[helbent4]

Originally Posted by schnickelfritz

In at least one thread, the USS Saratoga was stated as having been beached somewhere on the Flodida coast. Can anyone provide details on how she ended up in that state?

Dave,

Yes, that was RaketenJagdpanzer's personal Florida campaign:

The strikes happen pretty much as in the 1.0 background. Kennedy gets spared slightly by its bursts hitting out to sea and going off underwater due to malfunction. Patrick AFB is unharmed and becomes the keys to recovery in the area.

The I-4 corridor is pretty hosed, but Tampa/CENTCOM fallout went more southeast than northwest. Orlando and locations north and northwest did "OK", with MCO and SFB being key points for relief (what little has come).

As explained in 1.0-relevant sourcebooks, though, the Sunshine State has given rise to a lot of separatist elements which will be a problem for years to come. As I pointed out, the USS Saratoga is grounded of Port Richie, in a "maybe-someday" recoverable state. The chief concern is whether or not her reactor is safe and stable.

FL ANG units out of Jacksonville and USMC Reserve, Army Reserve and NTSC Orlando trainees are the bulk of the military presence in Florida, totaling around 2800 personnel. The Transportatiton and Paymaster reservists based out of Orlando provide the bulk of the mobility to units in Central Florida with their small number of HEMTTs, and the link between Central Florida and other regions is tenuous at best. Some transport aircraft remain, bolstered by rotary-wing and prop a/c from the USS Saratoga, and 3 functional, stored F15Ds also remain (but essentially grounded since a mere few hours' flying time worth of JP-8 remain).

SFB (Sanford International Airport) and to a lesser degree MCO (Orlando International Airport) have taken the bulk of relief flights; the surrounding environs near both airports are heavily patrolled by local militia (consisting of a great number of retired middle-aged veterans of Vietnam and Korea) aligned with both MilGov and CivGov. Unlike other areas of the country these two groups conflicts rarely involve more than catcalls, showing the international bird of peace to one another, and so on.

St. Augustine's civil government relocated to the near-indestructible fortress located in the old town. Nothing short of a demolition nuclear charge could bring the complex down and it is now the nerve center for recovery and civil government on Florida's northeast coast.

The chief damage done to Florida has been the repeated "surprise" hurricanes, although the judicious use of E2C Hawkeyes from the beached Saratoga, combined with the meteorological skills of NASA and Patrick AFB personnel have gone a long, long way to mitigating the damage by warning the remaining population centers as best they can...

The post doesn't reference how it got there, you can PM RakJgpz on how it gets there in his opinion.

Tony