[chico20854]

June 18, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

Fighting continues in San Diego as the ammunition supplies within the American perimeter dwindle to critically low levels. Captains of evacuation vessels refuse to return to the embattled ports, some out of fear, some because their craft are out of fuel; either way the harbor at Port Hueneme is now full of evacuation craft and the commander closes it to new arrivals, ordering them to the San Francisco Bay, the next series of harbors able to accommodate large craft.

The commanders of the 868th Tactical Missile Training Squadron and 347th Strategic Missile Squadron, having served together in prewar assignments, agree to consolidate their positions. The 868th moves into the secure area around the Desert Rock Airfield.

The lead battalions of the 49th Armored Division either hand over their areas of responsibility to state and local officials, or, unfortunately, abandon their disaster relief and internal security duties and prepare to move south and combat. The division commander inquires where his troops will be issued ammunition for their heavy weapons and armored vehicles; he authorizes the division's company armorers to remove the plates in their unit's M16A2s that prevent them from being placed on "burst" (the plates are a standard addition to National Guard M16s, semi-permanently installed for riot-control duties.)

Troops of Brigade Ciudad Juarez launch another attack on Fort Bliss, finally capturing the post MP station on the south side of the cantonment area. Far to the northeast, Brigade Chihuahua launches an infantry fixing attack on the cadets of the New Mexico Military Institute while dispatching an mechanized cavalry company with ERC-90 armored cars and infantry mounted in VAB APCs on a sweep to the east, hoping to encircle the cadets. Their attack is disrupted by a retired Korean-War veteran tanker and his two sons, who are singlehandedly defending the Highway 62 bridge over the Pecos River in his lovingly restored M24 Chaffee light tank. The Mexican advance is held up as the "old man" manning the 75mm gun destroys two ERC-90s; a duel ensues for the next three hours as the light tank dodges in and out of buildings and jockeys for firing positions to disrupt the cavalry's crossing. Eventually he runs out of ammunition and has to retreat, but has bought valuable time for the cadets to retreat to the cover of the city, where they are able to inflict heavy losses on the initial Mexican infantry incursion.

In Texas, additional Mexican reinforcements are arriving in the theatre. The Ciudad Victoria Brigade crosses into Brownsville, joining the 2nd Mechanized Brigade and the Matamoros Brigade in forming a division-sized "Coastal Column" beginning to move north towards Corpus Christi. The Saltillo Brigade crosses the Rio Grande at Roma and Pharr and quickly moves north, maintaining communications between the now-advancing "Coastal Column" and the armored drive towards San Antonio, where the Monterey Brigade has arrived and begins adding pressure to the US Air Force defense of the city. American reinforcements are less numerous, with the Governor of Texas committing his personal guard of State Guards and Texas Rangers to the city's defense.

The Joint Chiefs, facing massive shortages of fuel and ammunition worldwide, simply does not have anything available to commit to the front; the strategic reserve is, absent the 49th Armored Division and the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, frozen in place by lack of fuel.

The F-16s of the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing launch their most devastating strike yet, an air raid on the Mexican Air Force base at Monterrey, where the remainder of Mexico's F-5 fighter force has been deployed following the disabling attacks on their home base. The F-16s catch four F-5s on the ground between missions, destroying them as well as five other aircraft when they blanket the base with cluster bombs.

Mexico is under aerial attack from the south as well, with the appearance over the town of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border of the Boeing Skyfox light attack aircraft of the 198th Tactical Fighter Squadron. The converted trainers concentrate on the Tapachula Brigade's garrison, working it over with cluster bombs and rockets. Return fire is limited to small arms and machinegun fire, with the resident unit, like most of the Mexican Army, completely lacking in air defense systems. After five minutes and several passes the brigade's cantonment area is ablaze, leaving the unit (the only one with armored vehicles in the Chiapas and Yucatan Armies) struggling to maintain its own integrity and completely incapable of providing reinforcements to the war effort in America.

After weeks of effort, John Greendeer, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and 1996 graduate of the University of Minnesota's engineering school, is able to bring the aged electrical turbine at the Hatfield electrical power plant back online. The 6-megawatt generator is capable of meeting the tribe's power needs in the months when the Black River is not frozen over.

The USS Barbour County arrives at the South Korean port of Pohang with a cargo of vehicles (mostly 3/4 and 5/4-ton trucks) salvaged from the mine-damaged Rhode Island Freedom, which was abandoned in the Japanese port of Kokura.

In northwestern Poland, at the urging of the Western TVD commander, the Baltic Front renews its attacks on the Marines and allied troops of II MEF. The assault is led by the three remaining SU-130s and 29 ISU-152s of the 1048th Assault Gun Regiment, with several dozen scared Estonian teenagers riding on the outside of the guns like their grandfathers in the 1940s. Most of the guns complete the road march to the departure point without breaking down and the behemoths prove remarkably resistant to the American’s LAW rocket fire and the infantry mortars that are the Marine's first line of defense. Six guns are lost breaching the defensive minefield and three more fall to TOW missiles while closing in on the embedded Marines. The surviving guns push into the American rear area, but the troops of the 3rd Guards Motor-Rifle Division, assigned to follow through on the breakthrough, remain passively in their positions.

The commander of Carrier Air Wing 10, from the damaged USS Independence, meets with his new commander, LtGen Thomas Forberg, USAF, commander USAFCENT and CG, 9th Air Force. Forberg is already familiar with the capabilities of many of the wing's aircraft, having served a combat tour aboard the USS Coral Sea during the Vietnam War as a F-4 pilot. The Navy Captain and the General discuss the training, personnel and logistic needs of the Naval Aviation squadrons, some of which can be more easily addressed than others. One of the most challenging issues is that of aviators' carrier qualifications - landing a tactical aircraft on a heaving flight deck, especially at night and bad weather, is a highly perishable skill that needs to be practiced regularly and which appears impossible with no operable carrier within thousands of miles.