[chico20854]

June 13, 1998

The School Brigade at Fort Bliss, which has served as served as a chain-of-command parent organization for a variety of training units assigned to the Air Defense School for training and activation, is activated as a troop unit, complete with infantry battalions out of the local basic training barracks, artillery from the New Mexico National Guard, and the 1-124 Cavalry Squadron (Texas National Guard) from Waco. The Air Defense Center naturally provides an abundance of air defense units, including a Patriot missile battalion, a battalion of composite air defense weapons, and the 5-62 ADA. The brigade uses its available mix of weapons to create unorthodox operational units. Infantry drawn from basic training camps at Fort Bliss is attached to ADA gun batteries (PIVAD and Diana) to create heavy machinegun combat teams. Because the brigade has no organic field artillery, it relies heavily on infantry mortars and develops its own doctrine for employment of ADA gun systems in the indirect fire role.

Unofficially,

Additional Mexican C-130 transports land at Miramar Naval Air Station, bringing in reinforcements to the airborne force that seized the base. Interestingly, the planes land with only a thin reserve of fuel aboard, refueling from the hydrants on the base before returning home. Upon arrival back in Mexico, the aircraft transfer most of the fuel remaining to the base's fuel system - the Mexican Air Force has started to stretch its fuel supply by using captured American stocks.

In San Diego, the frigate USS Donald B Beary is reactivated (it has been partially deactivated as the supply of fuel diminished, its crew assigned to food distribution duties ashore) and immediately engages the Mexicans with its 5-inch gun; the short-range direct-fire is devastatingly effective. Mexican troops hidden among shoreside buildings return fire, riddling the lightly-armored warship with hundreds of holes from small arms fire. When available visible targets are all engaged and the ship's magazine running down the ship withdraws a few miles north to the large shipyard, where a hastily assembled crew of workers joins the ship's company in repairing some of the damage.

Elsewhere in the Battle of San Diego, Mexican troops of the Ensenada Brigade fail in their first direct assault crossing of the Sweetwater River into the southern portion of the naval base; however the brigade has used the engagement to slip the 8th Motorized Cavalry Regiment past Navy outposts further east. The motorized cavalry sweeps deeper into the city, taking advantage of the cover provided by the dense urban buildup.

In eastern Texas, Mexican progress is slow. 401 Squadron's F-5s are diverted from close air support missions to attack grounded aircraft on the ground at Bergstrom AFB outside San Antonio, succeeding in destroying a pair of B-1Bs that have been sheltering there since December. In Brownsville the Matamoros Brigade drives the crew of the USS Makin back over 250 meters in fierce house to house fighting; one of the Americans killed is Rodney Cutler, twin brother of Specialist Randolph Cutler, who catches a sniper's bullet when running for cover. In Harlingen, the troops of the 2nd Mechanized Brigade continue to discover unpleasant surprises from the cadets of the Marine Maritime Academy when it is discovered that one of the school's alumni has provided his alma mater with weapons not authorized to any Junior ROTC units, most notably a M50 Ontos light anti-tank vehicle as well as various .50-caliber rifles to supplement the four M-60 machineguns the school cadre sweet talked a friendly logistician into providing for "educational purposes." The Ontos uses its six 106mm recoilless rifles to make quick work of a pair of AMX-13 light tanks, once again forcing the Mexican brigade to suspend follow-on attacks.

The 868th Tactical Missile Training Squadron is ordered to withdraw from its home station of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, in advance of advancing Mexican forces.

On New York's Upper East Side, marauder Nathan Snyder asserts himself as being the custodian of the gang's small cache of weapons and food.

The Danish Expeditionary Corps is driven out of Stuttgart by the Soviet 41st Army after Italian troops of the 3rd Corps advance on the Rhine, having severed the connection between the Danes and the now-isolated XX US Corps. IV German Korps, holding the line between the Danes and the US VII Corps, retreats to the north; German commanders have to restrain their troops from engaging in a scorched earth withdrawal, promising that they will be back soon. XII German Korps troops, brought forward from reserve near Limburg, occupy defensive positions along the Main River west of Wurzburg, control of which has been ceded by the overstretched and exhausted US VII Corps.