May 9, 1997
Nothing in the canon for the day. Unofficially,
SACLANT is surprised by the absence of Soviet SSBNs in northern waters. Contrary to prewar expectations, when American and British attack submarines start scouring the White Sea and under the Arctic ice pack for Soviet SSBNs, they mostly find emptiness, livened by traps set by the Red Banner Northern Fleet such as minefields with a noisemaker in the center and the most advanced Soviet attack subs lying in wait for them. The USSR’s political leadership, in fact, has decided that keeping the SSBN fleet in harbor (those based in the Litsa Fjord were evacuated to bases farther east) ensures the strictest control of their fearsome nuclear arsenal and minimizes the chance of inadvertent launch.
1st Brigade, 50th Armored Division (New Jersey National Guard) completes Rotation 97-8 at NTC-2 at the Yakima Training Center and is declared combat ready.
NATO tactical airpower, reinforced with additional units from the USAF Reserve and Air National Guard and the USS Coral Sea air group operating in the North Sea, shifts its emphasis from close air support to battlefield interdiction, cutting Pact supply lines to the front. Polish and Soviet units all along the front start a gradual, orderly withdrawal, destroying roads, railways and bridges as they retreat. NATO mechanized units bypass isolated Pact garrisons, leaving them for follow-on units to surround and reduce.
A joint SEAL Team 3 - Special Boat Service team attacks the Soviet submarine base at Gremikha-Ostrovnoy. Satellite imagery (through a rare break in the clouds and fog) reveals that nearly a third of the Red Banner Northern Fleet's nuclear missile submarine force is there, sheltering from the NATO forces threatening Murmansk. A fierce firefight occurs between the NATO special operators and the security troops of the 313th Coastal Defense Battalion, a specialist anti-frogman unit.
Troops of the Turkish 8th Infantry Division enter the town of Popovo, Bulgaria. The town's capture cuts the rail line between Sofia and the Black Sea Coast as well as the most direct road connection. The country is not yet cut in half, relying on circuitous road and rail connections through the town of Ruse on the Romanian border, which is under periodic artillery fire from Romanian long-range guns.
Photo
Troops and equipment of the 32nd Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) (Wisconsin National Guard), the last brigade of the 36th Infantry Division, arrive at the ports of Davisville, Rhode Island, Boston Massachusetts and Portland, Maine to load onto ships for Europe.
Convoy 140 is joined by a flotilla of six smaller freighters which sailed from Great Lakes ports, carrying additional supplies and the 428th Field Artillery Brigade (US Army Reserve). The USS Saratoga battle group continues to provide cover to the convoy.
Pasdaran guerrillas in Esfahan, under direction of Sirjan Khorrasani, ambush a small, isolated Soviet convoy, destroying two Zil-131 fuel trucks, a Ural-375 supply truck and an escorting UAZ-469 and capturing a useful stash of military-grade weapons and supplies to sustain the rebel band.
An overland convoy of the 101st Air Assault Division, escorted by TOW HMMWVs of the 2nd Battalion, 180th Infantry (Oklahoma National Guard) arrives in Dalaki, Iran, linking up with the air assault troops that landed the prior day. The division then leapfrogs the 1st Brigade to the town of Kazerun, another 25 miles deeper into the foothills of the Zagros Mountains. The American troops there link up with rear area troops of the II Iranaian Corps.
The Soviet Sierra II-class submarine K-534, which has been hiding under a disused offshore oil platform in the Persian Gulf, resumes its interdiction of Allied shipping, launching another trio of SS-N-21 conventionally-armed cruise missiles at the port facilities in Jubail, which XVIII Airborne Corps is using to ferry troops and equipment into Iran. The attacks succeed in disrupting operations at the port, sinking the US Army small transport MG Charles P. Gross as it loaded equipment. The second missile's warhead (one was shot down by a patrolling Saudi F-15 interceptor) detonates above massed vehicles of the 3rd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division, damaging many of them and disrupting the brigade's orderly loadout.
The 255th Motor-Rifle Division, a mobilization-only unit from the Moscow Military District, is called up in Kursk. Equipment for the division is short, with no APCs, no anti-aircraft regiment, anti-tank or SSM battalion and with a single battalion of SU-100 assault guns in lieu of a tank regiment. Wisely, the formation is mostly used as a source of semi-trained manpower for rebuilding units that have been shattered at the front.
The Soviet raider Buliny races southward to escape the operating radius of American patrol aircraft that had located the destroyer the day before. Once confident of its relative safety the commander, Captain Second Rank Mikhail Mischenko, slows down to a sedate 10 knots to conserve fuel.