Well, if we use canon, they apparently did. How else can it be explained that the total assembled navies of Nato were destroyed without them resorting to nukes? It obviously cost them everything to do it, but once the last effective naval force was on the bottom, what real use would they have for a navy besides the usual coastal patrols, etc?
Sure it would be nice to have warships and landing craft, but it's not absolutely VITAL if there's no effective opposing force.

Does canon specifically state that no naval nukes are used against NATO sea forces? I don't recall that it does. That said, I don't think it's necessary as far as explaining NATO's naval losses.

If the Soviets could sucker major NATO naval forces closer to land- especially land controlled by the USSR (like NW Norway and/or the Kola Penninsula) they could reduce the NATO navies' sensor advantage and overwhelm them with firepower.

According to canon, there's a major battle in the Norwegian Sea, is there not? A major Soviet naval sortie (two or three battle groups along with fast attack missile boats) and Naval air forces launching from land bases could do a lot of damage before hitting the bottom themselves.

Not exactly, but close enough:
It's a very specific date for a VERY important event in history.
The 9th of July, 1997 is the day the war turned nuclear and hell flung open it's doors.

OK, but couldn't naval nukes have been used after this date? Does canon state that the Soviet and NATO navies were pretty much sunk (pardon the bad pun) before July 9th, 1997?

Canon only deals with the Naval War in the North Atlantic/Norweigan Sea/Kola areas, except for TF 76 in the PG. No info at all about the Pacific, Med, etc. On the old board, I had quite a lot on the naval war, and Antenna should still have some of that on his board. Having three or four surviving carriers and amphibious assault ships, some cruisers and destroyers, etc. is a lot more realistic, IMHO. There's no way that the entire fleets of both the USN and the Soviet Navy would be sunk prior to TDM. And that's surface forces. There'd be more subs surviving than surface ships, including boomers, IMHO.

The first problem might simply come from general confusion in canon materials regarding that matter. Indeed, it states that by mid-June the last major fleet-in-being in the world has been shattered (meaning NATO) but that is far from answering everything (considering v1.0 and even less with v2.2).

1) Most of the Soviet Northern Fleet was destroyed by late 1996. At most by mid-June 1997, they had 1 aircraft carrier, 1 battlecruiser, 2 guigded missiles cruisers, 7 destroyers and 8 frigates left to their Northern Fleet but a large number of coastal ships and submarines.
2) NATO made an unforgiving mistake by moving most of its fleet North. Therefore, allowing the Soviets to use all that they have left to their best effects.
3) What of the submarines? At the time the Soviets had something between 300-400 (IRL) and as they had been at war for over a year, they had produce more.
4) On June 27th (1-2 weeks later), NATO provides a strong covering force to the Mediterranean convoys but these are defeated by light fleet elements of the Greek Navy.
5) What has happened to the Far East and Indian Ocean? Iran is on US side and US has no opposing fleet in the Persian Gulf.

Another problem simply comes from the fact that the game is land oriented and the authors have not done much work on naval aspects. However, it becomes important with game developments and further inconsistencies.

Satellite down: The Nuclear Cruiser Virginia leading TF115 (1 cruiser and 5 destroyers including at least 1 Forrest Sherman) is defeated by a force 6 soviet destroyers in 1999????? Ok the Soviet had a lucky strike on Virginia but TF115 not capable of holding its own??? As much as I don't underestimate Soviet capabilities, I don't understand how that can be possible. Even less with 80% of the Soviet Fleet at the bottom of the Sea by late 1996. Six soviet destroyers is all that should be left to USSR in 1997 and to do such major damages, the fleet should have been made almost entirely of Sovremenny-class destroyers.

Still, I remind you that in this book the game states that US had 32 nuclear guided-missile cruisers stationed around the world (WOW!!). IRL 9 had been commissioned. V1.0 assumes clearly that the world navies had been expended to a large extend before the Twilight War. Therefore, assuming RL figures to the game might not be entirely accurate.

RDF has quite a viable if small fleet being described and the Soviet Caspian Flotilla as given if not at full streength remains substantial but landlocked. Why does it remain in the Caspian Sea where it is of no use while it could have been tranfered to the Black Sea?

Going Home can't be possible with some remnant of the naval forces

Absolutely! But there doesn't appear to be the need for naval nukes after June 97. There's just not a lot of decent targets left.
As for carriers left in other theatres, I don't buy it. Europe is the main stage, Europe is where the "big push" is taking place with Korea and the middle east as sideshows. There's almost no reason why the various carriers and their supporting fleets would stay away from the "Norwegian adventure" if the Soviet fleets elsewhere were believed to be neutralised (as seems to be indicated in canon).

The Nato fleet in my understanding was sunk by "superior/sneaky" Soviet tactics in the tight confines of the area. The remnants of Naval aviation, shore batteries, fast torpedo boats, missiles and even a few old subs, used well would be more than enough to massacre the Nato ships if they were asleep at the wheel thinking all they needed to do was provided shore bombardment for the landing forces they were escorting at the time. This is especially likely if in the previous six months of the war, the Soviet subs had been efficiently sinking western vessels and whittled the remaining fleet down. Given that earlier actions may have eliminated, or at least reduced the anti-air capabilities of the ships involved through sinking's, damage, or simply lack of ammo for the CIWS, it's conceivable the Soviet air assets would have a very large impact (as per canon).

It also appears the last engagement against Soviet naval forces was about two months earlier (late spring) after what can only be described as a furious running series of battles, it's understandable that Nato crews may have relaxed their guard. This makes even more sense given the overwhelming success the land forces were having on almost all fronts - it's quite believable everyone thought the end of the war was in sight, which can only be called a fatal mistake.

What is a "major fleet" anyway. Does it have to have a carrier at it's heart and consist of 20 or more other ships? Or could it be little more than a cruiser and 3-4 destroyers? Canon states the "last major fleet in being" was "shattered". This doesn't necessarily mean sunk either, but potentially could mean damaged to the point of scuttling or those ships still afloat could need 12 months in dry dock - something that doesn't happen with the nukes starting shortly after.

Obviously can't have been all that strong then, or perhaps they were caught without room to manoeuvre?
Exactly. Why would the US need a fleet of any real power in the area? What we see in RDF Sourcebook has to be almost the entirety of that fleet.
My reading is the six soviet ships were all that were available at the time in the Pacific. It's possible other ships exist around the globe in varying states of readiness either short on fuel, ammunition, crew or stuck in port with damage they can't get repaired.
It's also very likely TF115 was also damaged/short on ammo/lacking crew/etc

Which is shown by the USS John Hancock being the flagship. We also know the Tarawa was in the Baltic in Spring 2000 (from the aviation book - Osprey colour plate), but logic has it out of action in some way by October/November. If it wasn't, there's no logical reason it wouldn't have been the flagship.

About sure, the sea there is narrow with drifting ice at some points and batteries of coastal defense missiles firing in hanger. Sending carriers there is stupid at best. I hoped the admirals in charge were killed and if not, they should have been court marshalled. That move matches some of the most stupid ones in naval history: Trafalgar (french side) or the Spanish grand armada to England.

Atlantic, they were in the Atlantic. Then, you're right, the TF had been reduced to Virginia and 2 ships.

Good point

If we're talking about the engagement that resulted in USS Virginia's grounding prior to Satellite Down then it was the Pacific.

The direction this thread has taken is giving me wracking spasms of deja vu. The last time we got into a throw down, stand up fight about this topic a whole lot of valued forum members threw up their hands and walked away. Some are yet to return. Do we really need to go through that again?

Those who participated in the original 'debates' are well aware of one anothers' positions. The new members can have a look at the thread map and the archives if they want to bring themselves up to speed.

I for one still have strong opinions on these matters but I don't have the heart to voice them again. I still hold some hope that Chico et al will return to these forums some day.

This thread (solely due to one poster) has me literally counting the days until I never have to look at this forum again.

I'm not seeing anything like that at all, just an honest, open and constructive discussion which is explaining a lot about what happened to the naval forces world wide. Sure there's the possibility of people getting upset, but that's possible about ANY topic.
Mind you, I can't understand why anyone would get upset about a game... :confused:

On a lighter note
 

Speaking of reactivating old ships, I came across an gem that the HMS Victory, predating the United States, is still in commission! Given the technology left, it could well be one of the last full strength warships, and could certainly make a very interesting scenario, given that it would be one of the few vessels that would not be short of ammunition (creating gunpowder of the sort it could use is not exactly rocket science, given I know some high school kids who used to do it!)

The old wooden vessels would not be suseptible to rust, like the lighter GRP and Aluminium hulls of many smaller craft. But historically pressing civilian craft into service has always occurred in massive numbers whenever war broke out, and many of these vessels have been equally as effective as dilapdated warships, as the example above makes clear.

With regards to the Caspian fleet being stuck, that would only apply to the larger vessels, with the river system in spring and summer enabling many FACs and even some frigates access to the Baltics and the North Sea.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, the Soviet Navy was primarily focused on defence, and so they never planned on major assaults far from home. Hence, the destruction of the Northern Nato fleet at a time when they had few major surface combatants is entirely in line with the way they would prepare for war. Ie mines, aircraft and shore batteries as previously mentioned could be expected to be devestating, because that is what they were built and trained for. They have been slow to develop the surface combatants because, in their philosophy, that is not the most significant part of their Naval Defence strategy, unlike the west. They had huge numbers of missile weilding vessels that were transportable over land that would be devestating against the older vessels, as the Israelis discovered when a now dated Osa class vessel (a 165t rail transportable vessel of which the Soviets built around 200 in the early 80's) sank an updated Israeli destroyer in the 6 day war. China had about 120 of these as well, btw. Their punch is only as dated as the missiles they launched.

Interestingly, in 1984, USSR had 80 Whiskey class subs in reserve, plus another 50 in service, having been replaced by Foxtrot class vessels. These vessels, launched in the 1950's, would certainly have been reactivated, though how many would have actually been useable may be another question. But given warning it is very conceiveable they could all be made operational, though unlikely they would have been grouped together with any fleet as such.

While many of their capital ships are dated, the 12 Sverdlov class gun cruisers vessels would likely be more serious threats due to the fact that they used boilers to drive steam turbines and guns instead of missiles. While they would have had a harder time surviving initially, those that did would serve better in a lower tech post-nuke world that the more deadly but more tech-dependant vessels. Similar to the Iowa, Brooklyn, Ceylon and De Ruyter classes of vessels (USA, USA, UK and Netherlands respectively). But it is surviving the initial years that would be the problem. Looking at the age of vessels in service on both sides, it is unlikely that any that were not in reserves would be better than civilian vessels, with the latter probably being preferable due to the better conditions.

Shipbuilding and Shipyards, the USSR
 

source material from the 3rd and 4th Editions, Guide to the Soviet Navy.

To put it simply, the shipbuilding capacity of the Soviet Union is impressive. The USSR has 20 major shipyards (one with more than 2,000 full-time employees) compared to 16 for the US, as well as 700+ smaller shipyards. Four of these shipyards build only warships: Severodvinsk (submarines); Kaliningrad (destroyers and amphibious warships); Petrovskiy (small combatants) and the Sudomeky portion of the Leningrad Admiralty Association (submarines). These yards employee some 215,000 workers (this is considered to be the low estimate by Western intelligence agencies of the 1985-1990 period).

The Soviets build some 6 million deadweight tons (a supertanker is roughly 100,000 DWT by the way) of merchant shipping in the period 1986-1990 with another 4.2 million deadweight tons produced by shipyards in Finalnd, Germany and Poland (all purchased by the USSR).

Now, deadweight tonnage is not the same as full load displacement tonnage, but any way you cut it, 10.2 million tons is a lot of hulls!

My mistake, I have been tired lately and miss-read the stuff about ten times.:o

With both sides having heavy losses in the number of ships, either side could have used nukes on ships (which I doubt due to strategic importance) or used aircraft launched Air to Ship missiles (much more likely). Both sides had very effective missiles.

In 1995 the US still had more than 10000 nuclear warheads and the Soviets had a little under 35000. With Twilight they would more probably have maintained their pre-Berlin Wall level of 20000 (US) and 40000 (USSR) and you can expect both sides to built a few more before 1997. I'm not sure that strategic considerations come into the pictures with such numbers as two countries take nukes for candies;).

Such considerations would only had been for UK, France and China.

Tangentially to this, I had always thought that post 2001 (like around 2003, perhaps) the US Military would start giving thought to putting the Navy back together as best they could around surviving ships (John Hancock, City of Corpus Christi, and possibly other, unmentioned ones) and pulling "display" or "museum" vessels out for use.

Not for use in the actual Twilight War itself, mind you, but as part of the reconstruction effort.

The idea of A1 Skyraiders recovered from Davis Monthan AFB flying off the deck of the re-floated Intrepid while wacky and probably wholly impossible is one that makes me smile.

That's going to happen world wide I would think as resources become available. You might even see a few conflicts between Milgov and Civgov over who actually owns grounded or abandonned vessels of all types.

Hang on a tick; isn't there a Carrier Battle Group still alive and well in the Gulf per the RDF? The Carl Vinson and a few others at least. That's a pretty big stick all things considered.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a full blown carrier group, nor that they're well. My understanding is the assault carrier at the heart of it all is immobilised from battle damage, and most of the other ships aren't much better off. Nothing 12 months in a decent shipyard can't fix, if only one was available....

There are several countermeasures for conventional anti-ship missiles. Some believe (I'm not among them) that just a couple of Tico class guided missile cruisers could defeat almost any ASM threat to a supercarrier. As for nukes, there are several Soviet ASMs designed to carrier low-yield nuclear payloads expressly for the purpose of taking out a US carrier group. As Mo pointed out, there were literally thousands of warheads out there on both sides so there'd really be no reason to skimp should the need arise.

Once again, I'm not arguing that the Soviets needed to resort to nukes to cause heavy NATO naval casualties, but it is a viable alternative explanation for the de facto destruction of NATO naval power in the N. Atlantic.

You guys are confusing canon with some of the Great Matt W's posts.

Canon RDF sourcebook has the assault carrier Belleau Wood LHA 3 functional as part of TF 76.

The Great Matt W posted an RDF orbat previously, I couldn't find it, but I found this in the archives.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2090

"The carrier immobilized at Muscat, Oman is USS Independence (CV-62) with both torpedo damage and ASM damage. If a shipyard with supertanker size dry-dock was available, it would take 18 months of repairs to get her seaworthy. A caretaker crew is aboard, but most have been reassigned to other 5th FLT ships in the Gulf. "

And CVW-10 was her air wing; they're now based at Sheikh Isa AB, Bahrain.

I'll see if I can't dig out some of my old Naval stuff: Jason and his team found it mighty useful-they didn't use all of it, but they found much of it to be of value. They did have some surviving carriers-they may be moored 90% of the time, but there were four surviving carriers. (a fifth was docked in Bremerton with damage too serious to repair with resources at hand)

Personally, there would've been a lot more surviving ships, and not just anchored someplace. Remaining SSNs and Boomers would still be sailing on occasion, for example.

Huh? So we are! :confused:
The Belleau Wood however isn't a full blown carrier, but instead only operates helicopters and Harriers. I cannot find any reference to the Tarawa class being equipped with a catapult which puts almost all fixed wing aircraft out of consideration (the OV-10 Bronco, which was transferred from the Navy to the Marines and then retired in 1995 being the only listed exception).
Even so, it's unlikely the ships would see much use since there's a decided lack of resupply of important items such as missiles, parts, and conventional ammunition.

Ok lets go with Canon

USN ships still active and part of MilGov

RDF - a missile cruiser, a gun cruiser, several frigates

Kenya - a missile cruiser, several destroyers and frigates - per Frank Frey from his notes for the unpublished Lions in Twilight module

Troubled Waters - John Hancock and three Forest Sherman DD's plus a bunch of smaller vessels

Last Submarine - SSN

Naval and Aviation book - USS Tarawa

and since Korea was never discussed in a canon module but its assume those guys didnt swim there you can bet there is a task force there too

And the ships that brought the men to the RDF didnt transit the Med without escort - thats how you throw away 6000 men's lives - so that means more ships brought them there past the French and any Italian or Greek ships

oh and why wasnt Tarawa the command ship in Going Home - how about as simple as the skipper of the John Hancock was superior to him as to time in rank and thus would be the Task Force Commander

I thought that even when a fleet or task force commander is aboard a given vessel, that vessel will still have it's own captain. And the Tarawa is far, far better suited to the role of command ship, surely? In any case, at least some of the surface combatants escorting the Omega fleet back to the US must have crossed the Atlantic to Bremerhaven prior to the Omega fleet being assembled. I'd be amazed if MilGov didn't have at least one admiral or rear admiral available either already in Germany or at Norfolk and available to cross the Atlantic prior to the Omega fleet's assembly, ready and very much willing to command the Omega fleet.

Following ideas previously put forward by others on this forum, I've been tending towards the Tarawa being grounded and semi or non-functional somewhere along the Polish or Baltic coast. However I don't think it would be out of the question for the Tarawa to have been capable of being refloated and towed back to friendly waters but not being in a suitable condition for an Atlantic crossing with the Omega fleet. IIRC many of the remaining US forces in the UK made their own return to the CONUS post-Omega. Perhaps by then the Tarawa could have undergone sufficient repair and refit in a UK harbour to be the flagship for that second, mini-Omega?

Or you could have Tarawa not sunken but have taken significant damage to where she wouldnt be useful for the command ship - i.e. her radios, sensors, etc.. could be out and she is basically unable to exercise command functions outside of using signal flags.

That happened during WWII when ships took damage to where they were still operable but where they couldnt exercise command anymore - for instance San Francisco after she got pounded at Guadalcanal - still afloat but she was in no shape to be the command ship anymore

There are no details on who commanded the effort - and if there wasnt a seperate task force commander present then the senior naval officer present would take over as Task Force Commander - so if its the Captain of the Hancock then he is it. (all it takes is for him to be one day senior to everyone else and he would have command fall to him)

Plus having Tarawa present allows the US to evac helicopters and other equipment that divisions have been hauling around per canon and does it without any disruption of the canon (no one, no matter how partisan one way or another is going to say that Tarawa is even a tenth as capable as a Nimitz class nuclear carrier and that her still being in the USN means the US is now ruling the waves)

And it would go to also saying why the Marines got stranded - i.e. Tarawa was needed elsewhere

and you would think if Tarawa had been lost or grounded, given how the handbooks were written, it would have mentioned her loss so soon after the picture was taken

thus no matter how much Legbreaker wants her sunk, she most likely was part of Omega

With regards to canon, wasn't at least one US Coast Guard ship mentioned in Rifle River? (Yes, I know technically that wouldn't be part of the US Navy :))

Also it's been years since I read Satellite Down so I can't remember if the USS Virginia was on its own or was part of a small group of ships? Didn't they get into a fight with some Soviet warships? Is the Virginia listed as the only survivor?

An escort for the ships going to the Middle East makes sense.

I'm not convinced about Korea...there would certainly have been a task force there at some point in time, but how much of it would be left by 2000 is probably debatable.

Targan, I could be mistaken here (I'm at work at the moment so all of the above is from memory) but I think the US personnel in the UK were uplifted at the same time as the main Omega evacuation - I think there is reference in the Survivor's Guide to the UK to one or more of the Omega ships making a stop off in the UK to pick up US personnel.

Yes you are right about the stop in the UK - its also mentioned in Troubled Waters about the Omega UK evacuation

There is a good chance that whatever ships are in Korea are still there - short of fuel so they cant make the haul home but with enough fuel so that they can still operate around the Korean peninsula and the Sea of Japan.

So they are still effective but only locally. Now get some fuel there from the RDF or Kenya and that would change.

(i.e. Japan in late WWII didnt have the fuel to send ships to Singapore anymore but they had enough for ops to Pusan and back - so similar situation here.)

Virginia had several ships with her but they were all lost in the firefight with the Russian task group that led to her being beached.

From how its described they were the last USN ships active off the West Coast - and its a long way from the West Coast to Korea.

If you are interested Rainbow I can put up the relevant passage from Satellite Down showing that.

Fair point.

All true but seriously, given the enormous importance of the operation, MilGov couldn't come up with a single admiral or rear admiral to command the fleet? It just beggars belief.

Again, all true but not having the Tarawa present doesn't mean the US can't evac helicopters and other equipment with the Omega fleet. There would definitely be one or more (almost certainly more) ro-ro vessels in the fleet, and many cargo vessels are fully capable of having helicopters landed on them (many have one or more of their cargo hold hatches specially reinforced for exactly that purpose). And you'll note from other posts I've made that I'm not opposed to the Tarawa being once again in operation with the USN post-Omega. I just regard it has highly unlikely that the Tarawa was with the Omega fleet and didn't rate a single mention in Going Home.

You would think that if the Tarawa was among the ships sailing with the Omega fleet it would have been mentioned in Going Home. Seriously, specifically naming the John Hancock as being present and casually omitting any mention of the Tarawa being in the same fleet? I don't buy it.

I'm happy to admit that Leg and I have quite similar views in many areas of T2K. I'm also happy that you've joined the forum, Olefin, you have already stimulated much interesting discussion since joining. But I'd advise against buying into some of the old disputes that caused a great deal of pain around here (and led to the departure from active participation of the creator, founder and administrator of this forum). I don't think it's a fair characterisation of Leg's views to suggest that he vehemently advocates the sinking of the Tarawa. As I recall, the idea that the Tarawa was beached or grounded somewhere along the Polish coast during 2000 was widely accepted as a reasonable possibility by many members of this forum. As it happens, Leg and I subscribed to that view. Long story short, I disagree that the Tarawa being part of the Omega fleet was "most likely". I agree that it's possible though.

That would be the Chilula, WMEC-153, a Cherokee class medium endurance cutter. And for all intents and purposes, during the Twilight War most USCG ships were USN ships. Those USCG assets listed in Rifle River as being under the direct command of Rear Admiral Nils Holsgirder are examples of USCG vessels that basically aren't USN vessels by 2000.

All of the other vessels in the USS Virginia's battle group were sunk in combat.

I agree.

Now that you mention it I think I recall that too. I don't think the whole Omega fleet made a stopover though. Perhaps the Omega Fleet split at that point, with the main TF crossing directly and several sub-fleets sailing separately, one to pick up US troops in the UK, another sailing for the Med and on to the RDF and another heading to Africa to reinforce US forces there.

That's a possibility. I could be convinced either way. The Korean AO is one area that we've had few discussions about on this forum and I'd enjoy hearings everyone's ideas on it. Definitely a theater that deserved more attention than GDW gave it.

I agree with you there - same with Yugoslavia - besides a few mentions in a couple of modules and the US Army Guide its an empty page as to the original version of the game

I have been thinking that some fan modules may be what is needed there for sure.

If the Tarawa was still floating, and able to move under it's own power, it absolutely would have been the flagship, even if it's radios, radar, etc was destroyed. It doesn't take much to move a few radios aboard and position some radar vehicles on deck. The ship itself has way too much flexibility, even damaged, to ignore.
So it's far more likely it was out of commission in the latter half of 2000 than passed over in favour of an old destroyer.
If it was floating and useful, the US XI Corps wouldn't be cut off and could have been withdrawn - provided there were still landing craft left over from the earlier offensive to take the troops and their equipment off the beaches (there's no suitable ports between Germany and Gdansk).

A thought occurs to me re: the Tarawa. I don't think it's been mentioned before - apologies if it has and / or I'm stating the obvious.

Going Home is part of the T2K V1 chronology

The Nautical / Aviation Guide is part of the T2K V2x chronology

They are essentially two different timelines (albeit from the summer of 1997 onwards the differences are limited).

Its possible that in the v1 timeline the USS Tarawa may have been sunk long before the summer of 2000.

We know that GDW reissued at least one module to support V2x (Rendevous in Krakow) in a revised format with some different material. Perhaps if things hadn't gone the way they did we might have seen a revised Going Home at some point in time, which may have had the Tarawa as the TF34 flagship.

Just a thought...

The information provided in the colour plates of the V1 soviet, US and Nato vehicle guides was reused word for word in the V2 books. The same for unit histories. Additionally, much of the V2.x timeline info was likewise recycled from V1.
Therefore, while it is conceivable that V2's Aviation & Nautical book diverged significantly from whatever was discussed in the GDW office, it seems exceedingly unlikely that they'd have "reinvented the wheel" so to speak. Therefore, I believe we can confidently use the Tarawa information as presented for all versions.

At the risk of jumping into a storm here, but there is a third option.

IIRC, Not all the US Troops went home: They chose some units to remain in Europe to maintain a US Presence in the theatre. It would make sense, since Europe is the hottest theatre around, to use the Tarawa as a Flagship for a small European based Navel Presence to support those US troops there. After all, you really are not going to *need* a full fledged light carrier back in the US, whereas in Europe it allows you to have a solid RDF operating the Baltic where the quality of opposition requires the use of such equipment.

Great idea Panther - heck there is even a way you can explain the ship not being there for Omega and be in Europe and not sunk - which would be her captain declares for CivGov and takes the ship to support the ops in Yugoslavia - where such a ship would be of huge help to the US divisions that are there - and even though improbable it wouldnt in any way conflict with canon - because for one there is very little about Yugoslavia besides the forces there that is canon - and if all it has in one or two operational aircraft then the statement in RDF about last US active carrier group (at that time) still holds up

The US units which stayed in Europe either didn't have a choice (the cut off XI Corps) or essentially muntinied and refused to obey orders. Some smaller units did stay with official sanction, but the withdrawal order was essentially all encompassing.

The Tarawa declaring for Civgov? Very unlikely since floating it's such a huge resource, deep in a Milgov area in mid 2000. You can bet Milgov would do EVERYTHING in it's power to prevent such an occurrence. As far as I'm aware, the ship supports the US Marines - no US marines declared for Civgov. It's very likely that even after delivering troops a decent complement of Marines stayed aboard.

As it's conventionally fueled, it's not about to join the Yugoslavian units either - it would be left all alone in the middle of a hostile situation. There's almost no possibility of fuel being available from any source.

Additionally, even if it was to mutiny and somehow get to Yugoslavia, it still has to face the "might" of the remaining Italian and Greek navies. Obviously Civgov had some naval assets when it deployed units there, but how effective are they by late 2000? Could they really have the necessary fuel, ammunition and surviving crew to sortie out to escort the Tarawa all the way, or even part of the way?

No, to me the by far most logical fate of the Tarawa is either sunk, beached or critically damaged somewhere in the Baltic as a result of Pact resistance to the Spring Offensive.

Others are entitled to have a different view, however careful examination of the published materials appears to support this assessment.

Or alternatively Tarawa is at Omega - but doesnt show up until after the orders are issued for the evacuation - perhaps she is out of communication or has her long range radios knocked out - so she is assumed sunk

and then she steams into Bremerhaven with part of the 8th ID and the Marines on board or maybe just empty and unable to rescue them at all

We dont have any details on what exact ships were there by Nov 14 - so if she shows up between the orders issued and that date she is part of Omega and the module wouldnt mention it in any of the information the players had

Oh and it could then explain who takes the 6000 men to the RDF - its Tarawa and a few other ships

and the RDF module never mentioned what ships brought the reinforcements - just that they showed up

and Kings Ransom didnt have any naval elements in it - so Tarawa showing up wouldnt have been part of the module

so does Tarawa being there change canon - no not at all since no ships besides John Hancock were canon mentioned

I remember Leg arguing that only 9 ships existed in the USN because thats all that were mentioned at the time - then Challenger 42 comes out and now there are three DD's specifically mentioned as being in service and part of the Omega Task Force

so did canon suddenly explode and fly off into improbability - no it just expanded to add three DD's

same with Tarawa - adding her to the USN active list in now way suddenly makes the US rule the seas - she is just one more ship that is low on fuel if she is in the states or who arrives with the reinforcements at the RDF and who, like the French ships who were part of the FAR, not mentioned in the sourcebook