[chico20854]

November 5, 1997

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

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

Unofficially,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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