I know cannon doesn’t discuss it, but has SACEUR maintained the victor alert force? Those additional aircraft would be tempting to raid for reinforcements. Of course, they’ll be plenty busy soon enough…

Plausible and depressing. What a waste.

Somebody's going to make the request: it has to come from at least one very high-ranking officer. A theater commander such as CINC-WEST or CINC-FAR EAST could do it (or both make their requests simultaneously or nearly so); or it's the Defense Minister upon recommendation of the Chief of the General Staff (who would get that from the some 100 Generals under him).

Even in Hackett's Third World War books, SACEUR maintained at least 5% of his dual-capable aircraft on alert for possible nuclear strike missions. Having some F-15Es, F-111s, Tornados, etc. locked and cocked for nuclear strike is a no-brainer-and the alert force might be increased if it looks like the Soviets may be getting ready for possible nuclear action.

Agree, and there’s plenty of evidence in cannon to support air delivered tactical nukes in addition to some explicitly identified cruise missile strikes. I was more wondering how much risk had been taken with that pool to maintain a mission capable force for the conventional side. With GLCM, Pershing, etc surviving, I could see some “prudent risk” taken with the SACEUR dual capable reserve at key points. I was actually remembering the raid into Poland with F-111s in Hackett’s books which had aircraft released from reserve for the operation.

I believe in one of my conversations with Chico, that the 3rd Air Force was retaining the 20th TFW @ RAF Upper Heyford and possibly 366th TFW @ RAF Sculthorpe for nuke strikes.

Part of my Advent Crown writeup that didn't make it over to this thread (mostly because it didn't have a specific date attached to it) addresses this:

"NATO commanders held back one fourth of their remaining deep strike aircraft as a tactical nuclear reserve. At most NATO airbases, the pair of hardened aircraft shelters closest to the taxiway sat full at all times with quick reaction aircraft, fueled, crewed and loaded with B-61 nuclear bombs, ready to retaliate against any Soviet nuclear strike. An entire F-111 wing in the UK was also on standby, although their targets were gradually overrun by NATO infantry. Strategic reconnaissance assets scrambled to identify where the Western TVD and various Front headquarters displaced to, and USAFEUR and SAC had to update target allocation between theater and strategic targets as the theater area of operations extended into the Soviet Union."

So as attrition wears down the strike aircraft fleet a few aircraft get released, in addition to the Pershing and Ground Launched Cruise Missile fleets and the older SSBNs that are assigned theater missions in the NATO nuclear plan. That force is augmented by the pair of British Resolution-class SSBNs that have their retirement delayed, bringing the Royal Navy up to 6 boomers.

June 29, 1997

1st Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) repulses a number of Soviet commando raids across the Bering Straits but is forced to withdraw westward when Soviet arctic mechanized units cross to the US side.

Unofficially,

Responding to word of the probable Spetsnaz team infiltrating New Mexico, self-appointed civilian militias deploy to the Mexican border in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

The ROK Army links up with the amphibious force which had landed in Nampho, cutting off North Korea's South Hwanghae Province from the rest of the nation. Combined Forces Korea directs several South Korean reserve and home defense divisions to seal off the area and make gradual inroads into subduing it; paramount, however, is preventing any disruptions to the supply lines or any breakout of isolated North Korean units.

Chinese forces in northwestern North Korea begin to advance southward, while in Manchuria the People's Liberation Army's daily tally of towns and villages liberated from Soviet occupation continues to grow.

The 332nd Anti-Tank Brigade is released from STAVKA's Artillery Reserve and transported to the Polish-Soviet border. The unit is equipped with three dozen MT-12 anti-tank guns and an equal number of self-propelled AT-6/9 ATGM launchers, mounted on MTLB chassis.

The 44th Guards Airborne Division, the VDV's training division, is ordered to deploy to the Lithuanian-Polish border, setting aside its mission preparing conscripts to be NCOs.

The Polish State Council and Politburo are secretly evacuated from Warsaw by helicopter to the Communist Party’s resort complex at Arlamów in the mountains on the Ukrainian border.

The Polish defenders of the town of Hel are forced back into the ruins of the naval base.

VII US Corps encounters Soviet reinforcements when the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment engages T-86 tanks of the 2nd Guards Motor-Rifle Division, the Red Army’s premier show division, just arriving at the front from Moscow.

The Polish Internal Front counterattacks in the north, with a weak drive southwest from Bialystok with a scratch force of Polish and Soviet border guards, OTK and WOW troops and East German communists. The attempt to relieve the siege of Warsaw and cut II British Corps off from its bridgeheads is stopped outside Ostrów Mazowiecka by a NATO force detached from Operational Group Warsaw, reinforced with the Polish 2nd Free Legion. The battle between former border guard comrades is especially bitter and tragic, and the Polish drive peters out.

American troops of XVIII Corps make slow progress into the southwestern portion of Warsaw, reaching the runway of the international airport at sundown.

Damage control parties on board the battleship USS Iowa struggle to contain the fire started by a Polish kamikaze attack the day before. As the fire spreads in the powerless battlewagon, escorting frigates come alongside to provide additional pumping power and spray down the hull. The commander orders the aft magazine flooded as a preventative measure, lest the hundreds of tons of powder and explosives detonate.

In northern Sweden, 10th Mountain Division’s commander is able to regain full control of his battalions and arrange a ceasefire with the local Swedish commander, which is honored by the reinforcing Swedish units. Both sides turn their attention to the advancing Soviets, which have thrown the battered 16th Motor-Rifle Division back into the line. The Americans provide forward air control parties to guide the US naval aircraft in their strikes, while the rest of the division and the Norwegians continue their movement back to Norway.

photo
In the Mediterranean, Operation Carpet Bagger commences - USAF attacks on Greek naval bases by the 140th Tactical Fighter Wing (Colorado Air National Guard)'s A-7s, flying from Turkish bases, covered by F-16As of the 482nd Tactical Fighter Wing (USAF Reserve), who shoot down 12 Greek fighters (2 F-16C, 4 Mirage 2000s and 6 F-4E Phantoms) with the loss of only one F-16A. US carriers continue to attack Greek naval facilities, facilities they are intimately familiar with since they used them for many decades themselves.

Marines of the 4th Division make contact with outer pickets of the Soviet 201st Motor-Rifle Division in the mountains north of Bandar Abbas. The action is the first combat that the troops of the 40th Army, veterans of the war in Afghanistan, have had with American troops.

The lead elements of the Australian 1st Armored Brigade arrive in Ad Damman, Saudi Arabia, to begin making arrangements for reception and deployment of the brigade's troops when they arrive in a few weeks. (The vehicles are being loaded at multiple Australian ports).

Activation of the 84th Tank Division, a mobilization-only unit from the Kiev Military District formed from the cadre and student body of the Kiev Higher Tank Engineering School and equipped with T-34s, T-10s and ISU-152 tank destroyers, is halted. Instead, the remaining students are rushed to the front as reinforcements for the battered divisions which have retreated across Poland. Many of the school’s instructors are also taken to replace losses at the front, and the warehouses of equipment are depleted to make up combat losses at the front.

Great chapter!

Lots of indicators that the WARPAC is coming to the end of its (conventional) tether. Laid out as you have it seems like a failure of pol-mil strategic level intelligence to not counsel caution as NATO forces close on the Soviet border and begin engaging units of strategic reserve and re-rolled naval and air defense units. Plus, the Chinese front is falling apart and there’s been internal revolt.

It almost seems like a fit of pique after peace talks broke down to not re-engage after nato’s recent performance. Even the north cape campaign, while costly and failing to seize the terrain objective, did achieve the purpose of neutralizing the red banner fleet and wrecking its bases.

June 30, 1997

In a major change to command and control arrangements, Coast Guard cutters and personnel are absorbed directly into the Navy. Local maritime defense districts remain under command of their (former) Coast Guard commanders and staff, but they are formally in the Navy chain of command rather than reporting to the Secretary of Transportation.

Unofficially,

Private Cutler makes a return visit to the convenience store, this time with orders from some of his platoon mates. He returns thirty minutes later with shaving cream, disposable razors, bars of soap, three cold sodas and a small bag of pretzels. He makes a small profit from the excursion.

Following a (very busy) week of flight testing, the Boeing Skyfox is granted emergency USAF type classification as the AT-33E. (The ground crew promptly mangle the designation into the type's popular nickname of "Ate 33" rather than the manufacturer's marketing name.)

Patrols of the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) in the Aleutians are engaged by unknown enemies; subsequent examinations of the areas reveal shell casings from 5.45mm weapons, only used by the Warsaw Pact.

As a result of the ongoing conflict, control of Hong Kong remains in British hands, following an agreement between the Chinese and British governments to extend the British lease of the colony to such time as Chinese government is prepared to administer the area.

The Echo II-class cruise missile sub K-35 arrives at the naval base at Pavlovsk Bay, pulling into the tunnel dug into the mountainside to protect it from American attack. It is the submarine's first service with the Pacific Fleet and the conclusion of an epic patrol that departed Murmansk in December and took it through the North and South Atlantic and Indian Oceans before traversing the South China Sea and Sea of Japan, sinking Allied shipping and attacking targets ashore along the entire route.

VI German Korps heads northeast towards Brest, reinforcing V US Corps’ right flank, and soon encounters advanced elements of 5th Guards Tank Army.

VII US Corps' progress is halted by resistance from the 1st Shock Army and the effects of extended supply lines.

XI US Corps makes the least progress as the fanatical Polish defenders fight for every yard and launch countless counterattacks. The Poles are short of armored vehicles but their dismounted infantry know every inch of the rugged terrain of the Carpathian foothills and have the support of the local population. The Americans do not have enough infantry to secure their entire front, leaving their rear area vulnerable to infiltration by small Polish units.

In beseiged Warsaw, a 37-year old ZOMO (riot police) captain, Krzysztof Czarny, leads his company in a counterattack to recapture part of the paint shop of the Ursus tractor plant from German troops. Within two hours his command has taken 75 percent casualties from a senseless direct attack.

The last American troops leave Swedish territory. To their north, the Soviet forces facing Norwegian troops in Finland are at the end of long and tenuous supply line, and the fervor of defending the Soviet homeland wanes once the Finnish border is reached. Short of ammunition and fuel and with the Northwestern TVD on a theater-wide counterattack, 26th Corps orders the 115th Motor-Rifle Division to maintain a passive pursuit of the retreating Norwegians. Prince Jungi is happy to oblige, eager to return to his home territory and possible redeployment of his force to defend the border with the USSR.

US carriers (the John F Kennedy and America) turn their attention to the island of Crete, launching numerous airstrikes along the length and breadth of the island; dispatching the destroyer Briscoe to use its 5" guns in shore bombardment. The Greek missile boat Plotarhis Bessas, hiding in a cove on the south side of the island, launches all four of its Exocet missiles at 6 nm range at the destroyer. One is shot down by the destroyer's CIWS, one misses and the other two strike, one amidships and the other on the helipad. The warheads cause significant damage, and, like in the Falklands conflict 15 years prior, their unburned propellant ignites a massive fire. Within 45 minutes the order is given to abandon ship.

Navy salvage teams clear the first deep draft cargo berth at the port of Bandar Abbas as SEEBEEs clear the last unexploded ordnance from Bandar Abbas International Airport. (The Havadarya air base on the west end of the city was the first captured and returned to service.)

The USS Independence and its battle group disembark VMFA-112 and its F/A-18s and head out to sea, responding to rumors of activity by the remnants of the Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron.

Just want to say, keep it up.

July 1, 1997

Greece declares war on NATO in retaliation for the alliance's support of Turkey (which the Greeks interpret as interference in a local conflict unrelated to the larger NATO-Pact conflict) and the American strikes on its naval bases.

Unofficially,

The US 17th Airborne Division is formed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri from new draftees and volunteers from the Army throughout the continental US.

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

The 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing implements its dispersal plan, dispatching maintenance and support teams to dispersal airfields throughout the west coast.

A team of recalled reserve pilots and ground crew from the USAF and USN who have experience with the T-33 (alongside three Canadian pilots, who trained on the type) arrive at Mojave, California to begin a quick familiarization course on the AT-33E Skyfox.

American C-17 military transport arrive at a remote pattch of the Taklamakan Desert in far western China. While they have the blessing of the Chinese authorities, no word has been given to local authorities of the American's arrival in the vast desert. The aircraft land on a dry lakebed, unloading heavy equipment to drill a well, establish refuelling infrastructure (including a tankfarm in fuel bags) and a very bare-bones housing and support package. The secret soon-to-be-airbase will be used to support American aircraft's entry into the USSR through lightly defended Central Asian airspace.

South Korean troops of the WHAT Corps and the US I Corps, advancing in parallel, are less than 50 km from Pyongyang, North Korea. The North Korean Army in front of the Allied force has largely disintegrated, but the advance is slowed by local civilians, who alternately clog the roads, heading south as refugees seeking peace, prosperity and safety in South Korea and attack Allied forces heading north as diehard (and to Western eyes, brainwashed) holdouts seek to prevent their homeland from being overrun by foreign invaders.

map of front lines
The commander of the German III Korps calls on the last defenders of the Hel naval base to surrender; his offer is met by a barrage of mortar fire on his front lines. (Expending the last of the defender's stock of mortar ammunition).

In eastern Poland, V US and VI German Corps' advances grind to a halt while NATO deploys its reserves of strike aircraft and deep strike munitions to break up 1st Byelorussian Front. Confident of the suppression of the Voyska-PVO, the USAF releases the 379th Bomb Wing’s B-52G bombers to carpet bomb the Soviet force with a mixture of cluster and high explosive bombs. The bombing destroys relatively few armored vehicles but succeeds in disrupting the rear areas of both armies, damaging or destroying truck parks, supply dumps and towed artillery batteries.

II British Corps and III US Corps continued their progress, approaching Olsztyn from the south. Overextended and dependent on a handful of bridges and what could be flown into captured and expeditionary airfields, their advance slows while XII German Korps tightens the encirclement of Reserve and Baltic Fronts in the Wisła bend. (The Soviets are withdrawing from the west bank of the river under pressure from I German Korps, concentrating north of Torun for an attempt to break out). Olsztyn is defended by one of the last full strength OTK regiments and the 15th Mechanized Division, reduced to little more than a regiment in strength.

In northern Poland, Second German Army deploys VII German Korps to III US Corps’ left, pressing the remnants of Polish 1st Army back along the coast to the Soviet border.

In Warsaw, Captain Czarny is provided two dozen teenage boys as reinforcements for his company, which suffered losses of over 75 percent in fighting the prior day. They have never fired a military rifle and are not provided with uniforms, helmets, weapons or training before being assigned to his command. German, American and British troops continue to press in on the city, accompanied by constant artillery barrages on defensive positions.

The Karasuando Massacre creates tremendous anti-American sentiment in Sweden, forever condemning any chance of Sweden joining the war on NATO’s side. Few Swedes that see video footage of American troops shooting at Swedish police and middle-aged home guards or pictures of the burned ruins of downtown Kiruna can support joining the war as co-belligerents alongside NATO. The Swedish people and government ralliy around their military and, dismissing the offer of continued American air support from Norwegian bases, undertake the effort to deal with 26th Corps, which is gradually solidifying its positions in Swedish Lapland.

Morale in the NATO force in Norway slumps as a result of the defeat of the long-planned offensive. The air and naval forces have taken tremendous losses and infantry battalions at the front are badly depleted. While the wounded have been evacuated south and west, the Norwegian intelligence service’s informant at the Murmansk train station reports numerous carloads of Allied POWs headed south under heavy guard. The special operations troops that have survived the offensive are exfiltrating and unable to intercept the trains, and Finnish and Russian civilians and militias are rounding up downed airmen nearly every day. It is a dark time to be an Allied fighter in northern Norway. Nonetheless, actual disciplinary problems and desertion are low although black humor and soldier’s griping are rampant

In Iran, the 1st Marine Division passes through scattered Iranian defensive positions in the Zagros Mountains before entering the no-mans'-land that separates Allied and Soviet controlled territories. To their east, the Marines of the 4th Division launch vigorous attacks on the 201st Motor-Rifle Division, driving the Soviet division back to its previously prepared main line of resistance.

July 2, 1997

Keeping with its treaty obligations, Italy declares war on NATO.

Canadian troops in the Yukon Territory and British Columbia prepare defense lines throughout both provinces.

Warsaw Pact forces withdraw from the front with the Chinese Army quickly following them.

Unofficially,

The 276th ADA Battery (Laser) (Provisional) is relieved of its test and development mission and placed on alert for immediate deployment. One of the battery's four platoons (with three XM-12 systems) will remain at Fort Bliss to develop tactics and train new crew members. One platoon is airlifted to Korea to use its novel system against a variety of ground and air targets, while the battery headquarters and two firing platoons deploy to Europe via priority airlift.

Private Cutler's barracks business grows, now offering candy and Playboys, which Cutler has begun buying without orders being placed in advance.

The American carriers Abraham Lincoln, Stennis and Nimitz launch Operation Left Sweep, another raid on Soviet naval facilities near Vladivostok. The strikes' fighter escort further whittle down the PVO air defense interceptor fleet - the panicked commander of the 23rd PVO Corps reports that if he does not immediately receive a shipment of missiles and replacement aircraft he cannot guarantee round the clock coverage of Vladivostok.

NATO advanced elements close on the Soviet-Polish border, continuing the siege of Warsaw. SACEUR, General Phelps, is most concerned about the threat posed by 1st Byelorussian Front in the center. Intelligence indicates that the front’s third army, 3rd Guards Tank Army, is moving towards the border, ready to exploit any crack in First German Army’s line. The aerial bombardment has disrupted the Soviet force temporarily, but once the offensive resumes there is a serious possibility that the NATO force will not be able to hold, let alone continue to advance. A bold response is needed, and once again it is decided to risk USAF assets to resolve the crisis.

The 487th Tactical Missile Wing (-) is declared operational, with its headquarters at Konya AB, Turkey.

The US Sixth Fleet strikes the Italian naval base at Taranto. The attack submarine USS Scranton is lurking outside the entrance, catching the frigate Aliseo in the flank with a pair of Mk 48 torpedoes and the destroyer Francesco Mimbelli with a pair of Harpoons. The attack stirs up a confused hornets nest as the base responds to the American air attack, and the Italians manage to spot the submerged boat and sink her with helicopter-delivered depth charges.

photo
As I MEF continues its advance in the Zagros Mountains, rear area troops continue their efforts to sustain the advance as well as establish a base structure in heavily damaged Bandar Abbas. Maintenance teams search the city for materiel that can be salvaged and repaired or reissued.

An Aeroflot I-86 arrives in Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow carrying Italian mechanical and industrial engineers and planners to resume their oversight of the completion of the truck plant on the city's outskirts.

July 3, 1997

A Canadian battle group raised for service in Korea has its departure cancelled and, renamed Northern Command, is sent to Yukon.

The last USAF troops leave Point Salines Airport in Grenada.

Unofficially,

XV Corps Headquarters completes its command post exercise at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas and is declared ready for deployment.

A militiaman near Nogales, Arizona opens fire on a group of Mexican immigrants fleeing north.

The second regiment from the 5th Marine Division (the 27th Marines) arrives at Twentynine Palms, California to join its sister regiment the 26th in regiment-level pre-deployment exercises. The troops practice working in coordination with artillery, tanks and close-support aircraft from VMFAT-101, the F/A-18 readiness squadron at Air Station El Toro.

Soviet Arctic troops advancing across the Bering Strait consolidate their positions on the coast, establishing Nome as their headquarters and logistical hub, taking advantage of the port and airport facilities.

South Korean troops and American Marines of I MEB close on the North Korean coastal city of Hamhung, North Korea's third largest city and a major industrial center and transportation hub.

The Commander of 2nd Western Front reports that his troops holding the city of Brest have less than one days' supply remaining and that the rail lines leading to his front’s rear area have been cut; reinforcing divisions promised him are gathering near Smolensk but immobile while awaiting trucks to bring forward supplies of fuel for their hodgepodge collection of wheeled vehicles and to move the armored vehicles to the front.

The German III Korps reports that the town and naval base of Hel are finally under control, over a month after the start of the Battle of the Hel Peninsula.

In besieged Warsaw, troops of the American 40th Infantry Division (California National Guard) clear the last defenders from the now ruined terminal of Warsaw International Airport. ZOMO Captain Czarny's depleted company is assigned a reserve position 500m behind the front line in the Ursus Tractor Factory; he spends much of the day scavenging weapons and equipment from the dead and wounded to give his teenage recruits.

The last NATO troops (from the Norwegian Vestoppland Infanteri Regiment, part of 6th Brigade that had fought throughout the entire campaign) leave Soviet territory on the Kola Peninsula.

A GRU detachment arrives at Comiso Air Base, Sicily to tour the former USAF Ground Launched Cruise Missile facility. The team will brief Spetsnaz teams on the detailed layout of the facility, which closely resembles similar ones in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.

A fire rages through the Kama River Truck Plant's diesel engine manufacturing facility. The plant is the Soviet Union's largest truck plant.

A Soviet raider, a converted Cuban SD-14 type freighter, sinks the Panamanian-flag (but US-owned) tanker Texaco Star as it transits the Caribbean from Venezuela to the US Gulf Coast.

The Egyptian government completes an award of a contract to clear the Suez Canal of mines and sunken ship. The winning bid goes to a company led by a trio of retired generals that has little experience in large projects, has only a dozen employees (nearly all relatives of the generals) and until receiving the first payment under the contract, virtually no money to mobilize men and equipment to do the job.

Low-level skirmishing break out along the entire length of the Indian-Pakistani border as both nations rush troops to the front. Islamist tribal militias in northwestern Pakistan fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of Army troops.

Excellent reading. By this time in the timeline is the US following the Danish example and setting up the first (or expanding existing) Strategic Reserve Stockpiles like the one in Allegheny Uprising?

Not only will they have the GAMA area at Comiso to learn from, they’ll get a couple of different WSAs and Victor Alert areas at Italian and former US bases to study. The Greeks will have a strategic reconnaissance aircraft Base at Hellenikon and the Souda Bay complex (or what’s left of it) to offer.

There’s a lot of information to be gained, depending on how far the Greeks and Italians are willing to let the Soviets go in exploiting the sites.

July 4, 1997

The megapunk band Terminal Illness holds a "Release Dain Dangerous" concert on the Boston Common. Band members decide to omit the request for a permit, inviting the police to do something about it. A directive is issued by an emergency meeting of the city council to prohibit the concert and disperse any megapunks that gather at the Common. The success at enforcing the directive is short-lived, and by early evening 80,000 megapunks fill downtown Boston. In the greatest blunder in the history of the Boston Police Department, Chief Elliot Washington orders the arrest of Terminal Illness. Fifty veteran officers, armed with riot shotguns (loaded with rubber bullets and tear gas), approach the bandstand from the rear. As the officers rush the band members, Greasy Fellow (the band's backup guitarist) drops one of them with a roundhouse swing of his guitar. Six shotgun blasts answer his defiance. The crowd, already whipped to a frenzy by the music, charges the bandstand. The officers fire into the crowd trying to disperse it, with no visible effect. In a crazed rush, the megapunks overrun the officers. City riot units cannot regain control of the Common, and the mayor requests aid from the governor.

photo
Italian troops of the 4th Alpini Army Corps and 3rd Army Corps cross into Tyrolia, taking the Austrian garrison units by surprise. Italian airmobile and airborne troops capture mountain passes and tunnels, and alpine troops quickly link up with them, overrunning the defenders.

Unofficially,

A-10s of the 343rd Tactical Fighter Wing engage Soviet invasion forces in Alaska. Patrols of the 172nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic) clash with Soviet hovercraft of the 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade as they screen the Soviet invasion fleet, in the world’s first hovercraft vs. hovercraft battle.

American strike aircraft once again destroy the bridge at Khasan, cutting the sole rail line between the USSR and North Korea.

South Korean troops are now 25 km from central Pyongyang as resistance stiffens, bolstered by the increasingly urban terrain that favors defenders more than the open fields south of the city.

photo
7th Fleet launches Operation Kickback - the American submarines Chicago, Honolulu, Key West and Columbus strike Soviet Naval Aviation bases in Pacific (from Vladivostok to Petropavlovsk) with submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. The strikes are quite successful, overwhelming the air defenses of the region following the recent carrier strikes.

A combined British-American force assaults Olsztyn in northeastern Poland. The US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment skirts the city to the north, then turns south, while the British 6th Armoured Brigade repeats its armored thrust into the heart of the city that had failed in Warsaw weeks ago. This time the result is different, with demoralized Polish defenders slipping away into the forests south of the city.

Overnight into the 5th all the C-130s that NATO can muster in Europe drop airborne troops throughout 1st Byelorussian Front’s rear. The US 4th Ranger Battalion conducts a raid on 1st Byelorussian Front’s rear headquarters, killing or capturing the staff responsible for the front’s logistical support. The 240th Fallschirmjäger Brigade, only partially reformed after the battle of Inowrocław, captures the airbase at Biała Podlaska, with its 10,000-foot runway and adjacent rail line and highways. The 27th Fallschirmjäger Brigade lands from helicopters along 5th Guards Tank Army’s main supply route, establishing a network of company-size ambush positions along roads and travel routes in an attempt to paralyze the Soviet force by cutting off all supply movement. To the north the 26th Fallschirmjäger Brigade does the same to 7th Tank Army’s rear, while the 25th Fallschirmjäger Brigade drops along the Bug River, capturing bridges on the border.

The NATO troops from the Lapland Offensive, once returned to Norwegian territory, are directed to garrison locations to rebuild and rest. 10th Mountain Division has taken over 60 percent casualties overall and many of its infantry battalions are almost empty shells. Prince Jungi’s mechanized force is in desperate need of maintenance, some of its tanks having towed their broken down counterparts out of Finland. Both take in a trickle of replacements while the veterans sleep for days on end and the commander of the 10th Mountain Division's cavalry squadron is evacuated to the US, relieved of command. SACEUR directs that Allied Forces Northern Norway, upon evacuation to Norwegian territory, release X Corps' troops and the marine brigades for service elsewhere in the Alliance area, as well as aircraft not needed for the air defense of northern Norway.

The Victor II-class submarine K-517, a survivor of the Battle of the Norwegian Sea, arrives in the Indian Ocean.

General Suryakin in the Transcaucasian Front requests an additional two regiments of trucks to support his troops fighting in the Zagros Mountains.

A flight of eight Boeing AT-33E Skyfoxes - 1950s-era T-33 trainers converted to counter-insurgency light strike aircraft - departs Mojave, California for NAS Beeville, Texas, the first leg of a ferry flight to Howard Air Force Base, Panama, where they will replace A-7s in the 156th Tactical Fighter Group (Puerto Rico Air National Guard), freeing up those aircraft for service in the Balkans, Korea or Middle East.

The fighting along the Indian-Pakistani border intensifies, unlike in the continual skirmishing of the prior months. By sundown Indian troops have crossed the border in strength south of Lahore, cutting off a Pakistani salient.

Thanks!

Yes, at this point FEMA is well underway in its strategic stockpile program as well as its hasty evacuation site construction program. I haven't detailed them much as yet; IIRC I made reference to the appropriations being made in a war spending bill. I'll try to slip some news in in coming weeks.

July 5, 1997

By dawn, National Guard units have secured the downtown area of Boston following the riots that erupted during megapunk band Terminal Illness' unpermitted concert on Boston Common. Thirteen dead police officers are located. Property damage in the downtown area is estimated at $25 million. Twenty-six felony arrest warrants are issued against the members of Terminal Illness, who are arrested and charged.

The Jugoslav 5th Army launches an attack against northeast Italy in a brave effort to uphold its obligations as a NATO member (and recapture disputed territory it lost after World War Two).

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Jackson Freedom is delivered in Beaumont, Texas and the Salinas Freedom in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Headquarters, 141 Air Refueling Wing at Shemya, Alaska is ordered to evacuate all essential personnel due to the Soviet invasion of Alaska; many personnel volunteer to remain and fight to the last man, buying time for subordinate squadrons to evacuate. Two KC-135Es, inoperable, are destroyed by their ground crews. The naval air detachment on the island, VP-48, loads its personnel and much of its ground support equipment aboard six of the squadron's P-3 Orions and evacuates to the mainland while the SOSUS station force destroys its equipment and hitches a ride on another evacuation aircraft. Soviet aircraft from surviving but damaged airfields near Petropavlovsk appear in force overhead with an airborne force to seize the island, prompting the 110th Tactical Fighter Squadron to sortie all 18 aircraft against Soviet invasion force. In the battle that follows, the American F-15s down 40 transports and escorting Su-27 fighters, at the cost of 8 F-15As. Its sister squadron, the 122nd, downs 30 aircraft at the cost of 16.

The 1st Brigade, 11th Airborne Division completes Rotation 97-9 at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, is declared combat ready, and placed on alert for immediate deployment to Alaska.

The trainees at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, including Private Cutler and his platoon, are entertained by a traveling USO show featuring the eccentric rock star Ted Hendrix.

Chinese partisans cause 15 derailments of Soviet supply trains within a 24-hour period. The People's Liberation Army enters the city of Harbin, which had been occupied by Soviet troops since September, 1995.

ROK and American mechanized forces begin an encirclement of Pyongyang, the Americans advancing to the west of the city, the South Koreans to the east. The ruling regime secretly begins to evacuate the city before becoming trapped in it.

The American submarines that launched Operation Kickback begin to withdraw, heading to the safety of waters east of Japan where they can link up with a submarine tender to replenish their empty missile launchers.

In Poland, II British Corps pursues the fleeing defenders of Olsztyn north towards the Soviet border, while III US Corps moves east into the Masurian Lakes region, where it is rumored that the Polish government is maintaining a secret command post and reforming troop units.

To the west, III German Korps has driven the defenders of Gdynia out, where they reinforce the garrison of Gdańsk. That city is gradually being reduced to rubble by fierce urban fighting and suffering among the civilian population is great.

The Soviets react violently to the Allied airborne assault. MVD troops and KGB Border Guard units clash with the German 25th Fallshirmjaeger Brigade's paratroopers, who grimly hold on to some of the bridges and are forced to retreat and destroy some of the others. The lightly armed troops are no match for the tanks that the tank divisions pull off the line, dispersing into the woods whenever the tanks appear. Soviet artillery barrages rain down on any units that stand and fight, although many batteries are under attack themselves.

While the Soviets are securing their rear area, however, V US Corps and VI German Korps resume their assault from the west. The Soviet force buckles, retreating in disarray as armored vehicles are hastily reassigned to escort truck columns or give rides to retreating soldiers on foot.

HQ, XV Corps loads aboard military and civilian aircraft at McGuire AFB, New Jersey for transit to Germany.

The GRU detachment in Italy travels to Ghedi Tore Air Base to perform a detailed analysis of the tactical nuclear weapons storage vaults there (11 of which are installed in hardened aircraft shelters), which are built to a standard NATO design.

In Iran, XVIII Airborne Corps troops make progress in their advance as the US Marines and supporting soldiers link up with scattered IPA units. The British 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment is transferred from reserve positions in Saudi Arabia to the front in Iran, reinforcing the gurkhas of 27th Infantry Brigade.

I MEF's advance is slow while 4th Marine Division's two tank battalions face superior numbers of Soviet tanks, manned by veterans of Afghanistan. The 48th Infantry Brigade (Georgia National Guard), with two armor and two mechanized infantry battalions, is rushing north to tip the scales in favor of the Allies.

Soviet experts report that the Kama River truck plant's diesel engine plant will be out of operation for an estimated 12-18 months if sufficient automated machine tools can be obtained from Italy to replace them (halting further progress on the Ivanovo plant). The KGB begins investigating the fire to determine if it was arson or an accident by an exhausted worker.

In the Caribbean, a Soviet raider (a converted freighter with hidden weapons) intercepts the Cypriot ore carrier Angel Pride, loaded with Jamaican bauxite. The raider captures the bulker, evacuating the crew before setting her accommodation block afire and sending her to the bottom.

Pakistani troops counterattack south of Lahore in an attempt to break the blocking force cutting off the Pakistani pocket, but Indian armored units succeed in halting the attack with massed artillery and air attacks.

July 6, 1997

Canadian troops moving east for transportation to Europe are redirected and sent west to be held as a strategic reserve in Alberta.

Unofficially,

The Soviet Minister of Defense, at the urging of the Chief of the General Staff, the commanders of the Western and Far Eastern TVDs, the chairman of GOSPLAN and the head of the Military-Industrial Commission, requests a meeting of the Presidium of the USSR, the subgroup of the Politburo that oversees STAVKA and provides political direction of the overall war effort. At that meeting he is joined by the chair of the KGB and the Minister of the Interior (who controls the MVD Internal Troops) and summarizes the grave situation the Soviet war effort is facing. The ability of the Red Army to resist is collapsing in the Far East and the situation on the Western Front is likely to be in a similar situation within days as NATO troops cross the Soviet border in multiple sectors. The situation in the Balkans is proceding slowly, and the expansion of the war into Austria is further stressing the war effort. The North Korean Army is on the verge of collapse and Soviet troops are giving ground in Iran. Within the USSR the economy is in dire straits, ethnic tension and resistance to the war is growing while industrial production is slowing while the GRU reports ever increasing Western armaments production. He concludes by stating that the USSR has not been in such peril since the dark days of 1942 and urges an immediate renewal of the peace talks, with an offer of a worldwide immediate ceasefire in place as a sign of good faith.

The US 11th Airborne Division (less 3rd Brigade) is declared combat ready, although awaiting a full unit set of equipment, short of communications gear, helicopters, parachutes, HMMWVs and LAVs due to the needs of units at the front.

The Soviet 130th Air Assault Brigade, which was devastated by American fighters en route to their parachute drop on Shemya Island, Alaska, reduced to scattered and confused elements distributed all over the island (as well as troops on the nearby unihabited Aliad and Nizki Islands), struggles to overrun Eareckson Air Station, fiercely defended by a force of Alaska National Guardsmen, Air Force Security Forces and station personnel, sailors and Coast Guardsmen.

Cadets of the 10th California Cadet Brigade begin first aid, traffic control and disaster relief training at the El Toro Marine Corps airbase in Orange County.

B-52 bombers of the 43rd and 320th Bomb Wings strike Soviet air defense sites, coastal artillery positions, command posts, communications facilities and army garrisons in the Kurile Islands.

More secret convoys evacuate the Kim family from Pyongyang, each member travelling separately in a military convoy to various secret underground command posts and hideaways. A force of determined North Korean Army troops take heavy losses trying to hold open the last road leading out of the capital.

A Dutch Red Army attack on the nuclear weapons depot at Doornspijk is repulsed before breaching the perimeter.

photo photo
The Warsaw Pact launches an attack on Austria, with the Czechoslovakian 2nd Army and Soviet 28th Corps driving on Vienna and Lower Austria from the Bratislava area and 2nd Southwestern Front attacking from the East. Simultaneously, the 1st Southwestern Front launches a series of spoiling attacks along the lines in Bavaria to tie down Seventh US Army, I Dutch Corps and the German territorials.

In southeastern Poland, XI US Corps makes progress, entering the city of Rzeszow as the force moves forward along the foothills of the Carpathians. To their north, Panzergruppe Oberdorff reaches the Soviet border, the 46th Engineer Brigade assisting the 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized)'s Engineer Regiment in breaching the defenses along the Soviet border, one of the first US Army ground units on Soviet soil since the allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918-20.

NATO forces assembled for the Kola Campaign begin to disperse. X Corps headquarters is flown back to Alaska to command the units responding to Soviet attacks in the 49th state.

HQ, XV Corps arrives in Germany. 7th Army plans to use the command along the Czechoslovakian border in East Germany, replacing VII Corps which is now on the Ukrainian border.

The front in Romania is largely static as Turkish and Romanian troops enjoy a respite as Soviet units are starved of fuel and ammunition, which has been diverted to other fronts. The American 71st Airborne Brigade continues to hold its positions outside Deva, Romania as its S-4 (logistics officer) frantically tries to establish a secure transport route for supplies to travel along, since the Adriatic Sea is now a war zone with Greek and Italian forces interdicting its entrance.

The Victory ship Wayne Victory arrives in Bandar Abbas and begins the discharge of its deck cargo of telephone poles, which are immediately used to repair the city's shattered communications system.

Third Army's Provost Marshall reports that 90 percent of the Soviet POWs captured in May's landings in Iran have now been evacuated to the United States, largely aboard transport aircraft that were leaving the region after discharging troops or cargo.

The carrier Lexington and her battle group are dispatched from the southern Gulf of Mexico into the Caribbean to hunt down the Soviet raider. It is supported by the HU-25 surface search aircraft of VOJ-202 composed of USCG personnel and aircraft, operating from the Muniz Air National Guard base in Puerto Rico.

July 7, 1997

After a frantic 48 hours of legal activity, the members of the megapunk band Terminal Illness are released on astronomical bond. The band's attorney locates the band's leader and frontman Dain Danger in the Waltham County Sanatorium, where he has been admitted under the name of John Doe 23.

The Presidium of the Soviet Union authorizes the use of nuclear weapons.

Unofficially,

The decision to release nuclear weapons causes great consternation in the Soviet high command. The Minister of Defense had argued vigorously against the decision, stating that nuclear weapons are not a panacea and in fact would cause great damage to Moscow's Polish ally as well as opening the very real possibility of escalating rapidly to a general strategic exchange that would end in the destruction of the USSR. He is overruled by General Secretary Sauronski, who has convinced himself that NATO will be shocked by the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945 into abandoning its folly of supporting the Polish traitors' claim of the pre-1939 borders. He is joined by the Politburo's idealogical "voice of wisdom" who argues that the capitalist West is morally weak and that the Soviet victories in the Kola show that NATO troops do not have the will, at the individual soldier's level, to fight to overthrow the Soviet workers' paradise. The Foreign Minister doubts that the peace talks would be fruitful without the USSR having to accept humiliating conditions to secure peace. KGB Chairman Yangel remains largely silent throughout the deliberations, mostly confining his remarks to technical issues such as the release of warheads from KGB custody to military units tasked to deliver them. He, therefore, makes it of the utmost importance that his departure from Moscow immediately after the conclusion of the meeting remain absolutely secret.

Private Cutler's barracks business is faltering as his platoon mates have eaten their fill of candy and he has amassed a sizeable portion of the platoon's available cash. (The privates are required to have their pay deposited in a bank and only allowed to take a small portion of their pay in cash). He decides to expand his market to other platoons in the company, whose needs have been, until now, unmet!

The final regiment of the 5th Marine Division, the 28th, arrives in California to begin advanced combined-arms training as evaluators declare the 26th Regiment ready for action.

The Soviet 130th Air Assault Brigade on Shemya Island, Alaska has overrun the airfield and most of its hangars, destroyed the fuel tanks and has rallied its remaining paratroops into a semi-coherent force that has most of the remaining defenders pinned down in the base's support and barracks buildings.

The US supports Operation Repo, the Japanese occupation of the Kuriles. The 732rd Tactical Fighter Wing provides top cover & SEAD for Japanese aircraft that are supporting the landings, the 27th Tactical Fighter Wings's F-111s help interdict the islands. A RF-16C of the 192nd Tactical Reconniassance Squadron is lost on a dawn mission performing bomb damage assessment of the B-52 strikes. The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force escorts civilian transports, US Navy amphibious ships and its own force of 6 LSTs and the LSD Ōsumi from Hokkaido to landing stations off the islands of Iturup and Kunashir, landing troops around mid-day.

The Bundeswehr calls up the security units it had released in May, and Denmark commits two mechanized brigades and a regimental combat team to assist the struggling Austrians.

Additional units of First German Army surge eastwards in Poland to link up with the paratroops that are struggling along the Soviet border.

XI US Corps secures Rzeszow and its airport, while struggling to maintain a secure front to its south against frequent partisan attacks and infiltrators from the Polish 3rd Army.

The 113th Field Artillery Brigade (North Carolina National Guard) is transferred from III Corps in northeastern Poland to the Warsaw area, assigned to XXIII Corps, where the brigade's M-109 howitzer battalion (the 1st Battalion, 113th Field Artillery) is thrown into action supporting infantry battling towards the Siekierki power plant on the city's south side.

2nd Brigade, 6th Infantry Division (Light) embarks on buses and airliners for transfer to Stavanger, Norway, where it will load on ships for transfer to the Netherlands.

The Sierra III-class submarine K-231 is delivered from the shipyard in Gorky. The titanium-hulled boat is the last, and most advanced, nuclear-powered attack submarine built by the USSR. It begins a voyage to the Black Sea via the inland waterways, escorted by a tug boat and armed KGB riverine patrol vessel.

The Victor II-class attack submarine K-517 locates an Allied convoy moving along the East African coast. It attacks, blowing the bow off the escorting American frigate USS Bagley as well as sinking the American freighters Cape Farragut and Richmond Freedom (on her maiden voyage) and Liberian tanker Esko Stokes. It flees the area, pursued by the British frigate Juno and American Coast Guard cutter Jarvis.

The second flight of AT-33E Skyfoxes arrive at Howard Air Force Base, Panama.

Did the 55th SRW get some indicators of heightened risk? It seems interesting they disperse just before escalation to nuclear weapons. Was chemical release a trigger?

July 8, 1997

Am Dangerous' joy at the reunion with her brother Dain turns to rage when she finally meets her brother. Dain is incoherent and barely able to move because of almost constant palsied convulsions. It later transpires that he had been overdosed with Thorazine, and other antipsychotic drugs to which he is unusually sensitive, during his brief stay in the sanatorium. Am tries to attack the doctor, but John Blackwood manages to restrain her.

Unofficially,

A high-level delegation from STAVKA flies to Byelorussia, delivering the news of nuclear release to Marshall Slepnev, commander of the Western TVD. Another delegation is dispatched to Chita in eastern Siberia, with instructions for Far Eastern TVD to use nuclear weapons to implement a wide-ranging effort to eliminate the Chinese Army in the field and destroy China's ability to resist.

American resistance on Shemya ends, with the Cobra Dane early warning radar going down in a cloud of smoke and dust as the Air Force security force destroys it to prevent the Soviets from gaining anything of intelligence value from it.

The Far Eastern TVD establishes the Aleutian Front to control the disparate military efforts at the eastern end of the USSR. The Front's 25th Corps commands the invasion of Alaska, while the 51st Army is coordinating the defense of the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin Island. 25th Corps establishes a logistical hub in Nome.

The 11th Airborne Division (less 3rd Brigade) is deployed by air to Eileson Air Force Base, Alaska and Ladd Army Airfield, Alaska, filling out the vehicle park with requisitioned civilian vehicles and trucks from the Air Force, and immediately entering action alongside other elements of X Corps, the headquarters newly arrived from Norway.

Private Randall Cutler's barracks candy sale business is busted when he is "ratted out" by a trainee in another platoon as well as by a member of his platoon chewing bubble gum during morning physical training. A search of his platoon's barracks reveals fourteen privates with candy or pornography in their lockers.

The 147th Field Artillery Brigade (South Dakota National Guard) is detached from 8th Army, assigned to reinforce South Korean troops battering their way into Pyongyang.

The austere airfield in the Karakum Desert in western China is complete, with a skeleton staff of 150 US Air Force Personnel. A series of KC-10 tanker aircraft begin flying in to the base, discharging thousands of gallons of aviation fuel in the base's fuel blivets.

In Germany several units, some recently arrived and others reconstructing after losses in Poland, are assigned to the newly arrived US XV Corps.

With nearly 90 percent of Polish territory liberated, the lead elements of the NATO forces reach the borders of the USSR. British and German troops batter back KGB border guards on the southern edge of the Kaliningrad oblast while V US Corps and VI German Korps’ units relieve the last of the fallschirmjäger companies along the Bug.

To the south, Panzergruppe Oberdorf and VII US Corps press 1st Shock Army’s T-90s back over the border into Ukraine west of Lvov. NATO airpower and ATACMS missiles are reaching deeper into Byelorussia and Ukraine, dismantling air defense sites, transportation hubs, airfields and communications facilities.

In the southeast, Soviet radio intelligence units locate the headquarters of the 227th Field Artillery Brigade (Florida National Guard) and direct a battalion of BM-27 rocket launchers to strike it with VX nerve gas. Unfortunately, the strike takes place during the commander’s nightly staff meeting, and the brigade commander, his principal staff officers and both battalion commanders are killed. The unit’s effectiveness and morale immediately deteriorate.

1st Brigade and the Division Support Command of the US 6th Infantry Division (Light) depart northern Norway for the Netherlands. The Norwegian 6th Division disperses its forces across northern Norway, providing a strong blocking force along the Soviet border, repairing damage and undertaking internal security patrols.

Pasdaran guerrillas in Esfahan, under direction of Sirjan Khorrasani, attack an isolated Soviet signal site outside the city. In a predawn raid, they overrun the outpost of the 145th Signal Regiment, capturing several automatic weapons and disrupting communications throughout the 45th (my 32nd) Army.

Helicopters from the Jarvis and Juno sink the Soviet Victor II-class submarine K-514 75 nm off Mombassa, Kenya.

July 9, 1997

A momentous day...

The Red Army begins to use tactical nuclear weapons to stop German troops from advancing farther onto Soviet territory.

Unofficially,

At dawn a Mi-17 helicopter of the Soviet 65th Independent Transport Helicopter Regiment takes off from a facility outside Rechytsa, Byelorussia and flows at low level to the first battalion of the 231st Cannon Artillery Brigade. After landing, a KGB detachment brings a single 3BV3 152mm round to a 2S5 self-propelled gun. With Lieutenant-General Valeriy Khomenko, commander of the 7th Tank Army, watching, the gun’s crew loads the round and takes cover before pulling the lanyard. The round is fired and lands slightly more than 15 kilometers away, near the headquarters of the 228th Panzergrenadier Regiment. It explodes with the force of 2500 tons of TNT, destroying the regiment’s headquarters, ending the NATO offensive across Poland and taking the war to a new, deadlier, tragic level.

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

Patrols of the Native Canadian Ranger Regiment are authorized to expand their area of operations west into Siberia, and a company-equivalent is ordered to patrol the Alaskan Arctic coast.

Soviet troops engage troops of the 2nd Battalion, 130th Infantry, assigned to the 3rd Brigade, 47th Infantry Division, who are blocking passage up the Yukon River west of Galena, Alaska, site of an Air Force detachment. The Americans quickly call on the support of a flight of A-10s from the 18th Tactical Fighter Squadron, which scatter the Soviet hovercraft from the river. The proximity of Soviet troops forces the evacuation of the F-15s of detachment 1, 54th Tactical Fighter Squadron.

The fifteen members of Private Cutler's platoon caught with contraband are informed that they will be placed on extra duty for the remainder of their training cycle and that their overnight pass following graduation has been revoked. From lights out until 1 am the "dirty fifteen" are put to work scrubbing the walls and floors of their barracks.

In Ohio, the 221st Engineer Group (New York National Guard), assigned to assist civil authorities, completes conversion of the Wood County fairgrounds to a potential evacuation site. The work consisted of converting livestock barns to enclosed buildings with heating, winterizing utility lines and upgrading the restroom and cooking facilities. The group has nearly a dozen such projects underway, intended to rapidly create refugee housing for city dwellers.

F-16s of the 432nd Tactical Fighter Wing join Japanese F-15s in fending off a Soviet counter-attack that was attempting to strike at Misawa Air Base, a facility vital to the support of Operation Repo. The Soviets launched a coordinated air and missile strike, hitting the base with a pair of conventionally-armed SS-12 Scaleboard missiles and a submarine-launched SS-N-21 cruise missile. The air attack was less successful, the Soviets losing nine MiG-29s, 11 Su-24s and three MiG-27s. Three F-16s and two F-15s are lost in the action.

The American attack submarine Olympia enters the Arctic Ocean, having passed through the Bering Strait submerged.

In beseiged Warsaw, Captain Czarny's ZOMO riot police company is sent back on the line, this time defending the Towarowa train station, where a cat-and-mouse hunt for the enemy rages through the burned remains of hundreds of freight cars.

The 227th Field Artillery Brigade (Florida National Guard), its command staff gutted in a chemical strike the prior evening, is pulled from the lines, sent to Germany to rest and recover.

The remainder of the 6th Infantry Division (Light) begins to depart Norway.

In the Mediterranean, the American carriers John F Kennedy and America begin a series of anti-surface sweeps as intelligence indicates that the Greek and Italian navies are sortieing to push the Americans back.

Ashore in Turkey, the remanants of the NATO reinforcements delivered by the ill-fated convoy depart their marshalling areas, headed for the front facing their former Greek allies in Thrace. To the north, the Turkish 1st Army batters back a half-hearted attack by the Bulgarian Second Army.

A convoy containing the Australian 1st Brigade arrives in Bandar Abbas, Iran. The Australian unit will reinforce I MEF as it tries to break out of the Zagros Mountains into terrain more favorable to use of the brigade's tanks and APCs.

The damaged American frigate Bagley arrives in port in Mombassa, Kenya. A tug is dispatched to try to round up barges cast adrift from the sunken barge carrier Cape Farragut.

The Soviet Q-Ship (raider disguised as a freighter) in the Caribbean attacks the Kuwaiti-flag tanker Al-Tahreer, carrying a load of Venezuelan crude to the St. Croix refinery. The raider's guns set the massive ship ablaze and leave the area, with the crew adrift in lifeboats.

"F#@K IT, we're slinging nukes tomorrow comrades! What's a little nerve gas today?!"

July 10, 1997

The Red Army begins to use tactical nukes against the rapidly advancing Chinese troops. The first target in the theatre is Harbin, China, recaptured just days before and a vital transportation hub.

Unofficially,

NATO struggles to respond to the Soviet tactical nuclear strike outside Brest. It takes a number of hours for confirmation of the strike to be received and verified and word passed up the chain of command to the North Atlantic Council and President Tanner. The next 12 hours are spent in consultation, shocked discussions and near-hysteria. The American Joint Chiefs pass word down, requesting SACEUR's proposed response. Existing plans for use of tactical nuclear weapons are largely useless - to the extent they are even up to date. They call for corps-level "packages" of dozens of weapons to be delivered in a "pulse" lasting 12-24 hours, largely on locations where Soviet doctrine, as interpreted by NATO planners, would indicate are likely to harbor Soviet artillery units, logisitcs sites and headquarters. Most of the plans, developed pre-war, contemplate defensive use on West German territory, and in the months of advance across East Germany and Poland, have not been kept up by overworked staffs. Theater-level plans for use of deep strike assets (F-111s, Pershing missiles, Ground Launched Cruise Missiles and theater-tasked submarine launched ballistic missiles) are also out of date, since many of the targets are occupied by NATO troops. Tanner refuses to authorize the execution of any of these plans, requesting instead a "proportionate" response of a single weapon similar in yield to be delivered on a target equivalent to the German brigade headquarters destroyed yesterday. Hours pass while the directive is passed down and Tanner consults with the other NATO heads of state.

The Soviet nuclear strike is highly classified within the Warsaw Pact. Within the Western TVD, front commanders are aware of the development but not most of their staff and subordinate Army commanders. Far Eastern TVD commanders in Manchuria likewise unaware of developments in Europe, and other TVD commanders know about the strikes. The Soviet propaganda machine continues to crank out material about the revanchist German threat and that the warmongering Americans are liable to release nuclear hellfire down on the peace loving USSR, who for decades publicly declared that the USSR had a "no first use" policy.

Upon receipt of the first NUKEFLASH message reporting the Soviet use of nuclear weapons, the commander of Strategic Air Command, at his own initiative and following long-standing plans, orders the immediate launch of the alert bomber force. Within 15 minutes approximately one fifth of America's strategic bomber force is airborne, refuelling from accompanying tankers to enable them to reach their assigned Emergency War Order targets. All leave is cancelled and all SAC personnel are ordered to return to base immediately.

The Minnesota Regiment, a state guard unit, raises a third battalion as a paper formation, composed of state law enforcement officers (state police, game wardens, prison guards and park rangers), so that they could be legally considered to be members of the military.

C Company, 2nd Battalion, 34th Infantry at Fort Jackson completes its training cycle at Fort Jackson and the privates clean and turn in their weapons and gear. Private Randolph Cutler and his compatriots spend the evening scrubbing walls.

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Widespread panic accompanies the outbreak of nuclear warfare in Europe and China. Roads leaving cities in the US and Western Europe are jammed with cars fleeing potential targets. Churches are packed with the frightened faithful intent on making their peace with the Lord before the man-made holocaust takes them to meet their maker. Stores are stripped bare of preserved food; civilian guns and ammunition, camping gear and many first aid supplies have been sold out for months.

Patrol Missile Hydrofoil Squadron One, composed of the six Pegasus-class missile patrol boats and the tender President Taft, departs its home station of Key West, Florida and begins its transit to Rota Spain prior to finally (after months of inaction and discussion) be committed to action in the Mediterranean. The deployment is also an admission that America has more serious concerns than containing a possible threat from Cuba.

Following the prior day's Soviet use of nuclear weapons, HM Government fully implements Operation Peripheral, with senior members of the Royal Family and the Government dispersing to a number of secret locations throughout southern England and the 11 Regional Seats of Government fully manned.

Elsewhere along the front in Poland, NATO troops continue to advance as the momentum of operations and "fog of war" keep driving the Allied offensive forward. The 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment (Ohio National Guard) reaches the Soviet border north of Przemyśl.

The independent brigades that had served under X Corps in Norway (the 103rd and 197th Field Artillery, 111th Air Defense and 111th Engineer) begin movement out of Northern Norway.

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The American carrier USS Saratoga, operating along the GIUK Gap in search of Soviet raiders breaking out into the North Atlantic, is damaged by a SS-N-19 cruise missile fired by the Soviet Oscar II-class SSGN K-410 after its escorts and close-in defenses defeated seven other missiles. It is forced to limp into the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for repairs.

A small convoy of ferries and freighters departs Stavanger, Norway, crossing the North Sea to Eemshaven, Netherlands with the vehicles and heavy equipment of the US 6th Infantry Division (Light). Overhead, five F-15Es of the 21st Tactical Fighter Squadron, the last of the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing's original 48, transit to Eindhoven, Netherlands to join the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing's mixed force of F-111s and F-15E strike aircraft.

Companies of the 71st Airborne Brigade held in reserve in Romania begin familiarization training with Jugoslav and Romanian AK-47 clones and PK and MG-42 light machineguns as the brigade command staff grows increasingly concerned with supply. The training will open the option to convert some units to small arms that America's Romanian and Jugoslav allies can provide support for.

I MEF and XVIII Airborne Corps in Iran make slow progress in Iran. Thanks to a series of small tankers and the benevolence of the Saudi government CENTCOM has no shortage of fuel, but ammunition, spare parts and replacement vehicles and troops are in short supply.

The Victory ship Wayne Victory completes discharge of deck cargo of telephone poles and begins unloading 8000 tons of bagged corn meal to the custody of Iran Nowin government, which dispenses it to local bakeries and 1st Iranian Army's logistics staff.

Eight A-7Ds of the 156th Tactical Fighter Group (Puerto Rico Air National Guard) depart Howard Air Force Base, Panama, retracing the flight path of their replacement AT-33Es to Beeville NAS, Texas prior to deploying to Korea.

The Pakistani counter-attack south of Lahore is decisively defeated and the Indian Army crosses the Pakistani border in strength along nearly its entire length. Intense air battles rage overhead as masses of obsolescent fighters on both sides try to defeat each other and avoid the handfuls of modern aircraft (Pakistani F-16s and Indian MiG-29s) that appear from time to time.

Still working on the NATO response... hope to get caught up tomorrow!

July 11, 1997

Nothing official for the day!

The North Atlantic Council (composed of NATO heads of state) approves a response to the Soviet nuclear strike at the end of a marathon session that concludes in the early morning hours. A single W82 155mm nuclear artillery shell is to be fired at a Soviet regimental headquarters in the Brest area. Intelligence assets (up to and including American photo reconnaissance satellites) are tasked with locating such a target while a heavily escorted C-130 cargo plane is loaded with the round in West Germany and it is flown forward to a firing battery. The effort comes together shortly before dusk when a M109A5 of the German 215th Panzer Artillery Battalion fires the round, hitting the 261st Tank Regiment's headquarters.

President Tanner orders SAC's airborne alert to be halted, fearing that the Soviets will interpret the mass of bombers loitering within minutes of Soviet airspace as an indication that the US intends a massive and immediate attack on the Soviet homeland and respond accordingly.

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

Private Cutler graduates basic training and is allowed four hours on post with his mother and girlfriend.

A wave of panic sweeps across the UK with many people fleeing the cities for the perceived safety of rural areas; throughout the country there is panic buying of food, bottled water, and other essential supplies.

A dozen Chinese H-6 bombers launch from Dingxin Air Base in the Gobi Desert, each loaded with a single 250 kt nuclear gravity bomb, headed for cities in Eastern Siberia and the Soviet Far East. Two bombers, flying independently, each head for Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Chita, Ulan Ude, Irkutsk and Kosmolosk-na-Amure. A GRU informant in the nearby town radios word of the mass takeoff and the 11th and 14th PVO Air Armies respond by placing their forces on the highest alert. Eleven of the Chinese bombers are intercepted and shot down, and one makes it's way to its target, the city of Ulan Ude. The bomber drops its munition on the junction of the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian railroads on the eastern edge of the city. Set for a ground burst, the fuze on the bomb fails to operate and the Soviets capture the munition intact from the 3-meter deep crater it causes on the edge of the railyard.

To counter the threat of Soviet missile submarines, which have largely dispersed from their home ports, the Joint Chiefs authorize Operation Profligate, the all-out hunt for Soviet boomers. Carrier and surface groups have their allocation of attack submarines cut to one each (if they still had one assigned) and all available attack submarines are tasked with seeking out Soviet boomers. The escort carriers are pulled from convoy duty; the USS Langley lands its remaining Harriers and is sent to the Norwegian Sea while the Franklin and a small escort force begin patrolling northwest of Hawaii, a known operating area for Soviet SSBNs.

The Luftwaffe 2nd Luftjaeger Regiment is relieved of convoy escort duties and ordered into the siege of Warsaw, where the unit’s flak guns with their high elevation are invaluable in striking targets in the seemingly endless rows of concrete high-rise apartment buildings on the city’s outskirts. The airmen perform well, although taking heavy casualties in the urban meat grinder.

West German polizie clear the vicinity of NATO nuclear weapon storage sites of civilians, using some of the recently recalled security troops to secure the areas from refugees from the battle zone, curious hikers and hunters and anyone without a legitimate reason to be in the area.

NATO troops all along the line in Poland, Byelorussia and Ukraine slow their advance as they adapt to a nuclear battlefield. Infantry begin to dig in deeper to take advantage of the protection offered by foxholes, artillery batteries increase their spacing between guns, logistics units harden their stockpiles and disperse their vehicles and gas masks, chemical protective garments and decontamination gear are dug out of rucksacks and readied for use.

STAVKA continues to feed additional units into the Western Front. The MVD's 16th Convoy Brigade in Lvov, which operates labor camps in the region as well as commanding a riot police battalion, is reinforced with more riot troops and prisoners on parole and assigned a sector facing German troops. The Lvov sector is further reinforced by two other MVD internal troop regiments, the 1st from Kiev and the 8th Training Regiment from Donetsk. In Byelorussia, the 1st Shock Army (from the Moscow area) is reinforced with the 65th Tank Division, a mobilization-only unit formed from the Ryazan Military Automobile School. The division's antiquated T-10 tanks and ISU-152 assault guns are employed in defensive fighting, mostly fighting from hidden ambush positions.

The Japanese landing force in the Kuriles masses outside the village of Yuzhno-Kurilsk, the largest settlement on the island of Kunashir, where the surviving defenders from the 484th Machinegun-Artillery Regiment have gathered. Scattered Soviet stragglers are on the loose elsewhere on the island, but do not present a challenge to Japanese control of the island. The first Japanese air force C-130 transport lands at the airport 10 miles southwest of the village.

The Soviet nuclear assault on the Chinese People's Liberation Army continues. Twenty devices are used, hitting infantry columns advancing towards Soviet lines, bridges and river crossings and command posts. Soviet troops, which had been retreating before the masses of Chinese infantry, halt and begin to hold ground in preparation for a counterattack.

South Korean and American mechanized units begin sending probing patrols northward beyond Pyongyang as additional South Korean infantry units arrive to take over the reduction of the North Korean capital. In the east the last defenders of the city of Hamhung are blasted out of the ruins of a block of apartments by a joint force of American marines and South Korean soldiers.

Troops of I MEF's 1st Marine Division link up with soldiers of XVIII Airborne Corps' 3rd Battalion, 47th Infantry (9th Infantry Division) in the town of Firuzaba. The link-up is made easier by the Army unit's use of LAV-25s, which the marines recognize as friendly.

Workers in the shipyard in Leningrad finally are able to begin cutting away sections of steel plate from the hulk of the incomplete battlecruiser Rossiya for transfer to Nikolaev, where the plate will be used to repair the helicopter carrier Leningrad. In Nikolaev, while awaiting the plate's arrival, shipyard workers (diverted from working on the USSR's second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Orel) have put Leningrad's turbines back together (one was successfully replaced, the other was reinstalled despite being worn out), replaced one of the ship's diesel generators and reinstalled the SA-N-3 missile launchers. They also closed up the ship's sonar dome following removal of the obsolescent original system, forgoing the planned upgrade to a more modern model.

A salvage tug arrives at the burning Kuwaiti tanker Al-Tahreer in the Caribbean, but is unable to take her under tow. A HU-25 Falcon of squadron VOJ-202 overflies the Soviet Q-ship. When the radioed answers to the Coast Guard aircraft's queries seem overly suspicious the plane calls for a surface ship to conduct a boarding.

July 12, 1997

The siege of Shiraz is broken (unofficially) when the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines drive back the motor-riflemen of the 406th Guards Motor-Rifle Regiment, 71st Motor-Rifle Division from its positions closing the road into the city. The Marines are supported by strikes from A-4 Skyhawks of VMA-131.

Unofficially,

The GRU orders all surviving Spetsnaz units in NATO countries to make an all-out effort to attack NATO nuclear weapons storage sites. Likewise, the KGB activates its surviving agent networks and "associated organizations" (such as elements of the Irish IRA, the Dutch Red Army, the Japanese Red Army, the Red Army Faction in Germany, etc.) to disrupt the NATO deployment of nuclear weapons. Largely unprompted, the peace movement in Western Europe and North America leap into action, with protests in cities, on university campuses (although most schools are not in session) and outside military bases. The latter category of protests are broken up by civilian and military police, who will brook no disruption to the war effort.

Lech Walesa, president of the Free Polish Government, makes an urgent request to President Tanner that his government be consulted prior to use of nuclear weapons in the territory it has claimed. He explains that this is to prevent the destruction of locations and items that are of importance to Polish culture, and explains that his representatives are willing to provide locations of such sites so that "no nuke" zones can be established around them. Tanner agrees to consider the idea, but does so more to humor Walesa than to give it serious consideration, assured by CIA analysts that the Free Polish government is riddled with Warsaw Pact spies and any such zones would, if established, be used as safe havens for enemy units.

Soviet propaganda trumpets the news of the prior day's NATO nuclear use to all. Warsaw Pact media goes into overdrive, declaring that the Germans and Americans are brutal barbarians that have, in their desperation to salvage a victory from their inevitable defeat at the hands of the glorious Red Army, once again unleashed nuclear warfare on the peace-loving people of the world. (The fact that the USSR was the first to use a nuclear weapon is conveniently not brought up, and in the former USSR and Warsaw Pact states the population believed that NATO fired the first nuclear shot for many decades after the war.)

Private Randall Cutler and many of the other graduates of his basic training company board school busses for the trip a mile and a half down the road to his advanced individual training course, where they will be trained as light wheeled vehicle mechanics. They spend the afternoon doing paperwork and being introduced to their new drill sergeant.

The last of the SAC airborne bombers lands and begins recovery (post-flight maintenance, refueling, securing the weapons and debriefing the crew) before being turned around to return to alert status. SAC training units (the 329th Combat Crew Training Squadron and the 330th Combat Flight Instructor Squadron) stand down from their alert status and resume training flights, although non-essential flights in other SAC units are still grounded.

Massive protests surround RAF Greenham Common and other military bases in the UK. Demonstrators demand the immediate removal of American nuclear weapons from British territory and withdrawal of NATO forces from Poland in order to avert a nuclear war.

The Chinese retaliation for the Soviet nuclear strikes continues, with a massed launch of IRBMs on a variety of Soviet cities and military facilities. The attacks on population centers are defeated by an active and efficient ABM system (composed of handfuls of upgraded SA-5, SA-10 and SA-12 missile systems), but the naval bases of Vladivostok, Mys Shmidta, and Fokino are very heavily damaged.

Soviet forces continue the savage devastation of the Chinese military, with another 24 strikes on command posts, mechanized formations halted to refuel and masses of Chinese troops. Morale in the Chinese force begins to plummet and desertion becomes rampant; Chinese commanders need to keep their units together where the few experienced NCOs and officers can monitor the masses of near-panicked recruits, but to gather them in such a manner invites a Soviet nuclear strike.

Eight A-7Ds depart Travis AFB, California en route to Korea via Hawaii and Okinawa. They are accompanied by a pair of KC-767 tankers of the 203rd Air Refueling Squadron (Hawaii Air National Guard).

The Soviet response to the NATO nuclear attack on the 37th Guards Tank Division is swift, with another nuclear artillery strike on a NATO unit. This time the target is the American 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), which has advanced to within 30 km of Lvov, Ukraine.

British troops clash with the paratroops of the 44th Guards Air Assault Division along the Polish-Lithuanian border. To the west, the German VII Korps crosses the border into Kaliningrad, facing the partially rebuilt 3rd Shock Army, while III German Korps continues its assault on Gdansk.

The battleship Iowa, set afire and without power after a Polish kamikaze strike, drifts into a minefield in the Danish straits and detonates a US-made Mk 52 mine, with 625 pounds of explosive, further adding to the ship's peril.

The day sees the first use of tactical nuclear weapons in the northern theatre, when a FROG-7 rocket from the 116th Motor-Rifle Division is used to blast a Norwegian defensive position along the Pasvik River, which forms the Soviet-Norwegian border.

In Romania, the Soviet 14th Guards Army resumes its offensive westward along the Danube plain. The lead 59th Guards Motor-Rifle Division advances 10 km in the first 24 hours, closing in on the oil center of Ploesti. The Army's commanders are told that they are to take the utmost care to avoid damage to the petroleum infrastructure, and that they will be held personally responsible for any damage done by their units.

In the Caribbean, the burning Kuwaiti tanker Al-Tahreer sinks under the stress of a hull weakened by days of fire. A Dutch patrol boat, dispatched from St. Maarten to investigate the suspicious freighter, is fired upon when it approaches what is in fact a Soviet raider. It calls for help, and within 30 minutes an aircraft from VOJ-202 has the raider under radar observation. It remains safely out of range of the raider's weapons for the four hours it takes for a strike from the Lexington to be organized, launched and arrive at the scene. The American trainers and light attack aircraft come in on the deck, rocketing, strafing and bombing the Soviet craft. It sinks shortly thereafter.

July 13, 1997

The deployment of the 46th Infantry Division to Europe, delayed due to shipping shortages until this time, is further delayed by the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

The drug charges against Dain Dangerous are dropped.

Unofficially,

General Secretary Sauronski refuses to take President Tanner's call.

Hyped up over the (almost entirely imaginary) threat from "Marxist infiltrators from Mexico", the Texas civilian militias along the border begin more aggressive patrolling.

A second day of protests outside RAF Greenham Common. Demonstrators block all entrances to the base, hindering the resupply of cruise missile flights that are dispersed throughout the countryside.

Colonel Tumanski's Spetsnaz team returns to three GLCM launch sites in Berkshire that they had located in February, establishing a hidden observation post monitoring each. To their east, another Spetsnaz team launches an attack on the weapons storage area at RAF Upper Heyford, initiated with a truck bomb to blast through the perimeter fences. The attack is repulsed when the WSA's guard force ties down the Soviet sabateurs long enough for a pair of Peacekeeper Armored Cars from the 620th Security Police Squadron to arrive. One of the armored cars is destroyed by a RPG-18, but the other is able to employ its machineguns to pin down the attackers while more reinforcements arrive. Two commandos surrender, while the rest of the team is wiped out.

Far Eastern TVD retaliates against China for the nuclear attacks on Vladivostok and other naval bases. SS-20 mobile IRBMs from the 53rd Missile Army strike the PLA Navy's sole boomer base at Jianggezhuang, the Jiuquan and Xichang Satellite Launch Centers, the entrance to the Yuquanshan Mountain underground command center and the headquarters of the PLA's ICBM brigades. (There are hundreds of launch sites and dozens of underground missile and warhead storage facilities, too many for the Soviets to hit).

Internally displaced persons (mostly refugees from the fall and winter's fighting in East Germany and along the Czech border) begin moving away from locations that might be targets for Soviet nuclear weapons - air bases, the Mainz Army Depot, fixed military headquarters (even though the commands based there moved to alternative and field sites long ago), munitions plants and air defense sites, joined by some locals who, despite living near such targets for many years, decide that the risk is no longer worth it. The flow of people inhibits military traffic in West Germany, especially the trickle of units into Bavaria to resist the oncoming Italian-Pact force.

Italian troops advancing from the south link up with troops of the Hungarian 25th "Klapka György" Tank Brigade on the outskirts of Graz, Austria. The Austian government, from its wartime command post in St Johann im Pongau, calls for assistance from NATO to halt the Warsaw Pact onslaught.

The battle for Warsaw continues as the British 107th Infantry Brigade pushes south in intense fighting and the American 40th Infantry Division (California National Guard) launches an attack out of the ruins of the international airport. Captain Czarny's ZOMO troops are still locked in fierce combat in the Towarowa train station - they have captured and been driven out of a signal shed three times over the prior week, losing 40 men in the process.

NATO Air Forces on the Central Front drop the first nuclear bomb of the war, striking a SS-21 missile battery of the 458th Missile Brigade with a .5 kiloton B-61 bomb as it prepared to launch.

NATO forces in Northern Norway respond to the prior day's Soviet nuclear attack on the Norwegian-Soviet border. A F-16 from the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing drops a 60 kt B-61 bomb on the Kola Highway's Litsa River crossing.

The Soviet Ministry of Medium Machine building orders truck manufacturing plants (as well as a wide variety of other factories supporting the war effort) to implement industrial civil defense measures. Some manufacturing is moved to underground facilities and workers and their families are dispersed to a number of associated facilities, including resorts and rest camps, usually located within 100 km of the plant. During peacetime these provided recreation and vacation opportunities for workers; in wartime they serve as housing for employees and their families. The workers commute daily via train to the plant; if the plant is struck the workers on duty will potentially be lost but the off-duty workers and families will be safely outside the blast zone.

US Navy ship repair experts arrive in Mombassa, Kenya to evaluate the condition of the frigate Bagley.

The USS Independence battle group, in the Arabian Sea, resumes attacks on the isolated Soviet airborne force in Chah Bahar.

The US 9th Infantry Division (Motorized) shifts north as the 45th (my 32nd) Army begins a rapid retreat from the Shiraz area, pursued by the American 1st Marine Division, reinforced with the Australian 1st Brigade.

The final six A-7s of the 156th Tactical Fighter Group (Puerto Rico Air National Guard) depart Howard Air Force Base, Panama, also returning to Texas for redeployment overseas.

July 14, 1997

photo
The Jugoslav 5th Army launches an attack against northeast Italy in an attempt to support its NATO Allies (and recapture territory lost earlier in the century).

The Native Canadian Ranger Regiment enters combat, providing invaluable aid to the beleaguered American 47th Infantry Divisision. (Unofficially,) Nevertheless, the Soviet 25th Corps continues to make progress as it advances eastward. During the brief twilight, Soviet transports drop the lead regiment of the 13th Guards Airborne Division (the 115th Guards) on the western coast of the Kenai Peninsula, threatening the seaward approaches to Anchorage. The detachments of the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic) in the area immediately respond, but they are overwhelmed by the veteran Soviet paratroops.

Unofficially,

Violence breaks out on the edges of protests outside RAF Greenham Common, with fires and scuffles with police. USAF commanders dispatch helicopters and truck convoys from other bases to sustain dispersed missile launch units, while Territorial Army units deploy to the countryside to try to secure GLCM operating areas.

Eight A-7Ds arrive at Kimhae Air Base in Korea, bringing the 127th Tactical Fighter Wing (Michigan Air National Guard) back up to full strength. The aircraft had been serving in Panama before being transferred to Korea.

The Soviet nuclear attacks on China continue, with strategic bombers following up on targets that surived the previous day's attacks as well as artillery and SSM-delivered strikes on troop concentrations.

The Chinese Army high command commits sixteen infantry divisions, many still in the process of forming, to the front and others from the strategic reserve.

The Soviet 28th Army in Vietnam begins an offensive into southern China, blasting Chinese border defenses with a trio of nuclear rounds to allow it to advance northeast along the rail line and road to Nanning.

NATO militaries on the continent scramble to secure their rear areas in the face of increased Soviet special operations and terrorist attacks. The Luftwaffe requests the return of security units serving in Poland, which is refused (some are deeply engaged in the battle for Warsaw while others are fighting the same sort of partisan and special operations battles), being offered territorial security units (many of which are assigned to guard empty depots and assembly areas that have been vacant for months) to help push the security perimeters of air bases farther away from the security fences. Anti-terrorist units (GSG-9 in Germany, the SAS in the UK and the Dutch Royal Marines) intensify their operations, striking suspected hideouts even though the intelligence leading to them may not withstand future legal scrutiny.

NATO troops at the front are forced to adjust to another aspect of tactical nuclear warfare - the near dissapearance of nearly all tactical air support as CENTAF concentrates on the ability to wage a tactical nuclear war. All nuclear-assigned units (over half of the fighter-bombers) cease conventional sorties, instead generating the maximum number of possible nuclear-armed aircraft from their depleted and battered fleets. Non-nuclear fighters are tasked to support tactical nuclear strikes, flying escort missions, suppressing Pact air defenses, flying diversionary sorties or carrying camera pods for post-strike analysis or locating targets. Tanker resources are cut back dramatically, held for support of SAC bombers or nuclear strikes. The nuclear-tasked fighter-bomber and attack fleets are dispersed to other NATO airbases (in the UK, RAF Sculthorpe, Lakenheath, Fairford, Mildenhall, Weathersfeld, St. Mawgan and Machihanish all host nuclear-armed American aircraft), and nuclear depth charges are issued to American P-3 and British Nimrod patrol planes.

Lead elements of the Italian 4th Alpini Army Corps begin the second phase of their offensive, advancing north out of Innsbruk and reaching the German border by nightfall.

The Indo-Pakistani war continues as Indian infantry batter their way through deep Pakistani defense lines. The Pakistani Army has long prepared for another Indian attack, fortifying the banks of the irrigation canals along the border and laying minefields that are over a mile deep along most of the front. Urged on by jingoistic politicians, Indian commanders resort to techniques last seen in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, sending masses of poorly trained infantry under artillery cover to cross the obstacle belt in hopes of reaching the enemy trenches. The casaulties are equally horrendous as those suffered in the 1980s as the Pakistanis' pillboxes offer sufficient protection from artillery for machinegunners to mow down attackers, and the few locations where Indian troops capture Pakistani positions are quickly recaptured by mechanized reaction forces.

July 15, 1997

The Federal government begins to implement the preliminary steps towards city evacuation plans in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship New Orleans Freedom is delivered in Beaumont, Texas.

President Tanner authorizes SAC to implement it's command-wide dispersal plan, spreading bombers and tankers to over a dozen other bases (mostly USAF but a handful of Army and Navy installations), making it more difficult for the USSR to destroy a significant portion of America's bomber force on the ground.

In the final major Soviet airborne attack of the war, the 13th Guards' 301st Guards Airborne Regiment is dropped at the base of the Kenai Peninsula, isolating the area and placing Soviet forces only 50 miles from Anchorage. American fighter planes from Elmendorf AFB tear through the Soviet transport fleet (already much depleted from costly landings from Norway to Iran) as it turns for home.

A massive show of police force occurs outside RAF Greenham Common. While civil and MoD police clear protestors from gates onto the base, RAF Regiment and USAF Security Police patrol the perimeter, apprehending a handful of protestors who cross the fence onto the base.

In Operation Wonton, F-111s of 27th Tactical Fighter Wing attack the major railyards near Kimchaek, North Korean, delaying North Korean reinforcements and hitting NKPA positions near Kimchaek, North Korea in preparation for a USMC amphibious landing.

On the Kuriles, Soviet resistance on Kunashir has collapsed, but the remainder of the 18th Machinegun-Artillery Division on the adjacent island of Iturup launch a fierce (non-nuclear) counterattack against the Japanese landing force. US and Japanese aircraft hammer the remaining radar and SAM umbrella emplacements on and near the island, while heavy rainfall prevents close air support.

The leader of the Dutch Red Army, Bert Kroner, is killed in an early morning raid by marines of the Special Assistance Unit.

Along the front, as both armies engage in more nuclear attacks, a struggle of reconnaissance begins. Political leaders on both sides demand useful employment of the relatively low-yield weapons. Due to those weapon's nature, accurate targeting is vital - a 1 kt warhead is lethal against tanks within 90 meters; smaller artillery-fired rounds with yields below .25 kt even shorter distances. Yet both sides' reconnaissance assets have been depleted by the months of combat across East Germany and Poland. Human intelligence - special forces, long-range infiltration teams, friendly partisans - provide invaluable eyes-on location information, but are reliant on secure communications and have to be able to evacuate the target area before the strike. NATO deep-look assets (satellite, JSTARS and TR-1 electronic surveillance aircraft as well as tactical intelligence platforms such as the EH-60) have been worn down by the months of constant operation, but are more numerous than the Soviet ELINT fleet, which has been savaged. The Soviets enjoy an advantage in humint, with millions of loyal communists in Poland and NATO unable to conceal their operations from the local civilian population and with insufficient troops to hunt for hidden radio transmitters. The Soviets are also able to exploit the passive portion of their vast radio-electronic force (their active jammers and spoofing assets having been destroyed months earlier), using radio direction-finding to locate NATO units behind the lines. Both sides, however, face the challenge of identifying targets from the flow of electronic data - is a transmission from an artillery fire direction center or a field hospital? is the unit that set up in the woods a headquarters or a maintenance unit? The challenge of locating and identifying targets, transmitting that information to a headquarters (in an environment with disruptions to electronic communications due to EMP), making a decision to strike it, deploying a weapon to a firing unit and having the round fired before the target has moved to another location is quite formidable, and in the first week of the nuclear exchange it proves nearly insurmountable.

In this environment, conventional operations still prove effective, as demonstrated when the British 4th Armoured Division masses its tanks against the 44th Guards Airborne Division, driving the paratroops back from Kapsukas, Lithuania and cutting the Minsk-Kaliningrad rail line.

Italian troops cross into southern Germany, capturing the German alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, peacetime headquarters of the Bundeswehr 1st Gebirsjaeger Division, fighting for Torun, Poland at this time.

The evacuation of the four German fallschirjaeger brigades, battered in drops along the Soviet border, is halted. The need for infantry is so high, and the threat of infiltrators so high, that the elite paratroops are assigned to augment the jaeger battalions of German panzer and panzergrenadier divisions, one battalion assigned to each heavy brigade, ostensibly assigned to secure rear areas and rough terrain while the 9th Luftlande Artillery Battalion is sent to add to the artillery park outside Warsaw, where its 105mm howitzers add little to the overall effort.

The lead elements of the 10th Mountain Division depart Norway in a priority airlift to Germany as SACEUR demands experienced mountain troops to fight the Italian troops descending from the Alps.

Detachment 1, 495th Tactical Fighter Squadron deploys six of its remaining F-111Fs to Moron Air Base, Spain from RAF Lakenheath.

The Turkish Army activates three armored brigades (the 20th at Burdur, the 95th at Etimesgut, Ankara and the 172nd at Şereflikoçhisar) to try to stop the rapidly evolving Pact offensive in Bulgaria. The brigades combine newly arrived American M-60A4 tanks with a mix of recalled reservists (many in their 30s) and partially trained recruits, led by NCOs and officers recovering from wounds and others culled from training and headquarters establishments.

The US 9th Infantry Division (Motorized) in Iran is shifted north and west, following the linkup with US Marines and IPA troops outside Shiraz. The Soviet 45th (my 32nd) Army begins withdrawing from the area around Shiraz as the IPA 3rd Armored Division launches an attack on the Soviet lines outside the city.

July 16, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day!

Strategic Air Command units begin their dispersals. Among the movements are the 1st ACCS deploys to its dispersal site of Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ; 2nd ACCS deploys to Clinton County Airport, Ohio and detachment of the 43rd Air Refueling Squadron moves to McChord AFB, Washington. Each of the detachments include security, support and maintenance teams; whether there are nuclear weapons stored at facilities on those bases is highly classified (although most do not have adequate secure sites for them).

The Federal Emergency Management Agency orders its Special Materials Program to complete stocking and sealing of strategic reserve stockpiles across the nation. Preliminary city evacuation plan implementation is expanded to the Pacific Northwest and the Washington, DC area.

Protests continue at RAF Greenham Common in response to the prior day's police show of force. Additional thousands of people arrive, all demanding withdrawal of American nuclear weapons that are making the UK a target.

A Spetsnaz team attacks the American communications facility at High Wycombe, which plays a key role in maintaining communications with NATO nuclear assets.

The USS Midway battle group, hunting raiders in the South Pacific, is ordered north at flank speed to reinforce the war effort in Alaska.

NATO responds to the dual Soviet strikes on the 14th with two attacks, a W79 "neutron bomb" fired by a M110 eight-inch howitzer of the American 41st Field Artillery Brigade at 5th Guards Tank Army’s 306th Cannon Artillery Brigade and a Lance missiles fired by the Geman ArtillerieKommando 2 at an ammunition dump that is supplying 2nd Guards Tank Army.

Civilian contractors complete the rail line to Gora Kalwaria south of Warsaw and connect it to the bridge across the Wisla. The line is able to support much of the needs of Operational Group Warsaw and the German First Army, but further progress drops off quickly as workers quit and head west lest they become targets for a Soviet warhead.

Soviet air defense troops fire a SA-5 anti-aircraft missile with a 25 kt warhead at an American SR-71 reconnaissance plane approaching the Soviet border at high speed and 75,000 feet, downing the aircraft. It is the first SR-71 combat loss in over 28 years of operations.

Patrol Missile Hydrofoil Squadron One arrives in Gibraltar, completing its transatlantic transit. It requires a few days in port before commencing operations.

The Jugoslav attack into Italy has cut off land access to Trieste as mechanized troops of the 14th Corps reach the outskirts of Udine.

Pasdaran guerrillas in Esfahan blow up a car bomb outside local KGB headquarters, killing 13 border guards and disrupting operations for days.

While sailing southwest of Puerto Rico, the aged aircraft carrier Lexington suffers an engineering casualty and lays motionless in the water. She is soon taken under tow by one of her escorts, the destroyer John Hancock.

July 17, 1997

Nothing in the canon for the day. Unofficially,

The trial of the members of the Boston Megapunk band Terminal Illness related to the July 4 riot begins despite the defense's requests for more time to review the evidence, interview witnesses and otherwise prepare a coherent defense.

A female lieutenant colonel at Fort Monroe, Virginia, comes forward alleging that she was forced into a physical relationship by the (former) commanding general of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, who was relieved of command in June after multiple scandals.

Given the deteriorating situation in Europe, the decision is made to immediately deploy the 5th Marine Division, regardless of its training status.

The Army takes a different approach, dispatching individual squads and platoons from the 46th Infantry Division to Europe as replacements, to be "plugged in" to units at the front.

In the early morning hours, three protestors climb the fence onto RAF Greenham Common. They are intercepted by a USAF Peacekeeper armored car of the 501st Security Police Squadron; a jittery young airman opens fire with the turret-mounted twin MAG machineguns, killing two of the three and wounding the last protestor. By noon thousands of protestors are at the base's main gate, firing fireworks and lobbing molotov cocktails. RAF Regiment and USAF Security Police open fire as the crowd is on the verge of overrunning the gate. By sundown over twenty protestors are dead.

Mobile elements of the 18th Machinegun-Artillery Division on Iturup in the Kuriles (the mobile battalion of the 650th Regiment and the T-72s of the 110th Independent Tank Battalion) launch another counterattack on the Japanese troops, who have the garrison town and island's "capital" of Kurilsk surrounded. The T-72s succeed in breaking through the Japanese lines, but do so without their supporting infantry and are soon hunted down individually and defeated in detail.

The Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-33 sinks the small American freighter Sunmar Sky in the Aleutians as it approached the port of Dutch Harbor. The sinking of the ship within sight of the town is sufficient to scare shipping companies from dispatching any further vessels to the islands, forcing the support of the population and the 172nd Infantry Brigade to come by air and military shipping.

The Dutch Red Army announces a new leader, his deputy Jacob Ketelaar.

The first Danish reinforcements (from the 2nd Jutland Regimental Combat Team) arrive at the front in Bavaria; their deployment had been delayed by a shortage of transportation assets. The Danes are thrown into action immediately, clashing with Italian troops of the Tridentina Alpine Brigade 50 km southwest of Munich. To their east, German territorial troops are ejected from the German garrison outside Bad Tolz, but the the Italian troops are halted by fierce resistance a few miles north when they attempt to overrun the peacetime headquarters of 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group. The rear detachment, mostly composed of administrative troops with a handful of Green Berets, manages to hold two battalions of Alpini at bay for 12 hours before being driven out of the flaming ruins of Flint Kaserne.

The Soviets fire two more tactical nuclear rounds at NATO troops in Ukraine, halting the advance towards Lvov.

The 101st Air Assault Division begins a series of air assaults into the Zagros mountains. 1st Brigade captures the town of Lordegan.

US Navy experts declare that the damage to the frigate Bagley is so severe that it cannot be repaired in any shipyard in the region and that there is great risk in towing the ship back to the US for repair.

As the Lexington is under tow to the nearest drydock able to take her (at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico), orders are received to instead take her to Mobile, Alabama, where it will be easier to transport repair parts to a shipyard. The carrier's helicopters and what fixed-wing aircraft that can make it off the deck without catapults and wind over the deck take off, landing at Roosevelt Roads before returning to the East Coast for reassignment pending Lady Lex's return to service.

July 18, 1997

Nothing in canon for today. Unofficially,

Private Randall Cutler learns that AIT is vastly different from basic training when the senior platoon in his company is granted an overnight pass, starting at the end of the training day on Saturday. The lone drill sergeant on duty in the company area is indifferent to whether the junior privates are in uniform or civilian clothes, fornicating or not, let alone drinking sodas and eating candy. Cutler's dream of a barracks business empire collapses without an environment of scarcity to drive demand.

The 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment is formed at Fort Bliss, Texas, taking in some of the rear detachment troops of the 3rd ACR, which deployed from the base in the fall. The regiment begins filling up with graduates of the base's basic training battalions and replacements from throughout the continental US. Equipment is scarce, with a single cavalry troop of Cadillac-Gage Stingray light tanks and two battalions of M113 APCs. The regiment's air defense battery is brought to full strenth nearly instantaneously, however, by raiding the base's Air Defense Center and School for excess soldiers and equipment.

In the predawn hours a force of police and military units overrun the "Peace Camp" outside RAF Greenham Common. Hundreds of protestors are arrested, carried off in busses, as the government declares the area within one kilometer of the base a restricted area. A notable development is that over 75 percent of the civilian police are armed with firearms.

The US 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade launches another amphibious attack on the east coast of North Korea. Alongside South Korean marines of the 6th Marine Brigade, they land outside the industrial and port city of Kimchaek, defended by a mix of Patriotic Red Guards and remnants of several North Korean Army divisions. The heavy cruiser Des Moines provides heavy fire support, and aircraft from the carriers Nimitz and Abraham Lincoln fly overhead, clashing nearly continuously with the remnants of the Soviet 23rd Air Defense Corps from Vladivostok, a little over 200 miles to the northeast.

The American battleship Wisconsin and her surface action group locate a Soviet reinforcement convoy headed to Alaska and promptly engages it. The result is a bloodbath for the Soviets, as the few escorts (mostly aged corvettes and frigates) are quickly dispatched with anti-ship missiles fired by the American ships and their helicopters, leaving the transports at the mercy of the group's guns. The Soviet convoy scatters into the fog and Aleutian islands, but each ship is eventually located by the battlewagon's helicopters or supporting aircraft (from VP-90 near Anchorage and 407 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force from CFB Comox) and dealt with.

Jacob Ketelaar, the new leader of the Dutch Red Army, is killed by Dutch marines in a predawn raid. His term as leader lasted nearly 19 hours.

British troops fire their first tactical nuclear round, hitting a forming mass of Soviet artillery in Lithuania as the NATO forces along the Polish-Lithuanian border struggle to maintain control of the territory they have captured in the past weeks.

In Warsaw, Captain Czarny's ZOMO troops are pulled from the front line, assigned to guard a food stockpile in the basement of the Czapski Palace. The light duty allows him and his exhausted and depleted command to rest and absorb new members, staff from the Ministry of Interior staff who have been shanghied into the fight.

Italian troops in Bavaria continue their advance towards Munich, overrunning the BND (West German intelligence agency) ELINT station at Alpina. To their east, Czech and Soviet troops blast their way through the second of Austria's blocking positions between Vienna and the German frontier, west of St. Polten.

The destroyer Coontz, damaged in the second Teriberka withdrawal and by Spetsnaz attack in drydock in Philadelphia, returns to sea. Its place in the drydock is taken by the damaged carrier Saratoga.

The 101st's assaults in Iran continue with a dawn landing at Sharh-e-Kord, on the eastern edge of the Zagros Mountains. By sunset the town's airport is being improved by American combat engineers to enable it to support the division's helicopters. The Soviet 1st (my 9th) Army opposing them splits, with the 147th Motor-Rifle Division falling back to the east to defend Esfahan and the rest of the Army moving north.

More tomorrow....

July 19, 1997

Nothing official for today! Unofficially,

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

Jury selection concludes in the Terminal Illness riot trial.

Strategic Reserve Stockpile SRS-17374-2, located in the Appalachians in Pennsylvania, is sealed up by the contractor and the workers flown back home to Southern California. Strategic Reserve Stockpile SRS-17374-2, underneath St. Paul, Minnesota, is closed, and the soldiers of the 105th Engineer Group and 30th Engineer Brigade (both North Carolina National Guard) are urged to complete the secret projects they are working on as well.

The Soviet assault on China continues, with a Scud missile striking Songyuan as one of the freshly raised divisions is detraining from its journey to the front. In a further affront, specially modified Tu-16 Badger bombers of the 1339th Heavy Bomber Regiment fly a "ferry mission" to Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam (where engineers have repaired the runway after the Allied attack in January). As they overfly southern China, they drop to low level and use spray dispensers to spread fungal spores over rice paddies, infecting the fields with rice blast. The USS Olympia passes under the North Pole and begins hunting for Soviet SSBNs under the polar ice cap. It is transferred from the Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic Fleet.

The Luftwaffe's Flugkörpergeschwader 1 (1st Missile Wing) evacuates its quick reaction alert (QRA) site at Bodelsberg in Bavaria as Italian troops fan out across Bavaria. The heavily escorted convoy moves northwest, occupying an empty Bundeswehr ammunition dump at Riedlingen some 120 km away.

SACEUR orders a halt to the advance into the USSR; units are to engage in local attacks only to straighten the front line.

Italian troops clash again with territorial troops on the outskirts of Munich as the Luftwaffe and BND rush to evacuate assets amid a flood of panicked refugees fleeing the fighting.

In Austria, Hungarian and Italian troops clear the foothills west of Graz of Austrian territorial troops and decide not to continue the advance into the high alpine regions.

The final battalions of the US 10th Mountain Division arrive at the Stuttgart International Airport as the unit's first battalions take up defensive positions west of Munich.

In the first use of nuclear weapons at sea, a SH-60F from the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (the only American carrier operational in the Atlantic Ocean at the time) drops a B-57 depth charge on a Soviet submarine detected approaching the battle group. The 10-kiloton device detonates at a depth of 150 feet, crushing the target (while also disrupting the battle group's sonar picture for hours due to turbulence in the waters, and the destroyer Peterson's sensitive fixed AN/SQS-53 sonar array is damaged by the intensity of the blast). While postwar records do not identify which submarine was hit, there were three boats that were at sea at the time that were not heard from after that time - the Victor III-class K-502, the Alfa-class K-463 and the Kilo-class B-466.

Udine falls to Jugoslav troops as the garrison and civilian population of Trieste are frantically evacuated by sea; Jugoslav commanders are happy to let the evacuation occur, harassed by light naval elements, permitting higher quality JNA units to move west.

As support troops rush to establish secure lines of communications and coordinate with allied IPA troops, 3rd Brigade, 101st Air Assault Division makes another leap north, capturing the town of Chadegan.

The Pakistani line south of Lahore finally begins to crumble after days upon days of Indian human-wave attacks.

July 20, 1997

Nothing in canon for today! Unofficially,

A civilian militiaman west of Del Rio, Texas shoots two Mexican immigrants, killing one of them, a 17-year old from Oaxaca in southern Mexico.

A KC-135R tanker of the 92nd Aerial Refueling Squadron, call sign "Elephant 11", operating in heavy overcast over the Pacific accidentally collides with a Soviet Tu-16N Badger tanker performing the same mission. Although Elephant 11 is heavily damaged the crew manages to return to Boeing-King County AP, while the Tu-16N crashes attempting to land at Shemya, Alaska; thus making Elephant 11 and her crew the first and only tanker crew with a confirmed air-to-air kill.

Around the Western world the panicked and hurried evacuations of urban areas has largely halted as it becomes apparent that the nuclear exchange, after a week and a half, has not escalated to the strategic level that many had feared. Many people return to their homes and jobs in urban and suburban areas, although with a better idea of what is required to evacuate and what awaits them. Many who are able to remain in rural areas away from likely nuclear targets do so; the summer school break allow smany families to remain at their vacation homes.

The Royal Navy commissions another corvette, HMS Eskimo. Like its sister HMS Ashanti, the ship was under construction for the Malaysian Navy at the outbreak of the war, but the Royal Navy took over the contract and had the ship finished.

The main body of the Soviet force on Iturup in the Kuriles surrenders. The remaining defenders of the island - a platoon of security troops at the remote Vetrovoye air base - flee aboard an An-26 transport to Sakhalin Island.

The secret American airfield in the Karakum Desert - nicknamed Shangri-La by the airmen stationed there - now has nearly a million gallons of fuel and a stock of spare parts and conventional munitions (flares, chaff and the like) and is placed in a semi-caretaker status, with approximately 50 support and security personnel present.

NATO scrambles to assemble a coherent defense of Bavaria as Italian troops reach the city limits of Munich. The US Army Fourth Army, a pre-war Army responsible for mobilization of reserve component units from the Midwest, Rocky Mountain and Northern Plains states that had eployed to Europe in May to control units in the rear area, is assigned overall command of Allied efforts. The US XX Corps takes command of the US 6th and 10th Infantry Divisions as well as a handful of engineer, artillery and MP units, mostly redeployed from Norway, while the Dutch I Corps joins the German 15th Jaeger Division (the former VI Home Defense Command) and the Danes. The German effort adds in the more militarized elements of the Bavarian police - the Bavarian Border Police and the State Police's rapid-response force. More substantial reinforcements come in the way of I British Corps, which begins moving its heavy divisions south from positions further north on the Czech border.

To the east, additional Soviet troops (the 47th Motor-Rifle Brigade from Ufa in the Urals, the 16th Artillery Division from northwest of Moscow and the 96th MRD, a category C division from Kazan) arrive at the front. The tactical nuclear exhange continued with the first use of a nuclear-armed ATACMS missile, aimed at the 1st Guards Tank Army headquarters' communications center, identified by a US Army EH-60 ELINT helicopter.

Allied naval forces in the Mediterranean step up operations against the Italians, Greeks and their Soviet allies. NATO shipping has been cut off in the eastern Mediterranean between the still-closed Suez Canal and Italian domination of the Sicilian Channel. American hydrofoils accompany an amphibious task force eastward from Gibraltar while the USS John F Kennedy and America battle groups, low on munitions, begin a series of aggressive anti-surface sweeps from their operating area off the Egyptian coast.

The first battalions of the 5th Marine Division begin loading aboard ships in the Hampton Roads area. The roads in the area are crowded with military convoys as trucks begin moving the M60A4 tanks, M113s and M109s of the 46th ID's 36th Armored Brigade to piers from their staging areas at Fort Eustis; the vehicles are being shipped to Europe, where they will be parcelled out to replace losses in National Guard divisions.

A massive tank battle breaks out on the plains north of Shiraz, Iran as the advance of the Iranian 3rd Armored Division and the 1st Australian Brigade is countered by the 45th (my 32nd) Army, which commits the 69th and 15th (my 78th) Tank Divisions to hit the Allied force in the flank. The lead Soviet regiments slice behind the lead Iranian brigades, cutting them off, but are in turn attacked in their southern flank by the Iranian division's reserve brigade while the Australian brigade swings to face the lead Soviet regiments. As dusk falls the desert is a vast, confused battle, covererd in smoke from burning vehicles and dust kicked up by tracks, gunfire and artillery.

To the north, lead battalions of the 9th Infantry Division (Motorized) push beyond the positions siezed by the 101st Air Assault Division, continuing XVIII Airborne Corps' drive northward.

US Navy leaders in Washington place the damaged frigate Bagley as number 3 on a list of damaged vessels to be returned to the US via heavy lift ship, anticipated for mid-October.

July 21, 1997

On Grenada, a group of Constables, assisted by retired SGM Dan Rojos and a few other retired American NCOs, surround the hideout of the Bunny Woolsey gang, a particularly brutal and ruthless gang. The gang is wiped out in the subsequent firefight, although the group's leader, the notorious criminal psychopath Bunny Woolsey, is not identified among the dead.

2nd Squadron, 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment, detached to V Corps to provide additional screening for the Warsaw perimeter, is struck by a tactical nuclear weapon while at an assembly point for resupply and refit, nearly annihilating the unit.

Unofficially,

The prosecutor in the Terminal Illness-Boston Common riot trial presents hours of footage of rioting; the defense's objection that none of the footage shows the defendants is overruled.

The US Congress repeals the assault weapons ban of 1994, allowing civilians to once again purchase new military-style semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines. The actual impact of the repeal is minimal, since nearly all small arms production is devoted to the war effort.

Allied progress in North Korea slows as units run low on supplies. The limited road network is in poor condition and it (like the ports) suffered from months of Allied air attacks. The main road and rail lines in the west run through Pyongyang, which is still the object of intenst fighting as the South Korean IX Corps (composed of four reserve infantry divisions) and XI Corps (with three additional reserve divisions) push back the fanatical defenders, who believe (despite non-stop South Korean psyops broadcasts) that they are defending the Kim family.

Reconaissance units of II British Corps cross the Neman River in Byelorussia, skirting the eastern half of the city of Grodno, seeking a weak point in Soviet lines, which consist almost entirely of KGB Border Guards. As Scimitars and Scorpions of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars move east, they run into the T-80s of the newly arrived 96th MRD and quickly retreat back across the river, where the Chieftains of The Royal Hussars (Prince of Wales Own) offer heavier covering fire.

In Warsaw, Panzergruppe Oberdorff intensifies its attacks along the eastern edge of the city. The force, mostly composed of British and German troops (including two former East German NVA divisions), makes progress, with the 5th Panzer Divison's recon battalion slipping a patrol into the Praga neoghborhood, where they can observe the Wisla River and the flow of Pact defenders into the southeastern area of the perimeter.

The fighting in Bavaria continues as the Italian 4th Alpini Corps, facing increasing numbers of NATO troops to its north and west, tries to both sustain its drive into Munich and form a cohesive front line.

In Austria, the combined Czech-Soviet force (the Soviet 21st Army and the Czech 2nd Army) batters against the final Austrian defensive line, east of Linz as Hungarian troops shift west. Hungarian internal troops, poorly trained and equipped (but all that are available), attempt to establish control over the city of Vienna, abandoned by the government on the first day of the Pact invasion and passed through by Pact troops advancing from Slovakia and Hungary.

The Soviet 2nd Guards Artillery Division is withdrawn from the Kola Peninsula to the Leningrad area.

The Jugoslav advance in northeastern Italy is halted when advancing troops reach the fortified banks of the Tagliemento River, fiercely defended by Italian reservists occupying bunkers, dug-in tank turrets and pillboxes covering minefields.

The Battle of the Valley continues in central Iran as the Allied advance is halted by the Soviet 40th and 45th (my 32nd) Armies and tanks run amok in a vast cauldron of tanks, guns, dust and smoke. The clouds over the battle prevent visual identifcation of tanks, neutralizing the Allied airpower advantage. The Allied effort is reinforced by the commitment of the US 48th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) (Georgia National Guard), whose M1A1 tanks possess the theater's best thermal sights. On the other end of the spectrum, the Soviet 69th Tanks Division (a mobilization-only unit) commits two regiments of Second World War-era T-34/85 tanks. The ancient relics perform surprisingly well, able to inflict significant damage on enemy tansk with flank and rear shots, which the confused nature of the battle permits.

Elsewhere in Iran, the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment (Light) and Iranian 18th Armored Division finally begin to capture ground from the 7th Army, which is increasingly starved of supplies as the situation elsewhere deteriorates.

July 22, 1997

The British 6th Division is assigned to the Chinese 31st (my 3rd Group) Army in northwestern North Korea.

Unofficially,

The family of the 17-year old killed on the Mexican border appears on Mexican national TV. The grieving mother cries out "My son only wanted to go to America to work, so we could have money to eat. But this Yanqui shot him like a dog!"

Colonel Tumanski's stakeout of the GLCM deployment locations bears fruit, when an advanced party of C Flight, 11th Tactical Missile Squadron moves into one of the locations he had identified in February. Within an hour a convoy of 22 vehicles arrives, including four of the GLCM launchers, each loaded with four nuclear-tipped missiles. Tumanski's observation team calls for reinforcements, which arrive two hours later, by which time the Air Force Security Police have hardened their perimeter with barbed wire and claymore mines. The commandos attack anyhow, and while losing six of their ten remaining men, the Spetsnaz team succeeds in destroying one of the launchers (and the missiles aboard it) before having to flee the area.

Given the increasing scope of Soviet nuclear warfare, the Japanese War Cabinet decides to postpone the proposed Phase Two and Phase Three of their campaign to regain the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin Island.

The Italian Army diverts troops of 5th Corps - the Pozzuolo di Friuli Armored Brigade and the Gorizia Mechanized Brigade - from the Austrian front to contain the Jugoslav advance in the northeast.

The guns of the 17th Artillery Division, released from STAVKA reserve, fire their first shots from west of Lutsk, Ukraine as 1st Guards Tank Army launches a counterattack against Panzergruppe Oberdorf as that formation pauses inside Soviet borders.

NATO responds to the nuclear attack on the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment with a pair of artillery-fired munitions fired at the elite 120th Guards Motor-Rifle Division, which was massing to counterattack near Brest. The strikes hit the division's main command post and the control center for its 1045th Guards Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment, leaving it vulnerable to the next several hours of relentless (conventional) air attacks which savage the division’s gathering masses of armor.

The LSK (former East German Air Force) disbands in JG-3 (Jagdgruppe 3, fighter group), its sole remaining MiG-29 unit, as its stocks of spare parts for the aircraft have been expended and cannibalization has run its course. The remaining pilots are dispersed to other NATO air force training courses as instructors in Warsaw Pact tactics while much of the ground staff are reassigned to other roles; the least qualified (or useful) end up escorting convoys in Poland or defending airfields.

The US Navy releases SEAL Team Four to Sixth Fleet. It is flown to Rota, Spain via priority airlift.

The 112th Tactical Fighter Wing (Pennsylvania Air National Guard) in Tuzla, Jugoslavia receives a reinforcement flight of six A-7Ds, formerly from the 156th Tactical Fighter Group (Puerto Rico Air National Guard) in Panama. They are delivered by a roundabout route that ultimately included a daring low-level night flight over the Adriatic Sea.

The evacuation of Trieste is halted, and Jugoslav commanders discover that the evacuation fleet brought in reinforcements, the elite San Marco Marine Regiment.

The Victory ship Wayne Victory is fully unloaded in Bandar Abbas, departs to Muscat, Oman.

The Battle of the Valley concludes as the exhausted combatants pause to replenish diminshed stocks of fuel and ammunition. Allied forces retain control of the battlefield, while the 32nd Army's tank divisions retreat to the northwest and 40th Army, the main body of which had withdrawn northward during the battle, falls back to the airport complex of Yadz. The mobilization-only 69th Tank Division, reduced to one third strength and largely equipped with T-34s, is forced to rally on the northwest edge of the battlefield, within sight on Allied scouts. As the afternoon turns to evening a mighty artillery and aerial barrage is released on the well dispersed division, covering the hapless division with cluster bomb and ICM bomblets and laying FASCAM minefields throughout the division's area. Behind the cover of the barrage the 1st Marine Division resumes the northward drive that the battle had paused, using superior night-fighting equipment to continue the advance through the night.

The Pakistani Army commits one of its "strike" corps, the Second, (composed of mechanized units with a higher proportion of professional troops and better equipment) to try to halt the Indian advance. The attempt is less than successful, as the attacking Indian infantry (like the Chinese in 1996) simply disperse away from the armor, closing in behind them.

Just a point of interest: The Artillery gunners call nuclear artillery rounds "golden bullets" due to the color of the fuze sections. They otherwise look like standard shells except for the labeling.