 6-8 for allies. And then there's all the v1 canon material and documents that some others here have shared to mine.

But its unwieldy to work with... I usually have 6-10 windows open in excel and two to four in Word, plus three google map windows and a wikipedia page, plus acrobat with Janes' Fighting Ships or some such. When I have time to include photos that's another couple windows going on my screen.

So if I was to start this from scratch I would probably construct a military unit database that would have air, ground and naval units from all combatant nations in it. I might also build a location database, or, if I had the technical skill, put it all in to one master file. It would certainly make things easier to work with and maybe prevent foul-ups like two USS John Paul Jones or Newport News!

So just a peak behind the curtain!

Enjoy the weekend!

It is an incredible amount of work and a massive undertaking-it is also very well done and greatly appreciated.

[ToughOmbres]

November 15, 1997

Nothing in canon for today. Unofficially,

At the ministerial level, NATO political leaders raise a delicate subject - the status of the Jugoslav, Romanian, Turkish and Free Polish delegations, all of whom have had their territory overrun by Pact troops and are largely out of the war. After several hours of uncomfortable discussion the decision is reached to continue to allow them to participate in NATO decision making, as the Alliance still has an obligation to seek those countries' liberation.

The final FEMA emergency strategic stockpile is fully loaded and sealed up. This one, at Cardigan Mountain State Forest in New Hampshire, is the 37th one completed; plans for an additional 13 are ultimately not completed due to the nuclear exchange.

The first Soviet trawlers, patrol boats and small freighters that surged out of Petropavlovsk last week arrive in Anchorage, Alaska, bringing vitally needed supplies to the 25th Corps.

With the KGB network in the UK in tatters after months of hunts by the Army and MI 5, a fresh team of agents is dispatched from Moscow. They are flown to Turin, Italy, where they begin their covert trek to the UK.

The Soviet 30th Army, receiving reports of the numbers of Allied troops fleeing Wonsan and the immense damage to the city being inflicted by the fighting and Allied demolition teams, decides to hasten the capture of the city by detonating a Scud missile above the city. The resulting blast and fire from the 300-kiloton detontation destroys much that is left, swamps many of the small craft in the harbor and hastens the collapse of the defense. As night falls, the commander of the USS Des Moines brings the ship into the outer harbor, where it takes on over a thousand desperate soldiers and civilians who reach the cruiser from small craft or are rescued by the ship's boats.

The carrier USS Oriskany completes loading of stores and spares and begins her first voyage in 20 years.

In Singapore, the Freedom-class cargo ship Kansas Freedom is loaded with over 100 tank containers loaded with JP-5, the final cargo that can be hastily assembled for a voyage to Diego Garcia to replace what was en-route to the island garrison aboard the Galveston Bay, sunk last week.

The American battleship force arrives in Hakodate, Japan, where it refuels and the US Navy ammunition ship USNS Mount Hood can more rapidly transfer some of the nation's rapidly dwindling stock of 16-inch shells to the battlewagons.

The Dutch 9th Amphibious Combat Group, recovered from its raid on a Soviet air defense radar, assumes a position along the front lines on the western shore of the Szczecin Lagoon.

Refugee flows disrupt Central Europe as thousands of desperate Poles try to cross into Germany ahead of avenging Communist authorities; the flow of civilians on foot slows down NATO military traffic to and from the Oder bridgeheads. On the opposite side of the lines the Polish communist authorities are carrying out several campaigns simultaneously - a hunt for collaborators and spies, a drive to mobilize civilians to make emergency repairs to the war-ravaged nation's transportation, industrial, power and water systems, and mass relocation of the surviving population into areas that can sustain them as well as be carefully watched by loyal forces. To the west, a steady stream of German and Dutch civilians, fleeing nuclear attacks (or the potential of a nuclear attack) on their home, heads for the Belgian and French borders. The French and Belgian authorities conduct a careful screening of the refugees, but the basic humanity of the French and Belgian populations demands that the aged, young and helpless be granted refuge from a horrible situation.

Aircraft from the USS John F Kennedy battle group continue to range over Jugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria and Italy, striking a variety of industrial, communications and transportation targets and enemy troop concentrations with nuclear bombs.

To the east, the USS Nassau and USS Wisconsin withdraw from the southern Turkish coast, unable to meaningfully influence the situation ashore, where the remnants of 16th Air Force continue to fly attack missions from Incirlik Air Base, stiking Soviet targets in the Balkans, Transcaucasia and interdicting Soviet shipping in the Black Sea.

While the first ships of Convoy 306 arrive off ports in the North Sea, ships from Convoy 304 are still at anchor awaiting unloading berths at the remaining intact European harbors.

The new head of GOSPLAN delivers an address to the organization's staff and representatives of the various central ministries associated with industrial production. His speech calls for greater efforts from the workforce, calling on managers to inspire their workers to superhuman efforts in devotion to the victory of the workers in the worldwide class struggle. Privately, most of the laisson officers are disgusted, noting that his address fails to offer solutions to the myriad real problems faced by the Soviet economy - the cutoff of foreign trade, the loss of millions of workers to the war, nuclear attacks wiping out Kiev, Minsk and numerous other western cities, widespread ethnic and worker unrest, countrywide shortages of basic materials and much more.

The Guatemalan high command, dismayed by the Army's lack of progress in Belize, orders the air force and navy to get involved in the fighting. The Air Force redeploys several of its A-37 light attack aircraft and helicopters to airfields in the northeast, while the elite airborne force is rallied from its scattered garrisons (where they have been fighting Communist guerrillas) to the capital.

Another nice touch to mention the SRS/FEMA caches. Very realistic (although I can imagine DLA doing something similar) and a great addition to the timeline.

[chico20854]

Folks, I screwed up the other day. The following section

November 19, 1997

Various sources report an increased possibility of a Soviet nuclear attack on the UK. The Prime Minister, having received considerable criticism for his rushed evacuations during previous false alarms since July and reluctant to panic the population, is reluctant to order another full implementation of Operation Peripheral. Instead, after some discussion it is decided that the Royal Family will leave London for their estate at Sandringham in Norfolk, accompanied by the Home Secretary. As a precautionary measure, other senior members of the Government quietly leave the Capital for secure locations throughout the southeast of England.


is from Rainbow Six's amazing Alternative Survivors' Guide to the UK (https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2947).

It's such a great work that I have been leaning on it for much of what I have ging on in the UK. I screwed up by not giving Rainbow the credit he is most certainly due for his work, and I once again apologize!

Please take some time to read through his work. It has a lot more on the UK than I could ever hope to!

Once again, I'm sorry Rainbow! (And if I have picked up somebody else's work in my years of hoovering up timeline info, please let me know so I can get you the credit you are due!).

[chico20854]

November 20, 1997

Dr. Allie Kurtz becomes the CIA representative on the Allied Joint Intelligence Task Force in the CENTCOM area of operations.

Unofficially,

The Essex-class carrier USS Oriskany makes her first catapult launches in decades as she works up to full operating capability. She is joined by two of her escorts, the reactivated destroyer John Paul Jones and the Coast Guard cutter Chase, to begin working on battle group operations.

The KGB team arrives in the predawn hours on the beach south of Dover. They quickly unload their rubber raft's cargo of weapons, supplies and equipment before launching it into the surf; 100 meters offshore one of the team members sinks it and undertakes a perilous swim ashore. They break into an unoccupied holiday cottage and shelter for the day, recovering from the rough crossing in cold weather.

The last Allied front line troops withdraw from Pyongyang, leaving stay-behind parties in well-hidden and -supplied observation posts. In the east, forward detachments of the 30th Army reach the prewar Demilitarized Zone, now adequately occupied by South Korean troops.

The battleship Missouri returns to action, firing on Soviet and North Korean troops attacking South Korean and American marines outside the North Korean naval base complex at Songang-ni.

The Soviet 12th Tank Division prepares for an assault crossing of the Oder near Gorlitz.

The commander of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, seeing other units receive new companies from the US, pleas for additional troops to rebuild his battered unit, which is still at only 35 percent of authorized strength after months of action. He writes: "It is essential that 3rd ACR receive the requested persoonel and equipment to returnt the unit to full strength. However, even if we had all our personnel and mission capable equipment today we would still not be able to return to action because of our losses of senior leaders (sergeant through colonel) and our training status. We have been unable to train above squad level, and even training at squad level is limited by severe shortages of equipment. We have lost a large majority of our trained leaders and soldiers and gained few. None of the new personnel have conducted tactical training with the regiment's units. In addition, we have critical shortages in low density MOSs. 3rd ACR currently has four trained NBC specialists and most troops have no supply personnel; 2d Squadron's S-4 (Supply Officer) is an E-4 with 13 months in service. I have an aggressive training plan that will result in trained squadrons by March and a combat ready regiment by June, but in order to execute it I need the regiment filled with adequately trained personnel and mission-ready equipment."

The Wisconsin surface action group continues its rampage though the Aegean Sea and turns northeast, heading for the Turkish Straits. Lacking friendly air cover and given the near-destruction of enemy air forces in the area, the group proceeds with all of its radars on full power. Consequently, fixing the group's location, course and speed is relatively easy for Soviet ELINT aircraft orbiting over the Black Sea. They relay the information to Moscow and within 45 minutes a SS-20 IRBM is fired by the 19th Missile Regiment near Sumy in the Ukraine. The missile lands 600 meters from the battleship, sending her and her group to the bottom. (The reverberation of the shock wave from the blast off the shallow seabed did greivous damage to the escorts out of the direct range of the blast).

CENTCOM receives several companies of reinforcements from the "Bravo Company Transfer", with the 14th ACR and 48th Infantry Brigade receiving companies from the 13th ACR and 197th Infantry Brigades in the continental US.

In Soviet Georgia, workers at the Tbilisi Electronics plant begin the low-rate production of improved SS-23 guidance packages. The first prototype, completed a few weeks before, is rejected by Moscow because it is too heavy, a result of the unavailability of the proper lightweight alloy from the war-burdened Soviet economy. The initial series production lacks the proper metals as well. Deliveries of SS-23 missiles continue to be on hold while the new guidance packages are produced.

Unwilling to give up on the attempt to overrun Belize, the Guatemalan high command orders the Navy into action. The force, composed of a half-dozen or so patrol boats in the Caribbean and seven companies of marines (nationwide) needs several days to organize for an assault on Belize's many coastal villages and outlying islands.

Meanwhile, the front along the sole road between the two nations remains stalemated, with Guatemalan Army troops struggling to maintain their morale in the face of supply shortages, the shock of facing competent opposition and the constant fear of British attacks emerging from the jungle.

[chico20854]

November 21, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

The helicopter repair and maintenance center in Corpus Christi, Texas completesits first conversion of a US Navy TH-57 training helicopter into a OH-58 battlefield observation model for service at the front. The conversion was relatively minor, fitting additional avionics and weapons mounts, replacing the windscreen with a flat model as well as a coating of IR and radar-absorbent paint and a general update of aged components. A C-5 Galaxy awaits at the Naval Air Station to fly the "new" aircraft to Iran.

The American attack submarine USS Olympia arrives in Holy Loch, Scotland after a patrol that took it from Pearl Harbor, under the North Pole and into the Barents Sea.

The KGB team in the Dover area splits up into teams of one or two members, dispersing across the UK to begin tracking developments in wartime Britain.

Deep in the Chinese interior, the 292nd Motor-Rifle Division continues its advance on foot. In the month since it abandoned its vehicles (which were out of gas) the unit has advanced another 450 kilometers.

The freighter Kansas Freedom reaches Diego Garcia, carrying a load of JP-5 fuel, food and other essentials. The staff on the island begin storing the cargo discharged by the ship's cranes.

An A-team from the 20th Special Forces Group (National Guard) locates the Soviet 5th Pontoon Engineer Regiment's bivouac area and the growing equipment park containing much of the remaining tactical bridging equipment from Pact units throughout Poland. The team radios the find in to the group headquarters, which dispatches a Green Light Atomic Demolitions Munition team to the area. The strike team arrives shortly before dawn and, covered by the men of the first team, emplace it in between the tent sites and motor pool. The subsequent blast effectively wipes out the massed equipment and the specialist troops, severely limiting Western TVD's ability to ferry anything other than an assault echelon across the Oder.

The American light frigate USS Marchand begins its first operational voyage, an anti-submarine sweep of the approaches to Norfolk, Virginia.

The 234th Rear Area Protection Division, a unit composed of Romanian-speaking Moldovan reservists that performed well in quelling resistance to the Soviet 14th Army's occupation of southeastern Romania, is assigned to 26th Army and transferred to Jugoslavia.

The nuclear exchange continues in the Persian Gulf region, with USAF F-15Es taking a break from air defense to block the road junction south of Mashdad, Iran, where roads from Turkmenistan and Afghanistan join and continue to Tehran. Thanks to the efforts of the 82nd Airborne Division the road is one of the main routes for Transcaucasian Front to obtain supplies.

[Targan]

November 20, 1997The Wisconsin surface action group continues its rampage though the Aegean Sea and turns northeast, heading for the Turkish Straits. Lacking friendly air cover and given the near-destruction of enemy air forces in the area, the group proceeds with all of its radars on full power. Consequently, fixing the group's location, course and speed is relatively easy for Soviet ELINT aircraft orbiting over the Black Sea. They relay the information to Moscow and within 45 minutes a SS-20 IRBM is fired by the 19th Missile Regiment near Sumy in the Ukraine. The missile lands 600 meters from the battleship, sending her and her group to the bottom.

Whoops. Hopefully there were lessons learned there.

[bash]

Whoops. Hopefully there were lessons learned there.

Let me just crest this hill and present a profile, what's the worst that can hap

[ToughOmbres]

Whoops. Hopefully there were lessons learned there.

Indeed. Hate to see the BB Wisconsin go down in the timeline.

[chico20854]

November 22, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

The Freedom ship Toledo Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas.

FEMA commissions another evacuation center, this one a winterization and expansion of the campground at Vermont's Grand Isle State Park in Lake Champlain. The facility should be able to accomodate 1500 evacuees from Burlington, Vermont, Plattsburgh, New York or even more distant cities in New England. More controversially, the site is a mere 70 miles from Montreal; local emergency planners worry that the state may be burdened with supporting foreigners, even if they are allied civilians.

The battleship USS Missouri, operating in the Yellow Sea, is damaged by a conventional torpedo (one hit) in the bow from the Victor III-class attack submarine K-244 and heads for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii for repairs.

The British and American forces outside Nuremburg shift over to a defensive deployment, in many cases occupying defensive positions long planned for employment in the decades-long effort to defend West Germany from a Warsaw Pact invasion.

In Western Poland, corps commanders question the utility of holding bridgeheads over the Oder, pointing out that the NATO forces are in no condition to repeat the spring and summer's conquest of Poland and that the threat of infiltration and small size of the bridgeheads require troops to minimize dispersal, creating a lucrative target for Soviet nuclear weapons. The prior day's attack on Western TVD's bridging assets reduces the Pact's ability to threaten an assault crossing of the Oder as well, all arguing for a withdrawal from most of the positions east of the Oder-Niesse line.

In western Bavaria, the commander of XX Corps, facing off against exhausted Italian alpini mountain troops, requests reinforcements of artillery, engineers and modest armor forces to take advantage of the enemy's weakness and recapture territory. Unfortunately, 4th Army has no assets to send to the sector, such is the shortage of replacements, fuel, ammunition and spares.

Salvage specialists clear the entrance to the Danish port of Esbjerg that had been blocked by the Romanian freighter Ilfov, which had been sunk by Soviet bombs in an air raid over the summer. This effort clears a major obstacle to clearing the growing backlog of loaded ships in the North Sea. The backlog grows larger with the arrival of Convoy 310, which brings another 48 ships loaded with cargo.

Over the Baltic, an A-7E of the US Navy's VA-66, a survivor of the USS Coral Sea's air wing operating from the Danish Air Force Aalborg Air Station, intercepts a Soviet A-90 Orlyonok Ekranoplan craft flying at low level, ferrying a load of supplies into Poland. (Such is the desperate situation of the Pact forces; the craft carries a mere 28 tons of cargo). The A-7 diverts and downs the craft with several bursts of 20mm gunfire. Upon his return to base, the pilot is incensed that the squadron intelligence officer is uncertain as to credit the pilot with a "kill" (taking him closer to being an Ace) or with sinking a surface craft.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade in Kenya continues its fierce attacks on Tanzanian forces near Mombasa, defeating a planned Tanzanian attack before the forces can even get organized for an offensive.

[pmulcahy11b]

November 22, 1997

Upon his return to base, the pilot is incensed that the squadron intelligence officer is uncertain as to credit the pilot with a "kill" (taking him closer to being an Ace) or with sinking a surface craft.


That is an interesting conundrum there...

[bash]

*checks calendar*

*tugs collar*

Ooof.

[chico20854]

*checks calendar*

*tugs collar*

Ooof.

Keep in mind that Thanksgiving Day 1997 was on the 27th. Don't worry, I'm ready!

[chico20854]

November 23, 1997

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Sauronski decides that the strategic situation is growing increasingly intolerable, with the US, UK and Canada continuing to churn out tanks, troops, guns and aircraft with inpunity, while the USSR has suffered the loss of Kiev and Minsk and is faced with diminishing prospects of restoring East Germany to Soviet control. Accordingly, he directs that the nation's nuclear forces prepare to execute a strike on the American and British homelands, to decapitate their Capitalist regimes and create a favorable situation for a worker's uprising, or at least demand an end to the capitalist war of aggression. To prevent the attack from igniting an all-out apocolyptic response on the Soviet homeland, the attacks are to use no more than 15 missiles.

Janet Clancy, daughter of Vice President Pemberton and her father set out on their annual multi-day Thanksgiving cross country ski trip to the family's cabin in North Cascades National Park, Washington. Taking advantage of the cold weather, they travel on the frozen Lake Chalen to the isolated hamlet of Stehekin, accompanied by her Secret Service bodyguard, a former Marine sergeant that learned to ski at the Mountain Warfare Training Center in the Sierra Nevadas. The bodyguard is armed with his issue SIG-Sauer P229 pistol and a M-4 carbine. When they arrive at the cabin they are greeted by another agent and the family's cook, who arrived the day prior via snowmobile.

Soviet troops in Manchuria revolt when they receive word that they are to be sent to the front in Europe. The men feel that they have alreeady won a war for the Soviet Union and that the many reservists, rear area troops and other able-bodied men who did not contribute to victory in China should spend time at the front before they once again risk their lives. The men are heavily armed combat veterans, and the revolt must be handled delicately.

The American carrier Oriskany reaches a new milestone - its first full squadron sortie evolution, when VA-175 launches a training strike (in support of Marines training at Twentynine Palms, California) and returns to the ship.

NATO forces in Poland hold on to the Oder bridgeheads against growing Soviet pressure. The opposiiton is mostly Soviets, the Polish Army being diverted to support the Border Guards in the hunt for pro-NATO partisans, stay-behind parties and collaborators that may have betrayed the Communist Party.

The Freedom-class ship Springfield Freedom diverts from the North Sea into the British port of Felixstone for discharge of its cargo of vehicles (mostly new M939 5-ton trucks but also a quartet of M-1A2D tanks and several dozen old M-561 Gama Goats. They spend only a few hours ashore before being loaded onto the USS Boulder, a LST that can land vehicles on beaches.

As the orders to strike the US and UK are received by the leadership of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Long Range Aviation and Navy, planners begin to pull together the concept for the operation. (Existing plans largely cover an all-out strike on the West using all available weapons). They will be fully prepared to execute in three days.

[chico20854]

November 24, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

Having given the orders for an attack on the United States and UK, Premier Sauronski departs Moscow for the secret underground command center at Zhiguli Mountain near Kuybyshev. He is accompanied by his mistress, favorite son and small entourage to avoid attracting attention. His departure, of course, is noted by the KGB, whose Chairman Yangel, departs shortly thereafter for the safety of the bunker complex under Kosvinsky Mountain in the Urals.

The 2nd Brigade, 17th Airborne Division is declared combat ready after completing Rotation 97-11 at JRTC-2 at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. It is held at the base pending receipt of equipment and a decision from the Joint Chiefs as to where it will be sent.

The front along the DMZ in eastern Korea is static as 30th Army suffers from severe supply shortages and a lack of replacements for the heavy losses it has sustained in the long advance from the Soviet border. Allied lines in the central mountains are slowly receding to the prewar DMZ, while Allied mechanized forces in the west (mainly a handful of South Korean mechanized brigades and the 163rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (Montana National Guard)) south of Pyongyang are slowing 35th Army's reconquest of North Korean territory with frequent lighting mechanized raids on the Soviet advanced detachments. Meanwhile, South Korean stay-behind parties continue to identify Soviet supply convoys for interdiction strikes.

NATO troops along the Oder become increasingly nervous as each day passes without a Soviet attack on their bridgeheads. They spend the time furiously digging ever-deeper protective shelters, which hopefully will save them from the nuclear attacks they can't help but fear are coming shortly.

With the loss of the Wisconsin battle group in the Aegean to a Soviet missile strike, the commander of the John F. Kennedy carrier battle group departs Sigonella, Sicily and requests permission from 6th Fleet to shift his area of operations to the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily and west of the Italian Peninsula. The Navy detachment ashore, caring for the damaged carrier America, once again requests an update on what to do, having largely repaired what they are able to do with the resources on hand.

The LST USS Boulder beaches itself at high tide at Scheveningen, Netherlands and drops its ramp to unload the vehicles it loaded the day before from the Springfield Freedom. Dutch motor-transport units are waiting with tank transporters to move the four M1A2D tanks, while the Gama Goats are loaded onto flatbeds and the 5-ton trucks are taken over by a detachment (composed of German civilian employees) sent by the US Army's 21st TAACOM.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/19dyCIz9oMBJErf3FfR-Alg-_JXVzMpoC/view?usp=share_link)
The F-15E strike aircraft of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing return to the skies over eastern Iran, this time en route to the road leading from Herat Afghanistan. Mujaheddin fighters and their American CIA advisors reported the departure of the 682nd "Uman-Warsaw" Independent Motor-Rifle Regiment from Afghanistan to reinforce the battered 40th Army. A few hours later the F-15Es appeared overhead, ripping the column apart with an 80-kiloton B-61 bomb.

The Guatemalan Navy makes it's entry in the war with Belize when a force of six patrol boats, constituting all the craft in the Caribbean that can be made seaworthy, appears off the town of Dangriga, the largest town in southern Belize. They enter the yacht/fishing harbor and discharge two platoons of heavily armed Marines, overpowering the three confused policemen that had arrived to investigate. The Marines seize the police car and a number of civilian vehicles and head inland, securing the nearby road junction, cutting off the southern portion of the country and the direct road from the south to the capital.

[chico20854]

November 25, 1997

Speaker of the House of Representatives Munson, next in line of succession to the Vice President, is skiing in northern California. He and his wife slip out of his vacation home and do not leave word of their destination (Munson is fanatical about his personal privacy).

The Commander of the USS Olympia releases half of the crew for some well-earned shore leave following the conclusion of the long, dangerous patrol as the boat enters a period of refit alongside the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land.

Unofficially,

1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division completes Rotation 97-101 at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California and is declared combat ready.

Aboard the USS Oriskany, a second squadron, VA-153, matches the achievement of its sister squadron VA-175 by launching a full squadron mission.

The newly arrived vehicles that were transported to Europe aboard the Springfield Freedom and USS Boulder are transferred to a holding area at the British Catterick Barracks in Bielefeld, Germany, where user units are to pick them up.

Elsewhere in NATO-controlled Europe, armies are struggling to sustain operations as the flow of supplies through the heavily damaged port infrastructure slowly chokes off operations. On the Warsaw Pact side things are even more dire, with the Polish civilian population on the edge of starvation following a year where the nation's fields were battlefields and whose young and fittest citizens worked to eject NATO troops from the country rather than produce food and goods. Their Soviet patrons and allies are of little help, overstretched themselves supporting war from Korea to Germany, with their own Baltic States, Byelorussia and Ukraine nearly as devastated as Poland and with the subjugated populations of Romania, Manchuria and Jugoslavia dependant on them for sustenance.

XVIII Airborne Corps and Third Army direct additional supplies of ammunition and replacement vehicles to the 24th Infantry Division in Iran's northern Gulf coast. Airlift planners note that the 82nd Airborne Division has moved south, allowing the smaller airlifters to carry greater loads.

The Belizian command responds to the Guatemalan incursion in the south. They dispatch one of the British Gazelle helicopters to reconnoiter the location; it takes fire from a Guatemalan light machine gun but is not hit. Upon its return to base, the Belizians dispatch an infantry company reinforced with a British platoon to dislodge the Marines.

[Claidheamh]

November 23, 1997
As the orders to strike the US and UK are received by the leadership of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Long Range Aviation and Navy, planners begin to pull together the concept for the operation. (Existing plans largely cover an all-out strike on the West using all available weapons). They will be fully prepared to execute in three days.

Whelp, time to start stocking the survival bunker...

[chico20854]

November 26, 1997

The Honorable Judge Patrick Mahan Warren, a respected judge and community leader in St. Petersburg, Florida (and secretly the New American Natural Aristocrat in charge of the St Petersburg cell since 1990) suffers a debilitating stroke and is incapacitated. His wife Augusta assumes her husband's covert duties.

Colonel Nikita Borisov, one of the newly arrived KGB agents, arrives in London. He kills a beggar, Damien Metcalfe, and takes on his identity

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ships Mesa and Santa Ana Freedoms are delivered in Pascagoula, Mississippi. (Nine sister ships will be abandoned in various stages of completion after Pascagoula is struck by Soviet nuclear weapons.)

The Red Oak Victory, veteran of three wars, is activated for a fourth in Oakland, California. It begins movement to Concord NWS to load ammunition.

The cargo ship Ruth is activated in Oakland and leaves for Long Beach to load troops.

Rainbow Six reports that the senior KGB agent in the UK, Colonel Mikhail Romanov, based in London, leaves the British capital, having been alerted to the impending Black Thursday nuclear strikes by a coded message from KGB Headquarters.

CVW-546's last A-4 squadron aboard the USS Oriskany launches a full-squadron mission, this one a firepower demonstration for visiting VIPs at Camp Pendleton. The Oriskany group commander receives word that the two of the original escorts identified for the group - the missile cruiser Little Rock (CLG-4) and destroyer Barry (DD-933) - will be indefinitely delayed due to shipyard overcrowding, and that the last escort, the destroyer Mullinix, will be delayed until February. The Navy will attempt to identify other ships that can be assigned to the group as they complete repairs at various shipyards.

A team from the 3rd Infantry Division picks up the four M-1A2D tanks at the Bielefeld transfer site and returns to the division rear area, where they are issued to the 4th Battalion, 69th Armor. Two of the M939 5-ton trucks are issued to the 28th Infantry Division's 28th Signal Battalion, twelve go to the 43rd Infantry Division and the last half dozen to the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Supply officers are confounded by the Gama Goats, which were replaced by the HMMWV in the 1980s and are not on any unit's TOE.

The 24th Infantry Division in Iran is allocated the newly arrived recruits that were received on a charter 767 from Fort Benning, Georgia. The privates are rushed from Saudi Arabia to the front north of Bandar-e-Khomeyni, where the dazed soldiers are welcomed into squads of grizzled veterans.

The Belizian Defense Force group responding to the Guatemalan Marine landing divides into two groups. Two platoons make a cautious advance along the road south from Belize City and, not unexpectedly, run into a Guatemalan ambush, triggering an intense firefight. The firefight absorbs the Guatemalan commander's full attention, allowing the remainder of the Force, traveling overland through farms and jungle, to recapture the town of Dangriga and its tiny port. The second force gets tied up in fighting the Guatemalan patrol boats in the harbor, but the application of several LAW80s convinces the boats to depart. The Guatemalan marines are cut off, but hunker down in preparation for a bloody final stand.

[chico20854]

November 27, 1997 - Thanksgiving Day

part 1

Thanksgiving Day, 1997, had started well enough. The war which all rational Americans had feared for the previous 40 years had been going on for over a year without triggering the dire holocaust doomsayers had predicted. The fighting was on Soviet territory or other places equally remote from home and hearth. The news gave every indication that the Soviets would have to accept defeat any day now. The boys (and girls) would be home for Christmas. Meanwhile, there was plenty of work, the money was good, and everything seemed right with America. Then the bombs fell.

Rainbow Six reports that
On a day that British historians would later record as “Black Thursday”, the UK was attacked by Soviet nuclear weapons. (Unofficially) A single of SS-24 missile was fired at the UK by the 46th Missile Division from Pervomaisk in the Ukraine carrying ten 400-kiloton warheads. London was the first city to be hit, being targeted by a number of devices, the first of which detonated in an airburst above the Capital at 11:14am. One of the Soviet warheads aimed at London detonated in a ground burst several hundred metres from Heathrow Airport. The Tower of London suffered extensive damage, being virtually burnt to the ground in the firestorms that swept through London. The major business and financial center of Canary Wharf was destroyed by the firestorms as well. Whilst not a direct target of the attacks, the Thames Flood Barrier suffered significant damage and would require extensive repair work to restore it to full operating condition, leaving London exposed to the risk of potentially serious flooding. The London Underground rapid transit system, more commonly known as the Tube, offered no shelter on Black Thursday, with the fires that raged out of control above ground sucking in all the available oxygen, condemning most of those in the Underground system at the time to death by asphyxiation (many others were trampled to death as thousands tried to rush into Tube stations across London in a futile attempt to find shelter in the moments after the first nuclear detonation. Much of the content of the British Library was lost on (some items deemed to be of vital national interest were moved out of the Capital during the summer of 1997). Likewise, MI6’s London headquarters, Century House, was destroyed. Headquarters, US Naval Forces Europe (USNAVEUR) suffered heavy casualties, with the C in C amongst those either dead or missing. A number of personnel did survive however - some key staff had left London as a precautionary measure, whilst others had been on Thanksgiving leave.

Some three and a half million people were killed in the initial blasts and the firestorms that raged in London for a week afterwards. Another million people were displaced, with many of them exposed to lethal doses of radiation that would cause them to die a lingering death in the weeks and months that followed.

Cheltenham, home of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the arm of British Intelligence responsible for providing Signals Intelligence to the Government and the Military, was the second location in the United Kingdom to be targeted by Soviet nuclear weapons, at 11:15am on Black Thursday (approximately ninety seconds after the first warhead detonated over London).

(Unofficially) Of the ten warheads, seven targeted London (two aimed at the Palace of Westminster and Heathrow Airport, the others aimed to create a blanket level of destruction over the city), two were aimed at Cheltenham and the final one failed during re-entry.

[chico20854]

November 27, 1997

part 2

Unofficially,
Word was received in Washington of the London strike within a few minutes. The Secret Service and military wanted to evacuate President Tanner immediately. NORAD confirmed that there were no missiles inbound to North America. The President refused to board the NEACP, unwilling to give the appearance of panicking, but agreed to leave the White House. After issuing a statement condemning the attack on America’s closest ally, offering condolences for the loss of life and ordering American forces in the UK to support HM Government’s relief efforts to the extent that it does not impede combat operations, Tanner departed the White House for the last time. His motorcade took him to the US Department of Agriculture research center in Beltsville, Maryland (adjacent to the Secret Service training center, which had a small Presidential Emergency Facility) for a relaxing jog. A US Marine Corps VH-60 helicopter of HMX-1 stood on standby at the Secret Service center. At mid-morning, he departed the Secret Service center, his motorcade disrupting traffic on the Beltway as the President travelled to Andrews Air Force Base for Thanksgiving dinner with the troops. To keep up the appearance of normalcy, Vice President Pemberton remained in the city to host the White House’s formal Thanksgiving dinner with VIPs.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zletWSjW_op-5-nVaui4FzQbhGwF8ART/view?usp=share_link)
At shortly after 1700 GMT (3 pm on the US East Coast) in the North Atlantic the second phase of the decapitation strike, the attack on the US, was begun. As the satellites aligned the submerged Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine TK-20 was able to receive an updated position fix from its onboard GLONASS satellite navigation system. The massive boat’s fire control system adjusted for the distance between the receiver on the navigation masthead and the missiles’ locations forward on the boat and with a final glance between the captain and the political officer the first SS-N-20 missile was launched. Within 90 seconds six missiles had been launched and the boat dove and turned northeast, accelerating as fast as the sub’s two nuclear reactors could push the 48,000-ton boat.

(Officially) An orbiting military surveillance satellite picked up a number of IR signatures, characteristic of the launch of SLBMs (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles). Within minutes, messages were zipping through established channels and alarms began ringing across the nation. (Unofficially) The initial detection by Defense Support Program satellites was relayed to NORAD headquarters, which quickly relayed the news to the White House, Pentagon and Strategic Air Command (SAC). The launch was confirmed by the PAVE PAWS early warning radar on Cape Cod shortly thereafter.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bbnShHZOyw2IxCcIcDcpfQdEhuC5ae1n/view?usp=share_link)
SAC ordered the alert bomber force - some 75 B-1s and B-52s stationed at 14 bases around the nation (as well as the 43rd Bomb Wing’s B-52Gs at Anderson Air Force Base on Guam), as well as their accompanying tankers - to scramble. The so-called Elephant Walk of bombers began within 90 seconds of the confirmation, and with 15 minutes of MITOs (Minimum Interval Take Offs) the bombers were airborne. Following standing Emergency War Orders, they immediately refueled from approximately half of the tankers, topping off their fuel tanks, and proceeded to holding areas over the Arctic and western Pacific for further orders, joining the dozen B-52s already on airborne alert over the Canadian Arctic.

Back in Washington, when the warning of the incoming SLBMs arrived President Tanner was rushed across the base to board the E-4B NEACP, which immediately took off. (Officially) Because an inbound missile had been detected Vice President Pemberton elected to try to make it to the Special Facility at Mount Weather. (Unofficially) Vice President Pemberton ran to the waiting VH-3 of HMX-1 that had been more or less permanently stationed at the White House since the outbreak of war.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M2uI-iUVQioW9hHK34U6LLpX1swb4y2-/view?usp=share_link)
(Officially) President Tanner was killed, not by the strike on Washington, but by an accident during takeoff of the NEACP aircraft. The mystery of precisely what went wrong with one of the most rigorously inspected, carefully maintained aircraft in the nation has never been solved - the FAA never properly investigated the accident.

(Unofficially) Back at the White House, the helicopter’s crew already had the rotors turning when Pemberton’s military aide, a Marine Corps Major, heard the radio call about the NEACP crash. (Officially) Upon being informed of the President's death and told that no retaliatory action had been taken, Vice President Pemberton was forced to delay her departure and remain at a secure communications facility (the radios on the evacuation helicopter have never been considered reliable for this purpose). From the bomb shelter under the east wing of the White House (built during President Truman's tenure, and never intended to withstand a direct hit), Vice President Pemberton, after identifying herself, issued a proclamation of the existence of a state of war (only Congress has the power to declare war, and that body was not in session), and ordered retaliatory strikes on the USSR. With less than 10 minutes' notice between the rising of sub-launched ballistic missiles from off the Atlantic coast and their detonation over Washington DC, the orders to evacuate the cities were never given.

(Unofficially) The first missile to be launched by TK-20 was the one targeted at Washington. The SS-N-20 had ten 100-kiloton warheads aboard. One was aimed at the White House, two at the Pentagon, three at Andrews Air Force Base (necessary to ensure the destruction of aircraft on the base as well as cutting the runway) and one each at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, DIA headquarters at Bolling Air Force Base, the Presidential Emergency Facility and NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland and the National Reconnaissance Office headquarters at Westfields, Virginia. The missile warhead’s courses had been adjusted as they re-entered the atmosphere, adjusting for changes in atmospheric conditions, the missile’s performance, even differences in magnetic fields and gravity, all detected by the on-board electronics and cross-checked against the position reported by the GLONASS receiver. These adjustments allowed each re-entry vehicle accuracy nearly unmatched by any other Soviet (or many American) missiles. Each warhead landed, on average, within 220 meters of its aim point. With this level of accuracy, the strikes were devastating. The warhead aimed at the White House landed in the Kennedy Garden, just south of the East Wing, and detonated. The warhead created a crater 90 meters wide and 40 meters deep; the fireball consumed the adjacent Old Executive Office Building and Treasury Building and flattened all other buildings within a 1000-meter radius. Pemberton was killed when the missile detonated, the blast shelter completely inadequate against a blast so close and so powerful. (a representation of the blast is here (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=100&lat=38.8973958&lng=-77.035988&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&crater=1&ff=50&psi=20,1&rem=&therm=&cloud=1&zm=16)). The other strikes were nearly as successful, with none of the Washington area targets surviving.

(Officially) The main target in Washington, DC was the White House, in an effort (a successful one, as it turned out) to destroy the executive leadership of the country. A sizable portion of the downtown area was damaged, not by the blast itself (which was a small one), but from the seismic shock and radiation of the ground burst and the flash-induced fires. As a side note, the National Archives was closed at the time of the attack. When the bomb destroyed the White House, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the two most important documents in American history, were in their normal nocturnal resting place: a 50-ton subterranean vault designed to protect them from fire, flood, earthquake, and (of course) nuclear attack.

NORAD (North American Air Defense) headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain had three SLBMs aimed at it, each with a single 1 MT warhead set for ground bursts. (Unofficially) One of these scored a direct hit while the others landed nearby, creating quite impressive craters in the granite mountainside and delivering an intense shock to the underground facility. The facility had been designed to withstand just such a shock and was largely undamaged. (Officially) It was, however, out of communication temporarily.

Two missiles were targeted at SAC headquarters at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. (Unofficially) An Army Patriot battery at the base, deployed as an experimental anti-missile defense measure, succeeded in destroying one incoming warhead (as well as two decoys), leaving 19 100-kiloton MIRVs (Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles) landing within the base perimeter. (Officially) Several, set for ground burst, were aimed at the SAC underground command post, while others attempted to sever the runway, destroy the SR-71s of the 95th Strategic Recon Wing as well as that unit’s and the 544th Aerospace Recon Technical Wing’s headquarters and facilities. The base was incinerated and all the targets were destroyed.

The Thanksgiving Massacre (as it came to be called) destroyed only a limited number of command and control centers, but these were vital. In a matter of minutes the U.S. had been delivered a massive blow.

[chico20854]

November 27, 1997

part 3

The people of the United States counted on a steady flow of electricity for their health, comfort, and well-being, not to mention their livelihoods. This flow of electricity was the target of the USSR’’s drive to cripple the American war effort. (Unofficially) A matter of minutes after the warhead detonated on Cheyenne Mountain, three SS-18 missiles rose into the skies over the steppes at Dombarovski south of the Ural Mountains. Travelling over the North Pole, they each released a single 1 megaton warhead, (Officially) which detonated more than 50 miles high in several locations over the United States, inducing a massive Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). The EMP "killed" all unshielded electric power sources and functioning electrical devices over most of the continental United States. EMP proved to be more powerful than the most conservative prewar estimates, affecting even some supposedly shielded equipment. Enough equipment was on standby, and enough adequately shielded, to enable the Joint Chiefs to remain in touch with their scattered forces (for a time). However, basically all unshielded equipment which was turned on at the time of the attack was subjected to induced currents sufficient to destroy it, especially if it contained integrated circuits or the older transistors, which are very sensitive to variations in current and easily damaged by the slightest excess. Telephones, telexes, radios, computers, televisions, practically every form of electronic communications was out of commission or severely damaged. EMP had fried the control circuits of every hydroelectric station on the Tennessee River. Without controls, the massive turbines and generators were severely damaged. Power-generating facilities and the power transmission grid in Utah were severely damaged by surges and EMP.

The EMP knocked out all the operating radio and television channels. It took out the power grid and the power stations themselves, together with the spider web network of power transformers, inducers, relays, back-up generators and associated control instruments. Control circuits in all plants were fried by EMP, and the surge that occurred when the target cities went off-line brought down power transmission lines throughout the country. The power companies had lots of experience getting power back on line. Replacing one or even a dozen major transformers at scattered sites in the teeth of electrical storms or hurricanes was not an unusual occurrence, even on a holiday like Thanksgiving. But what had happened here and across the middle of Florida was a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. The damage was not to one portion of the system but to the entire power grid. All power-generating equipment was affected, from the Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant - which automatically shut down to the tiny gas turbine surge stations scattered across the state. Just about the entire electrical production system was on at the time of the strike, including all the back-ups, and was completely destroyed. Stations which had escaped the EMP surged, trying to make up for the sudden shortfall. One by one they overloaded, then their automatic shutoffs took them off-line. The continental power generation and transmission grid collapsed like a string of dominoes.

An effect labeled "residual reverberation" played havoc with backup diesel-generating systems in hospitals, hotels, and inevitably, the Civil Defense control centers. For sowing the seeds of what happened next, the strikes must be counted a total success. The electrical blackout and accompanying residual telecommunications jamming associated with the pulse created a monstrous void in communications, and into that void slipped rumor, exaggeration, and ultimately, panic. Without a reassuring central voice of authority, panic turned to rout and rout into riot and worse.

Airborne civilian aircraft (military aircraft were hardened against EMP) lost all power due to the EMP and dropped out of the sky. Some pilots made successful "dead stick" landings; many of them died trying. Some, blinded by the direct rays of the fireball, were flash-blinded where they sat. With virtually every radio in the affected zone blitzed into inoperability, no one was able to talk anyone down. The scorched ruins of the aircraft dot the nation. One of the lucky passengers was TV journalist Fanya Ayn Wilkerson, who was flying to visit her husband's family in New York. He had taken the boy and went ahead while Fanya completed some tapings for a network special about her escapades in Iran. Fanya was to catch a flight out of Tampa on Thanksgiving Day. Hers was one of the fortunate ones; the pilot managed to make a belly landing near Orlando, and the passengers survived.

Mundane devices like cars, ambulances, electric pacemakers and medical refrigeration units also failed. So did the incubators, respirators, kidney dialysis machines, and iron lungs in local hospitals and clinics. Even when hospital backup generators could be kicked back in to restore power, many patients died because the machines themselves could not be restarted or replaced in time to save them. Cars lost their electrical systems while in motion, causing massive chain-reaction collisions. Traffic lights, police emergency radios, and even the civil defense radios failed. The "We interrupt this program" messages were not heard because the home TV and radio sets that were turned on at the moment of the pulse (and remember the attack occurred on Thanksgiving Day, while the various ball games were on the air) were instantly rendered into so much junk, not even salvageable for spare parts. Generally speaking, if an item of electronic equipment was in use at the time the pulse occurred, that piece of electronics was irretrievably ruined.

(Unofficially) Pemberton’s orders for retaliatory strikes were received at SAC Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base outside Omaha, Nebraska as well as aboard the fleet of always-airborne strategic command and control aircraft. While SAC Headquarters was obliterated only a few minutes later, the Looking Glass airborne command post was able to relay the launch order to missile launch control centers, the airborne bombers and their bases and the US Navy’s TACAMO aircraft.

However, Pemberton’s orders did not specify what retaliatory measures should be implemented. The Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP), the US military’s nuclear war plan, had not, in fact, been a single plan for several decades. Starting in the 1970s the SIOP had evolved into a package of plans, which the National Command Authority was intended to select one or more options to execute. (Some early options included whether or not to target China, North Korea and Warsaw Pact allies as well as differing plans depending on the alert status and desire to withhold some assets for follow-up strikes or post-exchange negotiations). The SIOP in effect in 1997, updated earlier in the year, was composed of several categories of targets that could be assembled, like blocks, into a strike plan. (These blocks included five categories of Command and Control targets, two different air defense suppression packages, a petroleum package, a ground forces package, a military industry package, a naval base package, as well as packages of bombers, missiles, population centers, intelligence assets, early-warning assets and electrical power, among others.) In the confusion and chaos that preceded the incoming warhead aimed at Washington, Pemberton did not specify which package or packages should be executed, leaving SAC commanders without guidance.

In the absence of direction from the National Command Authorities, the Vice Chief of SAC, the senior officer aboard the Looking Glass airborne command post circling over the upper Midwest states, ordered what he believed was a proportionate and reasonable response - a near-mirror image strike on the Soviet Union. Therefore, he ordered the execution of the smallest counter-C3I package and a high-altitude EMP strike, after checking to ensure that the number of warheads to be delivered was nearly identical to that used against the US and UK.

As the afternoon wore on it became apparent that the Soviet strikes had ended with (just?) those three target areas and the high-altitude EMP burst. US Navy P-3C maritime patrol aircraft had flooded the area where TK-20 had launched from, with surface ships and attack submarines rushing to the vicinity at flank speed. At 5 pm the operators monitoring the SOSUS underwater sonar array in Bermuda detected a transient noise near where TK-20 had been operating; Allied Command Atlantic in Norfolk confirmed that no friendly submarines were operating in the area. Within five minutes a P-3C was overhead, joined seven minutes later by a second aircraft. Both deployed active sonar sonobuoys en masse, which, combined with low-flying magnetic anomaly detection, soon located the massive Soviet boat. The first aircraft, from squadron VP-24, dropped all four of the Mk.-50 lightweight torpedoes it was carrying. Two of the torpedoes hit, but the massive Soviet boat featured over two meters of separation between its inner and outer hulls, resulting in no significant damage (although creating a lot of structural steel damage that vastly increased the noise generated by the sub). The second plane, from VP-49. then closed in for the kill, dropping a B-57 nuclear depth charge, which crushed the boomer’s hull and reactor compartments. SAC established a round robin of tankers to support the airborne bomber force, keeping them on station but not launching additional aircraft. At bomber bases the commands worked overtime to generate additional alert-ready aircraft, while ground support teams, recalled from their holiday meals with family, raced to dispersal sites to support turnaround of aircraft landing at their alternate sites.

Complicating the plan for striking the Soviet command, control and intelligence apparatus was the presence of the Moscow A-135 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. Consisting of 100 nuclear-armed (10-kiloton warheads) interceptor missiles (68 Gazelle missiles to strike targets in the atmosphere and 32 Gorogn missiles to engage incoming reentry vehicles outside the atmosphere), the ABM system was controlled by a single tracking and guidance radar, the large PILLBOX phased-array radar at Pushkino, north of Moscow. NATO planners, starting in the late 1960s, had planned to deal with the system by overwhelming it with massive numbers of warheads aimed at the missile launch sites as well as the control radars, as well as striking targets in Moscow with enough warheads that destruction could be reasonably expected even if the ABM system was operational.

The orders from SAC, however, severely limited the number of warheads that could be deployed to defeat the A-135 system, forcing SAC to use an alternative. In the years before the war, American target planners had focused on the PILLBOX radar, concluding that if it were destroyed that the system would be inoperable, the various interceptor missiles unable to be guided against incoming NATO warheads. A slimmed-down effort to suppress the ABM system, therefore, could concentrate on a single target - the radar. Obviously, however, the operators of the A-135 would use the system to protect the radar from incoming ballistic missile warheads, negating the possibility of using low numbers of MIRVs against the PILLBOX. The CIA, reasonably, could not guarantee that one of its covert action teams would be able to penetrate the radar’s security perimeter to place a “backpack nuke” within lethal range. That left bombers as the only nuclear delivery means available to potentially strike the target.

The Moscow area was protected by the 1st Red Banner Air Defense Army for Special Use, a force that deployed four PVO (air defense force) divisions with 26 regiments of the latest model SA-10 surface-to-air missiles deployed in two concentric rings around the Soviet capital. As confident as SAC commanders were in their men and aircraft, they harbored doubts about the ability of a bomber being able to penetrate the Soviet border defenses, reach the Moscow area and overfly the radar to drop a gravity bomb. While the B-2 stealth bomber had proven successful in penetrating Soviet airspace over Siberia the density of overlapping air defense radars and missiles in the Moscow area was an order of magnitude more challenging. A cruise missile, however, harbored a better chance of reaching the target. The most advanced cruise missile, the AGM-129, first fielded in 1990, could be launched outside of Soviet airspace and reach Moscow. A stealthy missile, designed to defeat overhead pulse-doppler radars and coated in radar absorbing material, it offered a reasonable chance of reaching a heavily defended target, and if it failed no American airmen would be imperiled. Therefore, the plan called for the PILLBOX radar to be eliminated by a quartet of AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles.

The American counterstrike began shortly before midnight Washington time. A B-52H of the 644th Bomb Squadron, 410th Bomb Wing from K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in Michigan orbiting between the North Pole and the Siberian coast launched a volley of four AGM-129s. The cruise missiles were routed on an indirect path to Moscow, crossing the Soviet coast a few miles east of Murmansk to take advantage of an air defense network ravaged by months of fighting earlier in the year and travelled the length of the Kola Peninsula. Once they were south of the White Sea they rose to a cruising altitude of 7,000 feet to conserve fuel, and headed south once they passed Lake Onega. When the missiles were 200 miles north of the PILLBOX radar they dropped to an altitude of 50 meters, following a snaking path to avoid overflying large population centers, air defense installations or military bases. As they approached Moscow air defense radars began to sweep over the stealthy missiles, but with a radar cross section smaller than a pigeon the radar operators were unable to distinguish their signature from background noise. An orbiting Su-27 interceptor of the 611th Regiment, flying the northern sector of the capital’s Combat Air Patrol, failed to detect the missiles as well. Only when the missiles were less than 10 kilometers from Pushkino was a nearby air defense radar able to get a positive ID, and by then it was too late.

The Pushkino PILLBOX radar was obliterated by three of the missiles’ W-80 5-kiloton warheads. The fourth missile, the trailing one, was knocked out of the sky by the blast wave of the third missile. The blasts also knocked out the surface elements of the adjacent Gazelle missile battery. The A-135 system was down, a fact confirmed by an overwatching Defense Support Program early warning satellite.

With Moscow defenseless against ballistic missiles, the next phase of the American attack proceeded. A pair of LGM-118 Peacekeeper (MX) missiles, each with ten 335-kiloton MIRVs, was launched by the 400th Strategic Missile Squadron, 90th Strategic Missile Wing from silos outside F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. They arrived 25 minutes later, during the Friday morning commute, with 18 of the warheads detonating. Three reduced the Kremlin to a glowing crater, while others did varying degrees of damage to the PVO, Strategic Rocket Forces, KGB and GRU headquarters complexes. While the missiles did not kill General Secretary Sauronski or KGB Chairman Yangel, they did a great deal to cripple the Soviet war effort. Two Politburo members were killed in the attack, along with hundreds of thousands of Muscovites. (The effects of the firestorms and radiation that followed the strike would take the casualty numbers into the millions). While the political leadership that directed the war effort survived, the vast bureaucracy that had been struggling to manage the war effort was completely devastated. The centralized Soviet state had been dealt a body blow.

The next element of the American retaliatory strike was an insurance policy to ensure collapse of the Soviet Union’s war effort - a series of high-altitude EMP strikes that matched the ones inflicted on the US. These strikes were delivered by older-model Minuteman II ICBMs fired by the 321st Strategic Missile Wing at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. The collapse of the Soviet electrical grid was assured, The EMP strike had less effect on the lives of many rural Russian citizens, many of whom had no or only intermittent electrical power before the war, but for the urban middle class it was just as life-changing as for their American counterparts.

(Officially) The decapitation attacks were not limited to the UK and US, however. A nuclear bomb was directed at Oslo, the Norwegian capital. King Harald, who refused to abandon the seat of government in the face of enemy attack, died in the blast along with the Statsrad (state council) and most of the Storting (the Norwegian Parliament). (Unofficially) Soviet missiles also struck Copenhagen, Bonn and the Hague. (Officially) Riyadh was nuked. The cumulative effect of the attacks was as intended, a decapitation of NATO’s political leadership.

The Soviets had calculated that the nuclear strikes would disrupt American command, control, and communications - surgical strikes intended to knock America out of the war and end the war before the nuclear Armageddon spread any further. Like most of the major calculations of both sides this proved to be another miscalculation, but that was a small comfort to over half the members of the world's prewar population who were now dead, or to the other half, many of who wished they were.

Elsewhere in the world, the only development of note is that the US 24th Infantry Division begins a drive toward Ahvaz, supported by the 101st Air Assault Division's aviation assets. The assault quickly overwhelms the Soviet rear guards.

[castlebravo92]

Excellent stuff Chico, exceeded my expectations!

[Ewan]

Excellent stuff Chico, exceeded my expectations!
Totally agree, it really brought home the attacks.

Did no British forces retaliate for the attack on the UK or did they hold off to see how it played out.

[ToughOmbres]

I would like to echo the comments above-exceptional writing! Chilling but absolutely top notch.

[chico20854]

November 28, 1997

Unofficially, Shortly after American missiles ravaged Moscow the U.K. released its retaliatory strikes on the USSR. British nuclear targeting policy had for many years been closely coordinated with the Americans - during the days of the V-bombers the RAF was assigned to blast holes in the Soviet air defense net in the Baltics, and in the 1970s the UK developed the Chevaline system for its Polaris? SLBMs to defeat the A-135 system. Both nations were also deeply involved with NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group and British Trident SLBMs had already launched strikes in support of NATO’s war effort, most famously in the attack that leveled Warsaw. With the American strike on the Soviet capital any British retaliation on Moscow would be “bouncing the rubble”, and with the American supreme command in flux (see below) Prime Minister Blore ordered an independent attack.

Accordingly, HMS Vigilant launched two Trident II SLBMs at Leningrad, the largest surviving Soviet city. The missiles’ 12 100-kiloton warheads (each missile carried six) were targeted at the Baltic Fleet headquarters in Khronstadt, the Leningrad Military District headquarters in the city center (and a second MIRV at the command bunker on the northern outskirts off the city), the Kirov tank plant, the Admiralty and Baltic shipyards and the headquarters of the 6th Air Defense Army. The results of the attack were as devastating as the Soviet attack on London had been - overwhelming blast damage, firestorms of historic proportions, immense radiation that added misery to the remaining lives of hundreds of thousands unfortunate enough to survive the blast and firestorm. While the intended targets were all hit and destroyed, there were many other locations that were also destroyed - military academies, research institutes, Communist Party and KGB offices, four major railroad stations, a helicopter repair plant, electrical power plants and much more. While nothing would ever compensate for the attack on London, Britain had its vengeance.

Rainbow Six reports that the Royal Family is evacuated from its estate at Sandringham in Norfolk under heavy military escort by Army units. Other Army units attempt to locate surviving members of the Cabinet and escort them to their emergency command post, a top secret underground bunker located a few miles outside High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire which had been completed in the early 1990’s.

Those in British cities that had not been struck began to flee, heading for the perceived safety of rural communities. Their headlong flight blocked main road arteries, (unofficially) paralyzing government disaster response. Many Britons were shocked with the Government’s response to the strikes on London. No attempt was made for the fire services to extinguish the firestorm, and emergency personnel were ordered to remain on the perimeter of the disaster area, sheltering indoors whenever possible to protect themselves from radiation. The wounded that escaped the conflagration were diverted into triage centers, where those that were likely not to survive their wounds, or over 60 years of age, were denied further medical care, the overwhelmed medical staff concentrating on those that had the highest chance of surviving and contributing to the nation’s recovery. While widely criticized, a policy was implemented limiting transfer to hospitals in other areas of the UK to only a select few, a policy judged necessary to make the best use of a very limited resource.

The British nuclear industry began shutting down nearly immediately, following long-standing Home Office instructions. While the plants had not been targeted, the consequences of an attack on them while operating were dire. RainbowSix reports that the Sizewell nuclear power plants were taken safely offline. Likewise, the nuclear plant at Dungeness in southeastern Kent was shut down as a safety precaution, as was the Calder Hall nuclear power plant.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1997 nuclear strikes a detachment of troops in full NBC gear removed the plates used to manufacture bank notes from the printing plant at Loughton in Essex, following which Royal Engineers rendered inoperable several items of heavy machinery to ensure they could not be misused. Unknowingly they missed several sets of plates used to make twenty and fifty pound sterling notes and various Middle Eastern and African currencies

Unofficially, A flight of Tu-95H Bear missile carrier bombers unleashed six AS-15 missiles at petroleum targets in the UK. Rainbow states that Aberdeen in Scotland, known as the oil capital of Europe before the war, was one of the first cities after London to be hit. (Officially) The other missiles struck Milford Haven, Wales and Grangemouth, Scotland, sites of large refineries.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/12gagdh6qKp6UZ4n-5XaBeiN9ttOri8eX/view?usp=share_link)
For a time, the United States had no official "National Command Authority." More than 22 hours passed before he could be located by FEMA Central Locator System (CLS) operatives and transported to the nearest PEF (Presidential Emergency Facility). After being sworn in by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, President Pro Tem Munson's first official act was to proclaim that the full provisions of Federal Emergency Plan D (FEP-D) were in effect. These included, among other things, a declaration of martial law. (The military government's claim to sovereignty was based on the FEP-D documents and Pemberton's proclamation of a state of war.)

In the immediate aftermath of the strikes on Washington, John Carlucci, a prominent Boston lawyer and elected head of the United Brotherhood of Fishermen, believed to be backed by the Boston mob, no longer saw a need for restraint and decided to silence his opposition and secure his power. As the newly elected leaders of the Congress of North Banks Fishermen were gathered in Gloucester for their first meeting, a terrible explosion ripped through the building where the delegates and their families were gathered. Over 100 people were killed outright, and 250 were wounded.

(Unofficially) Meanwhile, the Soviets were not done attacking the United States. Due to the communications blackout that followed the EMP strikes, neither the KGB nor the GRU could determine if they had succeeded in decapitating the American political leadership. Satellite intelligence confirmed that the White House and Pentagon had been hit and the famed “Hotline” to the Kremlin was offline, but no one in the Soviet Union knew if President Tanner was dead or alive. (And if he was not, who was in charge and where they were located). Therefore, another round of attacks against command and control facilities was ordered.

The Typhoon-class submarine Barrikada (formerly the TK-217) received launch orders at its patrol station under the Arctic ice cap. Six of the vessel's 20 SS-N-20 nuclear-tipped missiles were to be fired in a strategic strike intended to damage the command and control facilities of the NATO allies. Two of the missiles were aimed at Canadian targets, the remaining four at targets in the United States. (Unofficially) Barrikada’s sister TK-210, the third of four Soviet SSBNs with hard-target capability, launched five missiles at the state of Florida.

Barrikada’s missiles were aimed at targets in the Mid-Atlantic region. (Officially) Fort Detrick, Maryland, home of the US Army Research Laboratories (well known as an important cancer research center) and reputedly the Army's center for biological warfare research, was hit. The blast which destroyed the center was several kilometers from the town of Frederick. Nonetheless, much of the town was reduced to rubble and several kilometers of the highway north of town were rendered impassable due to debris from fallen buildings, the hulks of autos and trucks, and fallen trees. Further north of Frederick was the location of Camp David, a target for a Soviet SSBN; the road in the valley below the road was made impassable by debris. The attacks, both ground bursts (because of their relatively small size), did comparatively little blast and fire damage outside of their immediate ground zeroes, but threw tremendous amounts of radioactive fallout into the air. The 228th Infantry Brigade was not badly damaged when Fort Meade was the target of a Soviet SLBM the day before because the target was the Presidential Emergency Facility and NSA headquarters rather than the fort's headquarters. In any case, much of the brigade was dispersed throughout the area rather than present on post.

Barrikada’s other missiles hit other Presidential Emergency Facilities as well. The Quantico PEF was struck with five 100-kiloton MIRVs, all set for ground bursts. The SLBM strike on the Presidential Emergency Facilities at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia (unofficially, the other five MIRVs from the missile that hit Quantico) (officially) caused casualties, but the 30th Engineer Brigade (Combat) survived largely intact (unofficially) because, like the 228th, the unit was largely dispersed throughout the region and the MIRVs landed in a different area of the base.

The population of the Washington area that wasn't killed by the strike and its immediate aftereffects either fled the city or died in the subsequent civil disorder. The horrible destruction of Washington, DC and its suburbs produced a wave of refugees flooding to the west, (and unofficially) east and south. (The strikes on Fort Meade, north of the city, blocked many from fleeing to the north).

Five missiles were targeted at the state of Florida. Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville suffered a near miss that landed in the sea just offshore. The resulting nuclear-induced tidal wave and wide-spread radioactive seawater contamination were dreadful and deadly. Millions died, both in the wave surge and in the subsequent legacy of nuclear poisoning, disease, starvation, and chaos that followed. Almost simultaneously three more sites were struck: MacDill AFB in Tampa, Eglin AFB near Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle, and the Satellite Recon Launch Facility at Cape Kennedy. Both the MIRV'd warheads at Eglin and the single one-megaton that were burst over MacDill were airbursts, designed to do the most damage to the widest possible area. Cape Kennedy received the attentions of a ten-warhead MIRV'd (one-megaton total) device. Unlike the other strikes, this was a series of pinpoint attacks upon the launch sites themselves. The resulting blasts vaporized nine of the 11 launchpads and the vehicle assembly building. A fifth attack, this one aimed at Homestead AFB, south of Miami, apparently never materialized. The failure might have been due to the intense EMP, which had the effect of deactivating the onboard electronics of the Homestead weapon, which is presumed to have landed in the sea well south of Miami without detonating. Four hits or near hits, however, turned out to be quite devastating enough - at least no one complained about the missing fifth bomb. In less than a minute the majority of the people in the second most populated state in the nation were plunged into a new Dark Age (literally and figuratively). Since Florida had no major oil refining or distribution targets, it was not as badly damaged as some other states, but the carnage was bad enough, nevertheless.

The Cape Kennedy strike was intended to destroy the launch facilities and, with some help from EMP, they achieved that end. No more recon satellites would be lofted from Cape Kennedy for some time to come. The two remaining launch pads were so extensively damaged by blast, heat, and radioactive residue that they were effectively inoperable, as was the shuttle landing strip and most of the surrounding support facilities. At Eglin AFB the main facilities at Hurlbert Field were scoured off the map. One of the MIRVs was sub-targeted for the nearby Naval Air Station, and seven more were aimed at Eglin's widely spaced AUX, or auxiliary airfields. One warhead was targeted against the Army Airborne Ranger Camp also located (deep in the swamps) on Eglin AFB. Ground zeroes for these .1 Mt MIRVs were much smaller than that of the 1 Mt device that hit Mac-Dill, but because the smaller warheads were "on target" with regard to the altitudes of their detonations, the recipients had no complaints about their relative destructiveness. The single biggest effect of the cumulative air bursts over a wide area of the Florida Panhandle was the vast and uncontrolled forest and grass fires ignited by the blasts. Because each of these devices was an airburst weapon, little initial or residual fallout occurred.

MacDill Air Force Base, headquarters of the US Readiness Command, Special Operations Command and the rear headquarters of Central Command, was hit. The blast there was ten times the size of any one of the single warheads detonating to the north. The only thing that saved Tampa Bay from mass extinction was the mischance of a premature detonation, some 2000 feet too high for the full effects of such a blast to be felt. Directly below the airburst the Earth's surface was first subjected to a blowtorch several miles across, then to a blast with an overpressure of 250 to 500 psi, which was more than sufficient to ensure complete destruction of any aircraft or personnel unfortunate enough to be on the base. The water table in Florida is generally very near the surface, and here on MacDill it was less than three inches down. Water cannot be compressed, and the force of the overpressure from the MacDill blast had the effect of squeezing a huge subterranean sponge; the water table (and the surface of the earth) literally rippled like a pond after a stone has been thrown in. Those spreading concentric circles acted like an earthquake, shaking down buildings and cracking concrete with successive waves of underground water displaced from the center of the water table under ground zero. Those structures above ground level that were not specially built to withstand both the blast and the surging earth beneath it lunged, bucked, and were swept away by the fiery nuclear winds of overpressure, shock wave, and the returning wave (as the surrounding air rushed back to fill the void made by the blast). All told, every major building on the peninsula was scoured off the face of the earth. Having been blasted down, the rubble was then bounced by each succeeding "ripple" of the water table. The central portion of MacDill's runway was never touched by the fireball from the bomb (which had detonated too high for maximum damage). Underground pipelines ruptured during the blast, pouring millions of tons of jet fuel, bunker oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline into the subsurface layer. When the bomb fell on MacDill, its immediate casualties were the families servicemen and women had left behind in the base's government quarters.

The five psi ring extended to the base's north perimeter fence, guaranteeing the destruction of all but the most heavily bunkered and revetted structures on the air base. The two psi ring extended to Gandy Boulevard two miles farther north. At that range almost all of the wood frame residences were first ignited by the thermal pulse, then blasted to splinters by the overpressure wave of the detonation. The fires were added to by the ignition of residential propane and fuel oil tanks. Over half of the brick or cinder block buildings lost a roof or were heavily damaged. All of the lush tropical and subtropical foliage was set afire. Flash burns and overpressure (blast) damage, especially to the very old or very young, contributed additional casualties. The one psi ring extended to the north boundary fence of Tampa International Airport, over ten miles from ground zero. At that range the shock wave tumbled cars and aircraft, and the thermal pulse ignited the highly flammable fuels within their tanks. The inferno resulting from the ignition of all the ruptured fuel tanks can scarcely be imagined. Among the things within the bomb's flash ignition zone were the bulging fuel tank farms of Port Tampa, various munitions on the docks of Hooker's Point, and the environmentally infamous 400-foot-high mounds of phosphorous and phosphate products located at Port Sutton and East Tampa. Initial casualties from the high air burst were in excess of 250,000. Most of this total was from blast and secondary debris from the detonation. Because the burst was too high, the city of Tampa suffered less than it might have from immediate radioactive fallout. The burst spread out from its epicenter in concentric rings of destructive overpressure, blinding dazzle, and secondary missile and fire destruction. Because ground zero was located over the peninsula of MacDill, much of the worst destructive overpressure (that of five pounds per square inch or higher) was confined to the Air Force Base. The ring of total destruction just barely exceeded the northern limits of the base itself, and the lesser but still devastating two-psi ring never ran closer to the heart of the city than the portion of Gandy Boulevard directly north of the point of detonation. The one-psi ring reached its maximum extension at the north barrier fence of Tampa International Airport. Vast amounts of glass windows were blown out, especially in the shimmering towers of the downtown business district (sparsely occupied due to the (unofficially) prior day’s attacks). (Officially) The lovely old homes along Hillsborough Bay's picturesque northern shore suffered blast, thermal radiation, and wave surge damage, while those south of Gandy Boulevard received much heavier damage. Those older, mostly wood-frame, homes disintegrated under the overpressure, ignited under the combination of thermal radiation and bursting gas and fuel oil tanks, and generally suffered total destruction. More modern concrete cinder block construction weathered the fire storm with lost roofs and some small amount of shattered foundations. The green, semitropical foliage burst into fire and burned. The outermost circle of destruction didn't encompass the newer or wealthier neighborhoods. The heart of the new construction and new industrial zone was still intact. The great center of knowledge and instruction, the University of South Florida, was essentially undamaged. The heart and soul of the city itself died although most of its citizens survived. Over one million people within the city limits of Tampa survived the initial blast and the collateral damage due to fire and fragmentation. Radiation from the MacDill attack was negligible except under the ground zero of the airburst. Most of the deaths had occurred in the immediate zone of the blast in the first seconds of the fire and flying debris thrown out from the blast.

MacDill AFB was effectively seared from the face of the earth. The airburst over MacDill pushed outward, creating a moving wave of sea water 10 feet high across lower Tampa Bay. This man-made tidal wave destroyed a large portion of the Gandy Bridge (southernmost of the three links between St. Petersburg and Tampa), damaged portions of the Howard Franklin Bridge, and smashed into the boat basins, jetties, docks, piers (including the local landmark known as the million dollar pier), graceful beach hotels, condos and private residences along Tampa Bay's western shore. The rush of returning water did similar, if less destructive, damage to the Tampa side shoreline. Overpressure tides from the MacDill blast devastated the inner bay area, particularly much of upper Tampa Bay. A wall of water 15 feet high surged over much of the eastern shoreline. It would have been worse, but for the mangrove flats the environmentalists had fought so hard to save from encroaching land developers. The flats significantly reduced the incoming power of the surging waters.

Flooding was widespread in the lower areas and had immediate permanent effects upon the operation of the Tampa International, St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Albert Whitting, and Michael O. Knight Airports. When the water receded, the only functioning air strips were the Clearwater Executive Air Park located near the highest point in Pinellas County and a sprinkling of other grass strips in northern and eastern Hillsborough County. None could accommodate large commercial airliners which might have brought in disaster relief materials.

The survivors could be grateful for only one thing - the wave damage, bad as it was, was not radioactive. The high airburst did fairly extensive blast and thermal damage, but, owing to its targeting pattern, the fireball never touched the ground. No widespread physical debris was sucked into the radiant center of the blast to become secondary radioactive fallout, and what little fallout that was created (by the residue from the bomb casing and the air, dust, and water vapors immediately around the 8000-foot-high core of the detonation) fell promptly back to earth in a fairly tight, localized pattern squarely upon the unlucky communities of Gibsonton and Apollo Beach. This fallout pattern of just over 20 miles or so settled over the three major south-bound escape routes out of Tampa. The city of Gulfport was not swept bare by the tidal wave from MacDill, nor was it blasted by the tremendous overpressure, or ignited by the thermal pulse. There were 7300 heart attacks in this community in the 24 hours immediately following the destruction of Tampa. That figure might have seemed abnormally high unless it is coupled with the average age of the typical Gulfport resident: 87 for men, 92 for women. The sick and dying from Tampa immediately overwhelmed the medical and sanitation facilities of nearby Sarasota.

Gibsonton and Apollo Beach, Florida were unlucky enough to share the fallout pattern from the MacDill AFB strike. The ill wind from the glowing fireball above MacDill carried the mass of the fallout the brief distance across Cockroach Bay before a heavy seasonal downpour washed the bulk of it from the skies above Apollo Beach and Gibsonton. The result was a three-by-15 mile wide swath of radioactive ash that blanketed the main southeasterly evacuation routes from Tampa. The initial rad count was not quite a killing dose, but everyone who drove through it was sick by the time they reached Brandenton or Sarasota. Thanks to a heroic effort by the local civil defense personnel, almost 99 percent of the vehicles that suffered contamination (unofficially, those that were lucky enough to start after the EMP attack of the prior day) were successfully quarantined at the Manatee-Sarasota County line. Some few, however, never made it out of the fallout zone due to lack of gas (no electrical gas pump was working following the EMP) or mechanical breakdown. A statistically insignificant number of other vehicles successfully evaded the sheriffs' roadblocks to spread their slow poison to other parts of the state.

The communities of Palmetto and Bradenton missed the worst of the overpressure tidal wave from the MacDill blast, but they received, instead, the full weight of the dead and dying from the fallout that blanketed those three southeastern routes. The civil defense effort in Gibsonton and Apollo Beach tagged contaminated cars as they passed through. The Manatee and Sarasota County Sheriff's Departments got the "hot" cars into a quarantine site and assisted the medical evacuation of survivors. Efforts to halt the exodus of contaminated people and vehicles south from Tampa led to the establishment of a temporary twenty-acre automobile park on the Manatee-Sarasota County line off of Interstate 75 that gave a whole new meaning to the term "hot car parts."

In the immediate aftermath of the strikes millions of cars and trucks jammed the nation's highways, fleeing cities which, it was imagined, were due to be struck at any moment. A number of people had been stranded in the highway junction (and self-proclaimed “town of hotels) of Breezewood, Pennsylvania during the fateful Thanksgiving weekend. Unofficially, millions more would have been on the roads if they had been able to be started after the EMP strikes. Unfortunately, most cars built after 1978 had computer chips on board and electronic ignition, features which rendered them all but scrap metal.

SAC spent the day recovering from the prior day’s attacks and counter-attacks. The airborne bombers and tankers landed, mostly at their recovery and dispersal bases to minimize the number that could be taken out by further Soviet attacks on their primary bases. These several dozen bases were generally of two categories: former B-52 bases from the heyday of SAC’s bomber force in the 1950s (these bases’ runways were well able to handle the weight of the big bombers) and airports (that had sufficient runway strength) that had hosted US Air Force, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard or other military air units in prewar days, most of which still retained at least a residual military presence and therefore a semi-secure facility and manpower that could be drafted into assisting in guarding the nuclear bombers.

The airborne command and control aircraft maintained their constant vigil, supported by a ferry operation of tankers. Those airborne during the attacks landed at their backup bases (Grissom Air Force Base for the Looking Glass, East Auxiliary Command Post and radio relay aircraft, Minot Air Force Base for the Airborne Launch Control Aircraft #2, Ellsworth Air Force Base for the West Auxiliary Command Post and ALCS #3, Rickenbacker, Ohio for the radio relay aircraft and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base for LANTCOM’s Scope Light command post) after their relief aircraft were on station. (The Navy’s TACAMO aircraft landed at Patuxent River, Maryland and Barbers Point, Hawaii). In Nebraska, the SAC backup ground command post emerged from its hide site in former munitions bunkers at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant and within a few hours had established communications links and a skeleton staff while the acting commander of SAC travelled to the site after the conclusion of his Looking Glass tour.

In the post-strike United States only the military had an operating communications network. Military electronics had been designed to survive in an EMP environment and were heavily shielded. NORAD headquarters was back online shortly after midnight, and SAC’s missile and bomber bases retained multiple redundant communications links (airborne relay aircraft, hardened land lines, the GWEN radio network, satellite communications as well as various other secure radio nets). Some state emergency and civil defense networks began to stand up, as did FEMA’s more rudimentary but adequate network of systems. A final communications network was composed of amateur radio operators, who had a long history of supporting in the aftermath of disasters. Finally, for a select few civilians, another reliable source of information was available - foreign short-wave radio broadcasts. These broadcasters were in the dark as to conditions in the many nations that had been struck, but were at least able to relay news that entire nations were “offline”.

Overseas, US military commanders received word of the strikes on the U.S. through the military signals network. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Jonathan Cummings, secure at the Alternative National Military Command Post at Raven Rock, Pennsylvania (the warhead aimed at Site R malfunctioned), relayed that in the absence of further orders otherwise that American forces in the field were to continue their operations, continuing to take care to minimize the chance of becoming a target of Soviet nuclear attacks, to monitor and be proactive about the morale of troops whose families may have been effected by the strikes, and to render all available assistance to SAC aircraft that may enter their area of operations following attacks on the USSR.

The crew of the Freedom-class ship Kansas Freedom completes unloading over 1000 containers of supplies in Diego Garcia in the remote Indian Ocean and begins preparations for departure.

The Soviet 234th Rear Area Protection Division arrives in Jugoslavia after a fraught transit from Romania, in which it lost several dozen troops to partisan ambushes as it travelled through small towns and villages in the Danube Valley.

[shrike6]

[. In Nebraska, the SAC backup ground command post emerged from its hide site in former munitions bunkers at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant



Growing up just down the road from GI, I had no idea that the CP was even there. Would have thought something like that would have been at Mead where the Feds still have some areas closed off to the public 60 years later.

[cawest]

just an fyi. Fort Huachuca az has a very long runway. it was set up for shuttles launches out of CA. Also, Tucson (green valley) has a titan II missile silo that is turned into a museum. hope this might be useful.

[Ewan]

November 28, 1997

The other missiles struck Milford Haven, Wales and Grangemouth, Scotland, sites of large refineries.

When the missiles destroyed the Grangemouth refinery, Longannet power station (just across the Forth from Grangemouth) would also be destroyed or at the very least heavily damaged.

With Longannet offline and the various nuclear power stations shut down Scotland will be plunged into total darkness.

[chico20854]

November 29, 1997

Unofficially,
President Munson was escorted to the Redding, California National Guard Armory, secured by an ad-hoc force of National Guard stay-behind and California State Guard troops. CLS operatives were reluctant to bring him to the nearest military airfield, Beale Air Force Base over 100 miles away, afraid that the SAC base will be attacked. The base dispatched a UH-1N helicopter from its base flight detachment to stand by the President when he was ready to relocate to a safer location. The helicopter brought with it a military aide and several security policemen, along with a communications team. Using the equipment that team carried, Munson was briefed on the SIOP and the various options he had. He inquired about the losses suffered by the U.S. in the prior two days (no way to be certain at this point but probably several million) and the losses inflicted on the USSR to date (the DIA estimated that between Moscow and Leningrad they were about five million) and the casualties that could be expected from the various SIOP packages. The briefers responded that they did not have any clarity as to what those losses would be, and that the selection of packages, timing and Soviet civil defense measures would dictate the losses. They relayed that an all-out attack, using all remaining ICBMs, SLBMs and bombers, would likely kill over half the Soviet population within a week. Horrified by that possibility, he authorized a relatively small strike in retaliation for the attacks on the Presidential Emergency Facilities, Tampa and the Kennedy Space Center.

The first, and largest package, was a SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) target set. The intent of this was to create corridors for entry/egress of American bombers into the Soviet homeland, opening the full array of targets in the central USSR to further manned bomber strikes. Upon releasing authorization, the operation, code named Boogie Valley, went into operation.

A combination of methods (B-52 stand-off, ICBM, SLCM, SLBM, in that order of priority) were used to blast holes in the Soviet air defense networks. The biggest breach was along the Arctic cost north of the Urals, with others over the Soviet-Finnish border (an egress route), the Sino-Soviet border in the vicinity of Lake Zaysan, near the junction of the Iranian, Afghan and Soviet borders (an egress route as well) and on the shoulders of the natural gap over Jugoslavia and Romania (which required strikes on Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Ukraine/Moldova).

For each hole, targets were long-range search radars, interceptor bases and SAM sites, as well as supporting C3I facilities. Special emphasis was on MiG-25/MiG-31 bases, as these long-range fighters had the ability to range long distances beyond Soviet borders (placing American tankers at risk) and act as mini-AWACS, airborne radar stations capable of directing further interceptors against American aircraft. Other high priority targets were the Soviet A-50 AWACS bases and radar sites with long-range P-70 air defense radars.

The main hole was through the Arctic. Soviet defenses in the region consisted of a line of radars on islands in the Arctic Ocean, another line along the coast, a third line a few hundred miles inland and then area defenses around important target areas, such as the Urals industrial region and Strategic Rocket Forces division deployment areas. SAM defenses were rare in the region, with barriers established much closer to target areas rather than a continuous barrier. In the center of the gap the only missile complexes were point defenses for the Norilsk mining center and Pechora, home station of the A-50 force and a strategic missile early warning radar. Instead, defenses were largely interceptors, with forward staging bases along the coast or even on Arctic islands.

Pending creation of the holes, the intent was not to have any bombers penetrate the defenses - to use long range or stand-off weapons to perform the strikes. Two exceptions existed, however. First, B-2s were available for a limited number of strikes. Second, once a hole was blasted through, penetrators departing from the Soviet interior could be used to create gaps along their egress routes. The crews, obviously, preferred that the defenses, while outward looking, be neutralized by others, if possible, however!

After months of intense aerial combat over Norway, Central Europe, the Mediterranean/Balkans, Iran and Korea as well as the plethora of non-strategic air defense systems in use by the Red Army and its allies, the intent was to avoid placing bomber routes over Red Army formations. In the Balkans, given the aged nature of Soviet air defense systems in use against the Romanians and Jugoslavs (and that the front had largely collapsed by this time), the risk was deemed acceptable.
A relatively small number of desired ground zeros (DGZs) - about 100 - were in the initial SEAD package. Munson, however, ordered that the number of weapons be reduced, afraid of provoking a proportionate response of 100 Soviet weapons on the US. SAC planners adjusted the plan to remove the strikes for the egress routes, limiting the strikes to creating the hole along the Arctic coast.

The advantages of this approach were that: 1) it was not a full effort series of strikes that stressed takeoff/recovery base capacities; and 2) it was relatively early in the nuclear exchange, and the most capable and newest weapons were available in quantity.

The first mission, the neutralization of the island of Novaya Zemlya, was done by two B-52Hs from the 26th Bombardment Squadron, 5th Bombardment Wing, from Minot AFB, North Dakota, refueled by KC-135Rs of the co-located 906th Aerial Refueling Squadron, each launching single AGM-68B ALCMs against each of the six air defense radars (outside of Rogachevo; the Rogachevo radar was destroyed by the strike on the airfield, as was the HQ of the 406th SAM Regiment; map (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=150&lat=71.6034886&lng=52.4465416&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&crater=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&rem=&therm=&zm=11)). Additional DGZs were on the HQ bunker of the 11th Air Defense Division and two SA-2 SAM sites; finally the radar on Kolguev Island was also struck by ALCMs from this cell.

A separate B-52 mission from Minot attacked the radars and airstrips in Franz Josef Land (four radars and two airfields at Nagorskoye and Graham Bell, five DGZs in total) with ALCMs. That aircraft also launched five missiles against radar sites farther east in the Kara Sea and the Taymyr Peninsula of Siberia.

In mission #3, the MiG-31 base and long-range radar at Amderma were struck by two AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles aimed at the airbase, the radar being disabled by the intense short-range EMP from the two blasts. That aircraft (the fourth aircraft from Minot on this series of strikes) also struck eight radar stations along the Arctic coast, each with a pair of ACMs, and the interceptor base at Vorkuta (two ACMs).

Simultaneously with the arrival of the cruise missiles from the first three B-52 cells on the targets was the arrival of a flight of 10 Minuteman II ICBMs launched by the 510th Strategic Missile Squadron, 351st Strategic Missile Wing from Whiteman AFB, Missouri. Each of those missiles had a single 1.2 MT W56 warhead. The targets for these missiles were A-50 AWACs and MiG-31 and MiG-25 interceptor bases, since the A-50 and MiG-31 had the ability to function as airborne control aircraft, replacing ground radars and coordinating surface to air missile and interceptor responses. (MiG-25 bases were included because they were able to somewhat support the MiG-31.) Each base was targeted by a single missile.

Following the first wave of B-52s and the Minutemen, another wave of B-52s struck targets further inland. The first of these missions targeted the interceptor forward operating base at Dikson with three ALCMs. The strike at Dikson also disabled the Soviet Navy’s radio direction finding facility and damaged the port facility and a number of ships at anchor for the winter. The single aircraft then closed on the Soviet coast before launching another round of ALCMs against the mineral production center of Norilsk and its associated air defense complex (including two SA-5 long range missile complexes, the interceptor bases at Alykel and Norilsk and the headquarters of the PVO’s 22nd Division).

The second cell targeted the second line of air defense radars in from the Arctic coast and the strategic early warning missile complex at Pechora with two B-52s loaded with cruise missiles. This strike also included the interceptor base at Naryan Mar and a second strike on the A-50 home base at Pechora-Kamenka. (Unfortunately, the strikes also resulted in numerous casualties among the Allied prisoners of war held at a nearby MVD prison camp four miles from the missile warning radar).

The third cell struck the northeastern air defenses of the Ural industrial megacomplex with three B-52s. Launching cruise missiles from the vicinity of Novaya Zemla, the ALCMs flew southeast, striking the interceptor bases at Yugorsk, Salka and Bakharevka and air defense radars at Gora Chrisop, Ivdel, Yugorsk, Serov, Sverdlovsk and Bolshoye Savino. Due to the large numbers of SAM launchers in the Urals and the inability to designate target locations for SA-10 batteries (which moved on average once a day and took but 15 minutes to set up), this cell was forced to concentrate its fire on PVO headquarters in an attempt to shut down communication between individual batteries.

The cruise missile strikes were followed by a battle damage assessment flight by a R-5D Aurora hypersonic spy plane, armed with a pair of SRAM-II missiles to target any DGZs that survived the strikes.

Officially, in retaliation for the attack on the Kennedy Space Center, the massive Soviet space launch complex at Leninsk-Tyuratam was struck by (unofficially) four Minuteman III ICBMs, each loaded with three 170-kiloton W62 warheads, 2 megatons in total. The attacks, aimed at the central administrative and support complex, Buran shuttle launch complexes (three pads), Soyuz launch complexes and the main communications sites, crippled the space center just as thoroughly as the Soviet strike on Florida had done.

The final American strikes of the day were against the remaining Soviet Military District headquarters for districts bordering active combat zones - the Southern TVD headquarters in Baku, Southwestern TVD headquarters in Kishinev, the Central Asian MD headquarters in Alma-Ata, the Far East MD headquarters in Khabarovsk and the Transcaucasus MD headquarters in Tbilisi. These strikes were delivered by B-1B bombers that made high-speed low level dashes into Soviet territory from the south.

The Soviets unleashed armageddon on an array of Allied command and control centers across the Pacific. The Delta III-class SSBN K-223, operating 1200 km southwest of Hawaii, unleashed five SS-N-18 mod 2 missiles, each with ten 100-kiloton warheads. One missile was aimed at each of Canberra, Australia, Wellington, New Zealand, Anderson Air Force Base on Guam, US Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii and Vandenburg Air Force Base, California. Officially, Soviet nuclear forces also targeted Japan, aimed primarily at destroying US military bases there. Tokyo was bracketed by 500kt nuclear explosions, destroying the USN base facilities at Yokosuka, west of the capital, and the large oil refinery in Chiba City, across Tokyo Harbor to the east. Nagasaki, home to Sasebo Naval Base, was not spared the indignity of being twice hit by nuclear weapons, not quite 53 years apart.

The strike on Pacific Command Headquarters caused severe damage to the city of Honolulu, and local facilities were overwhelmed. The state's urban residents (over 80 percent of the population) panicked.

Blytheville Air Force Base, located in the northeast corner of Arkansas, was expected to be the target for Soviet missiles. The air base, headquarters for the 42nd Air Division and home of a wing of ALCMs, was destroyed by a one megaton, ICBM-launched warhead shortly before midnight. The airburst flattened the base, and the town itself was damaged quite severely. Fallout was slight but still forced the evacuation of towns as far away as Covington, Tennessee, in addition to Blytheville itself.

Unofficially, Around the US, local authorities, among many other efforts, tried to clear roads of blocked cars and trucks, which had simply died from EMP while in motion. Officially, civilian casualties throughout Maryland were extremely heavy. Baltimore, though not nuked, was ravaged by savage rioting and numerous fires which gutted large parts of the central and western city. Annapolis, the state capital, was downwind of Fort Meade, and panicked residents began to flee the state capital. Unofficially, Those trying to flee Washington to the south were hindered by the prior days attacks - I-95 south through Quantico was closed by the attack on PEF, and US Highway 301 into Virginia was closed by the Fort AP Hill strike.

The SAC mobile command post remained in place at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant, where it stood up a mobile rapid re-targeting software system, fed information from the intelligence system and satellites (including the GPS positioning satellites, which had nuclear detonation detectors installed). Likewise, the NORAD Rapier mobile command center went live, while FEMA staff began moving to moored command ships in coastal Maine.

Elsewhere, RainbowSix reports that Gibraltar was targeted in strikes aimed at destroying the city’s port facilities - it was destroyed by a one megaton airburst. He also reports that the British government lacked the logistical capability to evacuate those who remained. Shortages of food and water led to unrest that soon gave way to outright rioting and looting. The police and the Army tried to control the disturbances, but for every one that they quelled another three were breaking out elsewhere. The first fatal clash between troops and rioters occurred in Glasgow today, with others soon following. The Royal Family arrived at a secure, secret location in southern England.

Officially, Soviet forces in the northwest launched another round of attacks on Norway. This round targeted the major industrial centers and the nation's petroleum facilities. Over a half a million Norwegians died in the day’s attacks and the strike on Oslo two days before.

Unofficially, in western Arkansas, the 2nd Brigade, Arkansas State Guard, still in the process of formation and armed only with privately-owned weapons, is unable to fully contain the outburst of violence that accompanies the nuclear attacks on the state and nation, but receives kudos from the many that it is able to assist. The brigade sees a surge in recruitment, especially among urban refugees who find themselves displaced, unemployed and in rural communities that are lukewarm at best regarding the new arrivals.

Despite the damage to the US ashore, the Oriskany battle group continues its training evolution, flying its first multi-squadron mission. The operations on the flight deck are somewhat disorganized as the crew adapts to having more aircraft moving around.

The Kansas Freedom sails in the predawn hours, headed for Mombasa, Kenya, the closest location where friendly naval forces are to be found, and away from the juicy target that is Diego Garcia.

Officailly, The owner of a M113 APC in Providence, Grenada dies of a heart attack while sitting in the APC's drivers' seat.

[shrike6]

November 29, 1997

The SAC mobile command post remained in place at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant, where it stood up a mobile rapid re-targeting software system, fed information from the intelligence system and satellites (including the GPS positioning satellites, which had nuclear detonation detectors installed). Likewise, the NORAD Rapier mobile command center went live, while FEMA staff began moving to moored command ships in coastal Maine.



Oh its mobile and not fixed. The thing with Nebraska is if it was fixed there are alot of good places to hide it. between the two former Ammo plants and the former Ammo Depots in Hastings and Sidney. Hell the former NAD in Hastings has throngs and throngs of former ammo bunkers between Hastings and State hwy 15.

[Targan]

November 29, 1997The Soviets unleashed armageddon on an array of Allied command and control centers across the Pacific. The Delta III-class SSBN K-223, operating 1200 km southwest of Hawaii, unleashed five SS-N-18 mod 2 missiles, each with ten 100-kiloton warheads. One missile was aimed at each of Canberra, Australia, Wellington, New Zealand, Anderson Air Force Base on Guam, US Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii and Vandenburg Air Force Base, California.

Any other members here who are dual citizens have the capitals of both their countries nuked? :(

[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.

[chico20854]

December 1, 1997

Officially, President Munson flew back east (unofficially aboard a E-4B of the 1st Airborne Command and Control Squadron) to the Special Facility at Mount Weather where a skeleton staff of the various category A agencies and FEMA personnel were on duty. Almost no members of Congress were present, and no legislative business could be conducted, but FEP-D permitted a number of emergency procedures to be undertaken. Communication was next to impossible since the effects of nuclear EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) proved much greater than predicted, and most of the supposedly shielded electronic circuitry was fried during the initial attacks.

A radio report was received at the SAC backup command post (which was preparing to displace to Naval Ammunition Depot Hastings, lest a Soviet snooper satellite detect its radio transmissions) from North Dakota that the air police garrisons at Minot and Grand Forks Air Force Bases remained intact and in control of the bases’ stock of warheads, with a number of the missiles operable. (The Soviet attacks struck the main base area, not the dozens of missile silos dispersed over many miles of prairie.)

In Maryland, Roger Caldwell, an assistant undersecretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, arrived in the state capital. He had avoided the riots in Baltimore and was able to travel to Annapolis where he rejoined a number of former government officials who had survived the Washington holocaust. The civilian population of Frederick dispersed following the strikes on Fort Dietrich and Camp David, virtually abandoning the city to its craters and radiation.

Not far from Mount Weather, and contrary to the situation there, radio waves cleared enough for radio contact with Carl Hughes to be reestablished; New America leader Carl Hughes found himself dealing with the only female head of a New America cell in the country in St. Petersburg, Florida.

With plenty of national defense industry plants that made the city of Clearwater, Florida seem like a target for further bombing, the inhabitants panicked and fled to the countryside. The exodus was joined by an estimated 4500 residents of the nearby town of Gulfport.

Unofficially, streams of survivors streamed out of Las Vegas as food, water, fuel and electricity grew scarce.

Officially, when news of the nuclear strikes against Washington, DC and the other areas broke in New England, fear of nuclear holocaust resurfaced. Widespread rioting in the metropolitan areas of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts taxed both the civilian and military police. Much of the factory facilities which supported the sub base in Groton and New London were destroyed in the riots and civil disorder. Much of Providence was ravaged by the disorder -fires gutted many of the large buildings in the downtown area.

Unofficially, across the nation, defense industry workers reported back to work. In many cases many of their co-workers had fled, and managers (and the military’s on-site contracting representatives) tried to figure out how to resume production after the damage wreaked by EMP and the loss of electrical power. Many sites had been fitted with emergency backup generators, but even in these cases the backups were inadequate to resume full production. An exception, however, were the many shipyards what ringed the nation’s coasts. The ships under construction, in many cases, had on-board generators and landside connections, originally intended to power the ships in port. Shipyard managers were, in several cases, quickly able to start the generators aboard the vessels under construction (which had largely escaped damage from EMP, being disconnected from power mains and installed in a large steel box of an engine room) and resume work on board and ashore.

Officially, a low-power AM radio station located somewhere in the heart of Central Florida came on the air. Calling itself the "Voice of the Lord," this apparently authoritative, allegedly fundamentalist Christian radio station began churning out the wildest and most criminally irresponsible propaganda imaginable. The criminally and deliberately misinforming Voice of the Lord did more to create and spread the senseless pain and suffering than the combined death count attributed to the entire bombardment of Florida. With no authoritative counter-voice to challenge the genocidal recommendation and advice from this allegedly Christian fundamentalist radio station, it deliberately and maliciously spread the notions that radiation sickness and the once-dreaded AIDS were one and the same and that the persons exposed to radiation in the attacks (particularly the one in Tampa) were now somehow "carriers" of lethal radiation that could be indiscriminately spread from one person to another in a manner identical to that of AIDS. The broadcaster went on to suggest that the radioactive sign of the city-dwelling, godless, immoral fathers would be visited upon their sons and daughters (and all who sheltered them or even breathed the same air) for the next seven generations. It was heavy stuff, laid on with all the skill, subtlety, and salesmanship of a true genius in the science of propaganda. The immediate effects of the attack, even in the countryside, had been traumatic enough

Nuclear mushrooms sprouted over Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and at Marcus Hook, a few kilometers down the Delaware River. The cities of Chester, Marcus Hook, Philadelphia, and many others were devastated by nuclear attacks on the refineries that dotted the southern reaches of the Delaware River. The strike on the Delaware City refinery in adjacent Delaware only wiped out one percent of the total US refining capacity, but it was just one of many strikes in the region of the lower Delaware River. Its contribution to the devastation was enough, however, to cause the northern half of Delaware to become almost completely deserted within days.

Unofficially, also struck in the attacks was the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where the carrier USS Saratoga was in drydock being repaired after being struck by a Soviet cruise missile. Also lost in the strike were the destroyer USS Dahlgren, the stores ship USS Sylvania and the amphibious assault ship USS Portland. The blast and subsequent firestorm raged across the city of Philadelphia; wide boulevards and green areas, designed in the 19th Century to prevent the spread of fires, were no match for the 100-plus mile per hour winds that fed the massive fires. Officially, radiation, fire, blast, and the resulting civil unrest killed or severely injured millions. The eccentric rockstar Ted Hendrix was killed in the attacks.

The Soviets launched a series of attacks on Southern California, firing five missiles from the Delta I-class K-477, which was sheltering under ice in the Sea of Oshkosh. The relatively inaccurate missiles made up for it with 800-kiloton warheads, which tore the city of Los Angeles apart. Three missiles were directed at the refineries in Los Angeles, igniting massive fires at the El Segundo, Long Beach, Wilmington, Torrance and Carson refineries and taking out over 1.25 million barrels of daily refining capacity. March Air Force Base, California was struck by two missiles, knocking out the headquarters of SAC’s 15th Air Force and a number of KC-10 tankers of the 22nd Air Refueling Wing.

Officially, the Norwegian naval bases at Horten, Haakonsvern, Ramsund, and Olavsvern came under attack, being destroyed or severely damaged. The inhabitants of the city of Kristiansund had largely dispersed into the surrounding coastal villages, and more left after that, fearing they would become a target. Even more of the populace left in the chaos and economic dislocation that followed.

Unofficially, Strategic Air Command started the month by exploiting the large gap in the Soviet air defense network it had created over the weekend. For the first time a B-52 flew its second nuclear sortie, when a BUFF from the 26th Bombardment Squadron fired a salvo of ALCMs at the Teykovo ICBM field; other aircraft from the 5th Bomb Wing fired a series of cruise missiles at the nearby Kostroma ICBM complex. Like the prior day’s strikes at the Dombarovskiy ICBM sites, the missiles targeted regimental launch control centers with ground bursts; the highly accurate cruise missiles were very effective in taking out the buried facilities.

Officially, in Africa an all-out attack by US and Kenyan forces, heavily supported by a small force of bombers attacking out of Diego Garcia, defeated the Tanzanian forces near Mombasa, driving what was left of them back into Tanzania. The bombers landed at Kenyan air bases near Nairobi instead of returning to Diego Garcia as the US began to disperse it forces to avoid having them be destroyed in a single attack. In the north the Somalis, under constant attack by US Rangers and Special Forces aided by US and Kenyan attack helicopters, began to withdraw towards Somalia, devastating the area as they leave. The Dar es Salaam refinery in Tanzania was destroyed by cruise missiles from USS Louisville, cutting off local oil production and leaving Tanzania dependent on oil from the Ndola refinery in Zambia to keep its tanks and armored vehicles running. Much of their remaining anti-aircraft weaponry was assigned to protect their fuel supplies and the pipeline from Zambia.

Unofficially,

The war in Europe dragged on as well. Logistically, NATO forces in Germany were somewhat adequately supplied thanks to the dozens of fully loaded ships waiting n he North Sea for berths in the few operable Dutch, German and Danish ports. Morale among soldiers dropped precipitously, however, as each man and woman wondered and worried about their friends and family back home. Soldiers (and most commanders with less than two stars on their shoulders) were unaware of the specifics of the attacks back home, just that America had been struck, with all details of where and when still highly classified (as was the fact that President Tanner and Vice President Pemberton were dead and that Speaker Munson had been sworn in as President of the United States).

On the other side of the lines, however, things were falling apart rather quickly. The destruction of the Red Army’s higher command levels paralyzed operations, while the attacks on Moscow caused the central coordination of production and transportation of supplies and replacements to the front to come to a screeching halt. Absent orders from Moscow, even Front commanders were reluctant to order the movement of even a single battalion. What supplies were en route to the front trickled in gradually as dedicated individuals doggedly pushed their way westward.

Nonetheless, SACEUR ordered a withdrawal of most of the remaining NATO bridgeheads in Poland, leaving only the US Marine garrison opposite Szczecin at the mouth of the Oder in place. The withdrawal

In Belize the final members of the Guatemalan marine force in southern Belize were rounded up by Belizian soldiers as they tried to make their way back home on foot. To the northwest, the British-Belizian combined force launched an assault on the Guatemalan force that had been stalled some ten miles inside the border for weeks. A platoon of British troops, led by cadre from the British Army’s jungle warfare training school, set up a blocking position in the remnants of the prewar border crossing station, completely cutting off the Guatemalan force from what few supplies that had been receiving (while simultaneously ensuring that they had more than enough food, fuel and ammunition!)

[chico20854]

December 2, 1997

Officially, two New Jersey towns, Linden and Perth Amboy (both locations of important refineries and oil storage farms), were hit by thermonuclear warheads on the night of December 2. Staten Island was badly damaged by blast and subsequent fires, but damage to the other boroughs was relatively light. The nuclear strikes did direct damage only to portions of Staten Island. Since the New Jersey strikes were airbursts, fallout was less severe than it could have been. The blasts lit up the night sky and shattered windows close to the ground. The fires raging across Staten Island, which had the misfortune to be located directly adjacent to the two oil refining complexes which were targets for a pair of Soviet nuclear warheads, were seen illuminating the sky as far north as Hyde Park. The entire western third of the island as far east as Port Richmond in the north and Staten Island Mall in the center of the island were reduced to rubble. Another third of the island suffered severe damage to buildings from blast and the subsequent fires. Over 117,000 people died on Staten Island from the blast alone, and another 11,000 perished across the Narrows in Brooklyn.

None of the city's other boroughs, however, suffered any deaths directly from the blasts. Damage to Manhattan from the New Jersey nuclear strikes was slight. Some glass was shattered, particularly near the ground floors where the blast was intensified by reflection from the pavement, and particularly near the southern tip of Manhattan, which was closer to ground zero. The nuclear explosions across the bay, however, did almost no blast damage at all, and even fallout was minimal, with the worst radiation effects being confined to Staten Island and western Brooklyn. Due to prevailing winds during and after the strikes, the heaviest of the fallout from the Linden blast missed Manhattan but fell across southern Brooklyn, Coney Island, and Rockaway Point. Over 300,000 people suffered from radiation sickness and many died. Brooklyn also suffered the riots, disease, and starvation which swept the rest of the city as well.

There was other physical damage as well. Most of Manhattan south of Central Park is only a few feet above sea level. After the electricity stopped working, the pumps which kept the subway, road and rail tunnels dry stopped. None of the bridges suffered extensive damage from the nukes, but all became clogged with cars soon thereafter. The military partially cleared several key bridges in order to facilitate their movements (this means abandoned cars were smashed together or were overturned on top of one another). Many of the city's hospitals were destroyed during the riots following the New Jersey nukes. Hospitals, after all, have stores of food and medical supplies.

Unofficially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the Chairman, Army Chief of Staff, Commandant of the Marine Corps and Chief of Naval Operations had gathered at the Raven Rock site), after consulting with President Munson, ordered a coordinated support effort from many of the remaining military forces in the US. Units assigned to the Army’s strategic reserve had, in many cases, already assumed responsibility for food distribution. They were soon joined by training units (the Army alone had ten training divisions and numerous training brigades), which halted most basic and advanced training cycles in order to provide assistance to areas in the region that they were located. Naval and Air Force training units, alongside the support and security troops of the small USAF strategic reserve force, assumed similar duties. The effort, while well-intentioned, was doomed to failure, since the units were led by less than the best officers, poorly equipped, in many cases only partially trained and, overall, woefully too few to meet the needs of the population.

In order to prevent a possible Empty Quiver incident (loss of an operable nuclear weapon) an emergency USAF, Department of Energy and Army team arrived at the ruins of Blytheville Air Force Base, Arkansas in a convoy of armored vehicles (which offer protection from the still-high radiation) from Little Rock. They secured the nuclear warheads for the XX Bomb Wings ALCMs and the dozens of B61, B53 and B83 nuclear bombs, all of which survived the blast intact in their secure bunkers.

Three 335 kt warheads from a Minuteman III ICBM strike Northern Fleet headquarters in Murmansk, the SLBM storage facility at Yagel'naya Bay and the Severomorsk naval base, with its reserves of fuel, munitions and spare parts. The strike marks the unofficial end of the Red Banner Northern Fleet as a force to be reckoned with. On the Pacific coast, Vladivostok is attacked a second time, with three MIRVs tearing into several hardened targets that escaped earlier tactical nuclear strikes.

RainbowSix reports in the aftermath of the nuclear strikes on London large numbers of refugees poured into Norfolk and Suffolk from the capital. As with elsewhere in the UK, the reactions from locals to these refugees varied - some tried to help them, although they were a minority, with the majority concerned about their own survival. An already precarious situation was made even worse by the destruction of Ipswich, which added many more displaced souls. Norfolk and southern Suffolk managed to remain relatively stable, thanks partly to strong leadership provided by the staff of the RGHQ in Norwich but mainly to the significant British and American military presence (in addition to the Air Force personnel a battalion of Territorial Army Infantry were also stationed in the region), with the airmen maintaining order and taking charge of food distribution, and substantial organised enclaves in the areas around Norwich, King’s Lynn, and Bury St Edmunds, close to air bases.

Elsewhere in the UK, armed troops, many partially trained conscripts and Territorial Army home service troops, take to the streets to try to maintain law and order while others began incinerating the unburied dead to slow the spread of disease.

Unofficially, the Freedom ship Colorado City Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas. The captain and crew are overjoyed to be away from the city’s petroleum facilities.

The 14th Air Division became the de facto command of 15th Air Force, after that headquarters' destruction the prior day.

Deep in the Chinese interior, the 292nd Motor-Rifle Division, on foot and out of contact with higher headquarters for many weeks, finally halted its advance and seeks winter quarters. The division had driven all the way to the base of the Tibetan Plateau.

Officially, the 94th (my 57th) Air Assault Brigade began withdrawing from Chah Bahar.

Unofficially, in Belize the British troops’ blocking position on the remnants of the prewar border comes under attack by an ad-hoc force of Guatemalan troops, led by a competent and charismatic young captain who took initiative (an uncommon trait among his peers) to try to reopen the road. The British force calls in artillery fire and the few light helicopters, whose onboard machineguns disrupt the Guatemalans as well as correcting the artillery. By dusk the Guatemalan attack has failed and demoralized Guatemalan troops begin to drift westward. Those that approach the blocking position with a white flag of surrender are disarmed by the British and sent westward; many others flee the battlefield and try to make their way around the border post by travelling through the jungle.

[chico20854]

December 3, 1997

Officially, Soviet missiles strike oil refineries in Ohio. The city of Toledo was not directly struck by the missiles aimed at the refineries and oil fields to the west of the city, but was nonetheless severely damaged by the strikes and subsequent fallout. (While the strike was an air burst, the subsequent fires dropped massive quantities of hazardous chemicals from the smoke cloud). Lima, Ohio was half destroyed by the blast that hit just to the southwest of the city. The strike on the refinery left most of the city in rubble and much of it uninhabitable due to radiation. Unofficially, the Lima Tank Plant, across the street from the refineries that were the target of a Soviet SS-11 ICBM, was damaged by the strikes, halting production (as if the EMP and massive disorder and dislocation that followed the strikes were not enough), although the tools and dies survived under the collapsed roof and walls burst by overpressure. Officially, the Ohio town of Irontown was devastated by missile strike on the refinery across the Ohio River in Catlettsburg, Kentucky.

Unofficially, the USSR targets additional American bases in the Pacific Rim. A Tu-95 Bear-H bomber of the 79th Heavy Bomber Aviation Division at Dolon, Kazakhstan launches and proceeds over undefended skies over western China, dropping to lower altitude over the ruins of Wuhan, where it launches a spread of AS-15 cruise missiles. Eight missiles travel at low level to the Philippines, where the American bases at Subic Bay, Cubi Point and Clark Air Force Base are plastered by Soviet nuclear fire. (F-16s of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing succeed in shooting down two of the missiles, saving Clark from more severe damage). Nearly simultaneously, the 551st Missile Regiment fires a spread of eight SS-20 IRBMs at American bases in Okinawa (a ninth explodes on launch, destroying its launcher). The island's defending Patriot missile batteries succeed in only striking one of the incoming missiles, and 21 150 -kiloton warheads blanket the island's military bases with nuclear hellfire.

The Empty Quiver team returns to Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas with the warheads and nuclear components of the bombs that they recovered from Blytheville Air Force Base. Two of the team members display the initial signs of radiation sickness. Empty Quiver response teams are dispatched from Ellsworth Air Force Base to recover the weapons from Minot and Grand Forks Air Force Bases. (The warheads of those bases’ ICBMs, of course, remain fully operable, intact and in place in their silos, their launch control centers manned by nervous controllers.)

Officially, the resources of the local governments in New Jersey and New York City were immediately overwhelmed by the conditions which followed the nuclear strikes. Fuel was in short supply, and all stocks were confiscated so that heat, electricity, and transportation could continue. Medical facilities were hopelessly inadequate to handle the burn, blast, and radiation casualties from New Jersey and Staten Island, let alone from other areas. Food and water were rationed. That, coupled with the sudden desire of millions of people to go elsewhere, resulted in rapidly escalating civil disorder. Each one of the city's hundreds of diverse ethnic or cultural groups thought it was being cheated so that some other group could get more than its fair share. There were riots, lynchings, mass looting, and arson. Thousands of people of Russian and Eastern European backgrounds - as well as French, Greeks, and Italians (who were perceived as having betrayed NATO in Europe), plus Chinese and other Orientals because they were different - were slaughtered in city-wide massacres, which only provoked reprisals.

Most of New York City's casualties occurred in the weeks and months following the nuclear attacks on New Jersey’s refineries, from starvation, disease, and the carnage as several million city-dwellers fought to escape or to survive. In Manhattan wreckage incurred when the island's population rioted was infinitely worse than the blast damage. Successive food and race riots along with fires (some of them arson) swept the city, leaving few, if any, buildings untouched. The nuclear blasts shattered many lower floor windows, and the rioting mobs got most of the rest, but above the 20th floor or so, windows were intact.

Philadelphia Congressman Charles Franklin, who was visiting relatives in Maryland, arrived in Annapolis, Maryland, joining the growing number of federal government officials that were gathering at the state capital. Elsewhere in the state, to the southwest of Frederick, the population of Sandy Hook, Maryland, fled the area.

In Florida, it was plain to anyone who cared to give it any thought that the tourist season would not be arriving in the winter of 1997. A lot of sensible people who had both somewhere else to go and a means to do so fled not just to Maderia Beach but to almost all of the dozen beach communities. Elsewhere in the state, a sympathetic guard cleared his prison in the face of a fire storm, releasing dozens of hardened criminals into the chaos outside. The fires at Tampa International Airport died down, nearly a week after the nuclear attack on MacDill Air Force Base. Dozens of other large fires still burned within the city.

Although there was no food shortage on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, there was fear of one, and rioting and civil unrest killed more people than the bomb. By the time troops had been brought in to restore order, almost a million people had become casualties, more than half the population. State government collapsed during this period, and the military (in the form of 221st MP and 29th Infantry Brigades) took over the civil administration.

Unofficially, the captain of the attack submarine USS Baton Rouge demands that his boat be released from the shipyard in Bremerton, where it has been since August undergoing repair from its duel with a Soviet Akula-class attack submarine. The boat is operable (some minor repairs remain unfinished), but the naval command has ordered it to be held pending an electronics upgrade, and several crew members have not returned to the boat after Thanksgiving leave.

The first dual search-and-strike mission is launched by Det. G, 1st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron with two R-5D Aurora hypersonic spy planes. The lead aircraft overflies the Dombarovskiy ICBM field, identifying which silos are intact and unfired, relaying that information to a second R-5D traveling a few minutes behind. The second aircraft strike those silos with B-61-11 bunker-buster nuclear bombs.

RainbowSix reports in the aftermath of the nuclear strikes on London large numbers of refugees poured into Norfolk and Suffolk from the capital. As with elsewhere in the UK, the reactions from locals to these refugees varied - some tried to help them, although they were a minority, with the majority concerned about their own survival. An already precarious situation was made even worse by the destruction of Ipswich, which added many more displaced souls. Norfolk and southern Suffolk managed to remain relatively stable, thanks partly to strong leadership provided by the staff of the RGHQ in Norwich but mainly to the significant British and American military presence (in addition to the Air Force personnel a battalion of Territorial Army Infantry were also stationed in the region), with the airmen maintaining order and taking charge of food distribution, and substantial organised enclaves in the areas around Norwich, King’s Lynn, and Bury St Edmunds, close to air bases.

Coventry met its demise when the warhead from a Soviet SS-17 ICBM detonated at 3,500 metres altitude at 1030GMT. Many inhabitants of Coventry and Wolverhampton had already fled into the surrounding counties, however the death toll from the strikes themselves and the subsequent fallout, disease, and civil disorder would reach well over a million.

[chico20854]

December 4, 1997

Officially, a Soviet missile destroyed the British government's wartime command post, killing most of the government, some of the royal family, and the chiefs of staff - it was a devastating blow. RainbowSix adds whether by chance or design would never be known, but the missile detonated just as the War Cabinet and Heads of the Armed Forces were meeting to brief the King. Not only was Prime Minister Tony Blake and most of the War Cabinet killed, but perhaps more crucially so too were several senior members of the Royal Family, including the King himself (although rumours would persist for some months afterwards that he had survived the attack but suffered a major nervous breakdown). In one stroke the UK’s national leadership had been virtually decapitated (recriminations would carry on for many months afterwards as to why so many senior figures had been allowed to be in the same place at the same time; in truth, British Intelligence had believed EYEGLASS’s existence to be secret, and in doing so had seriously underestimated the capabilities of their Soviet counterparts, who had learnt of its existence and location several years previously). Also killed in the attack was the director and operational staff of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO), a Home Office agency that was tasked with warning the civilian population in the event that a nuclear attack on the UK was detected and providing post-strike data to military and civilian authorities.

Officially, Minister of Defense Ian Burton was attending to his wife, who was undergoing a liver transplant, in Birmingham and survived the attack but his wife’s condition and the breakdown in law and order prevented him from traveling. RainbowSix adds he had been attending a meeting at Army Headquarters in Salisbury. Fearing the effect that it would have on national morale, Burton instructed that the death of the King be kept secret from the general population. (Note: this is a fusion of canon and RainbowSix’s interpretation of the situation.)

Unofficially, following up with the attacks of the prior day, Soviet missiles struck Wolverhampton, that city joining its neighbor in suffering and destruction. The last of the fires in London from the Soviet nuclear bombs died out, more from lack of fuel than from the pitiful efforts of the overwhelmed emergency services.

Officially, in the US federal plans for reconstruction after a nuclear exchange included almost immediate assessment of casualties and demographic dislocation, and efforts in this vein began. The widespread breakdown of transportation due to fuel shortages and blocked highways, along with the flight of workers and drivers, led to an end of food distribution in every major urban center. No American city had reserves of food large enough to last more than three days… and panic buying and pandemic riots and looting depleted what supplies there were in far less time than that. Within a week, those who had remained in the cities were starving, and those who could leave were joining the mass exodus to the country.

In New York City, an independent group called the Harbor Pirates took control of the various historical vessels at the Seaport Museum. Led by minor drug lord named Manuel Diego Huerra who, before the war, used pleasure craft on the East River to bring his wares into Manhattan from ships contacted clandestinely at night off the New Jersey coast. When government began collapsing in New York City, Huerra gathered together a group of merchant seamen, yacht owners, and young, wealthy, former clients who had had experience with sailing craft. Anticipating the chronic shortages of gasoline and diesel fuel which paralyzed all metropolitan New York, Huerra's group seized Piers 16, 17, and 18 on the East River, which was where five historic vessels belonging to the Seaport Museum on Front Street were berthed. These craft, still seaworthy, became the nucleus of the Pirates' East River Fleet.

The US 1st Army proclaimed martial law in New York, with the consent of the President. Under the proclamation the 42nd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade (New York National Guard), along with units of the 43rd Military Police Brigade (Rhode Island National Guard), took over government of the New York metropolitan area, with instructions to keep order and to oversee the relocation of the city's population to rural areas. Most of the inhabitants were alive and possessed of a single thought: Get Out!

Within the Seminole Indian Nation of Florida, a cohort of younger, more militantly radical tribal politicians succeeded to the tribal council. These militants longed for the political power that the tribe's newly earned wealth would bring. In the prewar years the radicals had thrown open the doors of tribal membership to admit a large number of other (non-Seminole) Indian radicals, part-Indians, near-Indians and would be Indians. This policy swelled tribal ranks to almost half a million before the war began. When the bombs fell and a political vacuum was created in Florida, the radicals were ready with a plan to drive all whites out of the state and reclaim their rightful lands. Following the nuclear strikes and the resulting EMP, the radicals seized power within the tribe.

In Ohio, the town of Marietta was the initial reception point for those fleeing the strike that hit Irontown; the influx of panicked civilians overwhelmed the small town; rioting between the locals and the refugees devastated the town.

A B-1B bomber carrying eight 200 kt nuclear-armed ALCMs crashed in poor weather over the Black Hills of South Dakota while approaching Ellsworth Air Force Base.

As expected, New American cells across the country lost touch with one another and each fell back on the provisions of the Eagle Papers. Their prewar preparations had served them well, and now, with stockpiles of food, fuel, weapons, ammunition, and spare parts, they were safe in their prepared communities (except for the cell near Fairbanks, Alaska, which was overrun by the Soviets).

Unofficially, Soviet missiles continued their campaign to destroy American command and control centers and petroleum production. Scott Air Force Base, Illinois was one target of a SS-19 ICBM fired by the 28th Guards Missile Division at Kozelsk. Three of missile’s six warheads (set to 750 kilotons) were aimed at the Transportation Command headquarters, while the others struck refineries at Lawrenceville, Robinson and Wood River/Roxana, Illinois.

The British strategic submarine force returned to action, firing a trio of Trident II missiles at the Volga region of Russia. The strikes are centered on the city of Kuybyshev, location of the Volga Military District Headquarters, a BMP plant, a Tupolev aircraft plant, two refineries, a steel mill and chemical plant. The Volga car plant in nearby Togliatti was struck, as were refineries and military industry in nearby Ulyanovsk and Syrazan. To avoid conflict with incoming British strikes, SAC refrained from attacks on the USSR; instead Pershing II missiles in Germany attacked Czechoslovakian and Hungarian political leadership targets.

The container-barge carrier Kunming Carrier was delivered in Quincy, Massachusetts; the ship already had a crew aboard and was nearly fully stocked. The captain-to-be was desperate to get his ship to sea lest it be destroyed by a nuclear attack.

His request denied by the base commander, the USS Baton Rouge's skipper defied orders and sailed from Bremerton, intent on saving his boat from what he felt was an impending nuclear attack. The boat was only partially stocked with food and spares and had a polyglot crew from the base (several sailors volunteered to escape the base) and a half dozen civilian shipyard workers on board to complete several minor repairs.

Receiving word of its owner's death, the crew of the Iron Duke (a full-scale replica of the clipper ship Cutty Sark) decided to seek shelter in the Caribbean. The captain hastily loaded the ship with as much food and fuel as he could locate in the chaos that was post-strike Key West and hastily departed.

[chico20854]

Well, that's a year's worth of the history! I started this thread with December 4, 1996. Things will be less busy in upcoming months as the intensity and pace of combat actions decrease. I'm glad folks have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed putting it together!

[shrike6]

Well, that's a year's worth of the history! I started this thread with December 4, 1996. Things will be less busy in upcoming months as the intensity and pace of combat actions decrease. I'm glad folks have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed putting it together!

Happy Anniversary! Despite my nitpicks you have epic piece of fanfiction here, Chico. Keep up the good work!!

[bash]

Yeah really amazing work. I've really enjoyed reading the updates. It was nerve wracking getting to Thanksgiving!

[Ursus Maior]

Great work, thanks for the continued posting of canon and community content! I read all of these posts to the letter!

[chico20854]

December 5, 1997

RainbowSix reports i an effort to ensure GCHQ was completely destroyed a second warhead was aimed at Cheltenham, although it overshot its target, devastating the nearby town of Gloucester instead. Soviet missiles also returned to South Wales - Cardiff, Swansea and Newport were all destroyed, along with the steel works at Port Talbot. A final Soviet nuclear missile targeted the twin port facilities of Felixstone and Harwich (the former was the busiest container port in the UK whilst the latter had been the main departure point for ships taking troops and material to the Continent). The missile missed its mark however, detonating directly over the nearby city of Ipswich, which was totally destroyed. Both ports suffered some damage, which was compounded by subsequent disorder, but would not require a large amount of work to be brought back to working order. The Folkestone strike also destroyed the UK end of the Channel Tunnel. RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge both suffered heavy damage in the nuclear strike aimed at the Felixstone and Harwich ports.

Throughout the UK, food and fuel were both rationed, although this was a relatively futile measure, as supplies of both were already exhausted in many areas; the news media came under Government control; and emergency centres were set up to deal with casualties, however the sheer scale of the devastation meant that much of the Government’s planning, whilst well intentioned, was woefully inadequate. The South East in particular was swamped with displaced persons, with many thousands of people being housed in hastily erected tented camps that offered little protection against the bitter winter. Bodies were still lying unburied in some areas, causing outbreaks of diseases unknown in Britain for decades; cholera first broke out in a Kent refugee camp on this date. Officially, one of the refugees fleeing London was GRU Colonel Piotr Bulganin

RainbowSix also reports that attempts to evacuate the major cities which had not yet been targeted proved futile in many cases; many of those who could leave had already done so, overwhelming rural communities.

Officially, in northeastern Arkansas most towns near the destroyed Blytheville AFB but outside the fallout footprint were abandoned in the panic.

The decapitation of the US military command, control, and communications systems proved to be only the beginning, although the apocalyptic spasm predicted for decades never took place. Instead of a chain reaction of ever-widening destruction, a slow, carefully calculated program of industrial and economic destruction began. American retaliatory strikes were not only aimed at Soviet command centers, but also at key industrial targets. Prewar studies had determined that the one key industry for modern society was petroleum production and refining.

Unofficially, President Munson, after watching the Soviet destruction of refineries across the US, authorized the execution of the SIOP’s anti-petroleum package, albeit on an extended time scale as a result of his stipulation that no more than ten warheads be expended in the campaign within any 24-hour time period. (Even the wording of his approval reflected Munson’s background as a contract attorney).

While the British had struck several refineries in the Volga region in the prior days and Baku’s oil infrastructure had been severely damaged by American strikes on the city when the Southern TVD headquarters was hit in the prior week, the Soviet petroleum industry had yet to suffer the effects of an all-out American nuclear attack. That began to change rapidly.

While Soviet PVO (Air Defense Force) commanders had ordered large numbers of the SA-10 missile batteries that had surrounded Moscow north to close the massive gap in the air defense network, but ordering and happening in the post-nuclear USSR were two vastly different things. The missile batteries were reasonably truck mobile, but the headquarters and support organizations had been largely static for many decades and had been raided for trucks earlier in the war. Shortages abounded, and the distances were too vast for the batteries to make it without refueling their thirsty trucks; the most fuel-efficient way to deploy was to move to the northern terminuses of the rail network before proceeding overland. The rapidly cooling winter weather would transform the northern-flowing rivers to travelable roads. Unfortunately, none of that plan came to pass. Without the coordination of the Ministry of Railways there was no rail capacity available, and the few batteries that attempted to make the move entirely by road soon found themselves spread out over many kilometers of northern Russian highway, out of fuel and with a trail of broken-down vehicles behind them leading to the ruins of Moscow. The hole in the Soviet air defenses would remain a permanent fixture of the Soviet Union, one that had been supplemented in prior days by smaller strikes that opened egress corridors over the Baltic, Balkans and Iranian-Afghan border.

The day saw SAC bombers launching cruise missiles at three Soviet refinery complexes in Siberia- at Angarsk near Irkutsk in eastern Siberia, Tomsk in western Siberia and Achinsk in the center. Ground Launched Cruise Missiles fired by the 303rd Tactical Missile Wing in the UK targeted two of the largest refineries in Europe, at Novopolotsk and Mozyr in Byelorussia, destroying each of them with a pair of 150-kiloton missiles. The loss of five refineries is a fierce blow to the already-reeling Soviet war economy.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/13yvlXKFKGyi_gv2c5b0a6KbA2pbzWUh2/view?usp=share_link)
The Soviets respond in kind with one of their most severe attacks on the American petroleum industry with an attack on the Houston area. Once again, two SS-17s rise over the steppes near Pervomaisk, Ukraine and 25 minutes later mushroom clouds rise over Texas. Two 750-kiloton MIRVs each are aimed at Texas City, Houston and Baytown, Texas, with the last two MIRVs aimed at NASA’s Houston Space Center. Seven of the eight warheads work, extinguishing nearly 2.5 million barrels per day of America’s refining capacity at ten refineries, over ten percent of the nation’s refining capacity in a single afternoon.

Officially, on President Munson's orders, Army and National Guard units seized bulk food storage facilities across the country and took custody of what petroleum remained. Rationing of food and fuel was introduced.

Congress attempted to reconvene at Mount Weather, but most members of Congress chose not to or were unable to return. (Unofficially, several dozen members gathered at the Greenbriar Resort 200 miles to the southwest, which contained a large bunker that had been long designated as a Congressional shelter.) Officially, lacking a quorum, nothing could be accomplished.

The search for the downed B-1B bomber was called off after two rescue UH-1s were lost in blizzard conditions over the Black Hills.

New England had one of the worst food/population ratios in the United States before the war and was the site of some of the earliest food riots. Having no local coal, oil, or natural gas reserves to speak of. New England could have survived on the energy production of local hydroelectric and nuclear power stations had these not been rendered almost completely inoperable by EMP from nuclear detonations. Local authorities determined that the prior week’s explosion that killed the CNBF leadership outside Boston was caused by flammable gas which collected in an empty heating oil tank.

The KGB broke 400 Pact POWs out of Graterford Prison outside Philadelphia, taking advantage of the chaos that reigned over Eastern Pennsylvania. Unofficially, KGB agents were able to incite an infamous Philadelphia leftist organization, MOVE, to provide armed fighters for the attack on the outnumbered guard force (many of which had fled the area in the aftermath of the attacks).

Officially, in Florida, the worst of the burn victims from the Tampa strike had died. Others died from shock, blast-related injuries, suicide, heart attacks, pacemaker failure, insulin shock, and related causes brought on by the subsequent EMP that stripped the central portion of Florida right out of the electrical age. The doomed stampede of panic-stricken civilians from Tampa and later from an ever-enlarging circle of surrounding communities did far more harm than the direct effects of the original attack. Many of those who didn't flee to the interior clung to the gulf beaches. Water was a major problem on the beaches and that alone thinned the population there. The reality of the chaos and death among those fleeing the Pinellas megalopolis soon brought back a trickle of former residents, and not a few brought new refugees back to this desolate little parcel of paradise. Life among those that remained was difficult as well. Without electricity and without water pressure, the great concrete and glass shells of the high-rise retirement condominiums in the seaside village of South Pasadena could not sustain life for long. Like the individual coral polyps that make up a coral reef, the residents of those high rises perished when the power failed in the EMP. The many elderly people with pacemakers were snuffed out as the EMP stole the electrical genie that kept their heartbeat tuned to a livable rhythm. The insulin-dependent perished over the next few days as did those whose spirits could no longer stand up under the onslaught of depression and despair. Death came in a thousand ways: dehydration, exposure, starvation, and despair. High-rise towers of proud engineering became homes for the dead. The tower dwellers would be no more; they were gone and soon to be as forgotten as the mound-building Indian tribes. The loss of electricity and telecommunications by the effects of the EMP created an information void into which fear, ignorance, and blind panic rushed. Without the strong voice of civil authority (be it Civil Defense, the military, police, or even the local radio or television announcers) to sooth and calm fears in an unprecedented situation, fear grew to panic and panic to blind flight.

Eighteen miles from Corpus Christi, Texas, the impact point of a 1 megaton nuclear device, the city of Sinton suffered heavy casualties - mostly in riots and panic that broke out in the prior days following the blast.

In Iran, the IPA 2nd Armored Division and 9th Airmobile Brigade destroyed the Soviet 94th (my 57th) Air Assault Brigade at Chah Bahar, as the Soviet paratroops were preparing to withdraw to friendlier territory.

Unofficially, the Headquarters of the 157th Air Refueling Wing was overrun by rioters at Boston-Logan airport; some of the staff escaped on the remaining tankers.

An assessment team from FEMA travelled to the site of the strike on the Robinson, Illinois refinery (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=8.5&lat=39.0105141&lng=-87.7366447&hob_opt=2&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=9843&psi=1,3&rem=&therm=&zm=15). (Emergency response teams, either state or federal, attempted to perform a site assessment on each attack outside of military installations). The team, heavily protected against radiation, was elated to discover that the MIRV targeted at the refinery not only fizzled (the warhead’s small fission primary charge failed to initiate the much larger thermonuclear part of the charge), with an assessed yield of 8.5 kilotons, but it also missed by over two kilometers. Unfortunately, that put the detonation right over the center of the small town, but meant that the refinery, the target of the attack, was only subjected to .5 psi of blast overpressure and was only very lightly damaged and remained fully operational. Of course, this information was kept highly classified, and the surviving population was unaware that the terrible explosion over the city was actually a Soviet failure and was intended to be much, much worse. (The Soviet analyst tasked to evaluate the poor-quality damage assessment imagery of the strike noted the presence of a mushroom cloud over the target area but, in a typical instance of Soviet sloppiness, didn't check the size of the cloud with what a 750-kiloton warhead should produce and therefore didn't realize that the strike was a fizzle; the GRU reported to the Strategic Rocket Forces that the target was destroyed).

An awkward confrontation occurred at the Naval magazine in Port Hadlock, Washington, when the USS Baton Rouge appeared at the facility, its captain demanding torpedoes and whatever missiles were available. He had a valid requisition from COMSUBPAC but the base commander had been told that the sub's skipper should be arrested for defying the Bremerton naval base commander's order for the sub to remain. The skipper succeeded in convincing the magazine's CO that he just want to preserve his ship and crew and return to the fight, and received a load of four Mk-101 and ten Mk-48 torpedoes, two Sub-Harpoon missiles, two Sea Lance-Ns and four Tomahawk cruise missiles (two with nuclear warheads, two with conventional). The crew began loading the weapons aboard, raiding the post commissary for food and finishing what repairs it could.

In Europe, the last of the NATO troops (except for the US-Dutch-German marine force under II MEF command along the Baltic Coast) withdrew from Polish territory after combat engineers rigged the bridges over the Oder with command-detonated mines. The bridges were not blown, the defenders on the western shore holding the triggers but unwilling to complicate any potential future advance into Poland with having to build replacement bridges. The initial Warsaw Pact forces to reach the eastern shore were Polish territorial defense troops under command of the Polish Internal Front, reporting to the Polish Communist Party, such was the paralysis gripping Soviet Front commanders following the attacks on Moscow and the Western TVD headquarters. American ELINT aircraft located a suspected Soviet higher-level headquarters along the Polish-Soviet border south of Brest and relayed its location to US Army headquarters. Two hours later a Pershing II missile was on its way to the target, its TV-guidance package landing it within the field headquarters’ inner perimeter. While it would be years before what was hit in the strike, the attack destroyed the field command post of the KGB Border Guards’ Western District, killing the commander and most of his remaining staff.

The collapse of the Guatemalan invasion of Belize was nearly completed with the arrival of Belizian Defense Force troops at the border, relieving the British troops holding the former border post. The Belizian troops passed through several encampments of demoralized and disorganized Guatemalan troops as they drove west, leaving the task of accepting the Guatemalan’s surrender to following forces. As with the British detachment at the border, surrendering Guatemalan troops were disarmed and sent west on foot back into the remote Guatemalan jungle to fend for themselves; the burden of supporting thousands of POWs was beyond the ability of the tiny British-Belizian force.

[chico20854]

And today's post includes an innovation - the photo of the Houston skyline with a mushroom cloud over it is an AI-generated image. I was playing around yesterday and this was the best of several things I tried. (I was using deepai.org if anyone wants to play around themselves). A lot of the others I generated were pretty bad -variations on "An Army tank driving through snowy woods" came up with some nice winter woods, but the tanks were comically bad, while "B-52 bomber launching a cruise missile" came up with an aircraft that looked like a grey-toned lovechild of a B-2 and a 747 with smoke coming from its belly!

So in general I think going forward I'll stick to RL photos from my massive archive, hoping the hard drive doesn't crash!

[castlebravo92]

Yeah, I've been playing around with stable-diffusion, and you can use images as baselines, and some of the output is very good, and some of it is...very bad. I'll post a few pics to the apocalypse images threads.

[chico20854]

December 6, 1997

RainbowSix reports that the news of the losses on the EYEGLASS bunker leaks out, at which point it spreads like wildfire despite the absence of any conventional media outlets. The consequences are exactly what Burton had feared - the loss of the figurehead of their King has a devastating effect on the British people, accelerating a headlong surge in to total anarchy.

Officially,

Africa had watched in horror as first China, then much of Europe and North America experienced nuclear warfare, seeing city after city die, hoping they would be spared the horror of nuclear warfare. Those hopes proved to be false ones, as two Soviet nuclear ballistic submarines attack multiple targets throughout Africa, destroying refineries, oil fields and oil terminals in Nigeria, Morocco, the Ivory Coast, Egypt, Tunisia and South Africa.

Cairo, Suez and Alexandria are left in ruins by multiple strikes against the major refineries in those cities. While the Suez Canal is not directly targeted in the attack, the nuclear strikes on the refineries at Suez effectively block the southern end of the Canal with the wrecks of several merchant ships and tankers. Over three million Egyptians die in the attacks and another two million are severely wounded.

Soviet nuclear attacks on Morocco destroy both of its refineries, with the city and harbor of Casablanca being destroyed by two 250kt warheads as well. The detonations sink or damage over half the Royal Moroccan Navy and deny the use of the port to NATO for the rest of the war.

The main oilfield at El Borma in Tunisia is struck by a 250kt nuclear weapon, causing widespread damage but relatively few casualties due to its remoteness.

Nigeria is hit by twelve warheads, destroying every Nigerian oil refinery and onshore terminal as well as several offshore terminals. The strikes kill or wound two and a half million Nigerians in the space of fifteen minutes and devastate Nigerian oil production and shipping capabilities. The city of Port Harcourt is almost completely destroyed by the nuclear detonations and the fires that spread unchecked afterward.

The Abidjan Refinery in the Ivory Coast is destroyed by a direct hit, with over 350,000 dead and wounded including over 2000 French civilians and military. Casualties would have been much larger but the warhead fizzles and only detonates with 40kt, devastating the area around the refinery but leaving much of the city relatively untouched. The explosion sinks three tankers loading at the oil piers and wrecks the Vridi Canal, cutting off the port from the sea and trapping over three dozen ships

South Africa’s nuclear arsenal doesn’t deter the Soviets from attacking the refineries at Durban and Sasolburg, destroying both along with the cities that surround them, and leading to a very large loss of life. Panicked riots break out in Johannesburg as survivors from the nuclear strike at Sasolburg stream into the city.

The USAF and USN facilities at Diego Garcia are struck by two 200kt airbursts which destroy every remaining USAF and USN aircraft that is still on the ground or who failed to get far enough way in time as well as sinking several ships. The base facilities are destroyed as well except for some underground bunkers.

The refineries and ports at Mombasa and Cape Town, both targeted for destruction, are spared when the assigned Soviet SSBN, in the act of launching the attack on those cities, suffers a massive malfunction. The hatch on the missile tube does not fully open and the missile strikes the hatch, destroying the submarine and its remaining missiles.

Nigeria, Morocco and Egypt rapidly slide into anarchy as what is left of their governments and police are overrun by panicked citizens who go on an orgy of rioting, looting and killing trying to get what food and medical care are still left. Tunisia’s government manages to keep control, for now, only due to the remoteness of the attack itself.

In the Ivory Coast Abidjan rapidly devolves into chaos as panic and rioting cause almost as much damage as the nuclear attack caused. The French 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion loses 150 of its 500 men between the nuclear attack and trying to stop the riots and is forced to retreat to Port Bouet.

South Africa mobilizes quickly to re-establish public order as riots sweep the country as news of the nuclear attack spreads, slowed by EMP related damage causing disruptions to their communications and electrical power generation plants. By days end South Africa officially becomes a co-belligerent with the US, declaring war on the Soviets, their Warsaw Pact allies, Mozambique, Angola and Cuba.

Unofficially,

In Korea, Allied forces have retreated fully back to the prewar demilitarized zone fortifications, which had been hastily refurbished by forced labor of a combined force of North Korean civilian refugees, Soviet and North Korean POWs and South Korean civilians.

The 13th Armored Cavalry Regiment (Light) is ordered to assume responsibility for disaster relief and food distribution in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area. The regiment, with one squadron of LAV-25s (originally issued for training purposes) and an air squadron using requisitioned civilian helicopters, requisitions civilian vehicles for the dismounted 2nd and 3rd Squadrons (as well as the Peacekeeper armored cars from the Three Mile Island and Susquehanna nuclear power plant guard forces). Despite the consternation the regiments' seizure causes, its role supporting the state government, police force and State Guard was instrumental in preventing Harrisburg from being overwhelmed by the flood of panicked evacuees fleeing the Philadelphia area.

A sheriff's patrol outside Bakersfield, California discovers a mass grave in an abandoned almond grove; the victims appear to have been shot.

In California, the desperate state government calls up the boys of the 10th California Cadet Brigade, which prewar had been part of a school-based paramilitary youth training program for children from elementary school to college ages. The brigade is one of two disaster relief units stood up over the summer, composed of 16-18 year old boys from the Los Angeles area.

In a tragic example of secrecy and poor communication gone mad, as part of a round of strikes against American and Canadian command and control sites, a Soviet SS-20 IRBM fired by the 586th Guards Missile Regiment in Siberia strikes Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. The Strategic Rocket Forces had not been informed of the Soviet invasion of Alaska and that the air base was actually the headquarters of the 25th Corps, the highest-level Red Army headquarters in the state.

Other attacks pound the Pacific Northwest, hitting the refineries in Ferndale and Anacortes, Washington, the bomber base at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane in the eastern part of the state and the nuclear submarine base at Bangor in Puget Sound, home base of the Pacific Fleet's Trident missile boats. While no boats are in port, the attack at Bangor destroys the support and reloading infrastructure at the base, although the dozens of ammunition igloos on the base remain intact.

American forces continue their campaign to cripple the Soviet petroleum industry, hitting targets throughout southern Russia - the refinery, petroleum facilities and naval base at Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) to the north (with a refinery, nerve gas plant, artillery plant and the famous Barrikada tractor factory) and Rostav-na-Donu, where the North Caucasian Military District headquarters, helicopter plant, air defense headquarters and ICBM repair facility are all struck by American MIRVs.

[chico20854]

December 7, 1997

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Despite the chaos in Los Angeles, the first members of the 10th California Cadet Brigade begin to rally at their designated mobilization point, the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach. Many of the boys have armed themselves at some point in their travels.

Soviet missiles strike the Scottish naval bases at Rosyth and Faslane, where a number of British, American and even Dutch submarines are undergoing badly needed post-voyage repairs. The attack submarines USS Olympia, USS Alexandria, HMS Superb and HNLMS Tijgerhaai are lost, as is the aged British boomer HMS Repulse.

A B-2 bomber of the 529th Bomb Squadron, following up on the launch of the SS-20 against Alaska a few hours before, locates the Soviet launcher as it is reloading with a new missile and hits them with a B61 10-kiloton bomb, destroying the launcher and a part of the 586th Guards Missile Regiment's support force.

Having dealt a heavy blow to American refining on the 5th, the Soviets renew their attacks, this time targeting the east Texas and Louisiana oil industry. A pair of SS-18s of the 41st Guards Missile Division, from Alyesk in Central Asia, are launched and release 20 MIRVs. Nineteen explode, striking the petroleum center of Beaumont, Nederland and Port Arthur, the Port Allen and Baton Rouge refineries, the Garyville and St. Charles, Louisiana refineries, the Lake Charles and Westlake refinery complex, and the lone refineries at Convent, Louisiana, Belle Chase, Louisiana and Pascagoula, Mississippi. The attacks ignite massive firestorms that, fed by the thousands of tons of petroleum products, will burn for days and destroy entire towns. The shipyards in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Pascagoula are destroyed by fire, the ships under construction reduced to burned-out, twisted steel.

The 428th Field Artillery Brigade (US Army Reserve), in southern Denmark after months of action in outside Warsaw, is in appalling shape. The barrels of the howitzers are worn out by thousands of rounds and the engines and suspensions of the M110s need overhaul. The towed guns should have been scrapped according to prewar standards. While its parent XXIII Corps remains on the front lines, the unit is able to obtain spare parts and barrels for its M114 guns from Danish Army stockpiles as well as a handful of older-model 8-inch howitzer barrels found in the weeds behind a storehouse, allowing the unit to downgrade a single battery to M110s instead of the more modern M110A2 model.

A pair of Minuteman III missiles strike Novosibirsk, hitting the headquarters of the Siberian Military District, Sukhoi aircraft plant, bioweapons facility, tank plant and other military industry.

A DC-10 packed with heroin and cocaine, cash and gold krugerrands, crashes after missing the runway at Pearls Airport on Grenada while trying to land in an early morning thunderstorm.

[ToughOmbres]

The TDM updates were really good and the subsequent updates have also been good, albeit depressing reading on top of the damage already done. Good stuff though.

[Rainbow Six]

December 7, 1997Soviet missiles strike the Scottish naval bases at Rosyth and Faslane, where a number of British, American and even Dutch submarines are undergoing badly needed post-voyage repairs. The attack submarines USS Olympia, USS Alexandria, HMS Superb and HNLMS Tijgerhaai are lost, as is the aged British boomer HMS Repulse.

That's me bolloxed. I live about three miles from Rosyth. Any strike there might also catch RAF Pitreavie Castle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Pitreavie_Castle

[Claidheamh]

That's me bolloxed. I live about three miles from Rosyth. Any strike there might also catch RAF Pitreavie Castle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Pitreavie_Castle

Uh oh, does that mean no more updates on the situation in the UK?

[chico20854]

December 8, 1997

In New York, Harbor Pirates leader Manuel Diego*Huerra is killed by one of his lieutenants in a knife fight over a woman. A power struggle within the group ensues.

Unofficially,

The coroner in Bakersfield, California determines that the bodies in the mass grave discovered a few days ago were executed with military-caliber firearms after being tortured. Despite the mutilations, local authorities have been able to identify several of them - local peace activists, union officials, outspoken college professors and Mexican immigrants - that had been disappearing for the past several months.

Soviet and North Korean troops reach the last Allied positions along the DMZ, completing the reconquest of North Korea. Months of conventional and tactical nuclear warfare have left North Korea an even more backward and impoverished country than it was at the outbreak of the war. Millions of its people have fled (either to the USSR or to South Korea) or been killed.

Finishing off what Operation Steel Bandit had started the prior winter, two TLAM-Ns fired from USS Hue City detonate over the airfields and southern tip of the peninsula at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.

Afraid that the last of the boomers in port may slip away, the Soviets strike remaining American missile submarine bases, hitting the Charleston, South Carolina and Kings Bay, Georgia naval bases and nearby port facilities. The Russians are too late, all available SSBNs are at sea and their backup crews (each boat has two crews) dispersed across the region assisting with food distribution.

The 337th Security Police Group, a US Air Force unit that had performed rear area security duties in Poland and East Germany, comes into its first direct contact with Soviet troops, outside Goerlitz. Fortunately, the Soviet forces were as worn down as the NATO armies, so the unit’s lack of fire support or anti-tank weapons is not a recipe for disaster.

The Canadian Navy commissions the patrol-minesweeper Whitehorse in Nova Scotia. While originally slated for deployment to the Pacific, the needs in the Atlantic are so great that it is pressed into service locally, hunting for rumored Soviet submarines positioning themselves for cruise missile attacks in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

In Iran, XVIII Airborne Corps' has gone over to a general offensive, while to their south III MEF has increased its pressure on the 40th Army, forcing the Soviets to fall back deeper into the Zagros Mountains. The 24th Infantry DIvision is reinforced by the 48th Infantry (Mechanized) (Georgia National Guard), which is brought back into action after a brief period of rest in Saudi Arabia, where it received most of the few replacement tanks and AFVs arriving from the US. (With a month-long voyage to the region from East Coast ports, the flow of supplies to CENTCOM has yet to be disrupted. This allows Third Army logistic officers to begin taking planning for the disruption that is to come.)

To ensure that the SS-24 missiles from the 46th Missile Division at Pervomaysk in the Ukraine are unable to be used again, a pair of B-1B bombers from Dyess AFB, Texas cross over the Balkans (their path cleared by fighters from the USS John F. Kennedy, which is making a rare foray into the eastern Mediterranean) and into Ukraine. Once within 50 miles of the ICBM field, they each dispatch ten SRAM-II missiles, set for ground burst, against the Soviet missile division's command post and regimental control facilities. One SRAM fails to detonate, so one of the B-1s, loitering nearby, fires a second round that eliminates the headquarters of the 309th Missile Regiment. Both bombers expend their remaining missiles as they egress over Turkey and northern Iran, where they pick up an escort of F-15s from the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing.

Meanwhile, a MX missile from the 400th Strategic Missile Squadron at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming retaliates for the strikes on the Gulf Coast the day before, destroying the command and control structure of the 41st Guards Missile Division at Aleysk in southern Siberia with ten 335-kiloton MIRVs set for ground bursts.

[chico20854]

December 9, 1997

The regimental HQ of the Canadian Native Ranger Regiment is attached to X Corps. (Unofficially) Elsewhere in Alaska, Soviet occupation authorities in Anchorage are completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the damage inflicted by their own weapons. Already struggling to provide food, water and heat for the local population in the absence of local government authorities (most of whom have either fled or been shot by the KGB), (officially) the aftermath of the attack on Elmendorf AFB ends up inflicting even more casualties than the strikes themselves.

Taking advantage of the chaos gripping Egypt, Libya launches an attack by Tu-22 bombers against the Aswan Dam, causing the dam to collapse and send a wall of water down the Nile, drowning hundreds of thousands of Egyptians and displacing even more. The attack destroys most of what electrical power was still being generated in Egypt after the nuclear attacks. Libyan tank formations cross into Egypt and head east against pitiful resistance.

Unofficially,

The commander of the 10th California Cadet Brigade, at the head of 250 16-to-18 year-olds, realizes that he has no communications off post and that his unit would be swept away; instead he offers his force to the base commander. It is armed by the mixed force of civilian security guards and recovering Marines and sailors guarding the facility. A Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sergeant, healing from wounds received in Bandar Abbas, Iran, assumes command and integrates the guard force into the unit in leadership positions.

The Soviets turn their attention to Canada's military potential, hitting the Maritimes with an array of SLBMs fired from the safety of the Arctic ice pack in the Barents near Svalbard. They hit the oil industry in Saint John, New Brunswick, Come-by-Chance, Newfoundland and Halifax and Point Tupper, Nova Scotia. The Halifax strike also targets Maritime Command Headquarters; the cumulative effect is to paralyze Canadian naval operations in the western Atlantic and invoke an immediate fuel crisis from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Norfolk, Virginia. The Soviets also strike Yellowknife, Yukon with a 500-kiloton airburst, destroying the Northern Command Headquarters along with the USAF 20th Air Division, which was coordinating area air defense with the Canadians.

Soviet attacks on the UK continue, this time with SS-11s hitting the North Sea petroleum center of Aberdeen as well as military industry in Nottingham.

The light frigate USS Camp departs Gulfport, Mississippi after sixty days of training following delivery. She goes to sea short of many provisions and ammunition, one of the last new American surface combatants to sail during the war.

Targets struck in the USSR this day by the US include the Black Sea Fleet, with the headquarters and naval base complex at Sevastopol receiving ten 100-kiloton MIRVs from a Trident D5 missile fired by the USS Rhode Island. Another of the boomer's missiles strike the naval shipbuilding facilities, port, industrial district and early warning radars at Nikolaev. Three more missiles are aimed at the garrisons and headquarters of three SS-20 IRBM missile divisions, at Lutsk, Romny and Belokorovichi in Ukraine; the missile launchers are largely dispersed (two were located in the garrisons for maintenance) but the attacks curtail their command, control and support, all in short supply in the Ukraine at this point. While the Soviets planned for remote launch for silos that had their launch control centers (at regimental level, each regiment controlling six to ten silos), the American campaign against the Strategic Rocket Forces' command, control and communications infrastructure has largely degraded this capability. The airborne launch control aircraft (never as many or as sophisticated as SAC's elaborate arrangements) have been grounded or destroyed, and the "Dead Hand" emergency launch system is not activated, as it is hard-wired to order an all-out launch of all surviving missiles.

The status of political leaders around the world is uncertain as well. The status (and even the ultimate fate) of General Secretary Sauronski is unknown after multiple nuclear attacks on his bunker complex in the Volga region. In the UK, the military is working to bring Defence Minister Burton to a location where he can coordinate government relief efforts. The death of President Tanner and his replacement by President Munson in the US is common knowledge among US military personnel serving overseas (owing to intact military communications networks), while word is spreading quite rapidly around the US, both among civilians and military personnel.

[Rainbow Six]

Soviet attacks on the UK continue, this time with SS-11s hitting the North Sea petroleum center of Aberdeen.

And there goes where I lived before I moved to three miles from Rosyth. Double bolloxed...

[Ewan]

And there goes where I lived before I moved to three miles from Rosyth. Double bolloxed...

My best friend probably got killed when Grangemouth was nuked and my cousins when Rosyth was nuked.

[kato13]

Not sure of my status in Chicago, but I think we would be in pretty good (relatively) shape for a bit. (Reasoning in thread below)

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=341&highlight=Chicago

Hoping we get a few mentions in the upcoming stories.

[chico20854]

December 10, 1997

Due to the disruptions in both the US and South Africa it takes several days to retaliate for the Soviet attacks in Africa. However, once they are ready, their attacks hit hard, and no protestation of “neutrality” means much of anything to the Americans or South Africans.

Conakry, the capital of Guinea, is devastated by two 350kt warheads targeted on the damaged but still functional Soviet air and naval bases as revenge for the attack on Diego Garcia. The attacks annihilate the remaining Soviet air, naval and army forces in the area (including three of the last four operational Soviet subs in the Atlantic who were being resupplied there) as well as the government and military of the Republic of Guinea. Over a million and half civilians are killed or wounded in the attack.

Multiple nuclear strikes hit pro-Soviet Algeria and Libya hard, destroying refineries, oil fields and ports, cutting off almost all oil production and in the process causing nearly seven million casualties. The cities of Tripoli, Skikda (Philippeville), Algiers, Arzew, Ra's Lanuf, Zawiya, Benghazi and Oran have all been targeted in the attacks. The attacks on Algeria incense the French government and many of its people who still think of that country as being part of France.

Libyan armored formations that had crossed the Egyptian border are devastated by three tactical nuclear warheads, knocking out over 80 percent of the tanks and APC’s and sending the survivors fleeing back towards Libya. (Unofficially, the bombs were dropped by A-7Es flying from the US carrier John F Kennedy, which has been patrolling the Mediterranean, trying to avoid repeating the fate of the battleship Wisconsin.)

In the Indian Ocean, a single TLAM-N 150kt nuclear tipped cruise missile detonates over the harbor of Victoria, capital of the Seychelles, destroying the city and killing over 17,000 people. A group of Soviet merchantmen and Indian Ocean Squadron auxiliaries who were under the protection of the “neutral” Seychelles government are sunk and the 300 man Soviet Marine detachment there is wiped out.

Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, is hit with four 38kt nuclear bombs delivered by South African Canberra and Buccaneer bombers, two over the city and two over the harbor, sinking over thirty Soviet and Warsaw Pact merchants “interned” there including three resupply ships critical for Soviet naval operations in the Indian Ocean. South African Cheetah fighters shoot down over two dozen MiG’s that attempt to intercept the bombers, losing five fighters and one bomber to the enemy fighters and AA. Three South African 38kt weapons delivered by missiles detonate over Angola’s capital of Luanda, targeting the government, the refinery and the main bases of the Cuban and Angolan bases in the city, destroying much of the city along with the refinery there. The third warhead detonates almost directly over the airbase that harbors most of the Cuban air power in Africa, destroying all the aircraft based there.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship San Diego Freedom is delivered in Portland, Oregon. Like the handful of others, it was essentially complete on Thanksgiving, taking a few weeks to perform sea trials and storing.

The prosecutors office in Bakersfield, California receives a tip from a deserter from the 5th California Brigade, a state guard unit, that the brigade commander and some of the long-standing members of the unit have been running a covert "Death Squad" that has engaged in a series of nighttime raids against suspected “enemy sympathizers.”

A month after returning to its pre-war stations in Mongolia, the officers of the 12th Motor-Rifle Division have made very little progress in standing up a new division following the poundings the division suffered in China and North Korea. It seems that in a Red Army months into a nuclear war that Mongolia is a low-priority sector for the allocation of conscripts and recalled reservists. The 12th has received only 45 enlisted men in the unit's time at home station, and since it is stationed in a foreign country cannot resort to the age-old practice of grabbing civilians off the local streets to fill out the division's squads, companies and battalions. Likewise, the division's equipment park consists of a dozen aged GAZ-63 light trucks and a pair of T-34 tanks, former gate guards for the division's barracks.

After 30 days of workups (interrupted as they were), the recommissioned destroyer USS Morton is ordered to sea from San Diego. She sets sail accompanied by the freighters Houston Freedom and the Liberian Westerbrook, heading to Honolulu.

MIRVs from a Soviet SS-19 strike SAC bases in the mountain west. Malmstrom AFB in Montana and F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming receive multiple warheads on their airfields and command and control facilities: their ICBMs remain safely intact in their silos, their crews in constant contact with the SAC command post in Nebraska.

The attack submarine USS Pasadena, lurking only 100 miles offshore, launches a volley of 12 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, each with a 170-kiloton warhead, against an array of targets in Petropavlovsk in an attempt to neutralize the Soviet port and naval base that is supporting the invasion of Alaska as well as Soviet boomers in the Pacific. Eleven of the missiles find their targets (the last one overshot and exploded harmlessly over the Kamchakta Peninsula), tearing apart the port, submarine bases, air defense headquarters, ELINT facility, long-range communication center and SLBM depot.

Danish troops escort the last members of the royal family to Helsingor north of Copenhagen (still burning in areas), where they take up residence in Kronor Castle, the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet.

[chico20854]

Not sure of my status in Chicago, but I think we would be in pretty good (relatively) shape for a bit. (Reasoning in thread below)

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=341&highlight=Chicago

Hoping we get a few mentions in the upcoming stories.

I'm trying to space out the attacks, but I think Chico goes this week! Thanks for bringing up that thread, I had completely forgot about it!

I just drove past Andrews AFB. Went to a party a block from the White House last weekend. Of course in 97 I would have been driving a fuel tanker around unaccompanied in the rear of the 28th ID. Partisan bait even before the Soviets nuked the division!

[chico20854]

December 11, 1997

Nothing in canon for today.

Civil unrest still rolls across the world as the remnants of national governments attempt to provide local and regional governments with resources, resources that are far from adequate given both the scale of damage and the breakdown of world trade.

Merchant ships try to avoid surviving major ports lest they be caught in a strike on one of them. The ships of Convoy 314 finally begin crossing the North Atlantic to Europe following strikes on Norfolk and Halifax, Nova Scotia, both marshalling ports for the flotilla.

Two investigators from the Bakersfield District Attorney's office are beaten by California State Guardsmen after attempting to conduct an investigative interview with the commander of the 5th California Brigade.

Most US Army training units have adopted a hybrid model. Depending on the length of training completed before the Thanksgiving Day Massacre, trainees are assigned differing levels of duties off-post supporting civil authorities. The senior-most trainees are officially graduated and assigned full-time duties, escorting food trucks, guarding fuel depots or assisting with refugees. Those with a month or more training completed pull civil relief duties part-time. Depending on the situation, they may perform a few hours of training each day or have several days of training each week and some days on civil duties. Those basic trainees with less than a month of service are, at this point, doing training full time in order to adequately transform them mentally from draftees to soldiers. Finally, to keep the pipeline going, local 18-22 year-olds, both men and women, are forcibly conscripted; the fact that college has not resumed after the attacks means that millions of college students are home and available for military service. (Meanwhile, FEMA has begun to implement plans to use unoccupied dorm rooms in rural areas as refugee housing, never mind that the rooms are full of student's possessions.)

When word is received of the nuclear strike on Hawaii, the battleship USS Missouri diverts to Puget Sound for repairs after it was damaged by a torpedo in November.

Private Cutler, having survived over three months in combat with the 36th Infantry Division, is promoted to Private First Class. His brother, still in Brownsville, Texas, is guarding a grocery distribution center.

The Soviets decide that they have suffered too much from American bombers and, being unable to close the gaps in their air defense net, the best way to stop them is to eliminate their main operating bases. (The GRU has a long list of suspected dispersal bases but absent confirmation that any particular one is being used the Strategic Rocket Forces are reluctant to waste warheads on them.). A SS-24 ICBM from the 60th Missile Division at Tatischevo near Saratov is fired at USAF bases across the south; Dyess and Carswell Air Force Bases (bases for B-1B and B-52H bombers, respectively) and Randolph AFB (headquarters of the USAF Training Command) in Texas are struck, alongside Shreveport in northwestern Louisiana, host of a number of military industrial sites and Barksdale Air Force Base, home of the 2nd Bomb Wing and its B-52s and tankers.

SAC strikes Soviet Central Asia, targeting the Central Asian Military District headquarters and aircraft plant in Tashkent, the SLBM plant and Communist Party apparatus in Alma-Ata, the energy weapons test and development center at Sary-Shagan and BMP plant at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

[chico20854]

December 12, 1997

Nothing in canon for today.

(except Challenge Magazine states that the first nuclear attacks on Canada, in the Toronto area, occurred today. That conflicts with Boomer, which states that Barrikada fired missiles on Canada in late November!)

The Naval Security Group at Galeta Island in Panama picks up intelligence indicating that Venezuela is going to officially join the war on the Soviet side. Hugo Chavez is convinced the US is on its last legs and he wants to grab his share of the spoils.

President Munson is briefed on the situation and that the entry of Venezuela with her modern navy, air force and army on the Soviet side, given the damage inflicted in the TDM, would completely unbalance the situation in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico and cut the vital shipping lanes thru the Panama Canal. “Let’s teach this little Mussolini a lesson!” is his immediate response, ordering the release of nuclear weapons to neutralize Venezuela’s military and deny her refineries to the Soviets.

Webstral detailed the strikes on the San Francisco area refineries:

Four MIRVs are fired at them, all from a single SS-17 ICBM from the 10th Guards Missile Division from Kostroma. The MIRV targeted at Richmond fails, and Soviet bomb damage assessment (a satellite passing by a few hours later) notes that the refinery is intact. The Strategic Rocket Forces fire a second missile, a old SS-11 that, while inaccurate, mounts a single 1.3 MT warhead.

The three .5 Mt strikes against Benicia, Martinez, and Avon are overkill for these targets. The strike on Martinez starts catastrophic fires at Benicia and Avon. Still, the Soviets like to be thorough. It's just blind luck that the one refinery physically separated from the others was missed while the overlapping attacks all succeeded.

The Soviets follow up the failed attack on Richmond with an ICBM with a single warhead. The launch vehicle selected is less accurate than more modern platforms. Whoever makes the decision to use the ICBM with a single warhead reasons that the higher yield of the warhead will compensate for the greater CEP.

The warhead is deliberately off-target. The Soviet strike is an airburst centered 7 km north-northwest of the center of the refinery complex, including the complex in the 5 psi ring as well as the thermal radiation ring, causing fires that destroy the complex. Richmond and San Pablo are doomed, but Oakland and San Francisco are far enough away that they are not obviously targets of the attack. No one is going across the Richmond Bridge anytime soon. Even though the bridge stays up, Richmond is completely destroyed. Burning tanks of fuel melt the roadway at the eastern end of the bridge and damage the concrete. There is no convenient bypass that also hasn’t been severely affected by the destruction of Richmond.

The first strikes at Benicia, Martinez, and Avon cause tremendous damage throughout central Contra Contra County and southwestern Solano County. Highly accurate strikes by the first three reentry vehicles wipe out the refineries and associated facilities at these three locations. Firestorms quickly engulf Concord and Walnut Creek to the south, Port Chicago to the east, Port Costa and Crockett to the west, and Vallejo to the northwest. Topography and the very wet El Nino winter of ’97-’98 serve to limit the damage compared to the devastation that reduces greater Los Angeles to ashes and rubble. While towns nearest the strikes suffer tremendous damage, the hills and marshes separating clusters of towns in Contra Costa and Solano Counties serve as effective fire breaks.

The strike at Richmond is particularly devastating due to the high population density of western Contra Costa County. Firestorms rage throughout Richmond, San Pablo, and the adjoining municipalities. By the time they have run their course, everything north of University Avenue in Berkeley has been consumed by fire. A virtually unbroken heap of smoldering ruin characterizes the Contra County shoreline from the western edge of Pittsburg, west through Martinez and inland to include almost the entire urban area in the valleys occupied by Concord, Walnut Creek, and Clayton; through the smaller towns lining the Carquinez Strait, along the southeastern shore of San Pablo Bay, and throughout the entire flat and densely developed area between the hills and the shore of greater San Francisco Bay south to Berkeley. On the Solano side of the Bay, Benicia has been annihilated, while Vallejo has been burned to the ground.

Seen in a larger context, these strikes virtually paralyze the San Francisco Bay Area and its 8.5 million inhabitants. Direct loss of life is significant but not overwhelming - less than 1 million. Loss of fuel for transportation, damage to the electrical grid, and the breakdown of order cause far more casualties over the next 2 years. Interstate 80, linking Sacramento with Oakland and San Francisco, is impassible through sections of Vallejo and virtually all of San Pablo, Richmond, El Cerrito, Albany, and much of Berkeley

Elsewhere,

The Freedom ship Trenton Freedom is delivered, having been at sea when the Galveston, Texas area was hit.

The last operating TV network, NBC, leaves New York City.

The Bakersfield DA travels to Sacramento, escorted by two patrol cars of heavily armed sheriff's deputies, to meet with state officials about the death squad within the 5th California Brigade.

At a US Army field depot in Waren, East Germany (a former Soviet missile base), three US Army deserters are arrested by guards as they attempt to enter the depot and secure fuel, ammunition and food by masquerading as resupply detachment for a III Corps unit. Under interrogation by MPs the three soldiers reveal that their attempt was directed by the leadership of their group of deserters, all former quartermaster soldiers, known as Fifth Squad. (CID investigators in Virginia had, they thought, broke the group up at Fort Lee, Virginia over the summer).

The Canadian Navy commissions its last warship of the war, the patrol-minesweeper Yellowknife, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The ship is pressed into service performing local security and relief duties.

[shrike6]

December 12, 1997

(except Challenge Magazine states that the first nuclear attacks on Canada, in the Toronto area, occurred today. That conflicts with Boomer, which states that Barrikada fired missiles on Canada in late November!)

I thought I was good at catching little tidbits. I did not know about that one and always assumed the Challenge Article was default for Canadian strikes. Good catch!

The Naval Security Group at Galeta Island in Panama picks up intelligence indicating that Venezuela is going to officially join the war on the Soviet side. Hugo Chavez is convinced the US is on its last legs and he wants to grab his share of the spoils.

President Munson is briefed on the situation and that the entry of Venezuela with her modern navy, air force and army on the Soviet side, given the damage inflicted in the TDM, would completely unbalance the situation in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico and cut the vital shipping lanes thru the Panama Canal. “Let’s teach this little Mussolini a lesson!” is his immediate response, ordering the release of nuclear weapons to neutralize Venezuela’s military and deny her refineries to the Soviets.

I know Chavez didnt come to power till '99. I take it the 1992 Coup attempt was successful in this timeline?

[pmulcahy11b]

I would go with Boomer on the Canadian strikes -- more official than Challenge.

[chico20854]

December 13, 1997

Two B-1B’s striking from Kenyan bases destroy the Cabinda refinery in Angola in a conventional bombing attack to deny its use to the Soviets and
Cubans, eliminating the last source of refined fuel for the Cuban forces in Angola, crippling their remaining air and mechanized forces.

Egyptian and Israeli aircraft destroy the last operational Libyan refinery at Tobruk, depriving the Libyan Army and Air Force of their last source of refined fuel. All fighting in the area soon grinds to a halt as the Egyptian and Libyan militaries come apart along with their countries.

In South Africa, the police and military forces put down the last of the rioters, using armor and machine guns freely against them as martial law
is enforced fully. Over two hundred thousand people have been killed in the riots since the nuclear attacks occurred.

Afraid that it is just a matter of time before Mount Weather, one of the most well known secret sites in America, is struck, President Munson orders the evacuation of the executive and legislative officials, leaving a caretaker staff behind to guard the site's still considerable resources.

Unofficially,

President Munson and his entourage (over 500 federal employees, members of Congress, military personnel and security forces, with an additional 350 family members) travel to Peters Mountain, Virginia, site of a less well-known bunker, 90 miles away near Charlottesville. The president travels by armored vehicle, the employees and their families by requisitioned school buses.

A B-52G from the 93rd Bomb Wing from Castle AFB, California (operating from its dispersal base at NAS Fallon in Nevada) flies another sortie over the USSR, this one targeting the city of Ulan-Ude. Closing to within 200 miles, the bomber launched four of its SRAM II missiles, each with a 100kt warhead. Two hit the Far Eastern TVD headquarters (one ground burst aimed at the headquarters building in the city center and one, also a ground burst, the alternate command post bunker outside the city), one is set for air burst over the city's airport (home to a Mi-17 and Su-25 airframe plant as well as a pair of Tu-95 Bear bombers dispersed from their home station in Kazakhstan) and the final one strikes the junction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Trans-Mongolian railroad, cutting off the main resupply route for Soviet forces in central China. Following the attack, the bomber turns south, where it is intercepted by a PVO MiG-23 that damages the big bomber (wounding the female co-pilot) but fails to bring it down. The bomber lumbers on, exiting over China before turning east over the Pacific, hoping for a tanker before heading to a recovery base. No tanker can be located (following attacks on Guam, Clark AFB and Okinawa), so the bomber lands at the Japanese air base on Iwo Jima, which the co-pilot bitterly complains is not the tropical paradise she dreamed of riding out a nuclear war in. Within six hours a KC-135 tanker lands, bringing with it a repair crew, fuel and reload missiles. Unfortunately, the damage to the BUFF is more than can be repaired at the remote island, so it is destroyed and the crew and remaining weapons evacuated.

The Soviets continue their campaign to destroy the American petroleum industry, this time by attacking refineries in the center of the country. A SS-19 ICBM fired by the 28th Guards Missile Division at Kozelsk disperses six MIRVs, each with a 550-kiloton warhead. They are aimed at the refineries in Tulsa and Ponca City, Oklahoma and Eldorado, Kansas. Two are aimed at oil terminals (at Kansas City, Kansas and Sugar Creek, Missouri) - both targets that were once refineries that the GRU failed to notice had closed. A final MIRV, aimed at McConnell Air Force Base, detonates several miles short of the target, destroying several dozen acres of productive farmland.

To escape the chaos in Boston, the headquarters of the First Maritime Defense District is moved to Camp Edwards on Cape Cod. Its commander, RADM Scott MacDowell, concentrates his very limited assets on supporting the fishing fleets and defending critical assets along the New England coastline.

In California, the Lieutenant Governor, State Adjutant General, Attorney General, Commander of the State Police and Bakersfield DA take some time from the response to the strikes in the Bay area to meet about the situation in the 5th Brigade. The state government is overtaxed responding to the nuclear strikes on the state, and the prospect of putting down a rebellious, heavily armed brigade would be a challenge in normal times. The decision is made to request military assistance, and the governor contacts the commander of Sixth Army at the Presidio of San Francisco to formally request armed federal troops.

The shipyard in Odense, Denmark delivers its last ship, the Susan Mae. The massive 100,000-ton containership is dispatched to the US to load supplies to sustain the war effort.

[kato13]

Barrikada received launch orders in late November of 1 997. Six of the vessel's 20 SS-N-20 nuclear-tipped missiles were to be fired in a strategic strike intended to damage the command and control facilities of the NATO allies. Two of the missiles were aimed at Canadian targets, the remaining four at targets in the United States.

Me looking at this as a programmer it says "Launched and Aimed". Does not say reached targets nor detonated.

Staging issue? Guidance Problems? 10 Warheads per kinda rules out fizzles/failures. We have made just as off the wall ideas to try to make canon work.

[castlebravo92]

I would go with Boomer on the Canadian strikes -- more official than Challenge.

The Challenge Article is the official list - GDW replicated it in the 2nd edition print. Dates are in conflict of course between various print options.

I like Chico's and the Challenge article's take on timing of the strike. There's basically two takes: a spasm that basically started and ended on Nov 28, 1997 (the Howling Wilderness take along with a few other modules like Red Star / Lone Star and Urban Guerrilla) and the tit-for-tat sporadic strikes occurring from late Nov through December - which more closely aligns with the history narrative in the v1 ref's guide:

"Fearful of a general strategic exchange, neither side targeted on the land-based ICBM's of the other, or launched so many warheads at once as to risk convincing the other side that an all-out attack was in progress. Neither side wished to cross the threshhold to nuclear oblivion in one bold step, and so they inched across it, never quite knowing they had done it until after the fact.
First, military targets were hit. Then industrial targets clearly vital to the war effort. Then economic targets of military im-portance. Then transportation and communication, oil fields and refineries."

[chico20854]

December 14, 1997

Large numbers of refugees from the eastern cities pass through Hagerstown, Maryland on their way to havens, real or imagined, in West Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, and western Pennsylvania. Much of Hagerstown is destroyed by fires and rioting mobs when local food supplies run out, and rumors spread that the townspeople are hoarding.

Unofficially,

The container-barge carrier Shenyang Carrier is delivered in Quincy, Massachusetts. The US government takes possession of the ship and transfers it to the Chesapeake Bay.

In western Europe, French and Belgian authorities record a record number of refugees crossing their borders from Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - over 50,000 for the day, with tens of thousands more piling up in huge backups on the roads leading to the frontier. The French government calls up reservists to back up the Army and gendarme units patrolling the borders on foot, in vehicles and by helicopter. Additional tens of thousands cross into neutral Switzerland.

US Army Criminal Investigation Division agents in Waren, East Germany discover that the attempted theft of supplies by deserters affiliated with the Fifth Squad organization (some want to label it a gang) was supposed to be an inside job when three members of the group, all quartermaster soldiers trained at Fort Lee over the summer, are identified as members of the group. A last-minute change of the guard roster meant that one of the members, who was supposed to admit the Fifth Squad truck, was moved to a different area of the base perimeter rather than manning the gate.

The Soviet Yankee Notch nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine K-395 is sunk with all hands northwest of Bermuda by helicopters from the escort carrier Shangri-La while firing SS-N-21 SLCMs. Interceptors shoot down 75% of the missiles; the two 200-kiloton warheads that survive detonate over Loring Air Force Base and Bangor International Airport in Maine.

A Soviet Tu-95 Bear bomber fires a single AS-15 cruise missile at the Akko steel mill in Haifa, Israel from over the Caspian Sea. The missile detonates over the mill 30 minutes later, destroying it and signaling to Israel that it should proceed carefully with providing any support to the US and its allies.

With rumors swirling about the nuclear attacks on the Soviet homeland and the never-ending meatgrinder of the European battlefields consuming entire divisions, the junior officers of the 156th (my 190th) Motor-Rifle Division in Manchuria revolt, lest they be the next victims.

Proving the reasonableness of their decision, the Czechoslovakian 3rd Motor-Rifle Division, en route back home via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, is caught packed aboard troop trains in Sverdlovsk when the city is attacked by two American Minuteman III ICBMs fired by the 490th Strategic Missile Squadron in Montana. The six 170-kiloton warheads blanket the city, destroying the Ural Military District Headquarters, the bioweapons plant, the steel mill, missile plant, artillery plant and truck plant in a sea of fire. In the attack, the Czech soldiers, locked in their railcars to prevent desertion, are incinerated.

Two additional Minuteman IIIs hit a variety of strategic targets near Sverdlovsk - the bomber training base at Kamensk-Uralskiy, the nuclear weapons plant at Lesnoy, uranium enrichment plant at Novouralsk and nuclear weapons stockpiles at Sverdlovsk-16 and Verkhnyaya Pyshma.

Hugo Chavez (who seized power in September 1995 with the assistance of the USSR and Cuba) is in the middle of broadcasting his declaration of war on the United States when a 340kt warhead from a Minuteman III fired from Malmstrom AFB in Montana detonates over the government district of Caracas, killing Chavez and destroying the entire government of the country as well as the Army General Command. The crack 3rd Infantry Division, stationed in the city, is almost completely destroyed. The other two warheads from the Minuteman III are targeted on Maracay, destroying the two largest Venezuelan Air Force bases and taking out most of her Air Force including every F-16, MiG-21, and F-5 fighter in their inventory as well as most of their training and transport aircraft. The CAVIM weapons factory is completely destroyed and the 42nd Airborne Brigade is wiped out. Puerto Caballo is hit by two 150kt nuclear armed cruise missiles, one destroying the Agustin Armario Naval Base, sinking the majority of the Venezuelan Navy. Both of its submarines, all six Mariscal Sucre class frigates, the four Capana class LST’s and over two dozen smaller ships are lost and several Marine battalions that were at the base being readied for operations against Curacao and Aruba are destroyed. The second missile destroys the El Palito Refinery and the Caribbean Ranger battalion guarding it. A single B-2 bomber completes the destruction of Venezuela’s refineries, with three 300kt B-61 nuclear bombs destroying the Amuay, Cardón, and Puerto La Cruz Refineries. It also drops a fourth bomb that destroys the 41st Armored Brigade at Fort Pamaracay in Valencia. Four B-1B and four FB-111 bombers armed with 500lb and 2000lb conventional bombs as well as GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided bombs attack the 44th Light Armored Brigade at Fort Conopoima in San Juan de Los Morros, destroying or damaging every armored vehicle and causing nearly 80 percent casualties. In the space of a few hours over four million Venezuelans are dead or injured and every major refinery in the country has been destroyed. Her Air Force and Navy have been eliminated as a threat to the Panama Canal and shipping in the Gulf of Mexico and the best units of her Army have been destroyed. The country is in a panic as it waits for more attacks, with the police unable to handle the rioting and looting that breaks out. The surviving Army and Marine units are too busy defending their base areas against waves of looters and panicked civilians to even think of taking action against the US. The attacks convince the leaders of Cuba that any thought of joining the Soviets in their war against NATO and the US is tantamount to committing national suicide. Miguel Hernandez is worried that the continuing presence of Soviet troops on the island makes Cuba a tempting target for US nukes and starts looking for any way to get those troops to leave.

[Ursus Maior]

December 13, 1997[...]
A B-52G [...] Following the attack, the bomber turns south, where it is intercepted by a PVO MiG-23 that damages the big bomber (wounding the female co-pilot) but fails to bring it down. The bomber lumbers on [...]. No tanker can be located (following attacks on Guam, Clark AFB and Okinawa), so the bomber lands at the Japanese air base on Iwo Jima, which the co-pilot bitterly complains is not the tropical paradise she dreamed of riding out a nuclear war in. [...]

There's a lot of Trinity's Child (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity%27s_Child) in there. :D I'm reading the novel right now and enjoyed the movie, too.

[chico20854]

There's a lot of Trinity's Child (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity%27s_Child) in there. :D I'm reading the novel right now and enjoyed the movie, too.

Yes, Matt Wiser (Thanks!!!) suggested that I include a shout-out to that masterpiece of Cold War fiction!

[chico20854]

December 15, 1997

President Munson, on the advice of what was left of Tanner's cabinet, issues the Emergency Relocation Decree. The purpose of Emergency Relocation Plan is to relocate the nation's urban population closer to food-producing areas and minimize food transportation. For this reason, about 100,000 urban residents are shifted from the larger cities around the Great Lakes to smaller cities on the Great Plains. There is considerable opposition to the relocation from both rural and urban populations. This program, acknowledging that construction of sufficient shelters in each major city to protect the majority of each city's inhabitants during a nuclear attack was impossible, calls for the wholesale evacuation of the cities to surrounding "host communities" in the event that a nuclear attack seemed imminent.

Morland Bryce, a British SAS commander in Norway, receives word of his wife's slow death in a Bristol hospital and the disappearance of his 4-year-old son.

Unofficially,

The container-barge carrier Lanchow Carrier is delivered in Mobile, Alabama. The Chinese government is in no condition to take possession of the ship, so it is taken by the US government. The 1108th Signal Brigade is made responsible for reestablishing communications, disaster relief and civil order missions within the 1st US Army's area of command.

RainbowSix reports that Southampton is a target of Soviet nuclear missiles aimed at its port and refining facilities.

Action at the front lines in Germany has largely ground to a halt due to lack of supplies. The Bundeswehr high command, effectively the government of Germany, consults with SACEUR about the redeployment of troops from the Oder-Niesse line to the German interior as it appears that the Warsaw Pact is in no condition to launch an attack into East Germany. Dispersing the masses of Allied troops evacuated from Poland will also help in maintaining order in the German interior and more evenly spread the burden of billeting tens of thousands of troops through the upcoming winter.

The last operational American nuclear carriers in the Atlantic, the USS Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt, move north and east into the Norwegian Sea, the scene of such fierce naval battles a year prior.

Israel retaliates against the USSR for its strike on the Haifa, firing a single Jericho II missile at the steel mill in Rustavi, Georgia. The missile's 450 kt warhead incinerates the mill and a nearby chemical plant, effectively delivering the message that Israel will retain its sovereignty and retaliate fiercely against any attack.

Analysts from the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade (Airborne) in Saudi Arabia intercept Soviet communications ordering Transcaucasian Front's 126th Missile Brigade to launch a nuclear-tipped SS-12M missile at CENTCOM headquarters. Knowing that the response time to such an order is roughly 45 minutes, the headquarters is able to evacuate its commander and most of its staff, while the defending Patriot missile batteries of the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade are all brought on alert and a pair of F-15Es of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing dispatched to attack the launch site once it is detected. The effort is successful, with the incoming missile shot down and the launch site plastered with cluster bombs within five minutes of the launch.

The mutineers of the 156th (my 190th) Motor-Rifle Division hold hasty trials for the more senior officers, finding them guilty of betraying true Communism. The colonels and generals are executed, the majors and lieutenant colonels released to wander the Altai region on their own, unarmed and alone.

[chico20854]

Me looking at this as a programmer it says "Launched and Aimed". Does not say reached targets nor detonated.

Staging issue? Guidance Problems? 10 Warheads per kinda rules out fizzles/failures. We have made just as off the wall ideas to try to make canon work.

If I had looked ahead to December 7th when I wrote up the Canadian strikes from Barrikada I probably would have done something like that... the SS-N-20 evidently wasn't a massively successful missile given that the Typhoons and their missiles were retired pretty quikly IRL while the older Delta III and IV boats still soldier (sailor?) on to this day...

[stilleto69]

I more imagined the female B-52 co-pilot looking like Rebecca De Mornay in By Dawn's Early Light. :) BTW, I'm also imagining that SAC Vice-Command looking like James Earl Jones (aka. Gen. Alice) aboard the Looking Glass aircraft.

[Matt Wiser]

You're not the only one...

[shrike6]

If I had looked ahead to December 7th when I wrote up the Canadian strikes from Barrikada I probably would have done something like that... the SS-N-20 evidently wasn't a massively successful missile given that the Typhoons and their missiles were retired pretty quikly IRL while the older Delta III and IV boats still soldier (sailor?) on to this day...

I always thought it was economics and size why the Deltas were kept over the Typhoons. I hadnt heard about the problems with the SS-N-28s interesting.

[Ursus Maior]

I more imagined the female B-52 co-pilot looking like Rebecca De Mornay in By Dawn's Early Light. :) BTW, I'm also imagining that SAC Vice-Command looking like James Earl Jones (aka. Gen. Alice) aboard the Looking Glass aircraft.

That movie is based on Trinity's Child, it was the adaption I wrote about.

[Ursus Maior]

The SS-NX-28 never worked, hence the Borei-class submarines had to get completely redesigned missiles. The SS-NX-28 (Russian designation: R-39M was based on the SS-N-20 Sturgeon (the baseline R-39) used in the Typhoon class. The SS-N-20 was already plagued by problems with their solid-fuel boost engines. Over half of the early flights failed. The Soviets seem to have ironed out most of these problems.

Although, I assume they didn't get rid of all issues, which might have been part of why they only bought six Typhoons and never ordered more than seven. Of course, these beasts were also extremely expensive given their enormous size.

[shrike6]

The SS-NX-28 never worked, hence the Borei-class submarines had to get completely redesigned missiles. The SS-NX-28 (Russian designation: R-39M was based on the SS-N-20 Sturgeon (the baseline R-39) used in the Typhoon class. The SS-N-20 was already plagued by problems with their solid-fuel boost engines. Over half of the early flights failed. The Soviets seem to have ironed out most of these problems.

Although, I assume they didn't get rid of all issues, which might have been part of why they only bought six Typhoons and never ordered more than seven. Of course, these beasts were also extremely expensive given their enormous size.

You learn something new every day. All I had heard was they wanted to keep the smaller boats (Deltas) because they could keep more of them in service for their money until the Borei came online. Knowing this now, I agree Ursus it had to be part of the factoring on the cost.

[shrike6]

I more imagined the female B-52 co-pilot looking like Rebecca De Mornay in By Dawn's Early Light. :) BTW, I'm also imagining that SAC Vice-Command looking like James Earl Jones (aka. Gen. Alice) aboard the Looking Glass aircraft.
You're not the only one...

Agreed on both accounts.

[chico20854]

December 16, 1997

The commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is forced to reorganize the regiment as a single squadron and relinquishes its remaining helicopters to III Corps’ combat aviation brigade, the 21st ACCR.

Throughout the month, sporadic nuclear exchanges continue, and the populace of America panicks as the Soviet attacks persist. It is not the all-out exchange feared for decades, but the horror of nuclear war has at last been unleashed against the continental United States. Communications and transportation have broken down almost at once as the government declares a state of emergency and preempts those telecommunications networks which have survived the missiles, the repeated EMP (electromagnetic pulse) surges, and inevitable breakdowns.

As law and order breaks down, some cities in the UK take action. In Leicester, the local council declares the city independent and orderes the city's Territorial Army infantry battalion to halt the flood of refugees entering the city.

Unoffiicially,

Following American nuclear strikes on Soviet ally but officially neutral Venezuela and the devestation of Africa's petroleum industry, the Soviets strike other neutral nations to deny their resources to NATO. SS-20s from the 32nd Missile Division, dispersed in forests of northeastern Byelorussia, target the four largest refineries in France, at Gonfreville, Donges, Lavera and Port-Jérôme, hitting each with a trio of 150-kiloton warheads (except Gonfreville, hit with two MIRVs and Port-Jérôme, 30 km away, which is hit with the third warhead from the missile aimed at Gonfreville).

Commander Phil Kearny, who survived the attack on Washington, returns to the nearest militay installation he can reach, Fort Ritchie, Maryland. The guard force there, understandably nervous, detains him while verifying his identity.

The GRU assesses that most of the United States' largest refineries have been destroyed, except for a few clusters that remain. Accordingly, the General Staff authorizes an attack on the cluster around Chicago. A single SS-18 from the 59th Missile Division at Kartaly in the southern Urals, containing ten 550-kiloton MIRVs is launched. Less than 30 minutes later three warheads detonate over the refinery in Whiting, Indiana, two over the refinery in Lemont, Illinois (on the southwest outer edge of the city's suburbs) and three over the refinery and Army Ammunition Plant in Joliet. The subsequent blasts wipe out the refineries, damage the ammunition plant and unofficially, start a massive firestorm in the industrial cities of northwestern Indiana. Within minutes the steel mills at Gary and Burns harbor, two of the primary sources of armor-grade steel for American AFV and warship production, are engulfed.

VIII German Korps, last in action on the Czech border south of Berlin, begins movement to newly assigned winter garrisons near the Baltic coast around the ruins of Bremen. Its place on the front line will be taken by the XXIII US Corps, which is being moved south from assembly areas east of Berlin.

A flurry of MX and Minuteman II missiles strike an array of Soviet targets, one in Siberia and one in central Russia. A Minuteman II missile flattens the T-74 tank plant at Nizhniy Tagil with a single massive 1.2 MT warhead. A pair of MX missiles strike the six garrisons of the 42nd Missile Division (which operates road-mobile SS-25 ICBMs, which are dispersed in hide sites throughout the area) and the divisional and regimental command posts of the 52nd Missile Division, which operates a mix of rail-mobile SS-24 ICBMs and aged SS-11s in relatively soft silos.

The 156th (my 190th) Motor-Rifle Division, masquerading as a loyal unit, goes on the march northward, crossing the Soviet border into Siberia. The KGB Border Guards do not question the unit's assertion that it is en route to the European front and fail to notice that their interactions are all with junior officers.

Detachment 1, 102nd Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron loses one of its HH-3 helicopters during a thunderstorm over Ugandan territory. One of the helo's pararescuemen, Technical Sergeant John Watson, survives the crash and escapes the crash site, wounded but armed with his CAR-15 and a 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol.

[chico20854]

Less than 30 minutes later three warheads detonate over the refinery in Whiting, Indiana, two over the refinery in Lemont, Illinois (on the southwest outer edge of the city's suburbs) and three over the refinery and Army Ammunition Plant in Joliet.


An interesting note on the Lemont Illinois strike. The refinery in Lemont Illinois (near where my uncle and many cousins lived at the time) is listed incorectly in canon as Lemont, Texas. As I dug around, I discovered that there is no Lemont, Texas, and that there is no refinery in or near Lamont, Texas, but there is a quite large one in Lemont, Illinois. I looked back at the 1979 Office of Technology Assessment report the Effects of Nuclear War (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Effects_of_Nuclear_War.html?id=ppQZAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false), that GDW used as the primary source of its target list, and discovered that OTA incorrectly listed it (and the Robinson, IL refinery) as being in Texas.

[castlebravo92]

An interesting note on the Lemont Illinois strike. The refinery in Lemont Illinois (near where my uncle and many cousins lived at the time) is listed incorectly in canon as Lemont, Texas. As I dug around, I discovered that there is no Lemont, Texas, and that there is no refinery in or near Lamont, Texas, but there is a quite large one in Lemont, Illinois. I looked back at the 1979 Office of Technology Assessment report the Effects of Nuclear War (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Effects_of_Nuclear_War.html?id=ppQZAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false), that GDW used as the primary source of its target list, and discovered that OTA incorrectly listed it (and the Robinson, IL refinery) as being in Texas.

I made the same discovery when I was generating my target list and running the casualty calcs!

What's funny is the Robinson, Illinois refinery is prominent in the 194th Armored Brigade bio in Howling Wilderness (on page 17) but they didn't fix the target list on page 11 in the same book.

Of course, this was pre-internet days where you didn't have thousands of random people to point out every typo and error you might have made nor could you just fire up google maps to verify refinery locations.

I need to x-ref my target list with yours Chico.

This is what I have Chicago looking like (note the rings are 5, 2, and 1 PSI respectively).

The Gary / Whiting Indiana attacks (listed as 1.75 MT on Whiting in Howling Wilderness) would have caused pretty extensive damage to Chicago, with fires reaching well into the Hyde Park area, and 2+ PSI structural damage out to around 102nd street East Side. Similar to you, on my target list I just had the Whiting attack as 3x550 kt MIRVs, but I was lazy with Lemont (750 kt) and Joliet (1MT).

[kato13]

December 16, 1997
The GRU assesses that most of the United States' largest refineries have been destroyed, except for a few clusters that remain. Accordingly, the General Staff authorizes an attack on the cluster around Chicago. A single SS-18 from the 59th Missile Division at Kartaly in the southern Urals, containing ten 550-kiloton MIRVs is launched. Less than 30 minutes later three warheads detonate over the refinery in Whiting, Indiana, two over the refinery in Lemont, Illinois (on the southwest outer edge of the city's suburbs) and three over the refinery and Army Ammunition Plant in Joliet. The subsequent blasts wipe out the refineries, damage the ammunition plant and unofficially, start a massive firestorm in the industrial cities of northwestern Indiana. Within minutes the steel mills at Gary and Burns harbor, two of the primary sources of armor-grade steel for American AFV and warship production, are engulfed.


Well it is worth it go get rid of Gary, IN. :D

[chico20854]

December 17, 1997

At Fort Ritchie, Maryland, Commander Kearny is confirmed as an active-duty Naval officer and assigned to stand watch at the Alternative National Command Center at nearby Site R, Raven Rock.

Unofficially,

The French retaliate for the Soviet strikes on their refineries with the launch of three S3 IRBMs from their silos in southeastern France. Two of the missiles, with 1.2 MT warheads, hit Riga and Kishinev, while the third destroys the massive refinery complex in occupied Ploesti, Romania.

As part of the effort to cut the US off from fuel from its North American neighbors, the USSR intensifies its nuclear attacks on the Western Hemisphere's petroleum industry. Once again the Typhoon-class submarine Barrikada is ordered to launch six missiles at targets at various countries. One missile targets Texas, hitting refneries in El Paso, Borger and Sunray with a trio of 100-kiloton warheads at each (unofficially, the 10th MIRV strikes the large airfield at White Sands Missile Range, which the GRU suspects may harbor dispersed SAC bombers). One missile is aimed at Alberta's oil industry, depositing MIRVs along a 300-kilometer stretch from Edmonton to Calgary.

Two of Barrikada's missiles destroy the PEMEX refineries at Tula, Minatitlan, Cadereyta Jiménez, Salamanca, and Salina Cruz, destroying all of them, killing 260,000 and injuring 350,000 people in the process. The refinery at Ciudad Madero is spared when the guidance system on the warhead malfunctions causing it to explode 20 miles to the south, leaving the refinery intact.

In Colombia both the Barrancabermeja Refinery and the Cartagena Refinery are hit by two 100-kt warheads, causing over a half million casualties, sparking rioting and panic buying that rapidly spirals out of control. The Isla Refinery in Curacao is targeted as well by the Soviets. Newly arrived Patriot missile batteries shoot the 100-kiloton warhead down short of its target. The warhead salvage fuses and detonates, killing over 16,000 people and injuring another 47,000, overwhelming the ability of the hospitals to treat the injured. The magnetic pulse from the warhead detonation takes out power all over the island, completely shutting down the refinery and Hato Airport.

After Washington and Annapolis are hit by nuclear strikes, the Naval Academy is relocated to Newport, Rhode Island, home of the Naval War College and OCS program. With its combat-ready resources already stretched thin, the Navy assigns Coast Guard Commandant HoIsgirder the duty of providing local security and defense for the new Naval Academy. HoIsgirder welcomes the assignment; Newport is a perfect base of operations and very likely to last through the dark ages he sees on the horizon. He begins shifting his assets out of bases on Cape Cod and Maine, and reorganizing them into a full-time fighting force at Newport.

RainbowSix reports that the town of Hereford is destroyed by a Soviet nuclear missile. (Hereford has no major strategic targets, although it was the pre-war home of 22 Special Air Service Regiment, the British Army's Special Forces, however by this time virtually the entire Regiment is deployed on operations worldwide and only a few dozen personnel remain at Hereford, most of whom operate in a support role).

The American carriers Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt and their battle groups enter the Vestfjord off central Norway. As their escorts clear the area of enemy submarines, the force prepares to execute a number of nuclear strikes, which launch in the early evening. A ragged mix of F-14s, F/A-18s and F-4 fighters provide escort to the Soviet border for a trio of A-6F medium bombers, EA-6B jammers and KA-6D tankers, which refuel the bombers before turning back. The force overflies Norway, Sweden and Finland before crossing into the USSR, where the bombers split onto separate courses. One bomber attacks the submarine building yards at Severodvinsk while the other two hit a variety of targets in the nearby port city of Arkhangelsk. (The latter city had been targeted by British Tornados in June in the disastrous Operation Gabriel which saw the loss of 15 of the 20 bombers.) Two of the A-6s returned to the carriers, the last one simply disappearing in the Arctic night after dropping its B61 bombs.

SAC is ordered to eliminate the Soviets ability to launch further SS-18 missiles, following the previous day's SS-18 attack that ripped apart massive parts of the Chicago area. Two B-2 bombers, operating from the forward airbase in the Western Chinese desert (which the Soviets still have no idea exists), cross into the USSR and loiter some 150 kilometers away from the surviving SS-18 bases, at Kartaly in the southern Urals and Uzhur in eastern Siberia. Weaving between air defense radars, they each launch ten SRAM-II missiles, set for ground burst with their 200-kiloton warheads, at the regimental and divisional command posts of the 59th and 62nd Missile Divisions, respectively. As each bomber exits Soviet territory (flying across the North Pole, returning to dispersal bases in the Midwest), it expends its remaining six SRAMs against remaining operable SAM sites, air defense radars and air defense garrisons.

The flow of supplies to Soviet forces in the Balkans has slowed to a trickle as disorder convulses the USSR, disrupting production of war materiel and transportation through the Ukraine. Southwestern TVD pleads for more support from STAVKA, but is instead instructed to make do with what they can gather from the comparatively rich and undamaged lands they occupy.

The remnants of the Romanian and Jugoslav militaries (and the US 71st Airborne Brigade and 6th Special Forces Group) continue their active guerrilla campaigns against the Soviet occupiers, gaining valuable supplies in raids and ambushes while simultaneously making the occupiers' logistic situation worse.

TSgt Watson evades a group of LRA rebels seeking him out after his helicopter crashed in rough weather. He is unable to reestablish contact with the squadron's other rescue helicopter, which was sent to locate him.

[chico20854]

December 18, 1997

A New America scouting team scouts the ruins of Blytheville Air Force Base, Arkansas but turns back due to high levels of radiation.

After a brief power struggle, a former longshoreman and small-time hood named Max Graciano assumes control of New York's Harbor Pirates.

Unofficially,

After receiving word from CIA briefers that a Syrian tanker was recently sighted entering the Bosphorus, President Munson authorizes nuclear strikes on Syrian targets. Communications cannot be established with Sixth Fleet or the NATO air base at Incirlik in Turkey from the bunker he is sheltering in (which has less robust equipment than Mount Weather), so the order is executed with a strike by a Trident I SLBM from the USS Henry L Stimson, patrolling west of Spain. The seven MIRVs which function (one fails) strike the refineries at Homs and Baniyas (one warhead each) and the ports and Soviet naval bases at Latakia (two warheads) and Tartus (three).

SAC's systematic dismantlement of the Soviet ICBM force continues with a B-52H sortie over the Arctic. The bomber launches 14 ALCM missiles at the 14th Missile Division at Yoshkar Ola in the Mari El Republic of Russia. Three hours later a dozen of the missiles explode (two failed in flight), destroying the control sites for the division's SS-13 missiles, the division command post and the garrisons for its road-mobile SS-25 ICBMs.

The refineries at Rosemount and St. Paul Park, Minnesota are hit by MIRVs from a SLBM and destroyed.

The small convoy of the destroyer USS Morton, Houston Freedom and Westerbrook arrives off Honolulu, Hawaii. The destroyer pulls into Pearl Harbor for refuelling, while the freighters proceed to the commercial harbor to discharge cargo.

In western East Germany, III Corps' 21st Air Cavalry Combat Brigade is reorganized, taking the remnants of 3rd ACR's aviation squadron and consolidating into a single composite battalion, with attack, lift and assault companies (alongside the usual headquarters and support organizations). Due to the unit's shrunken size, there is an excess of support troops; the Corps G-1 (personnel officer) offers them to other units in the corps. Most are reassigned, although a few (mostly specialized helicopter and avionics technicians) are not needed in the corps, and they are offered to US Army Europe for reassignment.

A clash breaks out in western Siberia when the 156th (my 190th) Motor-Rifle Division, which revolted while on occupation duty in China, is confronted by the riot troopers of the MVD's 180th Separate Motorized Battalion in the Altai Mountains. The MVD troops make skillful use of their few anti-tank weapons (mostly RPG-7s, with a handful of aged AT-3 Sagger ATGMs) in blocking the rebel's progress, but are forced to give way when the full weight of the rebel artillery is brought to bear. Retreating on foot, most of the MVD troops are rounded up by the rebels and offered the choice of execution or joining the 190th in refusing certain death that would result from continuing to follow orders from "Moscow".

[chico20854]

A question for you guys: nuclear attacks on neutral nations. Canon states that in December that both sides target sites in neutral nations to deny them to the enemy. So far I've described Soviet attacks on Mexican, African and French refineries, with Antwerp, Belgium coming soon. The US hit African, Syrian and African refineries. So my question is who else would have been hit and by which side, especially which neutrals the US would hit? It seems to me that the Soviets, largely cut off from the sea despite the heavy naval losses on NATO, are in no condition to benefit from oil imports from neutrals, minimizing the potential reason for further US attacks on neutral nations.

[castlebravo92]

A question for you guys: nuclear attacks on neutral nations. Canon states that in December that both sides target sites in neutral nations to deny them to the enemy. So far I've described Soviet attacks on Mexican, African and French refineries, with Antwerp, Belgium coming soon. The US hit African, Syrian and African refineries. So my question is who else would have been hit and by which side, especially which neutrals the US would hit? It seems to me that the Soviets, largely cut off from the sea despite the heavy naval losses on NATO, are in no condition to benefit from oil imports from neutrals, minimizing the potential reason for further US attacks on neutral nations.

First off, I think you've done a phenomenal job detailing out the attacks.

This link has a good digital copy of Soviet Military Power 1985 which, among other things, has a map detailing USSR arms transfers, troop deployments, and basing rights for neutral countries.
https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll11/id/2365/

I think the countries attacked would be the countries neutral but friendly to the USSR.

North and Central America:
Cuba
Nicaragua

South America:
Peru (apparently had Soviet military personnel present in 1985)

Africa:
Cape Verde
Mali
Guinea
Algeria
Ethiopia
Tanzania
Seychelles
Madagascar
Mozambique
Libya

Europe:
Albania?

Asia:
Syria
Iraq
Afghanistan
India (but the Pakistan-India war took care of this)
North Korea
Vietnam
Cambodia

Additionally, any countries that were potentially Italy/Greece aligned might get hit also (the only net add there might be Somalia, since Libya and Ethiopia are already covered).

But yeah, the bulk of the nuking of neutral nations would be by the USSR, simply because of access potential or lack thereof. I could see a conspiracy scenario where France nuked some neutrals in late '98 so that it could be the last man standing. By that point in the war, it would basically be impossible to tell who nuked who.

[chico20854]

December 19, 1997

The first arrest for hoarding under the provisions of FEP-D is made.

The Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade is brought home from Germany, where it had been mainly performing rear area security duties, to the Leeuwarden area to assist Territorial troops with internal security duties.

Unofficially,

With stocks of aviation fuel running low on many dispersal bases and the exchange somewhat settled into a handful of attacks daily, President Munson authorizes a dramatic cutback to SAC's airborne alert posture. The new status will be but four bombers airborne at any time, each with an accompanying tanker, one airborne command post and a single relay aircraft.

A mixture of military and police forces operating out of Nellis Air Force Base attempt to maintain law and order in Clark County, Nevada, but they are unable to prevent the rise of a number of gangs that compete ruthlessly for the remaining consumables.

The Soviets make what will prove to be the final attack an American refinery, hitting Sweeney, Texas with a SS-N-18 from the Delta III-class SSBN K-496. The SLBM is topped with a single 450-kiloton warhead, which incinerates the refinery and much of the surrounding area.

American Pershing II missiles hit more targets in the Western USSR. The strategic early warning radar in Mukachevo, Ukraine is hit, as is the Kharkov tank plant, the Smolensk nuclear power plant and the Lysychansk refinery.

The 1st Battalion, Minnesota Regiment (a state guard unit) is called away from evacuation duties to provide relief following the prior day's refinery strikes outside the Twin Cities.

The headquarters of the Sixth Army, holding out in the Presidio of San Francisco, like other Army headquarters around the nation, determines that it needs more troops to maintain martial law. Unlike, others, however, it has an available force - the 221st MP Brigade in Hawaii.

Rainbow Six reports that the Greater Manchester-Merseyside area has, to date, escaped the 1997 nuclear strikes (although it has suffered from widespread civil disorder, which the authorities struggle to contain). A TA battalion, 5/8 KINGS, is deployed to the Manchester area to quell the serious disorder as rioting mobs fight with the authorities and each other over control of food, water, and other supplies. As the Regional Government implements a dusk to dawn curfew the troops find themselves confronting the mobs with orders to shoot to kill if necessary. A peace returns to the city, but it is an uneasy one, one enforced only by military patrols, by the threat of deadly force. The Battalion takes under command all manner of reinforcements, airmen and women from the RAF, Army cadets, civilian police officers, even traffic wardens. As well as maintaining order they distribute aid to the city's population, although supplies are becoming harder to come by as each week passes. Tent cities spring up outside the barracks.

Lest it be caught in port, the destroyer USS Morton, which was quickly refuelled and took on stores, departs Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, accompanied by the container-barge carrier Harbin Carrier, headed for the Phillippines.

The American frigate USS Klackring sinks after hitting a mine in Vestfjord while protecting the Eisenhower and Roosevelt battle groups. The mine's origin is never established - whether it was a NATO or Soviet mine, freshly laid or left over from the Battle of the Norwegian Sea in December of 1996.

The new, massive containership Susan Mae arrives in New York on its maiden voyage. Upon arrival it rapidly becomes clear that conditions ashore are difficult and that it is extremely unlikely that there are 8,000 containers of cargo ready to be loaded. Wary of the disorder shore, the ship's master anchors in the outer harbor and contacts the Coast Guard for guidance. The Coast Guard responds, urging utmost caution (that there are armed, desperate people in small boats on the water) and advising the ship not to berth.

US Air Forces Africa calls off the search for TSgt Watson. Uknown to his headquarters, he is alive and sheltering in the bush outside a Ugandan village.

[Targan]

December 19, 1997
The Battalion takes under command all manner of reinforcements, airmen and women from the RAF, Army cadets, civilian police officers, even traffic wardens.

Ah yes, the famous image from Threads :D

[ToughOmbres]

All of the recent updates are really well done per usual.

The mostly limited nuclear strikes up to the TDM had already reduced NATO/WP to the level of a "broken back" conflict to me.

On the heels of the TDM the follow up strikes and damage really do seem to be "bouncing the rubble" since much of both sides plus neutrals are largely dysfunctional in terms of economies and government. Grim stuff.

[chico20854]

December 20, 1997

On remote Svalbard, the residents, both Norwegian and Soviet, realize that in order to survive they must set aside national differences and cooperate. The coal mines there are largely dependent on machines to extract the coal, which requires imported petroleum fuel. With supplies cut off by the war, the remaining inhabitants are forced to fall back on their own resources. Some machines are modified to steam power, but most of the coal is mined with hand tools.

A Soviet SS-20 IRBM with three MIRVs attack the Belgian refinery complex in Antwerp. The attack takes out most of Belgium's oil refining capacity.

In France, the overwhelmed border police are increasingly relying on military assistance for dealing with the flood of German, Dutch and Free Polish refugees seeking sanctuary from the war.

Coast Guard Commandant Holsgirder, in Newport, Rhode Island commands only USCG assets that were not operating under the direct command of the US Navy. He and First Maritime Defense District commander Scott MacDowell trade hard words over the movement of Coast Guard ships, crews and equipment from northern New England to the southern New England coastline. MacDowell believes firmly that the fishing fleets are the key to keeping the coastal population of New England from starving and turning into the kinds of rioting masses that had driven him out of Boston. These fleets need Coast Guard protection and succor. Although MacDowell commands a force with US Coast Guard on its uniforms and ships, he is acting under Navy orders. Already, his force has been tapped to provide replacements and to escort Army units (including a recently-raised brigade of New Hampshire Army National Guard troops) to reinforce Europe. MacDowell believes it was necessary to keep every USCG asset possible in northern New England to protect shipping and fishing in the event the Navy decides to move more of MacDowell's assets. Holsgirder flatly disagrees.

In the Vestfjord off Norway's west coast, the Roosevelt and Eisenhower battle groups are visited by their remaining support ship, the USS Detroit. Unfortunately, the ship is less than full, having been unable to obtain a full load of fuel or munitions from the replenishment fleet operating along the GIUK Gap. The available JP-5 will be enough for only five days of defensive operations or three full-scale offensive air strikes, even with the carriers' diminished air wings.

SAC continues its neutralization of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces with B-1 strikes on the Svobodnyy and Olovyanneya ICBM complexes. Like other attacks on Soviet missilebases, the B-1s stand off and lob SRAM II missiles from 100 miles off at command posts, with each 200-kiloton warhead set for ground burst to ensure the destruction of the buried installations. On their exit they expend remaining missiles on air defense, transportation and industrial targets.

The 156th (my 190th) Motor-Rifle Division arrives in the industrial, transportation and agricultural center of Barnaul in Western Siberia. The city government, with an overwhelmed MVD detachment struggling to maintain order among a panicked population fearful of American nuclear bombs arriving at any moment, abdicates to the rebel formation rather than see the city suffer any further damage and destruction in a battle it knows it cannot win.

TSgt Watson slips past a LRA patrol in rural Uganda as he moves toward the Kenyan border.

[chico20854]

Ah yes, the famous image from Threads :D

While RainbowSix gets the credit for that, I appreciate any chance to pay tribute to the great masters!

[chico20854]

All of the recent updates are really well done per usual.

The mostly limited nuclear strikes up to the TDM had already reduced NATO/WP to the level of a "broken back" conflict to me.

On the heels of the TDM the follow up strikes and damage really do seem to be "bouncing the rubble" since much of both sides plus neutrals are largely dysfunctional in terms of economies and government. Grim stuff.

Over the next few weeks you'll start getting a much reduced optempo as the collapse of the war economies impact operations.

[chico20854]

December 21, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day.

On the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere it is not only sunlight that is in short supply. As the nuclear attacks continue, the world trading and transportation systems have almost entirely shut down, leading to massive shortages of food, fuel and other necessities of lie. While food stocks exist, thanks to the bountiful harvest of the fall, moving the food to the population without petroleum is a nearly insurmountable challenge for the remnants of national governments.

In Paramus, New Jersey the 42nd Infantry Division makes its first arrest for hoarding food. Tony DiBello, owner of a small grocery wholesaler, refuses to sell his remaining stock to the military at the price established by 1st Army under the provisions of martial law (twice the price in effect on November 15), demanding five times the price. After he is arrested, troops sieze his entire inventory and allocate half of it to feeding centers and the other half is transported back to the local national guard armory that the battalion is operating from for the unit's cooks to prepare for the troops.

The Belgian government rallies all available security and emergency forces to provide relief in Antwerp following the attack on Antwerp. The interior minister reaches out to his French counterpart for assistance.

Soviet missiles rain down on petroleum and command and control targets in Ontario and Quebec. The national capital of Ottawa is blanketed with MIRVs from a SLBM.

An American Minuteman II missile strikes the Soviet refinery complex in Nizhnekamsk, and another destroys the massive Kama River Truck Plant at nearby Naberezhnye Chelny.

The new Danish containership Susan Mae, at anchor in New York's outer harbor awaiting cargo, is boarded by six armed men from a motorboat. The men rob the crew of cash, electronics and food from the galley but are disappointed to discover that the ship does not have any cargo aboard.

RainbowSix reports that most survivors of the strikes in South Wales head north into rural Wales or east across the border into South West England. Refugees fleeing the chaos of South Wales cause large scale upheaval in Mid Wales as many small towns and villages are swamped by the desperate hordes. Some refugees are integrated into the local communities but many locals oppose the influx and form armed groups in resistance against them.

The commanding officer of the 156th (my 190th) Motor-Rifle Division, the former deputy commander of the division's 53rd Reconnaissance Battalion, appears in public alongside the city's Communist Party chief to declare that the city is in safe hands. The division's troops spread out throughout the city, establishing small garrisons in most neighborhoods. The 190th's logistics officers are overjoyed by the seizure of the city's small arms ammunition factory, which yields over a million rounds for the division's guns. They are even more pleased by the capture of the intact Transmash plant, which has been turning out T-74s since early 1996. There are only a few complete tanks present, but plenty of parts to maintain them and several dozen in various stages of construction.

[Rainbow Six]

While RainbowSix gets the credit for that, I appreciate any chance to pay tribute to the great masters!

Yeah, that line was absolutely inspired by Threads.

I actually rewatched Threads a few months ago (it's currently on the BritBox streaming service). I think it's the first time I've watched it sine the original broadcast. I'd forgotten quite how bleak and harrowing it is.

[Targan]

I actually rewatched Threads a few months ago (it's currently on the BritBox streaming service). I think it's the first time I've watched it sine the original broadcast. I'd forgotten quite how bleak and harrowing it is.

The first time I watched it I was genuinely traumatised :D

[chico20854]

December 22, 1997

Dain Dangerous, Boston megapunk leader, seems rejuvenated somehow. In the midst of the riots, the strikes, and the civil unrest, his band Terminal Illness begins to give impromptu street performances, sometimes with only the most primitive sound equipment, sometimes without instruments at all. Dain's new music is the saga of what is occurring in Boston, and like all sagas, it has a moral - "Only the gangs will survive." When the first of the gasoline riots occurs, the megapunks decide to add a little looting and arson to the list of crimes. Strangely coincident, the buildings and homes that are burned belong to the old established leaders of the Boston area.

A dozen other cities in the UK have joined Leicester in declaring their independence and asserting local control over local security forces (usually some combination of Territorial Army, police, RAF and naval personnel, augmented by university and high school cadets and even minor police personnel).

Unofficially,

The eighth and final R-5D spy plane is completed in Palmdale, California. Elsewhere in the US, military production continues at a lower level at surviving facilities. Armored vehicle production continues in San Jose, California (Bradley and M113-series vehicles), York, Pennsylvania (M-109s and M-88s), Detroit, Michigan (M-1 tanks), Muskegon, Michigan (LAV-75s) as well as a handful of mobilization plants. In all cases production continues under backup generator power (or in a few cases, restored mains power) with widespread worker absenteeism and declining stocks of components. In many cases completed vehicles sit at the plants awaiting transportation to ports.

Army armored vehicle repair plants such as the Red River and Anniston Army Depots continue to repair combat damaged vehicles, again using backup generator power and, in many cases, POW labor for unskilled tasks.

In Alaska, the Soviet 25th Corps and US X Corps have gone to ground for the winter as temperatures in the Fairbanks area drop precipitously. Even though both forces are experienced cold-weather combatants, high temperatures in the -20 Fahrenheit range and near total collapse of logistical support force a cessation of offensive action from both sides.

The Belgian interior minister's plea for French assistance is passed to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Within hours the dialog has moved to the highest levels of the French and Belgian governments.

Back in the US, the evacuation of some intact urban and suburban areas is proceeding in an orderly manner. School busses follow their normal routes through residential areas, collecting people of all ages. Baggage is limited to 50 kg per person and pets must be left behind. The busses transport the relocatees (as they are dubbed by emergency planners) to the local high schools, where intercity busses load them for transfer to food producing areas. Citizens, if they have sufficient fuel, may self-evacuate in their own vehicles. As neighborhoods empty, local law enforcement notes who remains; initially no additional action is taken.

Rainbow Six reports that HMG converts the RAF research and development facility at RAF Boscombe Down to an operational air base, relocating a number of the RAF's surviving fighter aircraft, including the remaining Eurofighter Typhoons, to there.

A Soviet SS-19 missile is fired at southern England. MIRVs destroy the port and naval base at Southampton, and the port in Dover. A bus malfunction results in the three MIRVs targeted at the major Royal Navy base at Portsmouth tumbling into the Atlantic.

In a case of cutting edge aircraft neutralizing their counterparts, a R-5D Aurora drops a pair of B61 nuclear bombs on the Ramenskoye aircraft research and development center southest of Moscow.

Soviet missiles continue their destruction of the Canadian petroleum industry, raining destruction on Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The massive Danish containership Susan Mae, at anchor in New York's outer harbor, receives permission to anchor further offshore after the crew was robbed the prior day. It moves 20 miles further offshore.

In Iran, 2nd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division secures the town of Shushtar from rear guard elements of the 1st Guards Army, while the highly dispersed 82nd Airborne Division has largely exited the highlands of northwestern Iran into northern Kuzestan Peovince.

[chico20854]

December 23, 1997

POWs at a camp in Exmoor, England wake up to find their camp guards (largely civilians) have fled. Colonel Andrei Zvetayev, the ranking officer, takes stock of the situation and leads the men out of the camp.

The Typhoon-class submarine Barrikada receives what is to be its last launch orders, showering five more missiles on targets (unofficially) in Canada (Air Defense headquarters at North Bay, the Chalk River nuclear power plant and the industrial complex in Hamilton, Ontario), Mexico (the refinery at Ciudad Madero, which was missed in an attack on the 17th) and the US (SAC bases at Griffiss and Plattsburg, New York and Pease AFB, New Hampshire).

Unofficially,

The situation in the Chicago area contiunues to deteriorate a week after Soviet missiles struck targets along the eastern and southern edges of the region. Fires continue to burn their way westward, despite the cold temperatures and the heroic efforts of the fire departments. Rail traffic through the city has been halted as workers refuse to enter the danger zone, paralyzing one of America's largest transportation hubs. The troops of the 49th Armored Division, the primary force responsible for maintaining martial law, is woefully inadequate for the task, its 14,000-some soldiers and fleet of armored vehicles utterly incapable of maintaining power, water and food distribution to the millions of civilians in the area.

The 221st Military Police Brigade (US Army Reserve) embarks on several ships in Honolulu harbor, orderd to return to California to help maintain order there.

Pasdaran guerrillas in Esfahan assassinate a lone Soviet Major, who unwisely decided to take a late evening walk outside the garrison area. To their northwest, the 24th Infantry Division's advance patrols reach the outskirts of Dezful. To their east, the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment (Light) secures the 24th's eastern flank with a drive northeast from Ramhormoz, keeping the Soviet 4th Army off-balance and unable to intervene to the west.

[chico20854]

December 24, 1997

Food riots begin in New York City as stockpiles of food dwindle. Whole armies of crazed people invade nearby neighborhoods, following rumors of secret stockpiles of food, water, or fuel, and the resultant slaughters leaves tens of thousands dead and dying in the streets. These rumors are sometimes true - a handful of dwellings - usually the upper floors of apartments and condominiums, and the penthouses of the very rich - had stocks of food before the attack. Some owners took what they could and fled. The majority are cleaned out by the owners to eat or trade with, and many are looted by hungry mobs or by street gangs. In many cases, however, the owners left their dwellings and fled or died... and stores of canned food and other valuables remain. Much of Harlem is ravaged by fires which raged through the district during the food riots, while the Columbia University security forces lead the defense of Morningside Heights from the fortifications above Morningside Park.

The Chinese suffer disproportionately during the riots. Largely ignored during the race riots of July 1997 (the Chinese, after all, were fighting the Russians), Chinatown is attacked and pillaged time and time again during the food riots. Hungry, raging mobs use the rationale that only "real Americans" have claim to the dwindling food supplies of Manhattan. Thousands of Chinese flee the island entirely, but thousands more die, murdered in the streets or killed when arsonist fires race uncontrolled through the shabby, crowded, substandard tenements which jammed the streets behind the shops and restaurants. The southern parts of the Bowery, much of TriBeCa and most of SoHo burn to the ground in the Chinatown fires as well. In the Lower East Side, the riots bring wholesale slaughter to the streets, particularly to older people who have been unwilling to flee to uncertain havens before the troubles began.

The inhabitants of Roosevelt Island take advantage of their natural isolation and the experience offered by one of their civic leaders, a retired Marine Corps officer, Colonel Randolph Phillips, to form a militia and maintain a semblance of order. The various hospitals on the island have large stocks of drugs and other items. Roosevelt Island's leaders, knowing the value of such supplies, see to it that several basement refrigerators are hooked up to alcohol-converted portable generators soon after the power went out. Here they store large supplies of gram positive, gram negative, and broad-spectrum antibiotics, saline, D5W and other IV fluids, anesthetics, morphine, and dozens of other drugs and supplies which are nearly impossible to find elsewhere in the city (or anywhere else in the country for that matter).

On Governors Island, the largest island in New York Harbor and the location of a military reservation named Fort Jay, the reservation is abandoned (the soldiers were more useful guarding critical buildings and intersections in Manhattan and Brooklyn than they were guarding the harbor from amphibious invasions).

Unofficially,

A secret meeting occurs between the Belgian Prime Minister and President of France. While nothing is announced to other members of their respective governments, let alone their publics, the idea of a Franco-Belgian Union is proposed by the French President, as a condition for substantial French aid to the badly damaged Belgium.

The container-barge carrier Sian Carrier is delivered in Quincy, Massachusetts to the US government. This is the last ship built in Quincy.

For the second year in a row, NORAD commanders are on watch for visitors from the North Pole that are not in a sleigh. Fortunately, none arrive.

Rainbow Six reports that local commanders order the withdrawal of all police and military personnel from Birmingham, effectively conceding control of the City to the mobs, many of whom have managed to arm themselves with weapons taken from the police or other troops who have been overrun.

NATO intelligence identifies a major grouping of Soviet and Polish forces, under command of the Baltic Front, massing in northwestern Poland opposite the reinforced II MEF. Commanders hastily order the diversion of the US V Corps, which has been pulled back from the front line in anticipation of redeployment to the German interior for reconstitution and to assist civil authorities, to the Szczecin bridgehead.

German territorial troops, mostly security forces and support units, in the areas west of the Rhine, try to manage the flow of refugees trying to reach the perceived safety of French and Belgian territory. The border is effectively closed by French military units but the stream of civilians continues.

The last Transatlantic convoy in the "normal" series, Convoy 314, arrives in the North Sea, carrying a vast array of spare parts, replacement vehicles, munitions, food and the vehicles of two of the medium transportation companies stood up in October. The G-4 (logistics officer) of US Army Europe has had time to carefully prepare for the use and distribution of this bonanza, aware both of the vast needs of his command and that this convoy is the last of the pre-exchange resupply. (Additional ad-hoc convoys will sail for Europe in 1998 and 1999, but this is the final one of 58 North Atlantic convoys organized by SACLANT since hostilities started in Norway in November 1996).

The 12th and 34th Air Armies, Transcaucasian Front's Frontal Aviation components, receive an influx of combat aircraft from other theaters as supplies of jet fuel in other regions dwindle. STAVKA has directed the transfer of a portion of combat-capable aircraft and their crews to the area where fuel is still somewhat plentiful and where Soviet airpower can make the greatest impact on the battlefield.

In the first of many clashes with loyalist forces, the 156th (my 190th) Motor-Rifle Division routs a patrol from the MVD's 52nd Specialized Motorized Regiment, a riot control unit sent from Novosibirsk to investigate the situation in the now-uncommunicative city of Barnaul.

[chico20854]

December 25, 1997

In Norway, as in most of the world, it is a grim Christmas. The nation's power generation and telecommunications facilities have been destroyed as electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear detonations fried their control circuitry. Refugees from the cities, seeking food and shelter from the coming winter, have flooded into the countryside. At first they are received with charity and kindness, but it soon becomes obvious that there are more mouths to be fed than there are meals left in most parts of the country. The only government is by martial law, and the only forces for civilization are the remnants of the Norwegian military. People turn to the military for their leadership and for their protection.

A provisional state capital is established at the planned community of Columbia, Maryland, on Route 29 between Baltimore and Washington, and fifteen kilometers from the nearest Fort Meade crater.

In Pennsylvania, the principal targets of the urban migrations are the broad, rich farming lands between Lancaster and Chambersburg, the heavily forested and remote regions of northern Pennsylvania beyond Scranton and Williamsport, and the fertile lands beyond the Allegheny Mountains, between Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. The broad strip of low, rolling, farming country between Allentown, Harrisburg, and the western suburbs of Philadelphia have been overrun by refugees since the first nuclear war scares earlier in the year. Because of continued fear that Pittsburgh itself will be hit by nuclear warheads, few refugees enter the city itself, and, in fact, many natives of the city fled either during the nuclear panics of the summer of '97, or during the riots, fires, and renewed fears of nuclear strikes of the present. In the disorder the indoor shopping mall in Monroeville (on the eastern outskirts of Pittsburgh) is repeatedly looted by vandals and rioting mobs, leaving little but the shell of the building complex.

Unofficially,

King Albert II of Belgium grants his consent to the formation of a Franco-Belgian Union and a full military mobilization to both control the flood of refugees into the nation and obtain French assistance in responding to the nuclear attacks on Antwerp. Likewise, the French President obtains the grudging consent of the opposition Socialist party, seeing no alternative and painfully aware of the consequences of taking a pro-Soviet position in the wake of Soviet attacks on the nation. (The French Communist Party's consent is not requested, many of its leaders in detention for pro-Soviet espionage).

Not respecting the sanctity of the (in their view) decadent and exploitative holiday, more Soviet bombs strike the UK, destroying industrial facilities in Coventry, Derby and Bedford and the harbor of Bristol.

V Corps units in northwestern Poland launch a spoiling attack on massing Soviet and Polish troops of the Baltic Front. A massive snowstorm offers concealment to the advancing M1s and Bradleys but confounding the close air support aircraft, many of whom's advanced avionics are inoperable. The initial Pact resistance is Polish infantry.

XVIII Airborne Corps troops surround the town of Dezful, which is defended by a grab bag of stragglers from a dozen Soviet divisions, support troops and pro-Soviet Tudeh guerrillas.

[Homer]

Poor Monroeville Mall can’t catch a break. Overrun by zombies in 1977; overrun by looters in 1997!

All kidding aside, I wonder how Pittsburgh ARS/ANGB get treated. In the 80s there was an ANG A-7 unit there that would have probably gone to Europe, an SAC gained ANG KC-135 unit, and a MAC gained AFRES C-130 unit. Plus some nice long runways, defensible terrain, and in place communications. Probably a good bomber dispersal field as well.

[chico20854]

December 26, 1996

When refugees begin arriving in rural areas, it is inevitable that they should inhabit the sprawling shantytowns and rural slums which came to be known as refugee cantonments. (The FEMA-constructed evacuation sites were long-since filled) They are not forced into the camps; it is a mark of human nature, however, that lost people seek out others like themselves, with the same backgrounds and troubles. Camps are erected on open fields near running water and sources of electricity. These grow as newcomers arrive, searching for other bands from near their homes. Many cantonments are even named after towns and cities left behind - Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland in Western Pennsylvania - though after a time, any given refugee comes simply to refer to his camp as "home" or "the camp," and most camps lose the distinguishing features which had given them some semblance of individuality. All of the camps are much the same: huts made of sheet tin or clapboard, plywood or cardboard, some little more than lean-tos. Food is scarce at first, almost impossible to find at last, as thousands, as tens of thousands die of hunger, disease, and exposure. Many have left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and a trek by foot across hundreds of kilometers has left many barefoot, sick, and poorly-clad.

While some in the surrounding communities are indifferent to the plight of the newcomers, the majority try to help.

Rains finally quench the last embers in the southern half of the city of Tampa, which had burned out of control for weeks. By this time the fires die out, Tampa has suffered over 800,000 casualties, some 160,000 of which were deaths.

In the chaos of post-strike Britain, a collection of minor nobles band together on this Boxing Day to establish a new monarchy. It is based on a prewar book (The Great Pretenders) which "proves" that the rightful heir to the throne is a man named Paul Poundstone-Tuedor. Poundstone-Tuedor claims to be descended from the offspring of Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh (married in a secret ceremony), and thus rightful King of England. It begins gathering weapons and recruits to form a paramilitary arm, named the New Royalist Army, or NRA.

Unofficially,

In Trenton, New Jersey, a fire in a residential neighborhood destroys eight homes. It is started when a 62 year old man spills gasoline that he is siphoning from his lawn mower into his car in order to have enough fuel to evacuate. Once the fire starts there is no means to call the fire department, and water service is down as well. The fire is stopped only by a combination of cold weather and distance between houses.

The container-barge carrier Sian Carrier is delivered in Mobile, Alabama. It, like its sisters delivered in the prior weeks, is taken over by the US government.

The Soviet Union launches some its final attacks of the 1997 strategic nuclear exchange, hitting Luton, Gloucester, and Yeovil, England. Soviet nuclear attacks also continue in the Pacific with attacks on Sydney, Melbourne and Geelong, Australia and the city state of Singapore, whose industry and refineries are making valuable contributions to the war in the Far Eastern theater.

V Corps spoiling attack in northwest Poland continues, now encountering Soviet troops and armor. The Soviet tank regiments are equipped with an odd assortment of tanks, everything from top of the line T-86s to barely functioning T-55s dragged from storage in Siberian depots. II MEF assists V Corps by launching local attacks along its front line to tie down troops and prevent commanders from diverting reserves to face V Corps.

Transcaucasian Front attacks several refineries in the region to cut off CENTCOM's fuel supplies. A Su-24 is sacrificed on a one-way mission to hit the Sitra, Bahrain refinery while missiles hit the Saudi refineries at Rabigh and Jubail and the petroleum refining and transportation hub of Fujairah, UAE. In the medium term, the attacks will succeed in limiting CENTCOM's fuel supplies, but for now the strikes do nothing to arrest the Soviets' costly defeats on the battlefields of Iran.

In Iran, the defense of Dezful crumbles under American and Iranian assault. By nightfall the perimeter is less than 500m wide.

On the Korean front the war has gone largely static. The Soviet 30th and 35th Armies are starved of supplies after the destruction of Vladivostok and American tactical nuclear strikes on the supply lines from the USSR, added to the burden of supporting the suffering North Korean population, which had no opportunity to raise food in a year marred by intense fighting from one end of the country to the other. In South Korea the situation is nearly as grim - the local government is still intact and somewhat functional, but the growing collapse in the world transportation system and the burden of over a million Nortk Korean refugees after a year of fighting makes for a difficult winter.

[chico20854]

Poor Monroeville Mall can’t catch a break. Overrun by zombies in 1977; overrun by looters in 1997!

All kidding aside, I wonder how Pittsburgh ARS/ANGB get treated. In the 80s there was an ANG A-7 unit there that would have probably gone to Europe, an SAC gained ANG KC-135 unit, and a MAC gained AFRES C-130 unit. Plus some nice long runways, defensible terrain, and in place communications. Probably a good bomber dispersal field as well.

Monroeville Mall in the 90s was a reliable source of Camel cigarettes and Slim Fast diet shakes for me!

The ANG A-7 unit ended up in Jugoslavia until things began to fall apart there and they ran low on aircraft. I'll have to look at my notes for the other two units.

[Homer]

It’d be interesting to see the results if the folks wrecking monroeville and moving in from Ohio have a go at the airport. It’s on high ground with a pretty defined perimeter thanks to the layout of 376/376B and sits on the other side of the rivers from Monroeville, Pittsburgh, etc. There’s plenty of places to set up interlocking fields of fire for SPs or MPs with their relatively high scales of belt fed weapons, an internal road network for qrf and reserve movement, ample billeting (riding Armageddon in the Hyatt wouldn’t be that bad), and self contained power, etc. The downside is it’s a huge perimeter, you’ll have to deal with moon township by co-option or isolation, and you’ll need to be able to project power to interdict the river crossings which are set well out. Probably not enough troops to manage all that. Probably gets abandoned eventually for lack of forces and military value as the situation deteriorates.

Another airfield in PA that may be in a similar predicament is Harrisburg IAP. It’s got long runways, a pre-war ANG presence with comms and support facilities (Commando Solo EC-130s), sees a lot of traffic from 89th MAW aircraft doing training, is convenient to a few COG/COOP sites, and has water on half its perimeter. In T2K it probably benefits from a generally larger presence of security forces at NSA Mechanicsburg, New Cumberland Army Depot, and the redeployment of any remaining PA ARNG forces from Indiantown Gap. Unfortunately it abuts two urban areas, is overlooked by high ground, is on the wrong bank of the river for use as a barrier to foot movement, and is right off 283 and the PA turnpike bringing the hordes from Philly via Lancaster and reading. It’d be a little easier to crack than Pittsburgh IAP.

[chico20854]

December 27, 1997

Prince Jungi of Trondheim is crowned King Haakon VIII of Norway.

In Boston, a rash of shootings and robberies prompts Carlucci to organize a private army to ensure the protection of the UBF warehouses. With the help of Vietnam combat veteran and longtime friend Captain Thomas R. Holmes, Carlucci begins organizing the UBF Marines. Holmes, director of Carlucci's A1 Security Guard and Courier Service, is convinced that complete civil collapse is at hand. Carlucci's avowed goal of preserving law and order appeals to Holmes and is quoted regularly during recruiting drives. The UBF's policy of never asking where you came from or who you were, together with the prospect of regular meals, appeals to large numbers of young men. Lavish funding, diverted from the UBF treasury, and a substantial stockpile of loot from Carlucci's black market operations provide ample equipment for the UBF forces.

During the riots in the UK, the Red Devils (the hooligan element of the Manchester United Football Club’s supporters) are feared for their casual use of violence. When martial law is declared, the army begins shooting them on sight, so they leave Manchester.

Unofficially,

French and Belgian military planners meet in the former NATO headquarters outside Brussels to determine a solution to the shared refugee crisis. Both nations, with food, fuel and electricity rationed, have filled every hotel and hostel bed, holiday camp and excess military barracks with refugees from the fighting in Central Europe.

In northwestern Poland, V Corps drive begins to waver as supplies run low. The corps' artillery brigades can fire off over a thousand rounds a day, yet the available supply for the day is less than 200. Fuel is also running low, and the corps pushes forward using the remaining fuel in its armored vehicles' tanks.

RainbowSix adds the strands that held UK society together are unraveling with ever increasing swiftness, and as the year draws to a close the outlook for many is bleak. In many areas the rule of law has collapsed. The Government has lost control of much of the West Midlands and large parts of Manchester are under a dusk to dawn curfew, with violators risking being shot on sight by the Army. With the situation at home rapidly deteriorating, two Territorial Battalions have to be brought back from Germany to help enforce order. In addition to more standard measures police officers evacuating the Sizewell Nuclear Power Station leave a number of signs warning that the site is heavily radioactive, even though it is not, in fact, radioactive. The Army has stripped the Ministry of Defence site at Donnington, which was one of the largest military stores in Western Europe, of virtually anything useful. The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site, which was built to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste products, is safely shut down

The Soviet defense of Dezful is down to just six buildings in the city center; the commander of the 24th Infantry Division details two battalions (one American and the IPA 56th Independent Infantry Battalion) to contain the Soviets while the division support command and engineer regiment clear lines of communications through and around liverated areas of the city.

[chico20854]

I'm having tech issues while out of town. I'll resume posting next week. That gives me some more time to think about the Franco-Belgian invasion and double check the canon nuclear target list as well.

[pmulcahy11b]

Why was SHAPE missed in the targeting?

[Homer]

I always wondered how most of military infrastructure and support base managed to evaporate in a little under three years of broken backed warfare. Parts of Western Europe and Korea circa late 80s early 90s were almost carpeted with US combat support, combat service support, and headquarters units and installations. There’d be personnel losses due to the conflict, stripping of units for replacements, and physical destruction of facilities but you’d have to have something left to support the fight. One of the best parts about Chico’s work is the attention he’s paying to the supporting and sustaining elements of each side.

[castlebravo92]

Why was SHAPE missed in the targeting?

What is SHAPE?

[kato13]

What is SHAPE?

Supreme_Headquarters_Allied_Powers_Europe

[Homer]

What is SHAPE?

It sits in Soignes, Belgium. Used to be Cateau. Mons is right down the way. Mind the slag heaps.

SHAPE is the military headquarters of NATO.

[ToughOmbres]

I always wondered how most of military infrastructure and support base managed to evaporate in a little under three years of broken backed warfare. Parts of Western Europe and Korea circa late 80s early 90s were almost carpeted with US combat support, combat service support, and headquarters units and installations. There’d be personnel losses due to the conflict, stripping of units for replacements, and physical destruction of facilities but you’d have to have something left to support the fight. One of the best parts about Chico’s work is the attention he’s paying to the supporting and sustaining elements of each side.

My take-

In both real life and the world of Twilight:2000 the US military's grasp of logistics is incredibly good. Even the cavernous warehouses and igloos in the kasernes would be emptied relatively quickly once the "balloon went up" with the Warsaw Pact.
In real life (and I suspect in T2K) ordnance and fuel needs would quickly exhaust those pre-war stockpiles. There would be a ramp up of production at home (industries were already producing for China in their fight against the USSR) but even with increased output you would have:

1. Steady drain on supplies.
2. WP interdiction of logistics on their way to the front
3. Some pilferage and waste/spoilage.

Put another way, no matter what margin for "extra" is built in, armor, artillery and Infantry would probably expend it quickly. The old Quartermaster adage of "keep the best, issue the rest" would go out the window by, say, the second year of the war.

In purely game terms, once the first use of nuclear weapons takes place, you begin to see further supply disruptions (workers afraid of going to work, remaining with families). In addition the game doesn't work as well if PC's can always find FASCAM rounds and plenty of laser guided ordnance.

Just some thoughts.

[castlebravo92]

My take-

In both real life and the world of Twilight:2000 the US military's grasp of logistics is incredibly good. Even the cavernous warehouses and igloos in the kasernes would be emptied relatively quickly once the "balloon went up" with the Warsaw Pact.
In real life (and I suspect in T2K) ordnance and fuel needs would quickly exhaust those pre-war stockpiles. There would be a ramp up of production at home (industries were already producing for China in their fight against the USSR) but even with increased output you would have:

1. Steady drain on supplies.
2. WP interdiction of logistics on their way to the front
3. Some pilferage and waste/spoilage.

Put another way, no matter what margin for "extra" is built in, armor, artillery and Infantry would probably expend it quickly. The old Quartermaster adage of "keep the best, issue the rest" would go out the window by, say, the second year of the war.

In purely game terms, once the first use of nuclear weapons takes place, you begin to see further supply disruptions (workers afraid of going to work, remaining with families). In addition the game doesn't work as well if PC's can always find FASCAM rounds and plenty of laser guided ordnance.

Just some thoughts.

Yeah, the war in Ukraine is showing just how fast things would get destroyed in a high intensity war. Russia has lost over 3000 tanks and 100,000 men (dead, not including injured) in a year. Sounds like a lot, but doesn't sound like a lot when the USSR had around 60k tanks in 1989. But then again, the USSR was fighting China for a year and half then most of NATO for a year before things went nuclear. China would be a lot harder nut to crack than Ukraine, and Leopard 2s, Challengers, Abrams, + airpower would chew up a lot of vehicles really fast.

One of the stats that has came out of the Ukraine war (and about NATO being prepared for war) is that the UK had stocks on hand for about 2 days of warfare at the usage rate the Russians were using every day. Even assuming a post-Cold War draw down, the US was and is the only country in NATO with the logistical capacity to wage a high intensity conflict for any significant duration.

[Homer]

No doubt that the warstocks would go quickly and the exchange would handicap or prevent new production and distribution. This would make the sustainment effort all the more critical. USAREUR had a three star theater sustainment command (21st TAACOM) providing both materials management and DS/GS/Depot level maintenance and refurbishment. 19th TAACOM performed many of the same functions in Korea. One of the functions of both commands was battle damage repair and return to service of material.

Once the material flow from CONUS dries up, as Chico has shown, it looks like the maintenance organizations will be in greater demand to fix, fab, or cannibalize recovered systems and get them back in the fight. Likewise with material management and POL. Ammunition and other consumables have become a limited commodity, much more so than in the days of relative abundance pre-exchange; some structure would have to be established to manage material and ensure logistics prep for offensives. Husbanding high-end munitions like FASCAM, copperhead, TOW, etc would likely be one of their roles. If you want to play with organized forces (CENTCOM, Korea, etc) you can put a controlled supply rate on the high tech munitions.

By 98, the logistics effort may have expanded to include farming and ration production (salted, smoked, stc), reloading small arms ammo, distilling, clothing and personal equipment repair and reissue, salvage, etc. Centralizing production under a headquarters allows USAREUR to prioritize the logistics effort, even if it is carried out locally by every unit. Part of the preparations for an offensive might be the issue of preserved rations, refurbished material, distilled fuel, and what remains of prewar ammunition to high priority units. Likewise, units manning static defenses may be issued with few or no such munitions.

This doesn’t mean a game would have to have the characters well resourced. 5th ID and the other US forces involved in Ancient Mariner may have been issued with the most complete available scales of equipment and supplies before jumping off, but by the time the end comes at Kalisz they’re likely to have shot or consumed most of that stockpile in the offensive and the fighting detailed in “Death of a Division”. The remnants left constitute the players’ starting equipment. They may have a full load for their Bradley or Abrams, but there is nothing coming behind that. A few good fights and they may be looking for a less capable but easier to maintain ride and more sustainable weapons.

[Ursus Maior]

Yeah, the war in Ukraine is showing just how fast things would get destroyed in a high intensity war. Russia has lost over 3000 tanks and 100,000 men (dead, not including injured) in a year. Sounds like a lot, but doesn't sound like a lot when the USSR had around 60k tanks in 1989. But then again, the USSR was fighting China for a year and half then most of NATO for a year before things went nuclear. China would be a lot harder nut to crack than Ukraine, and Leopard 2s, Challengers, Abrams, + airpower would chew up a lot of vehicles really fast.And then, remember that the Ukraine war isn't particularly "high intensity" when measured to a potential NATO vs. USSR (or Pact, depending on background) war as envisioned during the 1980s. It's probably hard to fathom for today's readers of news, but the ongoing war almost completely lacks two dimensions of warfare - naval and aerial - as envisioned for WW3 and it certainly lacks several orders of magnitude in land warfare.

WW3 would have seen not 150,000-200,000 Soviets invade a country of 40 million with a GDP less than Sweden or Belgium (in 2021). Instead, the two biggest power blocs in history, plus China (and a good deal of other countries) would go toe to toe with each other and grind their forces against each other. There's good reasons, why warplanners were looking at 10-30 days scenarios: not a lot would have been standing after that, yet only the second mobilization wave would have been concluded for NATO (the next would have been after 90 days and then after 6 months).

[chico20854]

By 98, the logistics effort may have expanded to include farming and ration production (salted, smoked, stc), reloading small arms ammo, distilling, clothing and personal equipment repair and reissue, salvage, etc. Centralizing production under a headquarters allows USAREUR to prioritize the logistics effort, even if it is carried out locally by every unit. Part of the preparations for an offensive might be the issue of preserved rations, refurbished material, distilled fuel, and what remains of prewar ammunition to high priority units. Likewise, units manning static defenses may be issued with few or no such munitions.

Thanks for this Homer! A question for the hive mind: how effective are breweries for producing alcohol for fuel, etither methanol or ethanol? I'm aware of the vast numbers of breweries all throughout Germany, certainly many times more common than distilleries. While units would likely carry smaller stills (like the small and medium stills in the v1 equipment list), it seems likely that units in static positions would want to take advantage of industrial-scale alcohol production capability to build up those stocks.

[kato13]

Thanks for this Homer! A question for the hive mind: how effective are breweries for producing alcohol for fuel, etither methanol or ethanol? I'm aware of the vast numbers of breweries all throughout Germany, certainly many times more common than distilleries. While units would likely carry smaller stills (like the small and medium stills in the v1 equipment list), it seems likely that units in static positions would want to take advantage of industrial-scale alcohol production capability to build up those stocks.

I spent A LOT of time on this in the past. Still weight seemed too high by nearly an order of magnitude for the production volumes. The exception to this is when the fermentation process is ongoing due to liquid weight (I suppose the large volume could be a factor in the "weight"). Therefore I see units needing to be static for the actual production (other reasons as well such as needing fires, having to preprocess the biomass, etc). I suppose reducing still weight by 90% reflects having perfect equipment and maybe 66% to 75% reduction due to ad hoc construction would fit the game better. With these numbers I can see more stills being in the field. The biggest issue in the field would be the refining of the alcohol to 100% as simple distillation only takes you to 95%.

When looking for realism related to alcohol production in game bumps up against a lot of real world problems (like not being able to make it from wood without genetically modified yeast or bacteria we are just now refining). Agricultural waste and things like sawgrass and switchgrass have tremendous potential to be used, but they require more preprocessing which makes the industrial production easier to explain. In the field you would probably need to use something you would much rather save for eating.

[castlebravo92]

I spent A LOT of time on this in the past. Still weight seemed too high by nearly an order of magnitude for the production volumes. The exception to this is when the fermentation process is ongoing due to liquid weight (I suppose the large volume could be a factor in the "weight"). Therefore I see units needing to be static for the actual production (other reasons as well such as needing fires, having to preprocess the biomass, etc). I suppose reducing still weight by 90% reflects having perfect equipment and maybe 66% to 75% reduction due to ad hoc construction would fit the game better. With these numbers I can see more stills being in the field. The biggest issue in the field would be the refining of the alcohol to 100% as simple distillation only takes you to 95%.

When looking for realism related to alcohol production in game bumps up against a lot of real world problems (like not being able to make it from wood without genetically modified yeast or bacteria we are just now refining). Agricultural waste and things like sawgrass and switchgrass have tremendous potential to be used, but they require more preprocessing which makes the industrial production easier to explain. In the field you would probably need to use something you would much rather save for eating.

Destructive distillation is the low-tech way to go with methanol production from wood. It's not horribly efficient, but it works, it's fast, and doesn't require yeast and fermentation for a couple of weeks, which is one of the fatal flaws with ethanol production. Likely doable for a character party on the move.

Another way apparently is to heat dry wood to generate wood gas, and use a catalytic process to generate methanol from the wood gas. Not very low tech, and probably not appropriate for a character party on the run.

On a the complex industrialization side of the fence, methanol to gasoline is a thing, and as I posted before, would be easier to get up and running than converting a bunch of 1996 manufactured cars to running on ethanol or methanol. Production wouldn't be enough to get us back to an urban commuter society, but might be enough for the military to keep some aircraft up in the area, generators running for critical activities, and some vehicles running, and given a large cantonment or organized area, accumulate reserves sufficient for things like the Summer 2000 offensive, except using gas instead of alcohol.

[kato13]

Destructive distillation is the low-tech way to go with methanol production from wood. It's not horribly efficient, but it works, it's fast, and doesn't require yeast and fermentation for a couple of weeks, which is one of the fatal flaws with ethanol production. Likely doable for a character party on the move.

Another way apparently is to heat dry wood to generate wood gas, and use a catalytic process to generate methanol from the wood gas. Not very low tech, and probably not appropriate for a character party on the run.

On a the complex industrialization side of the fence, methanol to gasoline is a thing, and as I posted before, would be easier to get up and running than converting a bunch of 1996 manufactured cars to running on ethanol or methanol. Production wouldn't be enough to get us back to an urban commuter society, but might be enough for the military to keep some aircraft up in the area, generators running for critical activities, and some vehicles running, and given a large cantonment or organized area, accumulate reserves sufficient for things like the Summer 2000 offensive, except using gas instead of alcohol.

We have discussed some of this before in my methanol thread
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?p=93932#post93932

Maybe we move discussion there to keep this thread on track.

[chico20854]

December 28, 1997

Vancouver and Chiliwack, British Columbia are struck by Soviet nuclear weapons.

The Bronx has suffered over 800,000 fatalities in December and afterwards. Queens suffers half again as many casualties in the food and race riots as Manhattan (over 1.2 million fatalities in Queens, as opposed to over 800,000 in Manhattan).

Unofficially,

RainbowSix notes that Edinburgh, Scotland’s pre-war capital, is not directly targeted by the Soviets, but sufferes some loss of life and damage from the strikes on nearby Grangemouth and Rosyth, with fall out drifting over the western suburbs. Large numbers of people have fled the city in the last few months, with many heading for the perceived safety of the largely rural Border regions. Those who remain suffer from starvation, disease, and civil disorder.

Glasgow has been devastated by the Soviet nuclear attacks, with the death toll exceeding half a million people. Some refugees try to enter the area around Dumfries and Lockerbie in the aftermath of the nuclear strike on Glasgow, but most are turned back in a series of often deadly clashes with the locals.

French and Belgian military leaders work through the night on plans to halt the refugee flow using their nation's still largely intact military forces. They reach the conclusion that the only reasonable solution is to occupy German and Dutch territory, securing the Rhine as a hard barrier.

In northwestern Poland, the Polish 7th Marine Division is the last unit to evacuate the near-pocket between II MEF, V US Corps and the Baltic. The Polish marines take heavy losses from their advancing American, Dutch and German counterparts, leaving the Polish division a nearly empty shell.

In Bavaria, American GLCM cruise missiles are fired at Rome, Milan and Naples, Italy to eliminate Italy's ability to prosecute the war; the Italian III and IV Corps in southern Germany are already severly hampered by the closure of the mountain passes by weather and American nuclear strikes, forcing their supplies to be routed around the Alps through eastern Austria.

The carriers Roosevelt and Eisenhower, operating off the central Norwegian coast, launch one of their remaining few airstrikes before running out of aviation fuel and spare parts for the aircraft (nearly a quarter of their combined air groups have already been relegated to "hangar queen" status, serving as parts donors as maintenance crews are forced to cannibalize to keep airplanes operational). The strikes, using conventional munitions, knock out the transformer yard and ancillary facilities at the Kola nuclear power plant near Murmansk, disconnecting it from the power grid and allowing the operators to shut it down safely rather than induce a nuclear disaster that would contaminate the Arctic for centuries.

The American light frigate USS Marchand, on patrol in the North Atlantic, nearly capsizes after being struck by a wave coming from the aft quarter. The ship, built as a war emergency measure despite the Bear/Famous-class Coast Guard cutters it shares a design with's reputation as poor sea boats, loses its CIWS mount and its HU-65 helicopter, shaken about in its hangar, is a total loss. The captain orders a return to the nearest port for emergency repairs. Its sister the USS Petit is dispatched from the North Sea at 16 knots to Portsmouth, England to escort two ships on a special mission.

In central Dezful, the remaining Soviet troops (with a few Tudeh diehards fighting alongside) continue to put up fierce resistance to surrounding Iranian and American troops despite dwindling reserves of food, water and ammunition.

USANVCENT/Fifth Fleet dispatches the former Coast Guard Cutter USCG Thetis (newly arrived with the last supply convoy from home) to Diego Garcia, where it is to land a team (by one of the ship's small boats or its helicopter) to identify what facilities remain intact, what the repair effort required may be and what resources can be salvaged. The ship's complement includes a team of engineer planners from the 416th Engineer Command to assist with the effort.

An American B-2 bomber loitering over the Urals (an increasingly uncommon occurrence as fuel shortages cut back the number of sorties) catches a rare prize - a rail-mobile SS-24 missile train emerging from a tunnel, where it has been hiding between launches. It is quickly dispatched by a lone B61 nuclear bomb; it has never been determined what targets were spared by the attack, or, indeed, whether it was emerging to attack or simply to reposition.

[Ewan]

December 28, 1997

Glasgow has been devastated by the Soviet nuclear attacks, with the death toll exceeding half a million people.


Well this is where I die in the T2K universe

[chico20854]

December 29, 1997

Nothing official for today!

The last known commmunication is transmitted by Secretary General Sauronski from the safety of his bunker complex under Zhiguli, which was severely damaged when by an American 9-megaton bomb struck the fortress on November 30. His ultimate fate has never been determined, despite decades of speculation, rumors and inquiries.

An alliance of two Canadian biker gangs, the Stone Machine and the Bandits, cross the border into North Dakota and raid the Cobray firearms plant six miles south of the border. They overwhelm the security force and make away with hundreds of MAC-10 SMGs and Street Sweeper shotguns.

A tragedy occurs on the Ohio River, when the dinner cruise boat Belle of the Ohio catches fire and burns to the waterline. The boat, only certified by he Coast Guard to carry passengers for a maximum of four hours, had been pressed into service to evacuate residents of Cincinnati, Ohio to rural communities in northwestern Kentucky. Fue was in short supply, and survivors indicate that the crew was unable to run the heating system on the boat and that some evacuees on the top deck (the ship was carrying over 1500 passengers, despite being rated for 400) lit fires to try to keep warm. A precise death toll was never compiled as no passenger manifest had been prepared and many bodies washed downstream in the icy river.

RainbowSix notes that the nuclear strikes see waves of refugees flee the cities of Yorkshire, leading to often deadly clashes with communities who have not been directly targeted. In some cases refugees take over a community, then start fighting amongst themselves, and a number of towns and villages are now little more than burned out shells occupied (and fought over) by several different groups, whilst others have become fortified enclaves, where strangers are unwelcome and will be turned away, by force if necessary. Tyneside and Wearside both escape nuclear attack (quite how this happened remained a mystery to most people in the region). Northampton is ravaged by riots that started off over food but ended up in wanton destruction and looting. Twenty miles to the north of Northampton, the town of Corby, home to a plant that manufactured steel tubes and a nuclear power station before the war, suceeds in shutting down both facilities.

The 221st Military Police Brigade (US Army Reserve) arrives at the military port facility at Port Hueneme, California (secured by Navy Seebees) (officially) to assume internal security duties in Southern Califonia. (Unofficially, it is tasked with bringing the near-renegade 5th California Brigade to heel).

Shortly before midnight, several small teams from the French 1st Marine Infantry Paratroopers Regiment and 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment slip over the border into the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany west of the Rhine. They are tasked to determine the conditions on the ground, including surviving military units and facilities, concentrations of refugees and the condition of transportaion routes and chokepoints.

The Armee d'laire (French Air Force) issues a desperate call for all flightworthy transports overseas (throughout Africa and the Middle East, plus a lone C-130H in Frencch Guyana) to immediately return to Metropolitan France.

The Bundeswehr command begins preparations for an attack in Czechoslovakia in hopes of forcing the Czechs to withdraw their forces from southern Germany, clearing the way for the reconquest of the occupied areas. Supplies and reinforcements are brought forward; many of both have been stripped from terriorial units, especially those west of the Rhine, which are unlikely to see combat in the medium term and which are nearly entirely devoted to managing refugees and deserters.

King Haakon of Norway makes his first official public appearance when the "Arctic Fox" visits with refugees in the countryside outside Oslo.

The light frigate USS Petit meets up with its charges, a freighter and a large, aged troop transport, off Portsmouth and proceeds southwest, making sure to stay clear of French territorial waters, where a squadron of surface combatants has sortied from the French naval base of Lorient.

The US Navy's Sixth Fleet, facing the collapse of its logistic and repair infrastructuer and extensive damage to Gibraltar and Norfolk, makes the difficult decision to abandon the damaged USS America, which has been anchored in Sigonella, Sicily since it was damaged by mines and torpedoes in early October. The remaining crew (many have been transferred to other units or reassigned to shoreside security duties) work on transferring valuable materiel to the other American carrier in the Mediterranean, the USS John F. Kennedy. Three civilian cargo ships (the Berlin Freedom, the Cape Archway and the Panamanian Amer Asha) are also in port, ready to take on additional supplies and to transfer excess crewmembers to other locations, as Sixth Fleet has made the decision to abandon Sigonella as well.

[chico20854]

December 30, 1997

Dutch units on internal security duties suffer from desertions and poor morale as the nation suffers in the chaotic aftermath of Soviet nuclear strikes.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship El Paso Freedom is delivered in Portland, Oregon. The shipyard will struggle to complete another ship, but it is never delivered.

The Soviets launch what will turn out to be their last strategic nuclear attack on the US, with SS-N-18 missiles from the Delta III-class SSBN K-424 striking targets in the southeast. Dobbins Air Force Base, home of the US Air Force Reserve Command and the C-130 production line northwest of Atlanta, is hit with a 450-kiloton warhead (from a single-warhead SS-N-18), while Warner Robbins Air Force Base to the southeast is plastered by three 100-kiloton warheads from a SS-N-18, neutralizing the PAVE PAWS SLBM-detection radar. Fort Gillem and Fort Gordon are each hit by two 100-kiloton warheads from the same missile, ccausing heavy losses to the troops there.

RainbowSix reports that large numbers of people flee the cities of the West Midlands. This leads to a number of violent clashes between locals and refugees. Birmingham, the largest city in the UK outside London, suffers a complete collapse of law and order when the authorities, hopelessly outnumbered and having already lost large swathes of the city to the mobs, decide to withdraw all troops and police to prevent them from being overrun. (Whilst most Army units obey and pull out, a number of police officers, most of whom live in the same communities that are being abandoned, disobey the order and stay put).

Though not targeted by the Soviets, rioting and looting takes its toll on Birmingham, and much of the city is reduced to burned out ruins. Much of the southern part of Staffordshire descends into chaos as waves of refugees enter the area following the destruction of Wolverhampton and Coventry. Warwickshire also suffers due to its proximity to the West Midlands conurbation, with large numbers of refugees entering the northern part of the county from Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Coventry. Several towns are effectively taken over by refugees, who force out the former occupants, and violent clashes between different groups are commonplace, particularly in the area bordering what remains of Coventry.

French and Belgian military authorities implement a nationwide civilian communications blackout - the telephone system is turned off for civilians, as are telegraph and postal services. The high-speed TGV rail network is shut down as well (the airlines and civil aviation having been grounded following the nuclear strikes on French refineries earlier in the month), and a curfew imposed within 100 km of the border. This lockdown succeeds in cleariing the transportation routes and preventing word from slipping out of the massive troop movements towards the nations broders.

American missile squadrons in Europe launch another round of strikes on Warsaw Pact capitals as SACEUR, largely out of communication with President Munson and other NATO heads of state, is determined to eliminate Warsaw Pact allies' ability to continue waging the war. Prague, Budapest and Sofia are all struck by cruise missiles. killing additional hundreds of thousands of people. SACEUR is forced to use cruise missiles for the strikes by the dire state of his tactical air fleet, which has been ravaged by over a year of action, nuclear and conventional attacks on air bases and a near-collapse of the supply situation as desperate refugees look to the military to provide relief in the harsh winter conditions.

A French squadron sallies from the Channel Fleet's base in Cherbourg, preceded by minesweepers and operating under the cover of Atlantique patrol aircraft and Mirage interceptors to ward off any observers.

The Soviet 7th Army begins to crumble as it comes under fierce Allied attack from both north and south. Air operations over the front have largely halted as shortages of fuel, spare parts and muniions, not to mention replacement aircraft and pilots, all mount.

[Homer]

NSA is taking a beating. The HQs at Fort Meade is gone, as is the regional center (RSOC) at Gordon. The regional site at Kunia is probably compromised by the situation on Oahu, and the site at Augsburg probably destroyed in conventional fighting. That leaves the regional site at Medina Annex in San Antonio and the complex at Buckley.

There’s still collectors out there as long as satellites stay up, ships are still at sea, and aircraft fly, but the ability to process and correlate the data has been greatly reduced.

[Claidheamh]

NSA is taking a beating. The HQs at Fort Meade is gone, as is the regional center (RSOC) at Gordon. The regional site at Kunia is probably compromised by the situation on Oahu, and the site at Augsburg probably destroyed in conventional fighting. That leaves the regional site at Medina Annex in San Antonio and the complex at Buckley.

I don't remember if there's a canon ruling on who the NSA sides with (MILGOV or CIVGOV)? I assume that by the end of '98-'99, there's so little left of their equipment, networks, and resources that it hardly matters.

[Homer]

I don't remember if there's a canon ruling on who the NSA sides with (MILGOV or CIVGOV)? I assume that by the end of '98-'99, there's so little left of their equipment, networks, and resources that it hardly matters.

I’d go with the three DoD Combat Support Agencies (DIA, NIMA/NGA, NSA) all following DIA’s lead and siding with MILGOV. NRO as well since they’re also under DoD.

DIA would have been hit by the loss of their HQs at Bolling AFB, National Maritime intelligence center (NMIC) in Suitland, and Armed Forces Medical Intel Center (AFMIC) at Detrick. but they’ve still got analytic capacity through the service intel centers at NGIC and NASIC plus any dispersed personnel. What’s going to be hard for them is the Directorate of Ops at DIA is tiny. OTL Pre 2001 there were very few case officers.

NSA took a huge analytical and collection hit. In addition to the facilities losses, ground based collection sites (elephant cages) have been lost or destroyed, which will magnify the effects of declining air, maritime, and degrading overhead collection. The bright spot is Buckley has the mission ground stations for overhead collection, which is probably the most reliable remaining collection method.

NIMAs in a pretty good position. The facilities around in DC are probably compromised, but the main production facilities in Missouri are probably intact. They’re going to suffer from the loss of collection, but they maintain the mapping data as well, which will be valuable post exchange.

NRO is likely compromised due to its location. With the loss of the launch sites in Florida and California and satellite manufacturing capacity, they’re likely focused on using their remaining assets to keep the surviving overhead platforms viable.

Just my thoughts.

[Spartan-117]

I'm with Homer - they go MILGOV.

Tara Romaneasca has a short section on the impact of the NSA's loss and MILGOV alignment on page 93, which is informative. Because when the NSA has a problem generating COMSEC KEYMAT, it's a whole of government problem that point. It's not like most Agencies are using any other COMSEC material - certainly not for national security information.

So reconstituting that capability by the NSA for MILGOV will be a priority, as will CIVGOV seeking alternative encryption systems that don't rely on NSA KEYMAT, which they can't get. Again, the new Romania sourcebook has an entry on this issue, with DOE taking up the mantel on one-time pad production, "and hand-building a limited number of radio encryption modules not based on existing DOD or NSA software architecture."

[castlebravo92]

I'm with Homer - they go MILGOV.

Tara Romaneasca has a short section on the impact of the NSA's loss and MILGOV alignment on page 93, which is informative. Because when the NSA has a problem generating COMSEC KEYMAT, it's a whole of government problem that point. It's not like most Agencies are using any other COMSEC material - certainly not for national security information.

So reconstituting that capability by the NSA for MILGOV will be a priority, as will CIVGOV seeking alternative encryption systems that don't rely on NSA KEYMAT, which they can't get. Again, the new Romania sourcebook has an entry on this issue, with DOE taking up the mantel on one-time pad production, "and hand-building a limited number of radio encryption modules not based on existing DOD or NSA software architecture."

Yeah, there isn't a split until 1999 anyway, since through May 1998 there is technically a POTUS in charge of everything.

[Ursus Maior]

My take-

[...] The old Quartermaster adage of "keep the best, issue the rest" would go out the window by, say, the second year of the war.


I'd say, that goes out the window much, much quicker. It's a all hands on deck war very much from the beginning. That means big politics will want to micromanage quickly. So they start issuing orders for single divisions or brigades even. Sometimes certain elements in the militaries' apparatuses might be able to stop stupidities like this early on, but sometimes they won't.

Look at the current conflict in Ukraine: The good stuff went out the warehouses starting in June. That was 5 months into the war. The German Bundeswehr had exactly no SPGs to spare and no IFVs either. The industry didn't either. The Panzerhaubitze 2000 went out anyway and now, after the German defense minister has kept her hand on our 50 year old Marder IFVs for 10 1/2 months, the Bundeskanzler announced, we're giving them away nonetheless.

Yes, the numbers are minuscule compared to what was available in the mid-90s, but that doesn't change the general idea. I think, if in T2K a US ally would have asked for F-16s to switch from F-5s or F-104s in the face of a Soviet invasion, the US would easily have donated/sold/lend-and-leased a full wing. And why not? The F-16C/D was in full production, why not give away Block 10 frames from an ANG wing and reequip the ANG anew down the line with brand new F-16Cs? If that keeps the Soviets out of "nameless ally 6,000 miles to the East", it's better for them to fight on their soil (or not) than for the Soviets to creep closer and closer and eventually attack US forces directly.

I'd say, by year two of the Twilight War, we'd see ramping up of production for M40 recoilless rifles and M3 Carl Gustaf and their munitions. The former was in use by National Guard units during the last decade of the Cold War and the latter had just been introduced to the Rangers. With the ramping up of productions of ATGMs and other guided munitions since the war loomed or started, certain parts will become rather scarce. A recoilless rifle is a good support weapon for many applications, and with tandem shape charges becoming available to the M3, it can replace shoulder launched single purpose weapons like the Panzerfaust 3 (which, ironically, was bought to replace the Carl Gustaf M2). Certainly, neither the M40 nor the M3 can fully replace TOW, Javelin, Milan & Co., but better to have than have not. And once prime tier MBTs become sparse and their shiny sensor's start going dark, anti-tank warfare tools from the 60s and 70s will face their contemporary tanks (with minor upgrades). And then, a Carl Gustaf with tandem charge warheads will be king and thousands will go into all the light infantry divisions the US can still muster after 1997 and by early 1998.

[chico20854]

December 31, 1997

The Soviet 236th Rear Area Protection Division in Alma-Ata in the Central Asian Military district deserts and declares the city a "free city."

Unofficially,

Year end finds the world in dire shape. The nuclear exchange, which has expended less than 1200 of the world's nearly 50,000 nuclear weapons, has killed over 10 million people directly while halting the world's transportation and communications systems and set the stage for mass suffering on a scale not seen since medieval times. Conventional fighting has raged across Iran, Poland, Romania, North Korea and southern Germany, leaving the land and its hapless occupants in shambles. Millions of civilians have become refugees fleeing fighting, cold and darkness, seeking comfort in imagined safety somewhere other than their homes. The world's militaries have been torn apart, the shiny weapons and proud ranks of soldiers of 1995 reduced to desperate ragged forces struggling to obey the orders of political masters who cannot fully grasp the scale of losses sustained.

The final American strategic nuclear attack on the USSR occurs, with strikes on military production sites (a Su-27 aircraft plant, submarine-building yard and steel mill) and military targets (the headquarters of the PVO 8th Corps, bomber base, nuclear weapons storage site) in and near Kosmolosk-na-Amure in the Far East delivered by 12 TLAM cruise missiles fired from the attack submarine USS Columbus. Munson also authorizes attacks on two other Soviet strategic targets - the transportation hub and production center of Omsk in western Siberia (where the headquarters of the Strategic Rocket Forces' 33rd Guards Missile Army, the tank plant, a refinery and an Antonov aircraft plant were all hit) and Chita in far eastern Siberia, location of headquarers of the Transbaikal Military Distrct, 53rd Guards Missile Division and 50th PVO Corps as well as several bomber bases and the city's railroad station, further hampering operations on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Those cities are each hit by lone B-1Bs from the 28th Bomb Wing, operating from the remote western Chinese air base; the bombers recovere to the base, where KC-10 tankers are waiting with additional fuel and a reload of B-61 bombs and SRAM II missiles.

In central Alaska much of fighting has come to a halt for the winter. The flow of supplies to both American and Soviet forces has come to a crashing halt, victims of the vast distances and nuclear attacks on the homelands. Both sides find shelter, hoping that the fuel and food supplies on hand will be sufficient to last the winter. The commander of the 25th Corps in Anchorage, however, has other ideas. While the passes into British Columbia from the Alaskan ports seized in the fall have been closed by massive snow falls, the weather along the Alaskan coast east of Anchorage is more mild and Alaska's largest city offers reserves of supplies and wealth unheard of to most Soviet commanders. More importantly, the city's occupation force is composed of battle-hardened Arctic troops and Siberian natives, well adapted to fighting in the harsh winter conditions against an enemy that has likely grown complacent about the threat they are facing. Accordingly, he orders an offensive to drive the remannts of the 47th Infantry Division out of Alaska and launch a successful invasion of Yukon.

At RAF Alconbury, the 95th Reconnaissance Squadron, which operates TR-1 reconnaissance aircraft, assumes control of Detachment 1, 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at RAF Mildenhall as well as the detachment's two SR-71s.

RainbowSix reports a number of MP’s who had not been in London on Black Thursday are under military protection at various bases throughout the country (amongst this group is the Progressive Party’s George Graham). Parliament consists of just over forty MP’s and nearly thirty members of the House of Lords who survived the nuclear attacks and the chaos that followed (many by taking shelter at military bases). A number of MP’s and Peers who survived the nuclear exchanges remain elsewhere in the UK, either unable or unwilling to undertake the potentially hazardous journey to the south of England.

The destroyer USS Morton and container-barge carrier Harbin Carrier arrive off Manila, capital of the Philippines. Due to the unrest ashore following Soviet nuclear strikes the ships remain offshore. A long-range radio message directs the Morton to proceed to the AFRICOM area once it is able to secure additional fuel.

French and Belgian military units from their respective nations reach positions within 5 km of the frontier as darkness falls. The French III Corps has travelled through Belgium to line up along the Dutch border, augmented by French-speaking Belgian territorial troops. Units are issued live ammunition as deeper in France the troops of the 4th Airmobile and 11th Parachute Division are trucked to airfields in preparation for combat drops.

The Soviet 254th Motor-Rifle Division, a high quality unit exhausted by a year of hard combat in Romania, Austria and southern Germany, is withdrawn to Steyr, Austria for rest and to absorb what few replacement men and vehicles arrive in the region.

The light frigate USS Petit and its two charges make a safe passage through the minefields off the ruins of Gibraltar and proceed across the Mediterranean at 16 knots.

[Higgipedia]

I don't remember if there's a canon ruling on who the NSA sides with (MILGOV or CIVGOV)? I assume that by the end of '98-'99, there's so little left of their equipment, networks, and resources that it hardly matters.

I would imagine that the Army and Marines would have moved a lot of their linguists ahead to Europe for the voice intercept mission there, so it would mostly be staffed by Air Force and Navy Linguists as well as civilian employees.

[castlebravo92]

December 31, 1997

The Soviet 236th Rear Area Protection Division in Alma-Ata in the Central Asian Military district deserts and declares the city a "free city."

Unofficially,

Year end finds the world in dire shape. The nuclear exchange, which has expended less than 1200 of the world's nearly 50,000 nuclear weapons, has killed over 10 million people directly

Seems...low.

[chico20854]

January 1, 1998

France seizes the Rhineland west of the Rhine River from Germany and sends its III Corps alongside Belgian units into the Netherlands. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade, a territorial unit holding the Breda-Tilburg area, is attacked by the French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch successfully defend their positions, while the Bundeswehr, with its efforts split between internal security/disaster relief duties and preparing for a counteroffensive in the south, offers less vigorous reistance. Unofficially, French progress is slow. While airborne and heliborne troops are successful in securing key chokepoints near the border, the roads are clogged with abandoned civilian vehicles and the advancing columns are mobbed by swarms of desperate refugees, who assail the advancing troops with requests for food. Armored units are able to deploy their tanks' dozer blades to clear roads, while other formations are forced to shuffle their engineer units to the front; units reliant on trucks or wheeled APCs make minimal forward progress through the morass of humanity.

NATO operations in the Mediterranean (competing with the French) are dependent on the last sizeable operating refinery in North Africa, at Bizerte, Tunisia.

The new year starts off with good news for the Americans in the Persian Gulf. 2/325th Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division makes contact with the forward outposts of the 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade (Georgia National Guard). The American paratroopers are an incredible sight. Many of them are wearing a mixture of Kurdish clothing and US camouflage fatigues. The 82nd's commander, Major General Jack Joyner, rides out on horseback looking for all the world like a Kurdish hill chief.

The beginning of the year also sees the French FAR in action against pro-Soviet rebels in Senegal, Mauritania and the Horn of Africa.

Unofficially,

In a briefing about plans for 1998, the acting head of FEMA reveals the existence of the 37 strategic reserve stockpiles to President Munson. Given the quantities of food on hand, remaining electrical and petroleum production and security situation, Munson concurs with the recommendation not to reveal their existence to state authorities and local FEMA officials and to reevaluate the decision in the fall, when the food and other supplies in the caches might be more strategically directed. The stockpiles established and maintained separately by the state of Texas are broken open by their guard forces (dispersed platoons of the Texas State Guard and guards at state penitentaries) and used to sustain their ongoing operations.

In northern California, leaders of the Hells Angels and affiliated outlaw motorcycle clubs/gangs gather following the activation of the agreed-upon Plan Alpha worked out a year ago. Over 1500 members of the clubs, all heavily armed, have come together at a ranch owned by a club member just south of the Oregon border. A similar gathering is occurring in southeastern Ohio, despite the damage done by nuclear strikes on Ohio and Kentucky.

RainbowSix reports that Headquarters, US Naval Forces Europe (USNAVEUR) is reformed at the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth.

The Belgian Army's I Corps' two divisions make little progress on the first day of the invasion as they struggle in difficult terrain around Maastrcicht and Aachen, the corps' initial objective. While the Dutch resistance in the region is disorganized (Dutch forces largely consist of lightly equipped territorial security companies and platoons, which are highly motivated and able to take advantage of prepared defensive structures due to the former presence of NATO high command posts in the area). To their south, the French I Corps overruns Luxembourg, easily overwhelming the nub of the Luxembourgois Army that survived the previous year's action in Norway. The French II Corps' offensive moves north along the level terrain along the west bank of the Rhine, which has become crowded with makeshift refugee camps.

RainbowSix comments that while the British Ambassador in Paris protests the “act of unprovoked aggression”, the UK is in no position to offer more tangible support to either the Netherlands or Germany.

The remaining Red Army command staff at "Moscow Center" (actually a bunker outside the city) decide to call up the remaining mobilization-only divisions to combat the growing internal unrest and prepare for a final offensive that will wipe NATO forces from Western Europe. Making this happen, however, will prove challenging, to say the least.

[chico20854]

Seems...low.

It probably is!!!

[chico20854]

January 2, 1998

Rationing around the world becomes severe; many civilians perish in the winter.

Relations between the U.S. and France deteriorate. The U.S. government views the invasion of the Rhineland as self-aggrandizement at the expense of Germany. There is not much they can do about it, however, as all their available forces are tied down elsewhere.

Survivors of the 8th Marine Regiment are reformed in northern Germany and reunited with the 2nd Marine Division.

The 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division, a hardened, veteran division that has been at the core of the Group of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan (the remnant Soviet occupation force that remained behind when 40th Army entered Iran in early 1997), is ordered into Iran to shore up the crumbling Soviet position.

Unofficcially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Lubbock Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas. The shipyard will struggle to complete another ship, but it is never delivered.

Elsewhere in the US, military production is slowly grinding to a halt as stocks of raw materials and parts run out, electricity fails as the grid remains down and backup generators fail or run dry and workers are evacuated or lost to civil unrest. Even when final production sites remain operational (such as the F-15 plant in St. Louis, Missouri), the breakdown of the transportation system and damage from the attacks on the US and subsequent disorder brings production to a halt, with the last F100-PW-229 engine delivered today.

In Anchorage, Alaska the troops of the Soviet 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade and 13th Guards Air Assault Division move east, with the former unit's hovercraft escorting convoys of seized school and city transit busses carrying the paratroopers east of Valdez towards the Canadian border. The remnants of the 130th Air Assault Brigade establish a blocking position to prevent the American 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) at Fort Greely from cutting off the attacking force, while the 130th Motor-Rifle Division remains on occupation duty in Anchorage and along the road to the east.

The Dutch government informs SACEUR that it is wthdrawing all its forces in Germany, except for the 9th Marine Combat Group along the Baltic Coast, from NATO command and devoting them to home defense. SACEUR concurs and orders the release of sufficient fuel to fill the Dutch combat vehicles tanks for the trip home.

The Dutch I Leger Corps is ordered to return home to stop the French invasion; the 1st Mechanized Division is the first to move, having been held in a reserve position behind the lines as 4th US Army desperately casts about for replacement troops to hold the line.

In the Rhineland and Netherlands, the French and Belgian force is still bogged down. The airborne and air assault units that were dropped in the predawn hours of the 1st have not been relieved yet and find themselves beseiged by Dutch and German territorials and police determined to defend their homelands. The Belgian Army suffers considerable unrest within its own ranks as Dutch-speaking Flemish troops balk at fighting against their kinsmen. Poor weather overhead prevents the French Air Force from intervening, while the Dutch 302nd Territorial Brigade, facing the French 2nd Armored Division, actually increases in strength as scattered iindependent territorial and constabulary platoons arrive in the sector. The effort to seize the mouth of the Scheldt River fails spectacularly, as Dutch marines of the 2nd and 8th battalions repulse the French third-line 108th Infantry Divsion's ill-executed amphibious assault on the port of Vlissingen.

[castlebravo92]

Chico,

Errata note: "Even when final prodction sites remain operational (such as the F-16 plant in Fort Worth, Texas)"

The General Dynamics plant (now Lockmart) is immediately adjacent to the west of the Carswell AFB runways. I actually took a couple of sloppy pictures of it on my way to West Texas just before Christmas. VERY unlikely to still remain operational after the 500 kt strike there in canon (on mobile so can't see if you logged Carswell in your version of the hitlist). Bell Helicopter over in Hurst would be far enough away not to have any damage though.

[Targan]

January 2, 1998Relations between the U.S. and France deteriorate. The U.S. government views the invasion of the Rhineland as self-aggrandizement at the expense of Germany. There is not much they can do about it...

Well, there's quite a lot they and the UK could have done about it. Not that the world needed any more mushroom clouds sprouting at that point, but I do wonder when and how seriously discussions of nuclear retaliation might have gone on among what was left of the US and UK governments.

[castlebravo92]

It probably is!!!

FWIW, using the GDW Hit List, I have 8 million dead*, 14 million injured for 123 targets in the United States for just blast and thermal effects (not fallout - still working on generating a model for that; DTRA.mil hasn't given me access to HPAC yet so I'm working on reverse engineering the fallout generation from HotSpot and incorporating that with historical meteorology data to generate something that looks a little more realistic than the WSEG-10 smear fallout model).

So, that's my reasoning for 10 million global deaths from 1200 nuclear weapons seeming low by an order of magnitude (especially with China getting plastered).

Attaching the fatality curve I used to calculate deaths. It's a curve fit model generated from Hiroshima fatalities that in effect combines blast, thermal, and firestorm casualties. The net effect is that the curve shifts to the left more strongly than some other casualty models due to the basic assumption that most people seriously injured in the 4+ PSI zone would not be able to self-evacuate and would perish in the firestorm.

Note also, that this casualty model is less severe than some other models that have the hypothesis that even uninjured people would be unable to evacuate 5+ PSI areas before perishing in a firestorm.

And yes, this is probably way too nerdy.

* Edited to add - I didn't include the Windsor, ON attack in the initial calculations. Assuming a DGZ between the Chrysler and Ford plants for a 1 MT airburst, that adds another half million casualties (almost equally split between dead and injured) to the US tally in Detroit. Downtown and midtown Detroit would have been seriously damaged, but the Detroit Arsenal would have been about 6 km north of the end of the 1 PSI blast ring so would be completely undamaged and intact barring civil unrest and damage.

[chico20854]

Chico,

Errata note: "Even when final prodction sites remain operational (such as the F-16 plant in Fort Worth, Texas)"

The General Dynamics plant (now Lockmart) is immediately adjacent to the west of the Carswell AFB runways. I actually took a couple of sloppy pictures of it on my way to West Texas just before Christmas. VERY unlikely to still remain operational after the 500 kt strike there in canon (on mobile so can't see if you logged Carswell in your version of the hitlist). Bell Helicopter over in Hurst would be far enough away not to have any damage though.

Thanks for the catch! I edited the post to switch the last engine delivery to the F-15 line in St. Louis. That plant was outside the damage radius from the Wood River, IL strike.

[chico20854]

January 3, 1998

The winter of 1997-98 is particularly cold. Civilian war casualties in the industrialized nations have reached almost 15%, although the worst is yet to come.

The California coast from Santa Barbara south has been devastated by the nuclear strikes, and the city of Los Angeles suffers most severely. Blast, radiation, and fire, combined with panic and disease, cause millions of casualties. The city has less than 20 percent of its prewar population remaining. The Bay area has also been devastated by nuclear strikes, but the presence of military forces in the region provide a modest level of organization.

In Maryland, the capital of Annapolis has been largely abandoned following is contamination with fallout from the Fort Meade attack and the relocation of the state government (such as it is) to Columbia (located between Baltimore and Washington).

The Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade moves south from the Leeuwarden area to reinforce territorial troops. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade repulses another attack by French paratroops of the 8th Marine Parachite Regiment in the Breda-Tilburg area as they try to break out and join the (very slowly-advancing) French armored force. Frogmen from the Dutch 2nd Amphibious Combat Group sink the French frigate Balny as it anchors off Vlissingen in the pre-dawn hours blocking Dutch naval intervention and standing by to offer fire support to French troops.

With the the linkup between the 82nd Airborne Division and the rest of XVIII Airborne Corps completed, both the 82nd and 24th ID and their Kurdish auxiliaries begin an orderly withdrawal back to the Bandar-e-Khomeyni area.

Unofficially,

The last planeload of replacements departs Fort Jackson, South Carolina for service in Europe. The base's training brigades are devoting increasing amounts of efforts to assisting the state government in maintaining order, distributing food and organizing relief following the Soviet nuclear strikes on Charleston and the base commander judges that he cannot afford to lose trained and ready troops when his situation is so severe. Reinforcing this bias, his higher authorities (Training and Doctrine Command and 2nd US Army) had both been struck in Soviet nuclear strikes, as had Transportation Command and Military Airlift Command, the authorities responsible for arranging for reinforcement flights. Finally, Shaw Air Force Base, from which the flight departs, has limited amounts of fuel remaining in its tank farm and the base commander has been ordered to conseserve it for that base's tanker fleet, which is tasked to support nuclear strike operations. The move strands several requisitioned airlines at the base.

In Alaska, the Soviet 130th Air Assault Brigade (reduced to a single battalion of hardened troops) occupies a blocking position north of the hamlet (and road junction) of Gakona, Alaska, preventing the American force at Fort Greely from cutting the supply line of the 13th Guards Air Assault Division and 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade, which are continuing to advance northeast along Highway 1.

HM Government authorizes a roundup of known Soviet agents and sympathizers, determined to limit internal dissent that could hamper the already extremely diffcult relief effort in the nation.

7th Fleet is able to direct the oiler USNS Neosho to the South China Sea, where it rendevous with the destroyer USS Morton and the cruiser USS Sterett and refuels both ships before turning north, accompanied by the cruiser while the Morton makes her way to the Indian Ocean.

The Dutch royal family accepts the British government's offer to evacuate their home as rumors fly of French military intelligence and special forces teams roaming the country seeking them out. A Royal Navy Sea King helicopter extracts them, flying at low level over the dark North Sea.

French and Belgian troops encounter an obstacle that their commanders had not adequately considered - British, Canadian and American rear area facilities, air bases and storage sites. Many of the air bases have been struck (some multiple times) by Soviet nuclear weapons and are nearly abandoned, while others (such as Ramstein) are fully operational, guarded by German territorials and USAF security troops and harbor American tactical nuclear weapons. In there areas an informal truce prevails, with the Franco-Belgian units giving these sites wide berth and avoiding any engagemnet with their defenders. The commander of the French 1st Army, General Francois Bescond, reaches out to SACEUR, a well-respected colleague from prewar days. After a "heated and frank" discussion between the two commanders, an agreement is reached. After the French forces have reached the Rhine River, they will offer all assistance to all bypassed NATO personnel, regardless of nationality, to evacuate the zone. The generals agree upon a 1-km exclusion zone around all American, British and Canadian facilities and, in exchange for non-belligerence from the troops at these facilities, the immediate provision of adequate food and fuel to sustain them until they have been evacuated. The two generals also agree that they will support NATO proposals for the provision of covert French and Belgian logistic support to the war effort, including food, fuel, electricity and munitions, in quantities to be agreed upon by the diplomats and intelligence agencies. While the French general was later criticized for accepting such terms, Bescond responded that the British and Americans still retained tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and that what was later perceived as a bad deal was vastly preferable to the elimination of the French nation by its ertswhile allies.

The stripping of the USS America is completed and Sixth Fleet transfers the remaining shoreside spares and supplies to the newly arrived freighter Wolman Expert, while the remaining American and Allied personnel begin to collapse the area of Sicily under NATO control. The troop transport Barrett arrives with the Expert (both escorted by the light frigate USS Petit) to take aboard passengers.

The crew of the full-rigged ship Iron Duke (formerly the property of the late eccentrick rock star Ted Hendrix) arrive in St. John, US Virgin Islands and seek shelter from the war there.

[chico20854]

Well, there's quite a lot they and the UK could have done about it. Not that the world needed any more mushroom clouds sprouting at that point, but I do wonder when and how seriously discussions of nuclear retaliation might have gone on among what was left of the US and UK governments.

Thanks for that pointer, an angle I hadnt really considered. (The language about the US having little option is straight out of RDF Sourcebook.) Hopefully today's post adds a little clarity, although I welcome discussion on its reasonableness!

[Homer]

The 1km exclusion zone is going to frustrate some French leaders. Places like Buchel and Norvenich have USAF Munitions Squadrons supporting dual key special weapons on Luftwaffe bases while Woensdrecht hosts a GLCM wing on a Dutch airbase.

[chico20854]

January 4, 1998

As relocation and disorder continue in the US, city dwellers flee to the country and the country folk are not prepared to deal with what rapidly comes to seem to them as an invasion. Initial efforts of humanity and goodwill toward the victims of a nuclear attack rapidly turn into a grim battle of survival between seemingly endless mobs of refugees and the embattled farmers trying to save their food crops, then their seed crops, and finally themselves and their families from the ravaging deprivations of hungry, cold and desperate city folk. Northern Ohio has been severely depopulated by the nuclear strikes on the cities of Lima and Toledo and the fallout from the Michigan and Canadian nuclear strikes. Most of the population of the large urban centers of Ohio flee to the rural areas without encouragement by the relocation orders.

Even with all the goodwill and humanitarian intentions in the world, nothing could have prevented much of the suffering of the winter of 1997-1998. In Florida, there were just too many people and not enough of anything else. Left to freeze in the dark, New England's urban populace began a blind search for warmth and food. More than ten million people began descending on the farms and picturesque towns in the countryside. Hundreds of thousands died each month of illness, hunger or winter exposure. Thousands more died each day in the fighting that erupted as the farmers and citizens of the towns tried to stop the locust-like approach of the urban refugees. Even when there were surplus foodstuffs, the resources could not be delivered to where they were needed most; no communications network existed to identify stocks, and no effective central authority remained to coordinate the relief effort.

Unfortunately, there was more than enough evil, malicious and deliberately criminal misconduct, misinformation, and out-and-out disinformation circulating to compound the horror beyond any hope of retrieval by men of goodwill.

The fires and destruction in the US caused by the bombs are gradually brought under control, and governmental control of most urban areas is slowly regained (although some cities, like Boston, are never really brought back to order after the strikes). Civil unrest in New England has settled down as it becomes clear that New England is not to be a target. Only extreme measures bring back a semblance of order to New York City. Millions have died in New York City during and after the nuclear attacks and millions more have fled. Because of the damaged transportation network and the lack of fuel, there are minor distribution inequalities and some civil discontent, but little out-and-out rioting.

The American harvest of 1997 was larger than average, but it is not evenly distributed through the country. Most of it is still in silos and elevators in the Midwest. The large harvest had driven commodities prices down, and many farmers have withheld part of their harvest in hopes of getting higher prices later in the year. Theoretically, this grain is also subject to rationing, but there is a great deal of concealment in on-farm storage bins by individual farmers. Fuel is also hoarded, although both of these actions are illegal.

The mayor of Aldergrove, BC, Walter Rousseau, with support from local RCMP members, assumes dictatorial powers over the town.

One of the Atlantic fleet's last operable nuclear attack submarines, the USS Newport News, surrenders her berth and heads back to sea, leaving New London for the last time.

Unofficially,

The container-barge carrier Kirin Carrier is delivered in Mobile, Alabama. It, like its sister delivered a week and a half prior, is taken over by the US government. This marks the end of new ship construction in Quincy.

Paratroops of the 13th Guards Air Assault Division fall upon the lightly held outpost line of the 1st Brigade, 47th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry (Iowa National Guard) in a driving snowstorm, driving the startled guardsmen from their positions into the snow.

In northern California, members of the Hells Angels biker gang knock out the power to the Pelican Bay State Penitentiary with well-aimed rifle fire, then descend on the prison. The prison's guard force, understrength due to the draft and desertion in the weeks since the nuclear attacks, is oriented against threats from inside the prison, and within 15 minutes the bikers have captured the prison's command center (assisted by liberal application of demolitions against barriers and heavy steel doors). The bikers release the inmates within; their members and other prisoners that have a biker vouch for them remain at the heavily protected facility. The Hells Angels have gained a hardened facility and over 300 additional recruits.

More French and Belgian units arrive in southern Holland, linking up with the previously isolated French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch territorials of the 302nd Infantry Brigade have expended their remaining artillery ammunition and anti-tank weapons (mostly 1950-vintage M20 3.5-inch Super Bazooka rounds, everything more modern long ago sent to fight the Soviets). They begin retreating to the northwest as engineer parties complete the opening of dykes and irrigation systems, turning the low-lying polder into freezing swampland.

To the east, the 101st Mechanized Brigade arrives in Eindhoven from the Leeuwarden area minutes before the lead Scimitar and Scorpion light tanks of the Belgian 4th Regiment of Chasseurs à Cheval, the lead reconnaissance element of the Belgian I Corps. (The Belgian Corps has split, with the main body heading up the Meuse valley and a secondary effort headed for Dusseldorf on the Rhine). The French II Corps has overrun the final organized elements of the German territorial 45th Grenadier Regiment and reached the Rhine opposite Wiesbaden, leaving several large American garrisons isolated. In the center of the Franco-Belgian effort, I French Corps has brushed aside the remnants of the territorial 42nd and 46th Grenadier Regiments and advanced, despite the efforts of the various German obstacle detachments, past the exclusion zones surrounding Spangdahlem and Bitburg Air Bases where they are held up by a scratch force of Luftwaffe trainees at Ulmen.

[chico20854]

January 5, 1998

The unusually harsh winter which followed the nuclear exchange compound the real problems Florida faces a hundred-fold, and finally this constant and effective hate campaign smashes the floodgates of insanity. The attempts by what remains of the civil and military authorities to keep a lid on things fail dismally. A war of extermination begins to be waged across what could have been a semitropical garden of Eden. The resulting hysteria makes it an absolute risk to one's life to admit even knowing someone from Tampa or any of the other stricken communities within the state. People are pulled out of cars on the highway and lynched by fear-crazed mobs because they have automobile tags that had been originally issued in Hillsborough County. Others are summarily shot for the crime of having been born in one of the stricken zones. Wild rumors fly about stating that this or that innocent and unsuspecting community is a radiation "hot spot" and that those coming from such places bring the unseen and undetectable "germs" of radiation poisoning with them to contaminate places not yet stricken. Within a week the population of Tampa has plummeted to less than 10 percent of its prewar total. Within a month the city is a virtual ghost town, and the survivors are being hunted and harried over the countryside.

The main actors in this communal bloodbath include not only the displaced criminal elements of the big city, but also ordinary urban dwellers - mothers and fathers with children to feed and somehow protect from the freezing rains and unchecked diseases. Millions of these people battle a relative handful of farmers trying to save their own livelihoods and the lives of their own wives and children. Even without the artificially stirred-up hatreds, the twin scourges of disease and famine are hard at work winnowing the dead chaff from the few survivors. The harsh winter brings other dislocated and hungry people down into the zone of darkness and blood. Armed marauder bands spread chaos and destruction and waste more than they took.

Soviet troops cross the border from Alaska into Yukon Territory, able to mass sufficient firepower to overrun the scattered outposts of the 47th Infantry Division. Supplies begin to run low, however, as the distances increase and the winter weather takes a toll on the requisitioned civilian vehicles the Soviet troops are relying on for mobility.

The nuclear attacks force an abandonment of the effort reactivate the 106th Infantry Division. Only the 422nd Infantry Regiment, formed in early 1997 from reservists and draftees, constituting three battalions of the 422nd and two batteries of the 591st Field Artillery, has been fully trained and equipped.

As the nuclear exchange peters out and the home situation deteriorates, a number of British battalions are sent from Germany to England to help enforce martial law.

KGB Colonel Borisov, living off the British countryside during the winter, is one of the few agents not rounded up during the army's purge of known Soviet agents.

Unofficially,

A patrol of the 78th Training Division in Trenton, New Jersey, is unexpectantly engaged in a firefight when they stumble across an organized group of looters who have just finished sacking a neighborhood which the division's troops had just finished evacuating two days before. The poorly trained troops (most have completed basic training but not their advanced skill training, led by their training company's admin clerk) lose three men and are unsuccesful in preventing the looters from escaping.

The Belgian 16th Mechanized Division's 10th Mechanized Brigade engages the Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade on the southern outskirts of Eindhoven. The Dutch fall back and the Belgian division's 17th Armored Brigade comes swooping in from the east, the guns of their Leopard Is inflicting havoc on the hapless Dutch reservists. The command falls apart, with bands of men drifting away to the north. The lead units of the Dutch I Corps cross the Waal and Meuse between 's-Hertogenbosch and Nijmegen. The French III Corps' 2nd and 10th Armored Divisions (each with about half the troops and firepower of an equivalent prewar NATO division) clear the towns of Breda and Tilburg, respectively, and clear the continued resistance of territorials, reservists and constabulary troops that offer scattered resistance south of the Rhine. The Luftwaffe recruit detachment at Ulmen sustains a day of furious French artillery fire and several dismounted infantry attacks, turning each back in turn. In the far west, the Dutch defense of Vlissingen comes to an end as the defending marines and territorials come under attack from land and sea; after darkness falls the remains of the Dutch 2nd Marine Amphibious Combat Group slip out of the burning city aboard a fleet of small craft, intent on waging a continuing guerrilla campaign against the occupying Belgian and French troops.

Massive fires light the night sky over Sigonella, Sicily as the final American and Allied personnel evacuate the naval base and adjacent airfield. The departing troops burn the repair facilities, headquarters, barracks, warehouses, create craters in the airfield's runway and taxiways, collapse aircraft shelters and, the action that hurts the American sailors the most, set the damaged carrier USS America ablaze.

The Coast Guard medium-endurance cutter Thetis arrives at Diego Garcia, which was struck by a pair of Soviet nuclear missiles 30 days prior. The ship launches its helicopter for an aerial survey of the damage, conducting a radiological survey (what little residual radiation from the 200-kiloton airbursts has largely dispersed by trade winds and tides in the month since the attack) and identifying sunken obstacles to navigation in the atoll's lagoon.

[pmulcahy11b]

January 4, 1998
They begin retreating to the northwest as engineer parties complete the opening of dykes and irrigation systems, turning the low-lying polder into freezing swampland.



That's dike. "Dyke" is an offensive term for certain segments of the population that I won't go into here. Don't want us to get into any inadvertent trouble.

[kato13]

Dykes is the preferred plural

[chico20854]

January 6, 1998

The first pitched battle between local landowners and refugees is fought at a large refugee camp outside Butler, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh).

Since certain zoo animals - the large carnivores particularly - represented a danger to humans, zoo officials were ordered by local governments and by military authorities to destroy them in the event of a nuclear attack. Not all of the dangerous animals are killed, however. In the chaos following the nuclear attack, many zookeepers die or flee before they could carry out their duties. Others release favorite animals rather than kill them. Some people release animals en masse, believing that all living creatures deserve a fair chance. Some animals become desperate for food and water and break out when their keepers no longer come. The animals which are released or escape meet various fates. Most die, temperamentally unsuited to life on their own. Many are killed for food or because they are obviously dangerous. Others die in the harsh winter weather after the attacks, and a few manage to escape the cities completely.

By this point, many people who are in an American undamaged city are reluctant to simply pick up and leave. Conditions are still not too bad over most of the nation, and nobody wants to desert the security of their homes and possessions (relocatees are only allowed 50 kilograms of baggage) to go to some unspecified place in the country. The relocation buses, trains, and boats become increasingly difficult to fill. Rumors of what happens to relocatees when they arrive do not help matters. Rural communities are unwilling to have large numbers of outsiders forced upon them. There are shortages of just about everything, and the "relokies," as they are called, are subject to almost constant hostility from the local populace.

Conditions continue to deteriorate across the United States. Rural Americans are not happy to have untold thousands of homeless hungry urbanites thrust upon them, and violence flares against the refugees in many places. More often, a rural community accepts its quota of refugees, then turns them out when the troops had left. It is not surprising that a sizable number of "relokies" chose to leave at the first opportunity.

A number of British ports remain functional, most notably Margate in northern Kent and Portsmouth in Hampshire. Anglesey becomes a haven for surviving British forces in Wales as it is physically untouched by the war and is naturally easy to defend.

The Dutch 5th Mechanized Division is hit hard by French airstrikes in the vicinity of Nijmegen as it closes on the town of Eindhoven in an attempt to halt the advancing Belgians.

Unofficially,

Turmoil roils the high level of NATO command as the alliance struggles to respond to the French invasion of Germany and the Netherlands. The Dutch and German military commands (which are effectively their national governments in the wake of the nuclear devestation of their homelands) are livid with SACEUR for his deal with the French that essentially yields their territory without bringing the full military might of the alliance to bear to stop the invasion. SACEUR replies that the deal is the least bad option and that it at least will yield some compensation from the French while simultaneously relieving the respective governments of the responsibility for sustaining the refugees in the territory (he had demanded that there be no expulsions of population by the French and Belgian authorities). Pointing to the dire condition of NATO combat forces at the front, SACEUR has no non-nuclear means available to halt the French agression, as pulling troops from the line or allocating additional scarce resources will leave the front against the Soviets dangerously vulnerable. The German command grudgingly accepts this statement, noting that it has been unable to divert significant resources to defending the territory, other than cancelling the planned offensive against the Czechs and Soviets in the Hof-Nuremburg-Regensburg area.

The Belgian air force's F-16 fleet is grounded as the clear skies over the front allow the remaining Dutch F-16s to make an appearance overhead; the Franco-Belgian command fears fratricide as well as wanting to preserve the limited supply of spare parts and munitions for the fighters. The Dutch 1st Mechanized Division, hardened veterans after a year of action and the Czechs, Soviets and Italians, tear into the French 5e Régiment d'Infanterie, part of the 2nd Armored Division, southwest of 's-Hertogenbosch. The French combined-arms battalion is strung out along the highway through flooded fields, where the guns of the remaining Dutch Leopard II's are able to wreak the French column. Dutch MLRS rockets of the 101st Artillery Group sow submunitions among the column and the road behind it, preventing reinforcements from hurrying to the rescue.

In Germany, the Luftwaffe training unit is finally blasted out of its positions outside Ulmen as the French commit the 4th Airmobile Division to leapfrog the blocking position and direct precision fires against the German positions.

RainbowSix reports that HM Government is preparing an assessment of surviving facilities. One is the Hamworthy refinery located close to the Port of Poole. The refinery had suffered particularly heavy damage during a series of concentrated raids in August 1997 that forced it to shut down whilst the damage was repaired. The British Government managed to successfully fool the Soviets into thinking that their airstrikes had destroyed the facility when MI5 arranged for false documents to be passed to a known Soviet agent. The ruse worked and the refinery was spared a Soviet nuclear warhead.

The Freedom-class cargo ship Buffalo Freedom is delivered in San Diego, California.

The Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes is sunk by four 65-76 torpedoes fired by the Victor III-class submarine 60 Let Shefstva VLKSM 325nm NNW of Ascension Island while on an voyage to secure supplies of food from Argentina.

The USCG cutter Thetis lands its assessment team on Diego Garcia. While the overpressure and heat from the blasts stripped the occupied area of the island of vegetation and destroyed all unhardened structures in the central part of the base area, it left the airbase's twin 12,000-foot runways intact and several secondary underground faciltiies (overflow fuel tanks and such) intact, as well as the extensive magazine complex, space observation station and communications facility several kilometers away on the remote southern end of the island.

[chico20854]

January 7, 1998

Although Chicago itself was not a target, the oil refineries at Joliet were, and this is enough to panic the population of the city and surrounding suburbs. Food shortages are not severe except in large urban areas, and most deaths are caused by epidemics and rioting.

A mass prison break from Matsqui Penitentiary in British Columbia, orchestrated by Tom "Fang" Strakes occurs. Most prisoners disperse into the countryside south of the Frasier River, but some remain and form the Razorheads marauder gang.

Anglia has escaped damage during the first nuclear exchange, which attracts many refugees to the area. The local population resists this invasion, and open warfare erupts. Some towns manage to force back the refugees, but in the majority of cases, sheer weight of numbers win the battle. When the refugees get into the towns, they find that the situation is not as good as they had been led to believe and fighting for the few good spots breaks out among the refugee groups. The fighting dies down as winter approaches.

The Dutch 105th Recon Battalion inflicts heavy casualties on the Belgian 7th Mechanized Brigade on the approaches to Arnhem.

Konstantin P. Yermolaev, commander of the 10th Guards Motor-Rifle Division, is promoted to Major General in Iran.

Unofficially

The 49th Armored Division struggles under the burden of trying to secure one of America's largest cities and is forced to cede control of some areas (most notably the remnants of Chicago's South Side) to the armed gangs that have threatened food and fuel convoys, requiring more resources to escort than the divisional commander has.

In order to conserve fuel, the destroyer Morton is travelling alone at 12 knots through Indonesian waters. (The ship's bunkers don't carry enough fuel for the 5500-mile voyage at the usual cruising speed of 17 knots, and refueling is unlikely along the way). The warship is approached at dawn by a small flotilla of armed small craft (the largest is an 8-meter customs boat mounting a 20mm cannon), who approach the destroyer despite radio calls to keep a distance. Soon a surface action has erupted, the destroyer using one of its 5-inch main guns to blast the customs boat out of the water and deck mounted 25mm cannons and machineguns to drive off the smaller craft.

The Dutch 5th Mechanized Division (in reality less than a brigade in strength after the attrition of the German campaign of 1997 and the prior day's French airstrikes) tries to hold the advancing Belgians from entering Nijmegen, but short of fuel and ammunition, is forced to displace, leaving many of its remaining vehicles behind, their gas tanks empty. To the west, the 1st Mechanized Division fights another sharp engagement against the invading French, launching another flank attack, this one on the 8th Infantry Division's 67e Régiment d'Infanterie; the French motorized infantry unit's VAB armored cars proving exceedingly vulnerable to fire from Dutch APCs and AIFVs emplaced in the engineer training center at Vught outside 's-Hertenbosch.

On the German front, Belgian reconnaissance units have reached the Rhine opposite Duisburg, halting while German territorials destroy the road and rail bridges over the Rhine. The French II Corps resumes its drive north along the banks of the Rhine, creating a large pocket of disorganized German troops and tens of thousands of displaced civilians sheltering in and near the cluster of American installations in Baumholder.

At Diego Garcia, a team from the USCG's cutter Thetis continues its survey of the lagoon's anchorage. One pier is blocked by the sunken Cypriot freighter Ever Happy, as are three of the atoll's 20 dredged anchorage sites. The team ashore, haven broken into one of the explosives magazines, reports that there likely are several hundred tons of iron bombs present but that the airfield facilities (hangars, landing aids, fuel pipeline system, power, water and accommodations) are all destroyed beyond repair. Tactical or field-expedient systems will be needed to restore the base to operations, limited by the capabilities of those systems.

[chico20854]

January 8, 1998

The 49th Armored Division, which has been deployed in a disaster relief and emergency security role in the northern Illinois and Indiana area, is moved out of the Chicago metropolitan area. The division's 1st Brigade moves to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, 2nd Brigade to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, and 3rd Brigade and division headquarters to Springfield, Illinois. Likewise, the 46th Infantry Division is deployed on a variety of security and disaster relief missions along the eastern seaboard. Also leaving the Chicago area is the 35th Engineer Brigade (Combat), which moves into downstate Illinois to secure the energy resources there (oil fields, coal mines, the Robinson and Mount Vernon refineries) and food reserves of the region's bountiful farms. In Texas, a Navy salvage expedition withdraws the remaining operable aircraft from the lightly-damaged Corpus Christi Naval Air Station to the (unofficially) Memphis Naval Air Station.

The Dutch high command orders the remnants of the 5th Mechanized Division withdrawn across the Rhine for reconstruction. The Dutch 105th Recon Battalion is forced back to the Rhine from its defense of Arnhem. As it falls back, the advancing French and Belgian troops are engaged by the Dutch 4th Mechanized Division in a classic meeting engagement.

Unofficially,

The 1st Armored Brigade (Training) halts training at Fort Knox, Kentucky and dedicates all resources towards accommodating the over 100,000 refugees seeking shelter on and around the base.

The destroyer USS Morton is once again approached by pirates in Indonesian waters. Once again the crew is forced to open fire to drive off the attackers.

To the west, the 1st Mechanized Division is under pressure in 's-Hertenbosch as the French III Corps (provided with abundant air support by the French Air Force and the Mirage 5s of the Belgian Air Force) has massed troops on all the approaches to the city. The 101st Artillery Group fires its last two Lance missiles at logistic sites in northern Belgium. (The missiles are conventional cluster munitions, their American nuclear weapon custodial units having remained behind in southern Germany when I Dutch Corps displaced).

French and Belgian troops are busy establishing occupation authorities in the Dutch provinces of Zeeland and Limburg and the areas of Brabant that they control, as they are as well in areas in Germany that they control.

The campaign in Germany is winding down as remaining German troops are either defeated or withdraw across the Rhine. French field commanders grow increasingly irritated with the restrictions on their operations imposed by the presence of (mostly) American garrisons and the attendant exclusion zones, as well as the demand that they restore electrical power and water to the bases, with requirements for food and fuel still being developed by the isolated American commanders.

With winter weather arriving, the Danish containership Susan Mae weighs anchor from the New York Bight and sails around Long Island, seeking shelter in Long Island Sound.

In Iran, the units of XVIII Airborne Corps and III MEF begin falling back into the Zagros Mountains following the success of Operation Pegasus II. The move frees up several infantry battalions for duty securing the supply lines and rear areas, which have grown increasingly chaotic as various armed bands of deserters, smugglers, bandits and enemy special operations teams seek to eke out an existence preying on the civilian population and military traffic in the allied area of control. To their north and east, Transcaucasian Front is in no condition to occupy the territory evacuated, starved of supplies and replacements; Soviet commanders devote their efforts to securing food and fuel for their units and trying to prevent desertion from wearing their units down past the point of ineffectiveness.

STAVKA (or the remnants thereof) orders the deployment of the 260th Motor-Rifle Division in the Ural Military District. The mobilization-only division, located at Shadrinsk on the steppes of Siberia, has been forming since July, although other divisions were higher priority in receiving men and equipment. In fact, the declaration is more a reflection of the dire circumstances of the Soviet government than of the division’s condition, but nonetheless the division takes responsibility for maintaining order in its area of the country.

[chico20854]

January 9, 1998

In New York City, grocery stores, convenience stores, drug stores, liquor stores, gun stores, jewelry stores, electronics stores, waterfront warehouses, gas stations, apartments more or less easily accessible from the street-these and countless other possible sources of salvageable items are emptied. Another waterborne gang is formed. The Ferrymen are under the leadership of Cap Winston, a longshoreman who seizes control of a Staten Island ferry, securing the fuel already aboard and a small store ashore.

Unofficially,

The West Point student body and cadre is designated the 1st Cadet Brigade and assigned internal security and disaster relief duties as streams of refugees continue to travel up the Hudson River Valley.

In a bid to prevent the British from using its output, the Whitegate Oil Refinery in Cork, Ireland, the nation's sole refinery, in peacetime producing over 40 percent of its fuel, is hit by a Soviet SS-C-4 cruise missile fired by the 101st Missile Regiment, 44th Missile Division in the western Ukraine. (The missile flight is noted by NATO air defense radars as it passes overhead at low level, but commanders are unable to successfully engage it, such is the shortage of missiles and poor state of the C3I network).

Another day of heavy fighting rages in southern Holland as the French III Corps faces off against the Dutch I Corps. The veteran Dutch troops are running low on supplies, while the lavishly-supplied French troops are exploiting the lessons they have learned at such great cost over the preceding week. Outside Arnhem, the 4th Mechanized Division is engaged in heavy fighting against French armored units as the Belgians are shunted aside, while the 1st Mechanized Division (reinforced with the 103rd Recon Battalion) holds onto 's-Hertenbosch despite intense French bombardment.

Tension in the Romanian city of Târgu Mureș is steadily rising as the local population, already hostile (as most loyal Romanians are), grows increasingly irate at the failure of the Soviet occupation force (built around the 146th Motor-Rifle Division) to provide either security, food or fuel, instead hoarding what little is available in the harsh post-exchange environment for itself. A demonstration outside the division headquarters, which quickly escalates to scuffles with the headquarters guard, is broken up with gunfire ordered by the panicked senior lieutenant on duty.

[chico20854]

January 10, 1998

The Special Facility at Mount Weather is abandoned for other, more secure locations within the so-called Federal Relocation Arc, an area within a 100-mile radius of Washington, DC. The Charters of Freedom (the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights) are sealed in a deep secure vault under the facility, which retains a small security and caretaker staff.

UBF leader John Carlucci receives word that his wife, Tamara, last reported in Boston, likely became a casualty of the disorder.

Unofficially,

US XI Corps consolidates its surviving corps-level artillery troops and systems into the 151st Field Artillery Brigade, disbanding the 45th Field Artillery Brigade, whose remaining guns and gunners go to the 151st and excess command and support personnel are assigned to other XI Corps units.

As Dutch lines begin to give way after another sleepless night under unrelenting French artillery fire, the Dutch high command reluctantly orders the abandonment of the positions south of the Rhine. The 1st Mechanized Division crosses into the Utrecht area, while the 4th Mechanized withdraws into the ruins of the city of Arnhem, destroyed in battle for the second time in the 20th Century.

The remaining five F-16s of the Dutch Air Force are evacuated to British RAF bases in East Anglia.

Local resistance leaders (the ethnic Romanian remnants of the former city and military administration) in the Romanian city of Târgu Mureș organize a blockade of the Soviet 146th Motor-Rifle Division's headquarters in the city's historic medieval citadel. The city's local Hungarian minority is less hostile to the Soviets, although sharing the Romanian's outrage at the lack of food and fuel in the harsh Balkan winter. Lone Soviet soldiers are kidnapped and killed, lone vehicles attacked and columns of vehicles foolish enough to venture through the city after dark are ambushed.

[Rainbow Six]

Thanks for that pointer, an angle I hadnt really considered. (The language about the US having little option is straight out of RDF Sourcebook.) Hopefully today's post adds a little clarity, although I welcome discussion on its reasonableness!

When I was writing the UK stuff I thought about that angle but always presumed that it would be a classic example of realpolitik in action and there was no way that the UK would want to invite either French nuclear retaliation or the possibility of dragging the French into the War in Europe as an enemy. Hence the line in my work that the British Ambassador in Paris delivers a note of protest and that's as far as it goes (although it was probably a strongly worded note of protest...)

In other words, forget NATO article 5, western Germany would be thrown under the bus.

[chico20854]

January 11, 1998

As the battered and bruised attack submarine USS City of Corpus Christi remains in drydock, the remaining powers that be in the US Navy decide that, while she is badly needed at sea, she is due for a reactor overhaul. The remaining shipyard workers begin to amass the material needed for the job.

Colonel Alfred White (US Army, Ret.) repeats his offer to form a volunteer combat unit formed from WW II re-enactor groups and civilian military vehicle collectors. When he previous offered the unit to the military in early 1997, he was rejected out of hand. Now, after the Thanksgiving Day massacre and the losses worldwide as the war went nuclear, his offer is accepted. He begins to rally his volunteers and their vehicles at the now-emptied Savannah Army Depot on the banks of the Mississippi in northwestern Illinois.

Opposite French forces in Germany, refugees pile up on the French and Belgian frontiers, a large lawless zone springs into existence. Open fighting for food is followed by mass starvation and disease, until the lawless zone has become barren and empty.

Unofficially,

The 199th Infantry Brigade is ordered, ready or not, to Korea from Hawaii to reinforce Eighth Army.

RainbowSix reports that the region of the Welsh border counties of Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester is caught between two waves of large scale refugee movements as people pour out of the cities of the West Midlands and South Wales seeking the perceived safety of the countryside, leading to a number of clashes between locals and refugees. To the west, North Wales has escaped any direct damage from the nuclear attack on Britain, although the eastern regions are very close to the heavily populated north west of England which was heavily damaged by the nuclear detonations. The mass influx of refugees and marauding gangs from England prompts the formation of the Welsh Assembly Government (in Welsh Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru or LCC) after parts of North Wales are overrun by marauding gangs from England. GDW reports that the Welsh Nationalist Party takes advantage of the chaos to seize control of the country.

Fighting south of the Rhine in the Netherlands comes to a halt with the withdrawal of the last Dutch combat formations, although occupation forces are frequently engaged by holdouts and stragglers as an active resistance network begins to form. French reconnaissance units approach Utrecht but are halted by Dutch roadblocks; the commander of III French Corps orders that they hold their position. (The recon troops had advanced to determine the status of Dutch military forces north of the river in case French and Belgian units would need to secure the opposite shore of the river to prevent infiltration of refugees; the presence of Dutch troops indicates that the Dutch government retains active control of the region).

[chico20854]

January 12, 1998

In Pittsburgh, many who had fled the city have returned. The city has not been nuked yet… and the winter is cold, and the residents of surrounding rural communities are unenthusiastic in their reception of urban refugees. To the east, many of those trapped in the crossroads of Breezewood, Pennsylvania die fighting over remaining reserves of gasoline and food, and others manage to escape to other areas. The survivors are soon joined by refugees coming east from New Jersey and New York, seeking safety in the mountains. The large number of empty motel rooms, though lacking heat or electricity or even running water, provide the beginnings of a refugee city with a population of well over 5,000.

The Canadian 4th Mechanized Brigade (my 1st Division) is transferred from command of the US V Corps to the US XI Corps when V Corps is moved to occupation duty in central Germany.

Unofficially,

Ellsworth Air Force Base is abandoned, six weeks after it was struck by Soviet ICBMs. The remaining Security Police begin an epic midwinter trek across the frozen plains guarding several heavily loaded trucks that contain the assembled nuclear warheads from the base's missiles and remaining bombs from the munitions bunkers. The convoy is headed for Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In Atlanta a rumor spreads that CNN has been operating thanks to a large cache of food and fuel hidden in the network headquarters' basement. A crowd of 30,000 desperate people soon gathers and overruns the building, ending American TV broadcasting for several years.

NATO naval commanders in Europe, facing a severe lack of fuel for their combatants and a collapse of the worldwide trading system, organize the layup of much of the shipping in the North Sea. Idle ships have begun to clog the few remaining intact ports, crews have started to abandon their vessels and there are more cargo ships available than there is cargo for them. Facing harsh winter weather, several convoys are organized to remote anchorages in Norwegian fjords and sheltered harbors along the British coast.

[chico20854]

January 13, 1998

The destruction of Toledo and Lima in Ohio in December triggered a vast migration east from Cleveland, Akron, and Columbus. These refugees avoid Pittsburgh itself, fearful of another escalation in the continuing nuclear exchange, but vast refugee camps grow up in smaller towns throughout the region between the Allegheny Mountains, Lake Erie, and the Ohio Border. Refugee camps are established outside many of the towns and cities in the region, especially in such transportation centers as New Castle, Butler, the towns along the Ohio River, and, once fear of further nuclear attacks had receded, near Pittsburgh. The relatively small populations of the smaller towns are rapidly overwhelmed in numbers and in political power by the refugees, and Pittsburgh, partly depopulated during the chaotic weeks following the nuclear attacks, is overrun by them. Refugee migrations from the west enter Beaver County along the Pennsylvania Turnpike and from the area around New Castle to the north. Large numbers have already crossed the Ohio River and settled around Aliquippa and in Raccoon Creek State Park. In Washington County to the south, citizens alarmed at the influx of refugees and by reports of what is happening north of Pittsburgh, form a self-defense militia.

Unofficially,

As a result of the harsh words and clashing visions between USCG Commandant Holsbirger and First Maritime Defense District Commander Scott MacDowell, MacDowell begins developing a plan to use his remaining forces to maintain control of two facilities he believes are absolutely critical to the future of the Navy and Coast Guard: Portsmouth Naval Yard and Bath Iron Works. At the same time, MacDowell intends to provide security and support for the fishing fleets operating out of Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Massachusetts. Holsbirger can take care of the fishing fleets operating out of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and points south with his own ships and people.

With the fighting in the Rhine wound down, French and NATO authorities meet to make arrangement for the repatriation of Allied forces and the evacuation of facilities from the occupied zone. The burden of supporting the effort is to fall solely upon the French and Belgian governments, which begin mobilizing civilian trucking and rail assets as Army and Air Force engineers work to clear and improve transit routes. The first shipment of foodstuffs are delivered to the USAF Ramstein Air Base, which hosts over 2500 American airmen and soldiers and 15,000 refugees. The DIA Amsterdam station chief travels to Paris to meet with DGSE officials to hammer out the details of the larger assistance package agreed to by SACEUR and French commanders; the American ambassador in Paris implores the General not to refer to the package as "reparations".

[chico20854]

January 14, 1998

The northern gulf coast of Texas has been devastated in the nuclear attacks, along with most of the population of the metropolitan areas of Houston and Galveston (as well as the urban centers of Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and El Paso further inland). Thomas J. Kingsly, owner of a marina in Galveston, who also smuggled drugs - mostly marijuana and cocaine - up and down the Intracoastal Waterway in small craft and excursion boats, has escaped the nuking of Galveston-Houston and comes to live with his brother “Texas Bill” Kingsley on their father’s horse-raising ranch in Jackson County at the head of Lavaca Bay.

The final German Army unit in southwestern Poland, the 28th Panzergrenadier Division, crosses the Neisse River into Gorlitz, Germany. The unit distinguished itself in the long months since it fought in Ukraine, responsible for the destruction of four Pact divisions during the retreat.

The 76th Guards Air Assault Division is called back to the Leningrad area to perform local security duties.

Unofficially,

The first convoy of excess ships in the North Sea departs the region off Bremerhaven. Consisting of 26 ships, it moves out at 8 knots (to conserve fuel), escorted by the Danish corvette Beskytteren. Four of the ships are under tow, already stripped of excess fuel and stores and somewhat readied for long-term storage.

Pro-NATO guerrillas in northern Iran note the passage of the 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division from Afghanistan into Iranian territory. The Green Berets of the 5th Special Forces Group accompanying the partisans call the movement in to SOCCENT headquarters.

[chico20854]

January 15, 1998

It has become apparent that the bombs have petered out. Both sides seem to believe that an unlimited nuclear exchange will inevitably result in the extermination of human life and have seemed to be determined to keep nuclear strikes under some control (almost by mutual agreement). As it turned out, the effect is not to destroy humanity - only civilization.

As far as restoring power, however, the situation is grave. There are not enough technicians left in any one place to keep a nuclear power plant operating. Even with conventional power plants (thermal and hydro), as time passes, trained technicians become scarce and more units have to be shut down. Fossil-fueled plants not adjacent to fuel supplies become inoperable as the transportation system fails to deliver more fuel; even plants that maintain a stockpile are rapidly depleting them as the cold winter and extreme demand force them to produce the maximum possible output.

American fighter-bombers arrive over the troop columns of the 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division and drop a trio of B61 nuclear bombs on the massed vehicles. The strike halts the division's movement to the front.

Unofficially,

RainbowSix reports that many refugees have entered the area of Avon and Somerset and a large number linger at Minehead in Somerset, on the edge of Exmoor, where they have occupied a former Holiday Camp (the site's chalets offer ready-made accommodation).

The American destroyer USS Nicholson, a survivor of the battleship Iowa's surface action group, performs a solo anti-shipping patrol in the Baltic, hoping to interdict rumored supply runs by Soviet and Polish craft into ports along the Polish coast. It locates a small craft moving south at high speed towards the Polish coast near Kolobrzeg and closes at 30 knots. (The destroyer's sole remaining helicopter has been grounded due to lack of fuel and anti-ship missiles). When in visual range it confirms the target as a Soviet Poti-class corvette and opens fire with the its forward 5-inch gun. Seven shots are sufficient to sink the Soviet ASW ship (which fails to fire a single effective shot at the destroyer). As it slows and turns back toward deeper water, the American ship detonates a bottom-laid mine, ripping the bow off and sending the ship to the bottom.

CNN Reporter Wolf Blitzer is executed by firing squad in Perm (in Siberia) as a CIA Spy. While it is true that the CIA made use of his reporting over many years, he was never an agency employee and never knowingly and actively worked for the agency.

[Ursus Maior]

January 8, 1998
STAVKA (or the remnants thereof) orders the deployment of the 260th Motor-Rifle Division in the Ural Military District. The mobilization-only division, located at Shadrinsk on the steppes of Siberia, has been forming since July, although other divisions were higher priority in receiving men and equipment.

Actually, this website (http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/260msd.htm) lists the division as a category III (or "C") division, not a mobilization-only division. But, that might be nitpicking.

[chico20854]

Actually, this website (http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/260msd.htm) lists the division as a category III (or "C") division, not a mobilization-only division. But, that might be nitpicking.

Thanks!

I extensively mined that website; it is an incredible resource the likes of which I'm sure the DIA would have killed for (or prosecuted anyone that revealed if they had their own internal version!) back in the 80s. The page above that in the structure http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/msd.htm lists it among the mobilization-only divisions, which is why I categorized it as such. There was an earlier version of the site that had a heirarchy of readiness from A all the way to G. (A to C are the familiar ones, D is a unit like this that has a fairly substantial equipment pool and cadre, F are training divisions and G are more along the lines of "a warehouse full of SKSs and RPDs, two colonels and a list of local reservists."

[chico20854]

January 16, 1998

The Mid-Atlantic states are, in some ways, the hardest hit by the war. The famine and dislocation resulting from the nuclear attacks causes these states to experience a reduction in population levels unprecedented in human history. Linden, Perth Amboy, Paulsboro, and Westville New Jersey have all been subjected to nuclear attacks. Almost a million people became casualties in these strikes, and more die in the civil strife that followed. The northern areas of Manhattan are almost completely abandoned. Inhabitants this far north had always lived with some minor fear of the motives of their neighbors to the south and are among the first to flee to northern New Jersey and upstate New York. The remaining major urban centers in Pennsylvania - Harrisburg and Pittsburgh - remain intact except for the inevitable episodes of looting and food riots that winter. Electricity and fuel are sharply rationed everywhere, of course, and the general breakdown of transportation and food distribution leads to severe food shortages and widespread starvation just as they did in most other parts of the country. Most rural areas, however, possessed of long-standing traditions of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, continue very much as they always had, their inhabitants enduring lean, hard times with patience, determination, and outright stubbornness. The region's principal problems stem directly from the controversial refugee relocation program first proposed as a civil defense option twenty years before the war began. Most of the refugges from the Washington, DC area are absorbed into the more rural areas of Virginia and Maryland.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Providence Freedom is delivered in San Diego, California, the last of 150 of the class delivered.

In Paris, General George Stark, DIA station chief in Amsterdam (and the senior DIA station chief alive in Europe) has agreed to "assistance" terms with the French government. In addition to providing for French and Belgian government sustainment of NATO troops that are not (or were) belligerents in the recent invasion until those same governments can provide for the evacuation of them and their equipment and supplies, the French and Belgians are to provide 10 million of the following: rounds of small arms ammunition, pre-packaged combat meals and gallons of diesel fuel. The fuel will be transferred along with 1 million gallons of aviation fuel using NATO's Central European Pipeline System, which despite multiple Spetsnaz attacks, remains partially functional. The French and Belgians will also provide 100,000 rounds of 20-40mm autocannon ammunition, 100,000 mortar rounds, 100,000 artillery rounds, 25,000 105mm tank gun rounds, 25,000 120mm tank gun rounds and 100,000 tons of bulk food. The Belgian Air Force will transfer 12 F-16As, 500 Sidewinder Air-to-Air missiles, 2,5000 dumb bombs and a package of spare parts, as well as providing parts and assistance in returning the 50th and 86th TFWs' grounded F-16s at Hahn and Ramstein Air Bases in the occupied zone to service. (The fuel required for the evacuation flights of USAF and RAF aircraft from the zone is to be provided by the French and is in addition to the aviation fuel transferred under the agreement). The French Air Force will also provide assistance in returning six grounded C-130s and two E-3 AWACS to service. Finally, the transmission lines across the Rhine are to be reactivated, with 500 MW of electrical power to be continuously provided at no cost for the remainder of the year. (These amounts are much reduced from Starks initial demands, but both sides realiized that the former pre-war allies were in a complicated situation, that France and Belgium are both officially neutral in the NATO-Pact conflict, and in some ways having to adjust their thinking as both sides retain sufficient nuclear weapons to inflict enormous damage on the other).

The sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl is released from the shipyard in its homeport of Bergen, Norway, where it was completing a retrofit that modernized the ship's systems and restored much that had deteriorated over the ship's 84 years of service. The work is nearly complete and the owners (a school ship consortium) want the ship available rather than completely updated.

The 289th Motor-Rifle Division is activated in the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan from surviving students and faculty of the Baku Higher Combined Arms Command School, a motor-rifle officer training academy. Conditions in the area are terrible and it will be some time before the division is ready to support Transcaucasian Front.

[chico20854]

January 17, 1998

The 40th Training Division is formed at Camp Rilea, Oregon from surviving personnel of the 40th ID(M), which was decimated in fighting outside Warsaw the prior summer.

Aside from Charleston, South Carolina has suffered little damage in the nuclear exchange, while nuclear strikes along Mississippi and Alabama’s gulf coasts have disrupted the fishing trade.

The new year of 1998 in the USSR is ushered in with famine and epidemic. The nuclear exchange has ruined almost the entire harvest of the Soviet Union. Fuel shortages, coupled with the extremely cold winter, lack of water and medical care, and the breakdown of civilian control all contribute to the huge number of deaths in the country.

Unofficially,

The Belgian defense minister objects to the terms agreed to the prior day by his French counterpart, especially when word is received by his logistics chief that much of the ammunition and fuel to be provided under the deal are to come from Belgian stocks. (While a valid complaint in regards to the relative burden between the two nations, much of the Belgian materiel is of German, American or Dutch origin, or already in widespread use among NATO combatant nations and therefore, less likely to be detected by the Soviets as aid that violates the nations' neutrality. Likewise, Belgian fuel depots are already linked into the CEPS pipeline system.)

The Royal Australian Navy takes delivery of its last ship for a great many years, the frigate HMAS Arunta, from the Williamstown shipyard near Melbourne.

The mobilization-only 106th Motor-Rifle (my 232nd Rear Area Protection) Division is activated at Slavuta in the Carpathian Military District. The unit, the shadow formation of the 97th Guards Motor-Rifle Division, is initially assigned anti-partisan duties, where its woeful equipment stocks (with two battalions with BTR-152s and two and a half battalions of T-34/85s) are less of a problem than if it were to face NATO troops or even the heavily armed remnants of the Jugoslav and Romanian armies in the Balkans.

[Homer]

CEPS runs through France and Belgium in addition to the belligerent NATO countries and is also carries civilian capacity on a space available basis. I wonder how much activity there’s been by Soviet/WARPAC SOF and sabotage assets? Or how many small scale engagements by French and Belgian security forces.

[Ursus Maior]

Thanks!

I extensively mined that website; it is an incredible resource the likes of which I'm sure the DIA would have killed for (or prosecuted anyone that revealed if they had their own internal version!) back in the 80s. The page above that in the structure http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/msd.htm lists it among the mobilization-only divisions, which is why I categorized it as such. There was an earlier version of the site that had a heirarchy of readiness from A all the way to G. (A to C are the familiar ones, D is a unit like this that has a fairly substantial equipment pool and cadre, F are training divisions and G are more along the lines of "a warehouse full of SKSs and RPDs, two colonels and a list of local reservists."

The internet is just such an awesome place for geeks to find information on their subjects of passion. It's amazing what one can come across here. I bet DIA had those infos in the 80s, a lot of the barracks are clearly referenced with US terminology and names, but imagine a broader public of experts could have had these information back then: Big data analyzes are just so powerful when compared to smaller data studies.

[chico20854]

January 18, 1998

Quebec declares its independence from the Confederation of Canada and closes its borders. The Quebecois say that the destruction of Quebec is the fault of the English-dominated government and their French puppets in Ottawa. The new government of Quebec establishes a national capital at Sherbrooke and calls to France for assistance in defending Quebec's right to nationhood if the need arises. The various police, militia, and army personnel in Quebec are organized into a national army.

The 126th (my 92nd) Guards Motor-Rifle Division, a Category C unit from the Odessa Military District, is ordered to depart its home station to bolster Soviet anti-partisan operations of Jugoslavia.

Unofficially,

A French VAB APC of the 94e Régiment d'Infanterie, on patrol outside Breda in occupied Holland, is destroyed by a roadside explosion and unknown assailants open fire on the survivors. None of the French soldiers live long enough to see the arrival of the relief force.

A second convoy of excess cargo ships departs the North Sea anchorage off the German port of Bremerhaven. Meanwhile, the shut-down of the ships of the first similar convoy is nearly complete in a fjord outside Stavanger, Norway. The ships are drained of fuel (both heavy fuel oil and diesel), their light armament removed and all ammunition transferred to support vessels, and all food and consumables removed. All hatches and portholes are sealed, ships of similar size are "rafted" together and secured to moorings on the seabed.

Colombia’s civilian government is overthrown by Army and National Police units that are in the pay of the drug cartels, joined by the forces of the FARC and ELN. The Colombian Navy and Air Force, joined by the AFEUR anti-terrorist unit and about a quarter of the Army and National Police remain loyal to the government as civil war rapidly breaks out, with the rest of the Army and National Police, joined by FARC and ELN guerrillas and cartel militias opposing them. USMC trainers and US Army Special Forces troops that are training and assisting the Colombian military are caught up in the fighting.

[chico20854]

January 19, 1998

Despite the nuclear strike near Omaha, the city is not abandoned because of its central location and proximity to the grain belt, and the fact that it is a rail transportation hub. West Virginia, while not a target of the nuclear strikes, is undesirable as a relocation site due to its remoteness. The only nuclear target in Indiana is the Whiting oil refinery facilities in the extreme north. Casualties from radiation are significant, due to the heavier strikes in Illinois. The large cities are not evacuated, since food is relatively easy to get to them, but civil unrest reduces the population. Wisconsin was not a target of the nuclear strikes and is not severely damaged by radiation. Disease, shortages, and exposure take their toll, however.

Colonel Piotr Bulganin, a GRU agent in the UK, is captured by the British Army.

The armies of the world are in sad shape following the long 1997 campaign and nuclear attacks on both the forces in the field and their homelands, the source of ammunition, reinforcements and replacements, fuel, spare parts and new weapons and vehicles. The average strength of NATO combat divisions at the front has fallen to about 8,000, with U.S. divisions running at about half of that. Warsaw Pact divisions now vary widely in strength, running from 500 to 10,000 effectives, but mostly in the 2-4,000 range. Lack of fuel, spare parts, and ammunition temporarily paralyze the armies. There are no surviving governments to negotiate peace, which, unfortunately, could have come if they had existed. Only the military command structures remain intact, and they remain faithful to the final orders of their governments. In a time of almost universal famine, only the military has the means of securing and distributing rations. Military casualties have been much lower than casualties among civilians.

Filming of sitcom Darwin Was A Monkeys Uncle aboard the replica USS Constitution is halted when it becomes apparent that TV sitcoms will no longer be aired.

Unofficially,

The Belgian Defense Minister is replaced as the Belgian Prime Minister travels to Paris for discussions on the administration of the occuplied territories. As he leaves Brussels his motorcade is confronted by mobs of angry Dutch-speaking Belgians, livid about the treatment of their ethnic kinsmen in Holland.

STAVKA orders the activation of another mobilization-only division, the 160th Motor-Rifle, in the North Caucasus Military District. The division is formed from troops assigned to a PVO missile training brigade and excess personnel from the Yeysk naval air base. Most of the unit’s stockpile of equipment has been depleted in the years of war that preceded its activation, leaving a handful of relics from the Great Patriotic War as the division’s artillery and tank park.

SOUTHCOM is only in intermittent contact with government and military commanders in the United States due to the chaos from the attacks. Traffic through the Panam Canal is almost non-existent as power and fuel shortages sweep the United States and other countries cutting shipments by sea.

[chico20854]

Janaury 20, 1998

France recognizes Quebec as a sovereign nation and pledges its support of its independence.

The state of Utah has not been touched by the nuclear exchange (except for a few radiation-linked deaths). The post-strike food shortages do not cause the casualties they do elsewhere. This is partially due to the state's agricultural self-sufficiency, and partially to emergency food supplies kept by LDS church members and the philanthropic principles urged by that church's teachings. Despite the nuclear strike on Cheyenne Mountain, damage from radiation and famine is not severe in adjacent Colorado. The refineries and the aerospace industry of Washington have been destroyed in the nuclear exchange, while almost 13 percent of the megatonnage of the nuclear strikes fell on targets in the state of California. In Alaska, the North Slope oil fields were not a target of the nuclear strikes, since there are no refinery facilities there. However, the Alaskan pipeline has been cut in several places by Soviet ground troops, and the storage and shipping facilities at the pipeline's southern terminus were rendered unusable when X Corps withdrew in the fall. Most of the oil fields in the rest of the state (around Anchorage, for instance) are severely damaged as well, even if not in areas occupied by Soviet troops.

Colonel Piotr Bulganin, the GRU agent captured the prior day, kills himself before the Army can obtain any major secrets from him about the GRU.

The commander of the 126th (my 92nd) Guards Motor-Rifle Division responds to STAVKA's orders for his division to depart Ukraine and assume anti-partisan duties in Jugoslavia. (Unofficially), He notes that his division is severely under strength and has no food, fuel or service ammunition and that STAVKA has made no transport available to move the unit to Jugoslavia. He also notes that his division, even if at full strength, lacks the ability to self-deploy over such a long distance. He therefore respectfully declines to move his unit until such resources are made available.

[castlebravo92]

Just as an aside, Texas got 20% of the raw megatonnage...and that's without counting the Robison and Lemont "TX" strikes.

Simulated blast/thermal casualties using 1997 population numbers:


Row Labels Sum of DEAD Sum of INJURED
AK 56,458 63,775
AR 17,068 4,804
CA 2,351,092 3,959,548
CO 80,312 212,910
D.C. 154,505 209,690
DE 29,978 72,862
FL 78,144 155,504
GA 96,106 113,808
HA 142,806 173,417
IL 161,965 382,009
IN 292,938 687,750
KS 74,068 128,815
KY 18,108 31,010
LA 317,448 434,875
MD 73,376 196,922
MI 3,084 2,312
MO 70,093 124,063
MS 33,175 29,282
MT 22,008 22,743
ND 13,808 1,490
NE 128,254 157,453
NJ 1,190,951 2,482,863
OH 239,258 395,548
OK 85,812 102,746
ON 227,526 248,054
PA 394,571 1,337,164
SC 6,553 34,633
TX 1,423,363 2,088,855
VA 438,193 646,737
WA 16,691 25,812
WY 26,419 23,055
Grand Total 8,264,131 14,550,509


Sometime this annum I hope to have fallout casualties modeled with a decent fallout model (decent means better than the quick and dirty elliptical WSEG-10 algo used by NukeMapTools) capable of producing a nice fallout map as well.

The ON casualties are ONLY the Windsor Ontario attack, and all of those are actually Michigan, US casualties (I don't have gridded population data for Canada added to the population database), so obviously MI is grossly undercounted in the above pivot table.

Howling Wilderness states the population of the United States was reduced to 68% of it's prewar level by Jan 1 of 1999, or about 87 million dead after 13 months. If we use a rule of thumb and say half of the injured in the above table died from their injuries, and throw in another 5 million deaths from fallout, that gets you to ~20 million dead, so you need to fill in another ~67 million dead due to famine, disease, and civil unrest through 1999.

And then another 50 million dead through June of 2000. That's a lot of narrative writing to fill in the handwaving details that GDW left to the referee (or Chico in this case).

And if you go with the Howling Wilderness bleakness, another 100 million dead once the drought induced famine winds it's course, landing you at ~34 million survivors by 2002-2003 timeframe.

As an aside, I think the drought should be retconned into something a little more milder than killing off 75% of remaining population. The severity of the drought simply is not realistic given the size and water diversity in the United States (the US has a more reliable and redundant agriculture water structure at the national level than just about any other country, ESPECIALLY in the Deep South, where - even if you turned off the rain for a year or two, there's enough ground water able to be tapped to sustain subsistence agriculture for the half-sized surviving population.

[Homer]

The drought always felt a bit contrived from my position. Kind of like they needed a way to keep the badness going.

The big killers I could see would stem from a disruption of petroleum based society, leadership casualties, and a loss of population and resource control. The final straw was the Mexican invasion, which finally destroyed any progress made towards addressing the above.

Society in 1997 (and now) runs on petroleum. That's everything from a lack of petrochemical feedstocks for fertilizers to fuel for the firetruck coming to put your jury rigged chimney fire out. Systems just grind to a halt until alternative sources can be found or production restored; think the last harvest scene in Threads. Coal, burning trash, etc. hydro might answer some requirements, but they lack the ability supplant the omnipresence of petroleum. That said, there's going to be "islands" of (relative) better off (NW PA/W NY, ARK-LA-TEX, OK, etc.) where some oil still flows, and things limp along with shortages.

The strikes and chaotic post-strike environment prevented a smooth succession of leadership. Cannon and Chico's history have done a great job of showcasing the effects of disruption of leadership across the nation on unity of effort. Despite having a shell of a plan in place, with national caches, evacuation plans, and prepared refugee areas there was no one in authority post-strike to ensure execution and more importantly adjustment. While a functioning NCA was able to execute a series of strikes against the USSR, there was no corresponding authority to conduct a concurrent campaign to mitigate (control seems unachievable) the effects of damage and ensure the "islands" were identified and connected into what remained of a national web. Or, for that matter, to conduct triage of surviving populations and allocate resources.

Both of the above feed the problem of population and resource control. In the post-attack environment, the challenge of marrying vital sectors of the population up with the resources needed to rebuild elements of the national production, distribution, and storage networks was unmet. Instead, both Cannon and Chico's history show the effects of uncontrolled groups of refugees consuming resources that could be better used else where. Functioning leadership protecting the productive "islands", determining distribution of resources on a state and national level, with the wherewithal to either enforce order or enforce a blockade of non-essential areas was required for effective management of the crisis.

People die in dribs and drabs due to the failure of the above. Without an effective means of providing the resources of a petroleum based society, there's less of everything to go around, and fewer ways to keep what there is; so people starve, die for lack of soap and bacitracin, or freeze. Lack of effective leadership lets the crisis continue and deepen- nobody is making the calls to stop throwing good money after bad and resources (food, fuel, security forces, spare parts) are squandered (Just look at what's lost when SUBBASE Groton is overrun). Finally, by not adjusting plans to protect and reallocate what was left to surviving industry resources were squandered in ineffective sectors or responding to ancillary threats (imagine a full court press to muster enough production to properly process and distribute the 1997 harvest or if the response to the Mexican invasion had been handled by not denuding the country of remaining military forces).

Just my thoughts

[chico20854]

January 21, 1998

Nothing official for today!

Officers and senior NCOs of the small French garrison of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland board a light transport aircraft for a low-level flight to Sherbrooke, capital of the newly independent nation of Quebec, to help form and train the new nation's army.

US Army Europe begins a series of organizational and logistic streamlining as the first evacuation convoys from French occupied zone begin arriving. Administratively, the flow of replacement troops and equipment has almost entirely halted, requiring the losses sustained in the prior year's campaigning to be filled from resources already in theatre. The Army's support structure is in apalling condition between attacks from Soviet Spetsnaz teams and pro-Soviet partisans, the tactical nuclear exchange and the French invasion. The first evacuation convoys carry troops of the 21st Theater Army Command, who are tasked to establish a new support structure in central Germany. The command establishes a headquarters in the Kransberg Castle, a prewar US Army facility with extensive bunkers north of Frankfurt and begins planning to reoccupy a variety of Bundeswehr and US Army storage sites and ammunition dumps (all long emptied of materiel) to house the troops being withdrawn from the occupied zone. Likewise, the Air Force reassembles the remnants of 17th Air Force headquarters (its home station at Sembach Air Base was nuked in September) at the air defense control bunker under Erndtebrück, not far away from 21 TAACOM and begins coordinating the reassembly of USAF Germany.

The mobilization-only 283rd Motor Rifle Division is activated in the Crimea, formed from stay-behind troops of the 126th Motor-Rifle Division. By 1950s standards it would have been considered underequipped, with three battalions of BTR-152 APCs, a full complement of T-34/85 tanks and various Second World War and 1950s artillery pieces and FROG-5 SSMs; the division's sole anti-tank weapons are a battery of 57mm ZiS-2 anti-tank guns and less than 50 RPG-2 rocket launchers.

[chico20854]

January 22, 1998

Noting in canon for the day

The El Paso area is on the verge of being overwhelmed by streams of refugees from Mexico. 9th Texas Brigade’s harsh methods of dealing with the flow soon cause tensions with the Mexican government.

The destroyer USS Morton, approaching Kenya through the Indian Ocean, is intercepted by an A-1 Skyraider of the 2nd Battalion, 228th Aviation Regiment, which is performing a routine surface sweep.

The first evacuation flights of F-16s depart Hahn Air Base in the occupied zone to Jever Air Base near the German North Sea Coast.

Several German corps (VI, X, XI and XII Korps) are repositioned internally to reinforce the remnants of the territorials that were overrun during the French invasion as well as provide internal security and spread the burden of supporting troops across larger areas.

Within the US Army in Europe, instructions are issued to selectively deactivate subordinate units, reassigning their remaining troops and equipment to other subunits pending receipt of limited numbers of additional troops from rear area, naval and air force commands. Commanders are given wide discretion to promote soldiers who displayed leadership aptitude over the preceding months into leadership positions, pending receipt of additional troops.

7th Army and 4th Army's G-4s (supply officers) issue a directive to centralize control of key supplies currently held at division and corps level. Fuel, rations, guided missiles, MLRS rockets, chemical and tactical nuclear weapons and FASCAM, ICM and Assault Breaker artillery rounds are all to be managed centrally; initially commanders must cease issuing them without further permission and report stock on hand, permitting US Army Europe to reallocate these scarce resources to where most needed.

To the west, French Army commanders are taken aback by the sheer quantity of US Army and USAF materiel to be evacuated as American commanders refuse to abandon the smallest scrap of assets built up in over 50 years of occupation. Belgian Air Force technicians complete the transfer of the first F-16A, handing it over to a small American team that inspects the aircraft before flying it off to Jever Air Base.

Rains in eastern Africa begin to slow military operations as the limited road network, already heavily damaged by fighting and overtaxed even in peacetime, degrades under flooding and poor drainage. The weather also limits aerial resupply operations, even if the small fleet of support aircraft (and requisitioned civilian aircraft) had fuel and sufficient capacity to resupply the fighting forces.

[Homer]

I wonder what else goes out under the table from the Belgians. FN Herstal, MECAR, and FdZ all make a range of NATO standard munitions and material. The Belgians also license built the F-16.

If nothing else hopefully the US Liaison Team got a few days of good food, hot showers, and laundry!

[chico20854]

I wonder what else goes out under the table from the Belgians. FN Herstal, MECAR, and FdZ all make a range of NATO standard munitions and material. The Belgians also license built the F-16.

If nothing else hopefully the US Liaison Team got a few days of good food, hot showers, and laundry!

I tried to structure it so that the compensation items are things that Belgium produces and was possibly in widespread use in 1997 throughout the alliance, so that FN-marked brass, for example, wouldn't immediately raise red flags if the GRU recovered some. That the burden falls disproportionately on Belgium also is another example of who the senior partner in the endeavor is! The license-building of the F-16 was in cooperation with the Danes; absent their cooperation (and possibly components from the US) the Belgians are unable to build more. (And the Belgian F-16As are Block 5 or 10 standard, unable to fire AMRAAM or use guided munitions; IRL the Belgians started upgrading their F-16 fleet in 1997 but in this environment, with Belgium sitting out the war, they get nothing and their F-16s remain essentially unchanged from late-70s standard. To the USF of early 1998 a dozen of these planes are better than no aircraft at all, but a far cry from what had been coming off the lines at Ft Worth in November.

The head of the US delegation's little brother is a certain DIA colonel we all know...

[chico20854]

January 23, 1998

Nothing official for today!

Graebarde reports that farms in the US feel the fall as much as anyone. The modernized American farm depends on electricity to run all the modern conveniences. Animal enterprises especially suffer as it is rapidly discovered the normal crew cannot handle 1,000 hogs in confinement when the power fails, nor can the egg and broiler factories or the giant dairies. Even the smaller operations have trouble with the smaller herd and flocks they manage. It takes perhaps two to three times as long to milk out a cow by hand compared to a milking machine. (Longer for hand-milkers not used to the task, as their forearms tighten up from the squeezing). The four persons on a 50-cow dairy spend most of the day just getting the 40 or so cows milking at the time milked out, leaving no time for the myriad other tasks needed on the farm. Then arises the question of what to do with all the milk, or in the case of egg factories all the eggs, that accumulate in the first couple of days. Many of the large operations soon have no workers showing for work for a number of reasons which compound all the problems. Herds soon die off. Chickens and hogs start to starve unless someone turns them loose, and winter is not a good time for the housed animals to be set free to fend for themselves, something that was bred out of them long ago. Crop farmers fair somewhat better with their crops either in bins or silos on the farm or at the community grain company’s granary. As the transportation system fails, however, there is no way for the raw food to reach those that needed it.

Those farmers in the colder areas, predominately north of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers suffer as well as heat sources disappear. Very few have alternative means of heating their homes that are adequate for prolonged periods of time. The generator to run the electric heater or fans on gas stoves need fuel, which soon becomes scarce due to distribution and supply problems, which government policy seems to direct what aid arrives in rural areas to the refugees from the cities. Many farm homes are destroyed by fires caused by improvised alternative heat sources.

While food for the most part on farms is available, it is unprocessed. Most of the smaller holdings still maintain at least a token garden, but almost all modern farms rely on the same source of food as the city folks, the local markets. The specialization of the modern farmer works against them - dairymen have milk, most have some beef or a pig in the freezer as well as eggs and so forth, but most are not stocked up as their pioneer ancestors had been. The elderly, remembering the depression and war years of WW II are somewhat better prepared, having been ingrained with stocking up, but never all.

The winter takes its toll on the weak and sick, both two- and four-legged. Starvation conditions, while not as severe on most farms, exist. Local government support, in the form of USDA representatives, county agricultural extension agents and state agricultural university faculty, are not forthcoming in first winter after the attacks. Most farmers do not leave their farms other than perhaps cluster several families onto one farm for security. Neighbors help neighbors. Those with heat take in those without. Those with food share with those without. Refugees are ‘placed’ on farms. Some had been there before during prior evacuations at the outbreak of the war or in the flurry of panicked evacuations that followed the outbreak of nuclear warfare in Europe and Asia in July. Some are welcomed back as good helpers; others are sent packing as soon as the farmer is able to do so. The government procures food from the farmers, primarily raw food stocks. Cereal grains are coarse ground in on-farm mills intended to grind feed for livestock on many farms. The coarseness does not matter since it goes into gruel. Excess animals are butchered on a regular basis, or procured by the government for relief efforts. The farmers are given chits for the produce and livestock taken, but there is not much faith it will ever be worth anything.

Elsewhere, unofficially

The destroyer USS Morton arrives at the Kenyan port of Mombasa after a month and a half-long voyage from San Diego. The aged destroyer requires several weeks of repairs to restore the ship to adequate condition.

On the Warsaw Pact side of the front line in Europe the situation is desperate. Soviet and Polish troops are exhausted, their units depleted by months of battering NATO forces and nuclear attacks, at the end of supply lines across a nation devastated in two campaigns from one end of the country to the other, sustained by a USSR that has been at war for over two years, its economy in shambles as it supported war on five fronts. NATO troops have been expelled from nearly all Polish territory (a slice of northwest Poland, including the battered city of Szczecin, remains under control of US Marines), and Soviet, Czech, Hungarian and Italian troops occupy Austria and southern Germany along a line from Lake Constance through Augsburg and Regensburg through to the Czech border south of the Hof Gap.

The communications and transportation networks of the western USSR, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have been shredded by NATO conventional and nuclear strikes over the preceding year, the economy of Poland totally destroyed, the Polish harvest a complete failure, and Czech industry severely damaged by the war. The surviving Polish population faces death by starvation and exposure. Faced with these challenges and with Soviet units averaging 2-4000 men (from one seventh to one third of authorized strength), the Soviet Western TVD is in no position to continue offensive operations (or even to mount a coherent defense, if by some magical means, NATO could muster the force to counterattack).

The most immediate challenge is to sustain the fighting forces and the Polish population, followed by reorganization and reconstruction of the Pact armies. To lessen the burden on the transportation network (and to assist in maintaining martial law in the USSR) 1st Byelorussian Front and the reinforcements released by RGVK (most crucially the 1st Shock Army) are recalled to the USSR, ordered to leave a portion of their heavy weapons and vehicles behind for transfer to units remaining in Poland. (Compliance with those orders is more theoretical than real, but they do result in some replacement equipment reaching units still in contact).

Warsaw Pact units on the front line currently consist of: Baltic Front (with 11th Guards Army replacing 22nd Army) on the northernmost section of the Oder River from the Baltic Coast to Kostrzyn, where the 1st Western Front sector begins. That formation (with 8th Guards Army and 2nd Polish Army on the front line, with the remnants of 1st Guards Tank Army in reserve) faces the US XI Corps, and is responsible for the front south to Forst, where 2nd Western Front (2nd Guards Tank Army and 20th Army at the front, with 3rd Shock Army in reserve) assumes responsibility for the front line through to Zittau, at the common border of East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. From there, 1st Southwestern Front with 4th Czech, 21st and 1st Czech Armies guards the East German border and occupies south Germany through the city of Regensburg. Second Southwestern Front (with two Italian and one Hungarian corps under command, as well as its own 16th and 41st Armies) occupies Austria (with 2nd Czech Army, assisted by 8th Tank Army) and southern Germany from Regensburg to Lake Constance. Reserve Front, with 22nd Army, 4th Guards Tank Army and the 3rd Polish Army, remains in central and eastern Poland, assisting the remnants of the Polish Internal Front in rebuilding devastated Poland and restoring communist rule while serving as a reserve for the Western TVD.

In the air over western Germany, another flight of F-16s takes off from the French occupied zone, this time from the 86th Tactical Fighter Wing at Ramstein, heading for Hohn Air Base north of Hamburg.

Another mobilization-only division, the 67th Tank, is called up in the Siberian Military District. Formed in Novosibirsk from stockpiles and a small cadre of the 85th Motor-Rifle Division. The division’s stockpiles of equipment were depleted long ago to support other units, and the 67th only manages to receive a handful of T-55s and a smattering of Second World War-era artillery pieces. The rest of the division (which never receives a full complement of troops) is formed into a cavalry force.

[chico20854]

January 24, 1998

Nothing official for the day.

Congress, surviving members of which have been gathered at the Greenbriar Resort in western Virginia, has still failed to reach a quorum. The Speaker, watching the supplies at the luxury complex rapidly depleting and members drift away to attend to their districts, declares the House of Representatives adjourned. The Senate follows a few hours later, and America's elected representatives begin to disperse into the chaos outside the gates. A lucky few members are able to convince Capitol Police officers to accompany them, their firepower being traded for the priority access to food that the member presumably exercises.

17th Air Force headquarters in Germany is rapidly coming to the conclusion that there are few remaining air bases available to use. Several bases were overrun by Soviet and Italian troops in Bavaria, Bitburg, Sembach and several others (as well as all of RAF Germany's) were struck by Soviet nuclear weapons and most of the remaining USAF bases in Germany were west of the Rhine and are now lost to the French. The remaining Ground-Launch Cruise Missile fleet (from the squadrons based in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands) have been assembled in the woods and hills north of Frankfurt being rapidly occupied by US Army support units, and the day sees the first of several C-130 flights, escorted by armed USAF F-16s, carrying remaining B61 nuclear bombs out of American and Luftwaffe bases in the occupied zone.

The 254th Motor-Rifle Division, a veteran prewar Category A division that started the war stationed in Hungary before participating in the Romanian and Austrian-Bavarian campaigns, is brought forward from a reserve position in Austria, assigned to reinforce 21st Army in northwestern Austria.

The California City Freedom, on its maiden voyage using a scratch crew (the ship was delivered in early December), arrives in Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island to load cargo from surviving military production in New England. Three new UH-60 helicopters are flown aboard from the Sikorski plant in Connecticut, three containers containing nearly 800 Stinger missiles are loaded along with several dozen containers with complete engines and spares for F/A-18s and A-10s from a plant outside Boston. Other ammunition loaded aboard includes several containers of small arms ammunition in Pact-standard calibers (7.62x39, 7.62x54, 12.7x108 and 14.5x114mm) manufactured in Connecticut under contract to the Chinese Army. The largest prize is loaded aboard the vehicle deck, eight LAV-25s (also originally ordered by the Chinese and produced at the reactivated GM plant at Framingham) as well as an inoperable M-47 tank salvaged from a VFW post in Rhode Island. A cargo that will help the tanks already in Europe remain operating, two dozen complete M-1 tank engines and several containers of parts, has also been assembled from the plant in Connecticut, which continued producing the engines faster than the remaining tank plant (in Detroit) could install them in new tanks. Finally, a wide array of small arms from New England's arms makers are loaded aboard.

[chico20854]

Just as an aside, Texas got 20% of the raw megatonnage...and that's without counting the Robison and Lemont "TX" strikes.

Simulated blast/thermal casualties using 1997 population numbers:


Row Labels Sum of DEAD Sum of INJURED
AK 56,458 63,775
AR 17,068 4,804
CA 2,351,092 3,959,548
CO 80,312 212,910
D.C. 154,505 209,690
DE 29,978 72,862
FL 78,144 155,504
GA 96,106 113,808
HA 142,806 173,417
IL 161,965 382,009
IN 292,938 687,750
KS 74,068 128,815
KY 18,108 31,010
LA 317,448 434,875
MD 73,376 196,922
MI 3,084 2,312
MO 70,093 124,063
MS 33,175 29,282
MT 22,008 22,743
ND 13,808 1,490
NE 128,254 157,453
NJ 1,190,951 2,482,863
OH 239,258 395,548
OK 85,812 102,746
ON 227,526 248,054
PA 394,571 1,337,164
SC 6,553 34,633
TX 1,423,363 2,088,855
VA 438,193 646,737
WA 16,691 25,812
WY 26,419 23,055
Grand Total 8,264,131 14,550,509


Sometime this annum I hope to have fallout casualties modeled with a decent fallout model (decent means better than the quick and dirty elliptical WSEG-10 algo used by NukeMapTools) capable of producing a nice fallout map as well.

The ON casualties are ONLY the Windsor Ontario attack, and all of those are actually Michigan, US casualties (I don't have gridded population data for Canada added to the population database), so obviously MI is grossly undercounted in the above pivot table.

Howling Wilderness states the population of the United States was reduced to 68% of it's prewar level by Jan 1 of 1999, or about 87 million dead after 13 months. If we use a rule of thumb and say half of the injured in the above table died from their injuries, and throw in another 5 million deaths from fallout, that gets you to ~20 million dead, so you need to fill in another ~67 million dead due to famine, disease, and civil unrest through 1999.

And then another 50 million dead through June of 2000. That's a lot of narrative writing to fill in the handwaving details that GDW left to the referee (or Chico in this case).

Thanks!!!!!!

Once things slow down (and I think in general the number of daily occurrences will decrease markedly from here on out) I'm going to try to pull together a google map of the exchange, with ground zeros and yield/weapon/firing unit/date data noted. I'll send you a pm as that develops so you can work your magic!

While I am discovering/mining more sources about the growth and rampages of various marauder groups and disease outbreaks around the world, I don't anticipate getting too granular about the casualties worldwide. It just gets depressing! I am hoping to provide some more detail about the significant campaigning of the year - the Alaska counterattack, Mexican invasion, Iranian internal security, African wars as well as the summer campaign in Europe, much as I was able to flesh out the French invasion of the Rhineland.

Enjoy!!!

[chico20854]

I'll be out for the next week and a half. I'll resume when I'm back.

[Ursus Maior]

Just as an aside, Texas got 20% of the raw megatonnage...and that's without counting the Robison and Lemont "TX" strikes.

[...]

Howling Wilderness states the population of the United States was reduced to 68% of it's prewar level by Jan 1 of 1999, or about 87 million dead after 13 months. If we use a rule of thumb and say half of the injured in the above table died from their injuries, and throw in another 5 million deaths from fallout, that gets you to ~20 million dead, so you need to fill in another ~67 million dead due to famine, disease, and civil unrest through 1999.

And then another 50 million dead through June of 2000. That's a lot of narrative writing to fill in the handwaving details that GDW left to the referee (or Chico in this case).

And if you go with the Howling Wilderness bleakness, another 100 million dead once the drought induced famine winds it's course, landing you at ~34 million survivors by 2002-2003 timeframe.

[...]

That goes in the direction of my thinking as well. Texas will probably take decades to clear and clean up, but it would be an important project for the generation of T2K-millenials in the US, due to resources and LOCs across the Americas and the Gulf.

The drought seems extremely over-written. By that time, most survivors would likely have been relocated to arable lands or found themselves a plot to farm. The US would de-industrialize heavily, but small workshop industries would soon spring up in the newly found farming communities and nearby larger cities. The knowledge is still there and some of the tech-base and critical infrastructure as well. Rule of thumb might put the US at 150 million survivors in the early years of the 21st century. They would boom incredibly fast, probably generating the largest generation since the baby-boomers, due to available space, food and lack of social security. Infant mortality would be much higher, of course, but with local antibiotics and vaccine production (it's not that hard technically, if you know what you're doing), that'll be manageable as well.

It would be interesting to narrate, how the survivors incorporate the inevitable rise in misformed infants due to radiation damage to parental genomes. That could go very different, depending on the local community.

[Ursus Maior]

If nothing else hopefully the US Liaison Team got a few days of good food, hot showers, and laundry!
If the Belgians welcomed their US guests, then these will return well fed and slightly drunk. I never left Belgium hungry and once attended a conference in Liege, where we got served wine for every occasion and meal, except breakfast. France supposedly has similar customs.

[castlebravo92]

That goes in the direction of my thinking as well. Texas will probably take decades to clear and clean up, but it would be an important project for the generation of T2K-millenials in the US, due to resources and LOCs across the Americas and the Gulf.

The drought seems extremely over-written. By that time, most survivors would likely have been relocated to arable lands or found themselves a plot to farm. The US would de-industrialize heavily, but small workshop industries would soon spring up in the newly found farming communities and nearby larger cities. The knowledge is still there and some of the tech-base and critical infrastructure as well. Rule of thumb might put the US at 150 million survivors in the early years of the 21st century. They would boom incredibly fast, probably generating the largest generation since the baby-boomers, due to available space, food and lack of social security. Infant mortality would be much higher, of course, but with local antibiotics and vaccine production (it's not that hard technically, if you know what you're doing), that'll be manageable as well.

It would be interesting to narrate, how the survivors incorporate the inevitable rise in misformed infants due to radiation damage to parental genomes. That could go very different, depending on the local community.

IIRC, even as far back as ~1979 when the Office of Technology Assessment published "The Effects of Nuclear War", the Northeast US imported about 90% of their calories, so there would be a precipitous die off and/or population migration there. But not 90%. The Northeast actually has some decently productive agriculture potential, it just isn't economically competitive with 10,000+ acre agricorps in the Midwest at pumping out corn and wheat. And with the lights going out, the offices and factories closing, and no more welfare or social security payments and no more grocery stores, probably in the short run, pretty much everyone becomes a gardener, a farmer, a soldier/militia person, or a predator. Or dead.

A big determinant of any given locality's ability to arrest the slide into anarchy, starvation, and apocalypse would be the ability to procure enough food to sustain the population through to get the local harvest in...and the ability to get enough seeds to get a local harvest in. There would be lots of surplus labor available to hand till and weed fields.

I actually think for the US, the period between Dec 1997 and Nov 1998 is one of the most potentially narratively rich and under developed areas. There's a short lived period where things appear to be recovering a bit, but then the transportation system collapses and national government ceases and areas are left to their own devices.

This is where you see groups like the Texian Legion rise in East Texas (in my Head Canon, I have them being an amalgamation of the Texas State Guard, military "deserters" from the Red River Army Depot, biker gangs, and lead by a corrupt Sheriff - whose brother is a leader of a biker gang, forming up to "deal" with refugees streaming north from the Houston/Beaumont areas in the south, and Shreveport in the East). In the absence of Federal and state authority, other entities will spontaneously organize to defend what they have, or take what they need, or they will be victimized by groups that beat them to the punch. In most cases, this "spontaneous" organization will be on the skeleton or the structure of prior, pre-war organizations.

I'm also an "optimist" in the sense that I think most obviously predatory outfits would have a short life expectancy unless they were very well armed (i.e., the military could get away with it, for a while). If you look like a bandit, there will be a lot of frontier justice and shooting first and asking questions later, and there won't be any point taking prisoners if food supplies are already an issue. Of course, in some areas you might have a failure cascade that forces communities to become marauder to survive, but traditionally this type of unrest has been fairly uncommon historically even during widespread famine.

Also, the US has, on average, over a year's worth of grain already harvested. A famine in 1998 would be largely due to distribution not production issues, and would be a regional issue, not a national one - a lot of areas are self-sufficient from a calorie perspective.

All that being said, game would likely be hunted largely to extinction in the fist 3 months of a collapse scenario. Hunting should be much harder than it is in the rules.

[ToughOmbres]

January 16, 1998

The Mid-Atlantic states are, in some ways, the hardest hit by the war. The famine and dislocation resulting from the nuclear attacks causes these states to experience a reduction in population levels unprecedented in human history. Linden, Perth Amboy, Paulsboro, and Westville New Jersey have all been subjected to nuclear attacks. Almost a million people became casualties in these strikes, and more die in the civil strife that followed. The northern areas of Manhattan are almost completely abandoned. Inhabitants this far north had always lived with some minor fear of the motives of their neighbors to the south and are among the first to flee to northern New Jersey and upstate New York. The remaining major urban centers in Pennsylvania - Harrisburg and Pittsburgh - remain intact except for the inevitable episodes of looting and food riots that winter. Electricity and fuel are sharply rationed everywhere, of course, and the general breakdown of transportation and food distribution leads to severe food shortages and widespread starvation just as they did in most other parts of the country. Most rural areas, however, possessed of long-standing traditions of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, continue very much as they always had, their inhabitants enduring lean, hard times with patience, determination, and outright stubbornness. The region's principal problems stem directly from the controversial refugee relocation program first proposed as a civil defense option twenty years before the war began. Most of the refugges from the Washington, DC area are absorbed into the more rural areas of Virginia and Maryland.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Providence Freedom is delivered in San Diego, California, the last of 150 of the class delivered.

In Paris, General George Stark, DIA station chief in Amsterdam (and the senior DIA station chief alive in Europe) has agreed to "assistance" terms with the French government. In addition to providing for French and Belgian government sustainment of NATO troops that are not (or were) belligerents in the recent invasion until those same governments can provide for the evacuation of them and their equipment and supplies, the French and Belgians are to provide 10 million of the following: rounds of small arms ammunition, pre-packaged combat meals and gallons of diesel fuel. The fuel will be transferred along with 1 million gallons of aviation fuel using NATO's Central European Pipeline System, which despite multiple Spetsnaz attacks, remains partially functional. The French and Belgians will also provide 100,000 rounds of 20-40mm autocannon ammunition, 100,000 mortar rounds, 100,000 artillery rounds, 25,000 105mm tank gun rounds, 25,000 120mm tank gun rounds and 100,000 tons of bulk food. The Belgian Air Force will transfer 12 F-16As, 500 Sidewinder Air-to-Air missiles, 2,5000 dumb bombs and a package of spare parts, as well as providing parts and assistance in returning the 50th and 86th TFWs' grounded F-16s at Hahn and Ramstein Air Bases in the occupied zone to service. (The fuel required for the evacuation flights of USAF and RAF aircraft from the zone is to be provided by the French and is in addition to the aviation fuel transferred under the agreement). The French Air Force will also provide assistance in returning six grounded C-130s and two E-3 AWACS to service. Finally, the transmission lines across the Rhine are to be reactivated, with 500 MW of electrical power to be continuously provided at no cost for the remainder of the year. (These amounts are much reduced from Starks initial demands, but both sides realiized that the former pre-war allies were in a complicated situation, that France and Belgium are both officially neutral in the NATO-Pact conflict, and in some ways having to adjust their thinking as both sides retain sufficient nuclear weapons to inflict enormous damage on the other).

The sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl is released from the shipyard in its homeport of Bergen, Norway, where it was completing a retrofit that modernized the ship's systems and restored much that had deteriorated over the ship's 84 years of service. The work is nearly complete and the owners (a school ship consortium) want the ship available rather than completely updated.

The 289th Motor-Rifle Division is activated in the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan from surviving students and faculty of the Baku Higher Combined Arms Command School, a motor-rifle officer training academy. Conditions in the area are terrible and it will be some time before the division is ready to support Transcaucasian Front.

The (relatively) peaceful resolution to securing the repatriation of bypassed US assets and bases is especially well thought out and well done. Really enjoyed the winding down of Franco-Belgian invasion/occupation of the Rhine.

[ToughOmbres]

January 1, 1998

France seizes the Rhineland west of the Rhine River from Germany and sends its III Corps alongside Belgian units into the Netherlands. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade, a territorial unit holding the Breda-Tilburg area, is attacked by the French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch successfully defend their positions, while the Bundeswehr, with its efforts split between internal security/disaster relief duties and preparing for a counteroffensive in the south, offers less vigorous reistance. Unofficially, French progress is slow. While airborne and heliborne troops are successful in securing key chokepoints near the border, the roads are clogged with abandoned civilian vehicles and the advancing columns are mobbed by swarms of desperate refugees, who assail the advancing troops with requests for food. Armored units are able to deploy their tanks' dozer blades to clear roads, while other formations are forced to shuffle their engineer units to the front; units reliant on trucks or wheeled APCs make minimal forward progress through the morass of humanity.

NATO operations in the Mediterranean (competing with the French) are dependent on the last sizeable operating refinery in North Africa, at Bizerte, Tunisia.

The new year starts off with good news for the Americans in the Persian Gulf. 2/325th Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division makes contact with the forward outposts of the 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade (Georgia National Guard). The American paratroopers are an incredible sight. Many of them are wearing a mixture of Kurdish clothing and US camouflage fatigues. The 82nd's commander, Major General Jack Joyner, rides out on horseback looking for all the world like a Kurdish hill chief.

The beginning of the year also sees the French FAR in action against pro-Soviet rebels in Senegal, Mauritania and the Horn of Africa.

Unofficially,

In a briefing about plans for 1998, the acting head of FEMA reveals the existence of the 37 strategic reserve stockpiles to President Munson. Given the quantities of food on hand, remaining electrical and petroleum production and security situation, Munson concurs with the recommendation not to reveal their existence to state authorities and local FEMA officials and to reevaluate the decision in the fall, when the food and other supplies in the caches might be more strategically directed. The stockpiles established and maintained separately by the state of Texas are broken open by their guard forces (dispersed platoons of the Texas State Guard and guards at state penitentaries) and used to sustain their ongoing operations.

In northern California, leaders of the Hells Angels and affiliated outlaw motorcycle clubs/gangs gather following the activation of the agreed-upon Plan Alpha worked out a year ago. Over 1500 members of the clubs, all heavily armed, have come together at a ranch owned by a club member just south of the Oregon border. A similar gathering is occurring in southeastern Ohio, despite the damage done by nuclear strikes on Ohio and Kentucky.

RainbowSix reports that Headquarters, US Naval Forces Europe (USNAVEUR) is reformed at the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth.

The Belgian Army's I Corps' two divisions make little progress on the first day of the invasion as they struggle in difficult terrain around Maastrcicht and Aachen, the corps' initial objective. While the Dutch resistance in the region is disorganized (Dutch forces largely consist of lightly equipped territorial security companies and platoons, which are highly motivated and able to take advantage of prepared defensive structures due to the former presence of NATO high command posts in the area). To their south, the French I Corps overruns Luxembourg, easily overwhelming the nub of the Luxembourgois Army that survived the previous year's action in Norway. The French II Corps' offensive moves north along the level terrain along the west bank of the Rhine, which has become crowded with makeshift refugee camps.

RainbowSix comments that while the British Ambassador in Paris protests the “act of unprovoked aggression”, the UK is in no position to offer more tangible support to either the Netherlands or Germany.

The remaining Red Army command staff at "Moscow Center" (actually a bunker outside the city) decide to call up the remaining mobilization-only divisions to combat the growing internal unrest and prepare for a final offensive that will wipe NATO forces from Western Europe. Making this happen, however, will prove challenging, to say the least.

Despite the damage done by combat against WP forces, heartening to see the Dutch and German militaries give the Franco-Belgian invasion a bloody nose and not simply get run over roughshod.

[chico20854]

January 25, 1998

Surviving stocks of oil and petrochemicals in Aranas Pass, Texas which survived the fire are removed by the U.S. Army to secret storage areas in the north.

Elsewhere in the U.S. arrests for hoarding are commonplace (unofficially) as food and fuel in the "retail" distribution network have been almost entirely exhausted and military control of the wholesale distribution system is shakily established and enforced.

Following the virtual destruction of the 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division in a tactical nuclear strike, Transcaucasian Front orders the deployment of the 201st Motor-Rifle Divison from Afghanistan to Iran to perform anti-marauder duties.

Unofficially,

Officials in Bergen, Norway stock the sailing ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl with a cargo of preserved fish, ship parts and, in a hidden compartment, gold and other valuables from the city's banks and dispatch it to Latin America to trade for grain to feed the city's surviving population.

While the total load aboard the Colorado City Freedom is less than 20 percent of the ship's rated cargo capacity, it sets sail shortly before midnight after the stevedores and ship's crew complete loading the ship.

[chico20854]

I'll be out for the next week and a half. I'll resume when I'm back.

Back in the saddle, more coming this week! Trying to build some story...

[chico20854]

January 26, 1998

The German High Command decides to consolidate its elite forces into a single command, uniting the 24th, 25th and 27th Fallschirmjaeger Brigades, the former East German 40th Parachute Brigade and several mountain battalions under a single division headquarters, the 1st Fallschirmjager.

The winter of 1997-98 is a harsh one in northern and central Iran. The Soviet transportation system into the Transcaucasus Military District has been almost completely destroyed. Desertion is rampant as many troops became marauder bands. Tens of thousands of civilian refugees die from starvation or exposure. General Suryakin directs his staff to draw up an emergency food distribution plan that will distribute food and emergency supplies in as fair a manner as possible. South of the Zagros Mountains, things are better. The winter there is much milder, and the local farmers are able to produce enough food to keep people reasonably well-fed.

Unofficially,

Seeing the need for additional forces for domestic security and food distribution duties, the "Pentagon" (in reality, the powers-that-be at the ANMCC at Raven Rock) orders various units that have completed their training (most notably, the brigades of the 17th Airborne and 4th Armored Divisions and 8th Armored Cavalry Regiment at the National Training Centers and Joint Readiness Training Centers) from those garrisons to internal duties and the conversion of those bases' OPFORs (Opposing Forces), referees and support staff into troop units. The units that have completed their training are to use equipment stocks maintained at the base for rotating units to draw upon, while the cadre are to "unconvert" their VISMOD vehicles back to original configuaration and make use, as needed, of government-owned civilian-type logistic and support vehicles.

The 199th Infantry Brigade is ordered, ready or not, to deploy from Hawaii to Korea to reinforce Eighth Army, reeling after months of tactical nuclear strikes and a year of North Korean human wave attacks.

The crew of the Norwegian sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl, recently departed from its home port of Bergen, Norway, conduct test firing of the ship's defensive weapons, a single 40mm and six 20mm anti-aircraft guns provided by the city's Home Guard detachment.

[chico20854]

January 27, 1998

In Pennsylvania, state officials have tried to control the refugee situation but it has grown beyond the resources available. State government relocation authorities, working under the direction of federal relocation boards and officials, abandon the plans laid out by Washington bureaucrats months or years before. In the far northwestern corner of the state, Erie finds itself as a last stop for refugees from points west and south trying to enter New York. The population swells beyond anything the local authorities can cope with.

Unofficially,

In Canada, the remaining authorities implement a similar effort to activate military forces to support internal security and recovery efforts. The Canadian Army Reserve, which has been forming, training and providing replacement troops, sections and platoons to the Active force throughout the war, is now called upon to form troop units on its own. (This process had already commenced in July in British Columbia and Yukon in July, following the Soviet invasion of Alaska). Flush with draftees in the midst of their training, and with transport links to the fighting forces in Europe down, reserve units around the federation are able to, in general, stand up an at least nominal battalion of troops. In some areas older Cadets, retirees, veterans and RCMP officers are pressed into service. A more pressing problem is equipment, for while small arms (either current issue C7s or older C1 (FALs)) and individual equipment are plentiful enough, the Reserve's stocks of armored vehicles, mortars and artillery have been largely depleted by 13 months of war, sent overseas as replacements for combat losses on the Centraal Front or in Norway, or sent west to equip the forces facing the Soviets in northwestern British Columbia. Units in Ontaria and the Maritimes are allocated to augment the meagre Active forces in the region in suppression of the Quebec uprising, those in the west to facing the Soviets and those on the prairie to securing food and fuel as well as preserving a modicum of order in their local areas.

Dutch troops infiltrated into the French occupation zone ambush a lone Peugot P4 light vehicle racing to make it back to its fortified garrison before nightfall. The ambush is successful, and the bullet-ridden wreakage holds the body of the commander of the 158e Compagnie du Génie (158th Engineer Company).

Pro-NATO guerrillas in Esfahan machinegun a truck carrying Soviet soldiers on their way back to the front after a period of rest in the city.

The 279th Motor-Rifle Division, a mobilization-only "shadow" division formed from excess staff and obsolete equipment maintained by the elite 4th Guards Tank Division, is called up in Naro-Fominsk to help with relief and security efforts in the remains of the capital 70 km to the northeast. The division is fully manned from the masses of refugees that have fled the city and generously staffed with officers displaced from their jobs at ministries, institutes and schools. Like most late mobilizing divisions, equipment is scarce (four battalions of tanks, three of APCs) and obsolescent (T-55s, BTR-60s, BM-14s and 37mm AA guns). The unit is commonly considered the last Red Army division mobilized in the war (although local military district commanders ordered the 281st Motor-Rifle Divison into service nearly a year later, that action was not approved by the Red Army high command).

[chico20854]

January 28, 1998

The 82nd Airborne Division, worn out after months behind enemy lines during Operation Pegasus II and several weeks of internal security duties along the north coast of the Persian Gulf, is withdrawn to Saudi Arabia for R&R.

The student body of the US Air Force Academy, outside Colorado Springs Colorado, is converted to a troop unit, designated the Cadet Brigade. The brigade takes over the remaining weapons and equipment left at Fort Carson by the 4th Infantry Division when the 4th was airlifted to Europe in October of 1996.

Unofficially,

Thge 4th Virginia State Guard Regiment deploys a surplus Second World War-era M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, rearmed with unit machineguns and used by the regiment alongside three converted bank armored cars as a (completely unauthorized by command) so-called armored platoon.

A US Army resupply convoy in northwestern East Germany stops at a MP roadside checkpoint en route from its latest supply run, (relatively) laden with food, ammunition and fuel. Once stopped the MPs order the troops out of their vehicles, and soon they find themselves surrounded by more US troops in uniforms that can best be described as, at best, disorderly and unauthorized. They are ordered to drop their weapons as it becomes apparent that the roadblock is not, in fact, MPs but deserters, in this case a band of the US Army criminal band that calls itself 5th Squad. The minority members of the surrounded troops are offered admission to the group, which several accept, and the rest are stripped of their equipment and weapons, bound and gagged and driven several miles away, where they are dropped off in a remote patch of forest to fend for themselves. The haul secured by 5th Squad is enough to keep the gang fed and supplied throughout the rest of the winter.

Belgian troops (esppecially Dutch-speaking ones) are assigned primary responsibility for coordinating the evacuation of US and British assets from the Franco-Belgian occupied zone, taking over from French Army units which, in several cases, have strained relations with the NATO commanders involved. The Belgian troops are considered generous by the isolated American units, which appreciate the provision of ample fine Belgian ales.

The layup effort in the fjords outside Stavanger concludes with the stripping of perishable supplies, ammunition, fuel and lubricants from the last ship (the American freighter Cape Catoche). The crews and most of the supplies return to the Baltic aboard the Danish corvette Beskytteren and a trio of oilfield supply ships while the US Navy oiler Platte takes the salvaged fuel north along the Norwegian coast.

[chico20854]

January 29, 1998

Corpus Christi, Texas has been abandoned. The blasts at the end of November left 40,000 dead and 100,000 injured. Thousands more - no estimate is ever made - died in the weeks that followed from starvation, disease, and the effects of severe burns and radiation sickness.

Unofficially,

In Korea, the 163rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is withdrawn behind the lines and given priority in fuel allocation so it can act as a mobile armored reserve to smash enemy breakthroughs.

The final USAF Europe aircraft depart bases in the French-occupied Rhineland, landing shortly thereafter at nearby bases in central and northern Germany. They are laden with as many munitions as can be carried and topped off with as much fuel as they can carry.

French, Belgian, German and American engineers, each working in their own sectors (and with Americans handling the interfaces between nations) complete repairs to the CEPS pipelines across (and under) the Rhine, and shortly before midnight fuel resumes flowing into tank farms in central Germany.

The oiler Platte continues its voyage north, travelling out of sight of the Norwegian mainland.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-tjZiq-ixOvu6B2dKjdLc60pCUAjktNK/view?usp=share_link)
A third group of excess merchantmen departs the Heligoland Bight in the North Sea, headed for layup at Cromarty Firth in northern Scoland. It travels at 10 knots to reduce fuel consumption and allow a quartet of offshore oil rig boats to keep up with the formation, which is escorted by the Canadian "destroyer" Assiniboine. (Most NATO navies would classify it as a frigate.)

American paratroops and their Romanian allies overrun a Soviet outpost in the small Transylvanian town of Deda, ridding the area of Soviet occupation forces and, to the increasing dismay of Soviet leaders, cutting two rail lines from the USSR into the Balkans.

[chico20854]

January 30, 1998

Following the Army's lead, Headquarters, Marine Corps, directs the formation of additional troop units from training and support staff at various installations. The 30th Marine Regiment is the first of these, raised from some of the final classes of trainees at Camp Lejeune and Parris Island and their drill instructors, troops withdrawn from Guantanamo and a detachment from FAST Company, Atlantic. Reflecting its unusual heritage, it is assigned a new regiment number rather than one from the Corp’s long history. It is equipped with whatever vehicles and armor is available, most of which are training vehicles that have seen considerable use.

The replica USS Constitution takes on a cargo in Capetown, South Africa in exchange for a resupply of food and spare parts.

The 101st Air Assault Division's aviation elements are withdrawn to Saudi Arabia for rest and refit. Few replacement aircraft are available, (unofficially) although the Saudis are generous in permitting American maintenance contractors (many of whom are military retirees) and their facilities (and, unknown to their hosts, spares) to work on the American aircraft.

Unofficially,

The Red Army has always operated on a much more austere logistic basis than NATO forces, and in the aftermath of the nuclear exchange Soviet units are largely left to their own devices for support. In the Balkans, many Soviet units simply disintegrate in the face of a hostile local population and lack of resupply from home, but in Central Europe they are able to remain cohesive. This is due, ironically, in part, to the use of captured NATO supply dumps, the support of the local population and the benefit of RGVK (the Soviet High Command)’s prioritization of the Western TVD to the limited extent that central direction has any effect.

The US Navy tanker Platte, laden with fuel oil and diesel from merchantmen laid up in Stavanger to the south, arrives in the Vestfjord, where the carrier battle groups built around the USS Roosevelt and Eisenhower have been sheltering. While the nuclear-powered carriers require no conventional fuel, their escorts do and have nearly run dry, with only one ship operating, guarding the entrance through the minefields into the fjord. The Platte begins refilling those ships' tanks, the first resupply from the logistic system since December 20. (Some bartering and purchases of food from local villages had occurred since then, completely unauthorized by any higher command).

[chico20854]

January 31, 1998

Arrests for hoarding become commonplace. Most residents of Pittsburgh that had fled the city (and other similar cities) have returned home

Unofficially,

NATO Corps are lined up from the Baltic to French-Swiss Border in the following order: II MEF, III German, XI US, VII German, XXIII US, V German, XV US, I German, II UK, VII US, IV German, Danish Expeditionary Force, XX US Corps. I UK, III and V US Corps and II, VI, VIII, X, XI and XII German Korps are in the NATO rear area rebuilding, on relief duties or facing Franco-Belgian troops along the Rhine

The 15th Motor-Rifle (my 78th Tank) Division, badly mauled in Operation Pegasus II, is a shadow of its former self and is sent back to Chardzhou, Turkmenistan for rest and refit.

In New South Wales, Australia, the premier authorizes the reorganization of federal and state police, augmented by private security guards, into a new force, designated the Main Force Patrol, to combat rampant crime in rural areas and along the state's highways.

[kato13]

January 31, 1998
In New South Wales, Australia, the local governor authorizes the reorganization of federal and state police, augmented by private security guards, into a new force, designated the Main Force Patrol, to combat rampant crime in rural areas and along the state's highways.

Quite possibly my favorite detail so far.

[Homer]

January 28, 1998
The 4th Virginia State Guard Regiment deploys a surplus Second World War-era M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, rearmed with unit machineguns and used by the regiment alongside three converted bank armored cars as a (completely unauthorized by command) so-called armored platoon.


FWIW VMI maintained a cadet manned platoon of M48 tanks and a 105mm howitzer section for instructional purposes at least through the mid 80s. The Foreign Material Intelligence Battalion (Aberdeen Proving Ground) and NTC maintained “petting zoos” of primarily threat systems while JRTC and the ADA school operated hinds, hips, hoplites and colts. In addition a number of the vehicles on display at the APG’s “Mile of Tanks” and the Fort Knox Patton Museum were in good automotive order with some of the Patton museums vehicles being moved out of their display bays for special events. There were also some tanks stored in the back lots at Knox; I saw a Swedish S, Chieftain, and Leopard I parked in a motorpool off Main Range Road during the 90s.

[Ewan]

Quite possibly my favorite detail so far.
Yes a nice homage to Mad Max

[Targan]

In New South Wales, Australia, the local governor authorizes the reorganization of federal and state police, augmented by private security guards, into a new force, designated the Main Force Patrol, to combat rampant crime in rural areas and along the state's highways.

I'm assuming your intention there is to have the head of the parliamentary government taking that action? That would be the Premier of New South Wales (the leader of the ruling party in each Australian state is called the Premier, or Chief Minister in the Northern Territory and in the Australian Capital Territory). Premiers are the equivalent of state governors in the US.

Australia's states do each have a Governor, but that's the Crown's representative and Governors' responsibilities are largely ceremonial. Likewise the Commonwealth of Australia has a Governor General, again largely ceremonial (although in at least one infamous case the Governor General did dismiss the government of the day, ousting Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975 and sparking a constitutional crisis).

I can't imagine a scenario where the state police and local federal police would take orders from a state governor and not from the democratically elected state government.

[chico20854]

February 1, 1998

As part of the reorganization of US Navy and Coast Guard forces on the US East Coast, the Cape May Coast Guard station (which supported a small detachment of aircraft and smaller craft, as well as seerving as the Coast Guard's primary basic training base) is re-designated CMNB, Cape May Naval Base.

Elsewhere in southern New Jersey, the inmates of the Leesville State Prison revolt, gaining control of the facility and a small stash of weapons from the guard force. They hold 50 guards and staff members as hostages.

Unofficially,

In rural western England, the Spetsnaz team led by Colonel Mikhail Tumanski has sought shelter for the winter in one of the unit's safe houses prepared in prewar times by the GRU. The team, down to four men, has adequate supplies of (tinned) food, a well and warm clothing. It has not been in contact with GRU headquarters in many weeks and would, in the future, have a hard time doing so as their batteries and cypher pads are both running low.

With bunkers of their escorts once again partially full, the Roosevelt and Eisenhower battle groups depart the Vestfjord off Norway's west coast. The carriers' planes are nearly grounded as the jet fuel tanks are almost empty; the strike group's commanding officer orders that only a single S-3 Viking patrol aircraft be aloft at any time, such is the shortage of fuel.

The population of the Romanian town of Târgu Mureș rises up, overrunning the garrisons of the occupying 146th MRD and massacring their Soviet occupiers/oppressors.

A group of Pasdaran deserters robs a merchant convoy west of the Iranian capital city of Shiraz, drifting away into the Dalu Mountains after stealing food and trade goods.

In Belize, British and Belizian Defense Force troops have completed the roundup of Guatemalan deserters and stragglers as well as sorting through the detrius of the surrendered Guatemalan force. To their delight, they are able to restore to working condition enough vehicles to motorize one of the Belizian infantry battalions as well as return two of the captured M-41 Walker Bulldog light tanks to operable condition. While fuel and reinforcements from the UK ceased, the local economy produces sufficient food to support the population. RAF and British Army air operations have ground to a halt and local military forces are busy securing the borders against bands of bandits and deserters trying to enter the country from Guatemala and neighboring Mexico.

[chico20854]

I'm assuming your intention there is to have the head of the parliamentary government taking that action? That would be the Premier of New South Wales (the leader of the ruling party in each Australian state is called the Premier, or Chief Minister in the Northern Territory and in the Australian Capital Territory). Premiers are the equivalent of state governors in the US.

Thanks! I didn't have the time to do the research trying to get something up for the weekend. (I did, howver, verify that NSW is a state and not a province and that there are no local police forces, just state and federal. I didn't see that Mad max was filmed in Victoria until after the post went up. Can't win em all!) I've gone back and edited it to premier.

[chico20854]

February 2, 1998

With Port Arthur, Houston, Galveston, and Corpus Christi all destroyed during the nuclear exchange of 1997, Port Lavaca is the largest remaining port along Texas' Gulf Coast. However, a large number of the buildings in town were destroyed during the civil disturbances that followed the nuclear strikes. The nearby town of Point Comfort was the site of destructive looting, riots, and fires that destroyed the town’s chemical and aluminum plants. Most of the surviving residents of the town of Sinton, 18 miles from Corpus Christi, flee the town as food supplies run out.

Unofficially,

The Canadian Army's 37 Brigade, hastily formed from Militia units and garrison troops from CFB Gander and CFB Goose Bay in Labrador, begins to transfer troops into Labrador using local craft. To the south, 36 Brigade takes command of Militia units in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, while the Special Service Force headquarters, veterans of the Kola campaign, begins to integrate other active units in the southern Maritimes into it's command.

In the early morning hours Dutch guerrillas (members of the 2nd Marine Amphibious Combat Group) lay a series of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines on the main route out of a French garrison outside Breda. The mines are detonated a few hours later when the occupiers send out their first patrol of the day, ironically tasked to check for mines on the supply route back to the Belgian border. An AMX-10P is lost along with twelve men.

The Soviet Danube Front commander in Bucharest reacts to the loss of communications with the garrison of Târgu Mureș by sending a L-39 trainer/light attack aircraft plane from the 809th Fighter-Attack Regiment on a recon mission over the city. The pilot returns with word of the garrison's apparent demise.

The Iranian 3rd Armored Division, receiving word of the attack on the merchant convoy to the west, dispatches a mounted patrol to the area but finds nothing of interest.

Outside Vilnius, Lithuania, Colonel Česlovas Skrebys, a semi-retired officer that served as the local military commissioner responsible for mobilizing the resources of the area to support the war effort, decides that, in the absence of orders from Moscow, he will retain those resources for the relief of his local area. He moves his headquarters from a damp pre-WW II bunker to the lighter, more pleaseant surroundings of Trakai Castle on a frozen lake.

[chico20854]

February 3, 1998

Some inmates from the Leesville State Prison in southern New Jersey leave the facility, spreading horror and chaos across the area. Most of the inmates remain in the heavily fortified facility, however.

The Soviet 203rd (my 14th) Air Assault Brigade, brought forward in late 1997 to reinforce the 35th Army in North Korea, is caught by American aircraft when assembling for a heliborne attack on the DMZ and suffers heavy losses.

Unofficially,

A French Air Force KC-135 tanker carrying 75 passengers, military officers and senior NCOs, many recent veterans of the fighting in Germany and the Netherlands, arrives at CFB Bagotville in Quebec. The military personnel, unarmed, are to serve as advisors to the rapidly expanding Quebec National Army.

With the failure of the city's water treatment plant and influx of desperate refugees from the devastated countryside, sanitary conditions in Krakow (the largest, most intact city remaining in Poland) deteriorate. The first case of cholera breaks out in a refugee center at the Mydlniki train station on the city's northwestern outskirts.

photo (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TwnN19VcDQ9qLJoFmaE50OWatMB4d1Bp/view?usp=share_link)
The city of Târgu Mureș, Romania is punished for its rebellion with an airstrike delivered by the remnants of the 17th Air Army from a quartet of air bases around Bucharest. For three hours wave after wave of MiG-21 fighters and L-39 trainers rocket, bomb and strafe the city center and many miles of concrete-block apartment buildings.

Colonel Skrebys moves to establish a "security force" in his area. He issues orders to the Senior Lieutenant in charge of the 278th Local Rifle Company (the security force for the truck salvage and repair station established in a furniture factory on the south side of the town) to redeploy his four BTR-70s to defend the town (one at each entrance and one at the castle) and meets with the mayor to coordinate defense of the town, which has a small militia force formed of men over 50, equipped with World War Two-capture Mauser rifles and other aged small arms.

[chico20854]

February 4, 1998

In western New York, Lieutenant Governor Julia Annesetto takes personal charge of the area while the governor tries to handle the eastern region of the state. Local county militias, along with state police units and the Fort Drum military staff, form a more-or less unified command, although they are too few in number to watch the borders and provide internal security.

Unofficially,

In California, the command staff of the 5th California Brigade arrive at the headquarters of the 221st MP Brigade to coordinate operations and deconflict areas of responsibility. Halfway through the agenda, the State Guardsmen are surprised when the facility's guards enter the room and place them under arrest. The meeting is quickly recast as a field court martial, and the commander, executive officer, adjudant, intelligence and operations officers as well as many of the senior NCOs are charged with multiple counts of murder, fraud, robbery and other crimes in connection with the "death squad" the state guard unit had operated in the prior months. Meanwhile, a MP contingent surrounds the State Guard unit's scout platoon outpost outside Bakersfield; intelligence gathered pointed to the unit as being the "trigger men" executing the brigade commander and staff's orders to eliminate leftist professors, union activists, immigrants and troublesome journalists and other individuals. A firefight breaks out, but the MPs quickly overrun the base with their M-750 armored cars. As midnight approaches, the trial concludes and all the defendants are found guilty.

The soldiers and civilians (both American and what Germans remain) of the 21st TAACOM begin resumption of work to repair and return to service various damaged armored vehicles that have been evacuated from the Mainz Depot (actually a complex of several sites), also using tools and parts that have been brought out of the French occupied zone. Additional truckloads of materiel continue to arrive each day, but the demand for repair is so high that work must resume as quickly as possible. Some refugees from the nearby Dead Zone are brought in to assist in unloading the trucks and supporting the workers.

In a storm in the North Atlantic, the light frigate (prewar Coast Guard Medium Endurance Cutter) Escanaba capsizes when hit broadside by a rouge wave. The top-heavy craft rolls over and is soon headed for the bottom.

In the USSR, central authority continues to degrade. Local party cadres proclaim loyalty to the central authorities, but with the breakdown in communications they are frequently on their own. On the one hand, that freedom allows the cadres to take advantage of the opportunity to benefit themselves, but it also places them in a situation where, if and when accountability is restored, they can be held accountable for their actions instead of being able to claim they are carrying out the orders of some higher official. In such a situation, they generally choose to undertake some actions that can demonstrate their support for the war effort, while simultaneously looking out for their own welfare. The welfare of the local population is of distinctly lower priority, a situation that had prevailed for many decades preceding the war. Transportation of anything from the interior of the USSR is extremely difficult with the collapse of the rail network (powered by diesel and electrical generation), truck transport (limited and also diesel dependent) and even the simple barriers of numerous north-south running rivers between the Urals and the front (the Don, Volga, Dniester and Dnieper, crossings of which had been targeted by American strikes).

[chico20854]

February 5, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

Leaders of French and Belgian political parties from across the idelogical spectrum meet at Verasailles to discuss the situation in their countries and the way forward. There is a "very robust" discussion, with a wide array of voices opposed to the invasion of the Rhineland - Flemish leaders incensed at the treatment of their fellow Dutch speakers, Communists and Socialists opposed to "another capitalist war", nationalists upset at the idea of cooperation between France and Belgium.

A week after formation, the 1st Battalion, 30th Marines (an element of the newly-raised 30th Marine Regiment) has completed formation at Camp Leujeune, North Carolina and begins movement overland to Wilmington, North Carolina for deployment to Africa.

At dawn a firing squad of the 221st MP Brigade executes the commander and staff of the 5th California Brigade. Officers of the 221st MP Brigade disperse throughout the state guard unit's area of operation to take command of the unit; in some places the troops accept the new command and in an isolated few more firefights break out. The Army troops, better trained and equipped and with armored vehicles on call, dominate these engagements and by noon the state guard unit is under federal control, with the consent of the governor in San Jose.

The Freedom Ship Colorado City Freedom arrives at Bremerhaven, Germany with a cargo of vehicles, ammunition and spare parts. Troops from the 7th Theater Army Area Command meet the ship at the dock and take custody of its precious cargo. It is escorted to a central storage and processing facility, to be doled out as needed to support the highest priority operations in US Army Europe.

The Roosevelt and Eisenhower battle groups split as they approach the North Sea, headed for the shelter of a friendly port but not wanting to voerburden any one port with the tens of thousands of sailors aboard the ships and their escorts. The Eisenhower turns towards Iceland and the Roosevelt transits the west coast of the UK.

As the rains in East Africa continue to fall military operations slow to a crawl, roads transformed into muddy quagmires and aircraft unable to locate drop zones in the continual overcast. In Mombasa, the destroyer Morton receives repairs to minor damage incurred in its long and perilous voyage from the US West Coast in preparation for its next long voyage.

[chico20854]

February 6, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day! Unofficially,

Troops of the 11e régiment parachutiste de choc, an elite unit assigned as the direct action arm of the French DGSE, surround the Palace of Versailles and arrest those French and Belgian political leaders which had expressed opposition to the invasion of the Rhineland.

The 402nd Field Artillery Brigade (Training), a OSUT unit (one station unit training unit that took in raw recruits, put them through basic training and an artillery gunnery course before graduation) trains its last pre-exchange draftees at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The unit is assigned operational tasks, albeit as infantry as the few artillery pieces used for training are left on post, there being little need for artillery. The brigade is tasked to oversee distribution of food and fuel in southwestern Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. These duties initially consist of convincing skeptical and semi-hostile farmers, ranchers and small town residents to take in refugees from the cities of Texas and simultaneously hand over crops, livestock and crude oil.

Restructuring of US Army units in Germany continues as the flow of replacement troops has come to a halt. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, like many other units, deactivates subordinate units (in this case, the 2nd and 3rd Squadrons) in order to form a single nearly full-strength unit.

Its survey mission complete, the Coast Guard cutter Thetis returns to Bandar Abbas, Iran, completing its survey mission to Diego Garcia, which was hit by a Soviet missile in December. The survey party concludes that the airstrip remains intact and can be made useable with a few weeks' work by an engineer platoon, but that basing aircraft there would require reconstruction of facilities destroyed in the blast. The harbor remains an attractive anchorage despite several sunken ships; there is ample room for over a dozen additional vessels.

[Ursus Maior]

February 2, 1998With Port Arthur, Houston, Galveston, and Corpus Christi all destroyed during the nuclear exchange of 1997, Port Lavaca is the largest remaining port along Texas' Gulf Coast. However, a large number of the buildings in town were destroyed during the civil disturbances that followed the nuclear strikes. The nearby town of Point Comfort was the site of destructive looting, riots, and fires that destroyed the town’s chemical and aluminum plants.
It might be added that the Port of Port Lavaca – Point Comfort, or "Port of Port Lavaca" for short, lies jointly in both towns. The big question for operating this port and others in the Matagorda Bay in general would be, if the Matagorda Ship Channel remains intact. The channel was constructed between 1962 and 1966, and since then allows vessels to travel between the Gulf of Mexico and Matagorda Bay. I presume, the Soviets wouldn't hit the actual channel directly and with the next blasts occurring way out at Corpus Christi or Galveston, the channel likely is still intact.

The next available port would be the Port of Freeport, the smallest deepwater seaport along the US Gulf Coast. It's a pretty interesting site, actually. The large German chemical corporation BASF owns a marine terminal there, built during the early 1990s. So it's brand new during the Twilight War. Also, the US federal government has made Freeport the largest facility of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), with a capacity exceeding 40 million barrels. It would be quite the prize after the war and indeed might or should have been nuked during the exchange of 1997, I think.

Last addition, because the strip of land between Galveston and Corpus Christi is so interesting in strategic sites, is that Matagorda Island, the long stretch of land southwest of the channel, had its own air force base until 1975. Matagorda Island Air Force Base was more or less a run of the mill SAC base until the Vietnam War. It was then used by Air Commando for training, possibly coming under control of the US intelligence community, and consequently abandoned after the war.

It's interesting for local military operations after the collapse of central government in 1997, because the runways are in relatively good condition, so it could be used relatively quickly (after green keeping). All buildings are in various stages of deterioration today, though, but 25 years ago, that might have been different. Also, barracks and makeshift service areas as well as an improvised tower are fairly easy to erect. Additionally, there is a usable dock and a small port facility available, giving the air base a marine connection.

After decommissioning, the base was turned over to the Department of the Interior as a federal wildlife refuge. Since then, or maybe it existed before, a much smaller Matagorda Island Airstrip has been constructed, probably for use by DoI agencies, but maybe also for touristic use. It is also connected to a small harbor, which is likely not a deepwater port. A road connection to the old AFB exists, giving a reactivated base additional capacities and logistical options via air and sea.

Also, way to the South of Matagorda Island there is a third airstrip, historically known as Matagorda Peninsula Army Airfield, later known as Matagorda Peninsula Airport. It, too, was a World War Two installation for pilot training and is still in good shape, but without the usual service buildings to handle aircraft. All in all, five strips of 4,000 ft each exist here.

Historically, the site was used by Space Services, Inc. of America (SSIA), which established a rocket launch facility on the island for commercial rockets with the airport, known as Pierce Field. SSIA remained on site until 2002, making it likely that they would still be using the site during the Twilight War or that at least some of their gear might remain in situ after the nuclear exchange. SSIA is quite the interesting company and one of the first to explore commercial rockets and other space-oriented services. The company was bought up early in the 21st century, but reading about it on Wikipedia and their website, makes me get a lot of crazy ideas, especially if mixed with pulp, post-apocalyptic or conspiracy theory ideas, of which T2K has an abundance to offer. All I say here is "New America"!

I certainly see MilGov or CivGov trying to establish a regional operation around a reactivated Matagorda Island Air Force Base, especially if the Freeport Strategic Petroleum Reserve site is still an exploitable ressource: one runway of 8,000 ft, five runways of 4,000 ft, a dock, a port and a nearby auxiliary installation with its own harbor is certainly nothing to sniff at. The only problem might be that abandoned airfields are safe havens for international drug dealing and Matagorda Island is no exception: It's been known that drug trafficking goes through here.

[chico20854]

February 7, 1998

Canadian troops in New Brunswick and Newfoundland launch attacks on Quebec in a move to eliminate the separatist movement in Quebec once and for all and bring Quebec back into the Confederation. On the southern front Canadian troops attack from New Brunswick. On the northern front, a hodgepodge force from Newfoundland, wwhich has been ferried into Labrador, crosses the border into northwestern Quebec.

Realizing that nuclear attacks on the UK likely disrupted GRU operations, MI5 decides to take a gamble and infiltrate the GRU network in Britain.

Unofficially,

The first deaths from cholera occur in the Mydlniki train station in Krakow; the disease is spreading rapidly among the thousands of desperate refugees in the overcrowded and unheated station.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt battle group sails into Portsmouth harbor on England's south coast. The group's arrival brings the local Royal Naval command thosands of allied sailors and their powerful fleet (which, however, is extremely low on fuel and ammunition), but also the burden of thousands of additional bellies to fill alongside those of refugees from London and southern England.

In Northwestern Iran, 7th Army tries to re-establish control of the largely Kurdish region. While American regular forces departed the region in December, A-Teams from the 5th and 7th Special Forces Group remained behind, amply supplied from caches established during Operation Pegasus II, and closely integrated with friendly Kurdish guerilla bands, who were experienced fighters even before the war broke out thanks to years of resistance to the Persian-dominated central government in Tehran.

[chico20854]

February 8, 1998

Quebecois forces abandon Sherbrooke, relocating their capital north to Quebec City as Canadian troops from New Brunswick approach.

In the US, the nationwide relocation effort is abandoned as being wasteful of fuel. In retorspect, its main effect has been to create large bands of homeless wandering throughout the country.

The Soviet ballistic missile submarine Barrikada rendezvouses with a submarine resupply vessel in the north Atlantic. The ship brings orders to the submarine that it is to remain on station in the North Atlantic until 15 March, then return home.

Unofficially,

The 1st Battalion, 30th Marines closes on the port of Wilminton, North Carolina and secures the port area while loading its paltry amount of equipment aboard the transports Minnesota Freedom and the Maltese-flagged Clipper Santos.

With the front in Central Europe growing calm and teams getting increasingly exhausted and low on supplies, the Headquarters, 20th Special Forces Group issues a recall order for teams that are able and willing to attempt the journey to the unit's new headquarters in Fürstenberg, East Germany (the prewar Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army headquarters complex).

In central Jugslavia the 158th Motor-Rifle Division finds itself in an increasingly untenable position. The division's regiments are strung out along the road and rail route between the Sava River and Sarajevo, holding a series of isolated outposts along the bottom of the Bosna River Valley, with the division headquarters in the steel mill of the Bosnian town of Zenica. The situation outside the small garrisons grows increasingly desperate as Jugoslav partisans and bandits begin to attack traffic along the route and the Soviet bases as well. The commanding general’s requests for aerial resupply are laughed off and the division’s 151st Tank Regiment, “holding” Sarajevo, finds itself under siege in the city’s downtown, subject to murderous enemy fire from the high ground overlooking the city.

[chico20854]

February 9, 1998

In the fighting in Canada's eastern front, Quebec fights an offensive war and manages to defeat the Canadian Army units attacking from Labrador. On the southern front, Quebecois forces withdraw to defensive lines along the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, preventing the Canadian Army from advancing any farther north.

Colonel Denise Richilieu accepts the position of head of the DGSE (the French intelligence service) in the Persian Gulf region.

Unofficially,

In central Germany, 7th Army Training Command recevies an influx of resources and personnel at its new location of Giessen, prewar home of the multiple logistics sites and the 42nd Field Artillery Brigade. (The command's premier peacetime facilities, the Hohenfels and Grafenwohr training areas and the NCO Academy in Bad Tolz, have all been overrun by Pact and Italian troops). The personnel, mostly former drill sergeants or MOS instructors reassigned from other units in Germany, are formed into training groups to retrain excess Air Force and Naval personnel (as well as selected Army combat service support troops) as infantry or artillerymen prior to reassignment to depleted Army combat units.

The commander of the 158th Motor-Rifle Division, in Zenica, Bosnia, forms a relief column to break through to his isolated 151st Tank Regiment in Sarajevo. The task force is built around troops of the 158th's 246th Independent Recon Battalion and 506tth Motor-Rifle Rgiment, with engineers and BM-14 rocket launchers attached.

Lithuanian Party authorities from Vilnius, Lithuania send a courier to Trakai to inquire why the normal monthly contingent of draftees has not been dispatched.

[Homer]

In central Germany, 7th Army Training Command recevies an influx of resources and personnel at its new location of Giessen, prewar home of the multiple logistics sites and the 42nd Field Artillery Brigade. (The command's premier peacetime facilities, the Hohenfels and Grafenwohr training areas and the NCO Academy in Bad Tolz, have all been overrun by Pact and Italian troops).

They’ve also lost the Baumholder training complex, which is a pretty good small arms and light weapons training complex west of the Rhine. Wildflecken should still be viable, and the Bergen-Hohne complex up north should be good to go.

Ammo, fuel, and parts for training are going to be at a premium, but part of rebuilding and reconstituting units to continue operations will be at least some level of gunnery and (hopefully live fire) collective training. Hopefully subcaliber trainers, reduced range practice (concrete) rounds, and sim gear was evacuated north. Even a few days with golf carts and everyone yelling “bang, bang” will still be better than nothing.

[chico20854]

February 10, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

French and Belgian parliamentary leaders (follow the arrest of dissenters) in Versailles reach agreement in concept for the unification of the two nation's governments, tentatively to be titled the Belgian-Franco Confederation. They break their marathon session (they have been meeting at Versailles for over five days and long nights) to return to their capitals to seek buy-in from their respective fellow political leaders and to detail civil servants to begin working on the details of the agreement.

Both sides’ armies are in a dire condition. The remnants of both combatants’ air forces are largely grounded by lack of fuel. At sea, the remaining naval combatants, also out of fuel, have nearly all returned to port. More importantly, as far as NATO’s armies in central Europe are concerned, the cargo ships that ferried the ammunition, fuel, spare parts and replacement equipment have ceased sailing. (Even if they had fuel, there is little cargo available for them to carry, as war production in America and the UK has largely come to a halt after EMP bursts and the collapse of the transportation system). The German, Dutch and Danish economies produce little war materiel due to the lack of electrical power and raw materials, and general disruption and insecurity. The prewar logistic stockpiles in western Germany and the Netherlands have been depleted in the Battle of Germany and Operation Advent Crown, and the stockpiles of the armies in the field were targeted during the nuclear exchange or abandoned during the long retreat across Poland. Further, with the collapse of the German government, military units are now responsible for distributing food and fuel in their local areas, and have largely depleted their remaining supplies by the late winter.

The relief column of the 158th Motor-Rifle Division is unable to depart from the base in Zenica because the convoy carrying fuel from further down the valley has been delayed by heavy partisan activity and poor winter weather. In Sarajevo the 151st Tank Regiment loses a T-34/85 to an anti-tank mine while trying to return to the unit's base after successfully duelling a Jugoslav recoilless rifle in the hills; the regiment is down to a week's short rations and two day's vehicle and heating fuel.

The US Navy-owned (but civilan-manned) tanker USNS Paul Buck completes loading a cargo of 225,000 barrels of refined petroleum products at the refinery in Bizerte, Tunisia. The US government paid the refinery owner what would normally be considered an exorbinant amount for the cargo, successfully outbidding the French and Italian governments' representatives for the cargo.

In Trakai, Lithuania, the courier from the regional Party committee is received by Colonel Skrebys, the local military commissioner, who informs them that the requested draftees are instead being used for local defense and that, if in some time in the future the area has excess personnel of military age, he will dispatch them "with all due haste" to republican authorities. Skrebys then dismisses the courier and has him escorted out of the area. The courier notices that the castle is guarded by uniformed troops.

[chico20854]

February 11, 1998

The South St. Petersburg Defense Force, a grange-style resistance group, is organized by surviving property owners in the southern third of the city.

Unofficially,

Additional guerrilla attacks break out across occupied Dutch territory south of the Rhine. The remnants of the military government have coordinated the attacks by teams from the 2nd Amphibious Combat Group and the 104th Reconnaissance Battalion (a long-range deep penetration unit) against six separate French and Belgian installations. The attacks succeed in forcing the defending troops to lock down, allowing other Dutch agents and resupply activities to move freely in much of the occupied region.

The layup of ships at Cromarty Firth in northern Scoland concludes, with over 35 excess tankers and freighters stripped of food, fuel, lubricants, weapons and ammunition and many spare parts. The Canadian "destroyer" Assiniboine, which escorted the convoy to Scotland, departs, accompanied by the oilfield supply tugs Robu Seahorse and James Palmer, carrying the salvaged materiel and the ships' crews.

At sundown the resupply column that the commander of the 158th Motor-Rifle Divison is waiting on to launch his relief effort for the besieged 151st Tank Regiment finally arrives at the Zenica steel mill, the division headquarters. The dreadfully-equipped unit has minimal night fighting capability, so the troops of the relief column are sent to bed early prior to an early morning departure.

The commander of 22nd Support Command, the logistic organization supporting Third Army in the Persian Gulf, concerned about the long-term availability of fuel and other supplies for CENTCOM, receives permission from General McLaren to establish a floating fuel reserve at Diego Garcia. USNAVCENT (5th Fleet) is directed to identify a suitable excess supertanker (there are several at anchor in the Gulf), prepare it to serve as a storage vessel (cleaning tanks that had carried crude oil in preparation for refined products, storing containers of extra supplies on deck and augmenting the crew quarters and onboard repair facilities) and transfer it to Kharg Island, where it will gradually be filled with diesel, jet fuel and gasoline that can be spared from the small stream still being produced by Saudi, Bahrainian and Iranian refinery facilities.

[chico20854]

February 12, 1998

Another day with nothing in canon. (You'll be seeing a lot of this going forward!)

Teams from the California State Guard's 1st Medical Brigade are spread out all across the state, administering to the wounded from the nuclear attacks in the Bay Area and Los Angeles-Riverside area, trying to provide dayto-day health care in evacuation camps and administer to the increasing flow of Mexican refugees which continue to cross the border every day.

The USAF's 313th Tactical Fighter Squadron flies the first operational mission in a former Belgian F-16A. The aircraft takes off from the squadron's new base at Jever in northern Germany, flies a low-level path along the Baltic coast towards Szceczin, passsing over the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Are) east of that Polish city before turning south, flying a course parallel to and 50 km east of the Oder River. The aircraft's photographic pod scours the area for Pact troop concentrations, artillery and missile batteries, logistic sites or headquarters, hoping that fatigue and the snow on the ground will help defeat some of those unit's camouflage. It turns west near Zielona Góra, Poland, dropping its ordnance load of four 500-pound bombs on a previously identified radio repeater site in 2nd Polish Army's rear before crossing the river and returning to its base. While seemingly routine, the flight is not without risk, between the aircraft's uncertain maintenance and prior flight history, the breakdown of air defense coordination between NATO units (the pilot sights some small arms fire headed skyward as he crossed over the German front line) and the (remote) possibility that the Poles or Soviets may have an interceptor airborne over the front lines or have obtained additional surface-to-air missiles.

The dreadfully supplied and equipped relief column from the 158th Motor-Rifle Division, led by the division commander himself, finally departs its base in Zenica, Jugoslavia as the first light of day brightens the horizon. The column of trucks is lead by a pair of PT-76 light tanks, with a handful of BTR-40 APCs and a WW II-vintage American M-16 anti-aircraft halftrack captured from the Turks scattered along the column as gun trucks. The convoy covers 15 km before it is stopped by a downed bridge. As the engineers are brought forward to emplace a temporary one the entire column comes under fire from enemy troops in the heights overlooking the valley. The engineers are unable to work under such fire, and the M-16, the column's most effective means of suppressing the dismounted enemy (with four .50-caliber machineguns), soon runs out of ammunition. The beleagured troops dig in, seeking shelter from hastily dug fighting positions and the nearby village's surviving structures (and even remnants of structures).

Communist Party officials in the remains of Vilnius, Lithuania are furious when they learn of Colonel Skrebys' statement. He is expelled from the Party while word is passed to Moscow of his betrayal, requesting military forces to deal with him.

[chico20854]

February 13, 1998

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Having taken longer to gather resources and sufficient recruits, the headquarters, 2nd Battalion and various support units of the 30th Marines completes its formation and begins loading aboard the tank landing ships USS Boulder and Schenectady and the small (former East-)German coaster Johstadt, which have shallow enough drafts to make their way up the river to the small port at Port Royal, adjacent to the unit's home station of Parris Island, SC. Additional troops are ferried by landing craft to the USS Spiegel Grove (I have the USS Hermitage), an antiquated (built in 1956) amphibious assault ship pulled out of mothballs at the outbreak of the war.

Following up on the prior day's flight, the 50th Tactical Fighter Wing launches a raid on Pact military targets in western Poland. Eight F-16s (of a variety of models) take off from Jever Air Base in northern Germany and cross the Jutland Peninsula before heading out over the Baltic, turning south over Bornholm Island to cross the Polish coast. With two aircraft laden with AMRAAM and Sidewinder missiles flying at 10,000 feet as top cover, the rest of the flight stays at low level before splitting into three two-ship teams to strike various targets identified by yesterday's sortie and other methods (radio direction-finding and agents on the ground). One team hits the road junction at Świebodzin with cluster bombs, one strikes a suspected artillery battery with more cluster bombs and the final flight strikes the radio relay site attacked the day before. Within an hour all eight aircraft have returned safely.

The Dutch container ship Nedlloyd Van Neck, carrying a partial cargo of foodstuffs, clothing and used cars from Latin America, strikes a mine in the North Sea northwest of Vlissingen and sinks.

As the situation of the 151st Tank Regiment in Sarajevo grows more desperate (the last of the fuel is being stretched to hopefully last another day), the relief column south of Zenica remains surrounded, unable to advance or withdraw. The division commander's pleas for support from 26th Army and Southern Front are approved, and as the long and desperate afternoon for the surrounded Soviet troops drags on a single MiG-21 flies overhead. The pilot is unable to identify any enemy positions through the overcast and drops his bombs on empty forest before returning to base.

[chico20854]

February 14, 1998

Again, nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

Islands of stability have formed acrosss many areas of the US, often in vicinity to intact military units, petroleum or food production or the remnants of a state government. (Or, frequently, many or all of these). Notable areas include western New York, central Pennsylvania, Bakersfield, California and Mempis, Tennessee. By this point, lack of fuel and harsh winter weather have halted most refugee movement across the country, granting remaining authorities time to organize the provision of food, shelter and what little fuel is available.

The 20th (my 16th Guards) Tank Division is reassigned from 4th Guards Tank Army to 8th Guards Army and assigned a sector along the German-Polish border opposite Frankfurt on the Oder.

At the Mydlniki train station in Krakow, daily deaths to starvation and disease now exceed 15. Many of the youngest and healthiest refugees depart, seeking less dangerous shelter. One group discovers a dangerous but intriguing location - an abandoned prefabricated concrete apartment block that faces the ruins of the adjacent manufacturing center of Nowy Huta, which was struck by an American nuclear weapon in the fall. All of the windows have been blown out and many of the apartments have suffered extensive damage, but hold small stashes of food, clothing and other valuable salvage abandoned when the original residents evacuated, fearing radiation.

The 158th MRD's column is still surrounded by Jugoslav territorial defense troops and the remnants of the Jugoslav National Army, who keep the column pinned down with well-aimed sniper fire from the hills over the immobile convoy. Adding insult to the situation, the Jugoslav partisans launch simultaneous attacks on the surrounded 151st Tank Regiment in Sarajevo, overrunning the last remaining isolated observation post and the division command post in Zenica. As dusk falls the division commander orders the abandonment of the relief effort and the suffering troops mount up and fight a running battle the 15 km back to their base, leaving 20 percent of the force that left the steel mill at dawn three days ago behind as dead, with twice that number brought along in the surviving vehicles wounded.

The commander of XVIII Airborne Corps is distressed when he is told that nearly 15 percent of supplies dispatched from his port facilities are lost en route to the front line by bandit roadblocks, pilferage from civilian material handlers and attacks on supply lines and routes.

[chico20854]

February 15, 1998

The 8th Infantry Division (Mechanized) has completed its reorganization and is preparing to return to duty on the front lines in East Germany. Armored vehicle losses in 1997 had been heavy and all remaining tanks in the division are assigned to 1-68 and 3-77 (my 4-69) Armor, while 2-68 (my 2-69) and 5-77 Armor are disbanded to provide personnel replacement for the other two battalions. The remaining tank battalion in the division, 4-34 (my 5-68) Armor, is left without any vehicles of its own, but a convoy of heavy equipment has recently arrived in Europe (one of the last to do so) and included in the cargo is a consignment of Cadillac Gage Stingrays which are used to re-equip the battalion.

Unofficially,

The remaining team members of B Squadron, Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, who have been operating in Manchuria for nearly a year, have established themselves in relative comfort in a small hamlet in rural Suihua prefecture in Manchuria; some members remark that they have "gone native", moving in with local families and providing a (very, very competent and dangerous) militia to defend the small town.

In the early morning hours the last stragglers of the 158th Motor-Rile Division's ill-fated relief force trudge back to the division's headquarters complex at the Zenica steel mill. By dawn it becomes apparent that the Jugoslav resistance fighters that harried the column have followed them, with the base coming under rocket and mortar attack and outer pickets reporting movement in the buildings and hills that surround the base. In Sarajevo, the surrounded 151st Tank Regiment comes under attack, its remaining operational T-34/85s rushing around the perimeter to reinforce positions threatened with annihilation.

In the no mans land between Allied and Soviet lines in the Zagros mountains, Antoly Shinsky, a deserter from the Soviet 9th Army and his compatriots (all from the Russian Far East) occupy the village of Dorodzan and begin a reign of terror, pillaging and oppressing the town's helpless civilians.

[chico20854]

February 16, 1998

As conditions in the area deteriorate and the flow of components grinds to a halt, workers at the Red River Army Depot halt conversions of M113 ACCVs to the M115A1 standard.

The 6th (my 5th Guards) Tank Division is withdrawn from garrisons on the outskirts of Tianjin, China north into Manchuria in an attempt by 36th Army to achieve sufficient troop density to maintain control of surviving industrial and natural resources.

Unofficially,

The disperesed units of the mobilization-only 158th Motor-Rifle Division, spread along over 200 kilometers from Sarajevo to the Sava River, come under coordinated attack from the remnants of the Jugoslav National Army and Territorial Defense Forces, in no small part thanks to the efforts of advisors (and communications provided by) the Third Battalion, 6th Special Forces Group. The attacks succeed in pinning down the Soviet "occupation force", preventing supplies and reinforcements from moving between garrisons and allowing the Jugoslavs to concentrate forces and pick off the garrisons one by one. The first to fall is the 151st Tank Regiment in Sarajevo, whose commander surrenders at nightfall, begging for humane treatment of his surviving troops. Unfortunately, the assurances he receives from the JNA commander are ignored by his Territorial Defense co-belligerents, and as midnight nears Sarajeov is once again the scene of a bloody massacre the likes of which the Balkans are famous for; the American Green Berets are unable to control their allies and are resigned to "taking a walk away from the unit for a little while".

As the departure date for a reinforcement convoy to Africa arrives, naval authorities are distressed to discover that only half of the planned 20 ships (freighters and tankers, as well as the ships carrying the 30th Marines) have arrived at the sailing port of Hampton Roads, that there is only one escort (the frigate Lockwood) ready; another (the destroyer Richard S. Edwards) back in the yard for repairs to its complicated and troublesome 1950s steam plant, which the remnants of the late-war modern navy has a difficult time finding skilled operators for, not to mention the 750 tons of No. 4 fuel oil she needs for the voyage.

A 15-year old boy from the village of Dorodzan slips away to get help in the predawn hours, after the band of Soviet Army deserters have drank themselves into a stupor.

[chico20854]

February 17, 1998

Nothing in canon for today!

Although very few geologists are in any position to notice, small-scale seismic shocks have become much more prevalent as the battered Earth's crust tries to adjust to the shocks of the multiple ground bursts of the nuclear exchange. While the tremors are too minor to cause any further damage (and in most cases too minor to be noticed by people), they do have the effect of opening up some long-closed oil wells in northwestern Pennsylvania (and elsewhere around the world).

In the upper Midwestern states, the 49th Armored Division has secured dozens of grain elevators and stationed small detachments at over 100 dairy farms as well as maintaining a very active system of patrols and roadblocks. There is initially resentment by the farmers of the military control of the food stocks, but soon rumors begin to spread of the depredations unleashed on farmers by desperate and hungry city-dwellers in other areas of the nation. The hostility to the Texas guardsmen (many from rural backgrounds) begins to dissipate as the farmers and the soldiers reach an understanding that it is better for the troops to take the food for distribution than for hordes of refugees to overrun the farms.

Concerned about the situation back home and facing a hopeless situation, the commander of the Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brigade, on occupation in Manchuria, decides to abandon his position and return his command home. The command's Soviet "liaison officers" are arrested and disarmed, with a few sympathetic ones retaining their freedom and preparing forged movement orders.

The drunken rampage/celebration in Sarajevo continues following the capitulation of the Soviet 151st Tank Regiment. Most of the surviving Soviet troops (mostly Moldovan reservists and confused Central Asian farm boys) are sheltered by American and JNA officers, while the Jugoslav troops (mostly JNA enlisted men and Territorial Defense troops) run wild. By dawn fighting has broken out between different groups within the Jugoslav force, with religious/ethnic groups fighting each other and JNA and Territorial Defense units struggling for control of the captured garrison and its few remaining weapons and supplies.

[Targan]

Probably more efficient to make it a "On this week 25 years ago" thread from here on. Heroic effort so far. A very enjoyable read.

[chico20854]

February 18, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

In Alaska, X Corps launches a counterattack against Soviet forces holding Fairbnks, Alaska's second largest city. (The Soviets took the town in November, expending the last of their offensive firepower, leaving X Corps ensconsed in Fort Wainwright and Eileson Air Force Base on the city's eastern outskirts.) The 11th Airborne Division launches a frontal attack supported by the guns of the 197th Field Artillery Brigade while the troops of the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) slip around the city to the sorth to cut off the Soviet force.

Demonstrating the disarray within the USSR, a dozen Ts100 processors for MiG-29 radars arrive at the Chortkov airbase in Ukraine, which, before it was struck by an American nuclear bomb in September, supported Su-25 attack aircraft and has never operated MiG-29s.

The small fleet of amphibious ships carrying the 30th Marines anchor off the Hampton Roads port complex, accompanied by the Coast Guard patrol craft . The force has but three helicopters, single UH-1N, CH-46E and CH-53Es that were being retained for training use at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina.

After two days of scrambling through the rural no mans land between Allied and Soviet lines, the 15 year-old boy from the village of Dorodzan encounters Allied troops - a patrol of Circassians guerrillas accompanied by an American advisor from the 7th Special Forces Group. To the young man's disappointment the patrol does not divert from its planned patrol route to liberate the town, but gives him food, water and directions to friendly lines as well as reporting the situation in his home village to higher headquarters.

[chico20854]

Probably more efficient to make it a "On this week 25 years ago" thread from here on. Heroic effort so far. A very enjoyable read.

Thanks!

I've been really busy at the office lately - the biggest change in the primary responsibility of my jobin over 50 years and a lot of associated travel. Entertainingly, it has been past a lot of sites mentioned in this thread... one SAC base and about 6-10 refineries. A nice addition to the couple targets I pass on a more regular basis.

I'd like to try to keep it a daily update for the next couple weeks (once I get caught up). As far as conventional fighting I'd like to detail X Corps' counterattack out of Fairbanks, the collapse of the Allied defense in British Columbia and counterinsurgency operations in Iran as well as the re-emergence of anti-Soviet forces in Jugoslavia. Later this year there is the 1998 Pact South German offensive and its aftermath as well as the Mexican invasion of the US. (I have tried to assimilate the collective wisdom of the couple of threads here on the topic as well as the Mexican sourcebook that was done up a couple years back; spoiler - I'm not going to have the Mexicans nearly as beefy as described in that book). I'm thinking maybe in later March and April as well as the fall (and most of 1999 and the first half of 2000) a weekly update will work better.

[chico20854]

February 19, 1998

The 6th Marine Division, after a year-long training cycle culminating in a full-division live fire combined arms exercise, is declared operational and begins deploying to Korea.

Unofficially,

The Arctic troops of the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon)(Alaska National Guard) make slow progress moving cross-country over the frozen tundra south of Fairbanks while the remainder of X Corps continues its attacks on Soviet positions in the town. The weather clears enough for A-10s of the 18th Tactical Fighter Squadron to make an appearance overhead, clearing out a Soviet artillery battery that had concealed itself in a sawmill complex on the city's western edge.

Only two days after leaving their positions in Manchuria, the staff of the 1st Far Eastern Front notices that the Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brigade is not responding to radio calls.

An A-6 Intruder aircraft from the USS Kennedy battle group, supported by two others configured as tankers, strikes the Soviet submarine support base at Patros, Greece, following receipt of rumors about a nuclear submarine being prepared for a patrol in the Mediterranean. The lone aircraft arrives over the Greco-Soviet base at low level at 4 am, successfully dropping its load of a single B61-8 345-kiloton nuclear bomb. Its all-female crew of LtJG Pamela Shore and LtCdr Susan Williams escape thanks to a retarding parachute, which allows the low-flying bomber to duck behind the low hills that surround the city before the bomb detonates. The blast wrecks the submarine tender Magomed Gadzhiev, the upper works of the submarines B-164 (Foxtrot-class), B-854 (also a Foxtrot-class), the Tang-class B-546 and the Whiskey-class S-231 and rolls the Victor II-class SSN K-371 over, flooding her through a hatch in the sail left open by the war-weary watchman.

[chico20854]

February 20, 1998

The replica USS Constitution arrives in the Cape Horn area, discharging cargo for Capetown and picking up several American servicemen to replace crewmen lost to malaria.

Unofficially,

X Corps' offensive in Fairbanks makes slow progress as American paratroops carefully blast Soviet troops out of individual buildings. The 11th Airborne Division has few armored vehicles and its supporting artillery batteries are short of ammunition. Adding to the difficulty of the operation is the fact that the battlefield is still occupied by friendly civilians, requiring precision fires against enemy targets rather than more indiscriminate use of area-effect munitions to clear entire sectors.

The final American fighter aircraft of the war is completed, a F-20 Tigershark built at the Beechcraft aviation plant in Wichita, Kansas. Originally intended for delivery to South Korea, the aircraft is instead flown to Dover AFB, Delaware, Air Force authorities hoping that it can be partially disassembled, loaded aboard a C-5 transport plane and delivered to the CENTCOM AOR.

The next round of attacks against the embattled 158th Motor-Rifle Division in Bosnia begins. The Jugoslav forces have moved a platoon of four T-34/85 tanks captured from the division's 151st Tank Regiment from Saarajevo to outside the division's headquarters in Zenica, where they begin to systematically enage the position's strongpoints with precision heavy fire.

[chico20854]

February 21, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

The 402nd Field Artillery Brigade gets in its first firefight, between one of the brigade’s platoons and the militia of the small town of Chillicothe, Texas. The soldiers retreat, leaving five dead behind.

The fighting in Fairbanks continues as the desperate troops of the Soviet 147th (my 261st) Motor-Rifle Division give up positions in the citys downtown, shifting the focus of resistance to the railroad yard and industrial area on the north side of the Chena River.

The Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brgade is able to requisition sufficient railroad rolling stock to load all of its troops and heavy equipment; the commander authorizes the outfitting of several cars with anti-aircraft weapons, armored vehicles and armor to allow the formation (probably to be split into three separate units) to fight its way through opposition.

The attacks against the 158th Motor-Rifle Division expand in scope, with Jugoslav partisan fighters (coordinating with US Green Berets of the 6th Special Forces Group) surrounding all of the division's outposts along the valley of the Bosna River.

The Bulgarian freighter A.B. Buzko, with a partial load of grain and iron ore aboard, arrives in the Greek port of Patros, only to discover that it has been hit by an American nuclear bomber. The ship's captain, unable to reach Bulgarian naval command (the headquarters bunker was struck in the fall and alternate facilities have gone offline in the chaos of post-nuclear Bulgaria), heads back to sea, instructing his radio officer to try to reach any Warsaw Pact naval headquarters.

[chico20854]

February 22, 1998

Another day with nothing in canon. Unofficially,

The fighting continues in Fairbanks, Alaska as the 11th Airborne Division attempts an assault crossing of the frozen-ovver Chena River. With artillery and mortar ammunition running low, the paratroops are forced to cross with little supporting fire and suffer heavy casaulties from Soviet machinegun fire.

Throughout the front lines of 4th and 7th US and 1st, 2nd and 3rd German Armies, engineer troops, having largely constructed nearly adequate winter quarters for troops, are diverted to hardening defensive positions along the front lines as commanders realize that there will be no NATO offensive anytime soon; strong defensive positions allow a longer front line to be held with fewer troops.

The 61st Training Motor-Rifle Division in remote Ashkabad, Turkmenistan (just north of the Iranian border) graduates its last class of trainees. There are too few local civilians to draft (doing so would collapse the local collective and state farms), so the unit dispatches the new trainees to the fighting in Iran and maintains a local garrison dedicated to protection of local order.

[chico20854]

February 23, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

In Alaska, the fighting in downtown Fairbanks continues as American airborne troops attempt to gain a foothold on the north bank of the Chena River and National Guard troops of the 1st and 2nd Arctic Recon Brigades close in on Highway 2, the sole road leaving the city to the west. Troops of the 1st Brigade move slowly and carefully as they advance around the forested slopes of Ester Dome, the mountain that dominates the city's skyline, slowed by temperatures of -50 F.

Pact forces in Poland are slowly rebuilding their logistic structure after the havoc wreaked by NATO occupying forces and nuclear and conventional strikes. A major challenge is the change of railroad gauge along the Polish-Soviet border; the pre-existing change of gauge stations were thoroughly destroyed by NATO engineers before they evacuated the area in August. The Linia Hutniczo-Siarkowa (Metallurgy-Sulphur Line), a Russian-gauge line that reaches nearly 250 miles into eastern Silesia, is the highest priority, although Soviet engineers are unsure of their ability to repair the Wisla bridge at Kolonia, whose western abutments were destroyed by an American atomic demolition munition. The Soviets urge the Polish Communist Party to rally manpower - military, POW, civilian, refugee - to manually unload the few train cars that are arriving from the USSR for further transport to the front.

In the Ionian Sea, the Bulgarian freighter A.B. Buzko makes radio contact with another friendly ship, the Soviet Ignatius Sergeev, which is in the Black Sea. The Soviet captain reports that he has been ordered to Cuba with a cargo of foodstuffs for the isolated Soviet garrison there, but is unsure of being able to pass through the Bosporus. The two captains make a pact - the Bulgarian ship will deliver its cargo of grain to Cuba while the Soviet ship diverts to Bulgaria; both leaders reckon that in these desperate situations that the arrangement makes some lvel of sense.

Party officials in the Tver region north of Moscow, faced with rapidly diminishing food supplies and ever more refugees from Moscow, decide to demonstrate their commitment to the war effort by sweeping the refugee camps for men of military age. The local MVD quickly rounds up nearly 500 men (and some young women in their late teens and 20s) and loads them onto railcars, dispatching them to the front in Europe as reinforcements.

[chico20854]

February 24, 1998

Another day where canon is silent! Unofficially,

The 402nd Field Artillery Brigade returns to Chillicothe, Texas in mass. The brigade deploys two companies of infantry, which overrun the town, burn it to the ground and execute all males between the ages of 14 and 70.

In Canada, the Quebecois force on the eastern front continues its offensive, delayed to allow time for reinforcement and training. Using a hodgepodge fleet of fishing and recreational boats as well as three ferries pressed into service, they make an amphibious landing that quickly overwhelms the loyalist force along the Labrador-Quebec border and cuts the coast road between the border guard force and the main base at Goose Bay.

The 53rd Hungarian Brigade completes the outfitting of several railcars as gun platforms, with armor to protect against shrapnel and light small arms fire (sufficient to stop an AK-47 bullet, but not a PK machinegun or heavier). It begins loading aboard the trains; most of the troops are housed in boxcars or aboard a suburban commuter train; the brigade's engineers drain the fuel from several damaged locomotives and an underground fuel tank into a tank car placed at the center of the formation. Simultaneously, the unit mechanics strip the local railroad maintenance shop of tools and spares that may be needed. The local authorities are powerless to object, the town (Naushki in eastern Siberia) being overrun with heavily armed Hungarians, nearly all of whom are unable to speak Russian and interteract with the local civilians.

The new destroyer USS Howard, which was commissioned in Maine in September and entered a period of training before entering active service, finally completes its shakedown training and enters port at Mayport, Florida for minor refit and resupply prior to commencing active service.

Third US Army directs its sole subordinate MP brigade, the 16th, to coordinate with the paramilitary Iranian National Security Force, on efforts to secure the supply lines between ports on the Persian Gulf and forward positions in the Zagros Mountains. The MPs are provided the remnant of the Australian Expeditionary Brigade (reorganized into two nearly-full strength battalions and a robust headquarters and support element) to deal with the most heavily armed bandits and deserter groups.

[chico20854]

February 25, 1998

Nothing official today!

Six A-37 light attack jets which have been reactivated from retirement for transfer to Colombia are requisitioned while awaiting arrival of Colombian pilots at Columbus AFB, Mississippi. The base commander authorizes the release of pilots and a single crew chief for each aircraft and sufficient fuel for each aircraft to fly to Chambers Field at Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia.

The commander of the 2nd Far Eastern Front reluctantly orders the dispatch of the veteran 27th (my 90th Guards) Tank Division to to the western front.

The crew of the destroyer USS Howard is distressed when it discovers the dire conditions ashore in northeastern Florida. The naval base is crowded with shattered survivors of the nuclear attacks on the Atlantic Fleet's other southern bases - Charleston, Kings Bay and Norfolk - both human and floating. The base is held by a heavy security force, holding off masses of desperate refugees fleeing the chaos elsewhere in the state.

In Lithuania, a platoon from the MVD's 357th Convoy Regiment is dispatched to deal with the insubordinate occupier of Trakai Castle, Colonel Česlovas Skrebys. The detachment, survivors of the desperate drive to evict American and British troops from the republic, is but 17 men strong, with a pair of worn out GAZ-66 trucks and a single Second World War-era SG-43 machinegun.

[chico20854]

February 26, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

Quebecois forces in Labrador advance northwest and inland, heading for the NATO air base at Goose Bay. They are largely unopposed.

In Alaska, the Soviet defending force has been largely pushed out of the industrial area north of downtown Fairbanks, shifting the focus of Soviet resistance to the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where the remannts of the 147th (my 261st ) Motor-Rifle Divison's reconniassance battalion and anti-aircraft regiment have fortified the school buildings and cleared resupply and reinforcement routes through the campus' steam tunnel system.

The 199th Infantry Brigade arrives at the Korean port of Ulsan, one of the few remaining South Korean ports. It begins its transit to the III MEF area of operations.

The USS Howard's supply officer is crestfallen when she discovers (and verifies) that there is no fuel available at the Mayport, Florida naval base (or further inland, in Jacksonville) to enable the ship to depart. There also is little ammunition available to arm the ship, with some rounds for the ship's guns and torpedoes for its torpedo tubes and helicopters (a single SH-2G Seasprite rather than the two SH-60s she is designed for). The ship's complement is pressed into service as a security force ashore, despite the captain's insistence that his warship needs desperately to get into action at sea.

SEALS from SEAL Team 4 severely damage the Italian tanker Norvegia G at anchor off Bizerte. The ship's double hull would defeat most demolition charges, forcing the commandos to attach the charges to blow out the propeller shaft seals & and ignite a fire in the accomodation block. The ship and its escort, the corvette Sfinge, had been positioned to transport the cargo from the local refinery that the US has just loaded aboard the USNS Paul Buck. An attempt to attach limpet mines to the Sfinge is thwarted by alert sentries aboard the ship.

The MVD detachment sent to Trakia, Lithuania to force Colonel Skrebys to comply with the orders of Party authorities (and eliminate him if he refuses) scouts out the town, noting that defensive works have been thrown up, manned by armed defenders. Recalling earlier reports that Skrebys had armored personnel carriers, the detachment commander calls for additional forces before launching his attack.

[Homer]

February 24, 1998
The 402nd Field Artillery Brigade returns to Chillicothe, Texas in mass. The brigade deploys two companies of infantry, which overrun the town, burn it to the ground and execute all males…

Well, that escalated quickly. Can’t wait to see how the rest of the area reacts when word gets around…