[chico20854]

November 9, 1997

The US responds to the nuclear attack on Pusan by launching a single Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missile from the USS George Washington Carver at the Soviet port and naval complex of Vladivostok. (unofficially) The eight MIRVs aboard all function, destroying the docks (three warheads), Pacific Fleet headquarters (two warheads), PVO headquarters (two warheads) and the ship repair yard (one warhead). American nuclear bombs will return to Vladivostok in the weeks ahead, but for now the city is crippled.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Seattle Freedom is delivered in Portland, Oregon.

The troop ship General Patch completes reactivation and is towed, with only a caretaker crew, to Atlantic City, New Jersey to serve as FEMA emergency housing. While thought is given to using the ship in its designed purpose, the decision is made to continue shipping replacements to Europe by air, using the many intact airfields in the UK, rather than cram thousands of recruits into a single hull, vulnerable to Soviet submarines and raiders, and uncertain as to the condition of any European port large enough to dock the 600-foot long ship.

The defense attorneys for the former commander of the battleship Missouri request a change of venue to the continental US, concerned about their personal safety (and that of their client) in a region increasingly targeted by Soviet nuclear weapons.

The commander of the 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Security) Division arrays his troops around vital sites in the city of Bratislava in an attempt to intimidate city authorities into releasing supplies to his unit. He dispatches battalions to the city's local and regional government buildings, the telephone exchange, refinery, truck plant, military academy and airfield.

In southern Germany, the US VII Corps comes under pressure on its northern flank as an attack from the Soviet 41st Army, heading south out of Nuremburg, begins.

As the 82nd Airborne moves south and they and their Kurdish allies rove across northwestern Iran disrupting Transcaucasian Front's rear area, General Suryakin orders 7th Army north to, initially, secure a supply line and following that to combat the marauding American force.

The Politburo is in turmoil as the various factions struggle for dominance. Sauronski and the KGB hold the upper hand, however, and one of the peace faction's leaders, Chairman of the Trade Union Council Ivan Maksimov, is arrested by the KGB and transported to the notorious Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. His children - sons serving as a fighter battalion commander in Iran, another son in a tank regiment in Poland and his daughter's husband serving in an air defense battery outside Moscow - are relieved of their commands and ordered to return to the capital, clearly a signal that they are to at least serve as hostages.

Britain dispatches reinforcements to Belize. The first two aircraft are British Air 767s carrying Territorial Army infantrymen from the 4th Battalion, The Kings Own Border Regiment, whose home defense duties are taken over by recently raised Home Service Force companies. 1st Battery, Royal Artillery, a training unit, is mobilized as well and moves to RAF Brize Norton to load on board one of the UK's odder transport aircraft, a chartered former RAF Shorts Belfast. Another of the gargantuan aircraft arrives to load the three Gazelle light helicopters of 25 Helicopter Flight for the transit to Central America.