[Southernap]

Okay so if we are talking about the convoy and its loses while in route lets pull somethings apart and think about this logically.

The presumption that any RO/RO ships would have survived post 1997 is interesting. Even more so based on how the write ups of the naval combat in the core rule book, "Last Submarine" trilogy, "Gateway to the Spanish Main", "Going Home" and the various Challenge write ups. Effectively all the pre-war fast supply ships and most modern merchant ships are sitting at the bottom of the ocean either from hostile attack or from being caught in port when the nuclear strikes were occurring. Nearly all of them agree that the major fleets of the pre-war era have quit to exist and that there are very few of the warring nations and neutral shipping in the combat zones that exists above small intra-coastal shipping. Anything that seems to go across the world is doing so at great risk to not only breaking down when it arrives or to attack by whatever lays out there past the edge of the "known" world.

If we are talking about the US trying to pull together some shipping, then we are talking about then for the US Department of Transportation Maritime Administration National Defense Ready Reserve Fleet, the ships at the various "Ghost Fleet" stations, such as one at James River, VA located near Fort Eustis in the Chesapeake Bay. The other locations at least in pre-1989 timeline would have included:

• Beaumount Texas
• Suisan Bay, CA
• Long Beach, CA
• Bremeton, WA
• Buzzard Bay, MA
• Philadelphia, PA
• Norfolk, VA
• Newport News, VA
• Alameda, CA
• Baltimore, MD
• New Orleans, LA
• James River, VA

Which again most of these regions have a nuclear strike at or very nearby them in 1997 and therefore aren't giving up much. The few in non-targeted zones probably have the wrong types of ships to move any armor of any healthy amount successfully and rapidly offload it.

That list of places is just to name a few places. I have been near the one in the James river about 15 yrs ago. Which is a great place to go fishing. If you can do it and not get hassled by the game warden or security Most of the ships then were retired 1970s or some 1980s era bulk freighters or old freighters that were still using King Post cranes. Which is how the old amphibious cargo ships could do offload things like tanks into landing craft or on to piers. Most of them were poorly maintained and more then a few were slowly sinking at their anchorages due to poor maintenance.

So that said, we are probably looking in late 1997-1998 time frame. So very old cobble together freighters that use bulk cargo loading options and if we are lucky maybe a single larger more modern containerized freighter, but that is going to be on the very small size compared to ones that would have been in services in lines like Marsek or such in the period right before the war.
___________________________________
Okay all that said, so potential threats to the convoy post 2000 from naval units. All through the second page of this thread is the assumption about submarines. So lets talk about who had submarines and who didn't

Here are some nations during the Cold War from the Eastern North American Seaboard to Yugoslavia/Jugoslavia coast that has submarines

• Cuba
• France
• Spain
• Libya
• Italy
• Greece
• Turkey
• Egypt
• Canada

Out of that list only the French have nuclear powered submarines. The rest of those nations use some diesel-electric power for their submarines. The Cuban, Egyptian, Libyan submarines are some variant of a Soviet Whiskey or Foxtrot class. While the Greeks and Turks both had damned near clones of Type 209 submarine that was built by the Germans in the 1960s. That isn't an exhaustive list either, nearly all the major naval powers of South America had a submarine of either US WW2 vintage or some licensed copy of a German Type 206/209.

Trying to find a diesel-electric is a serious PITA. Let me put it this way as a good descriptor of ASW combat against a capable submarine, put your ear to your flashlight with the light on and try to hear the battery running.
___________________________________

It seems like a sideshow. I can't understand why, in terms of strategy, either the US or Soviet Union sent forces there (especially the latter, given that its new Warsaw Pact allies, the Italians and Greeks had already defeated the Yugoslavs and ignited internecine warfare.

So Yugoslavia/Jugoslavia (pick a dang spelling preference) was a weird country during the cold war. It was socialist, Tito was a socialist, however it was never fully went full bore in with the Soviets. If I remember reading the history right, Tito went from killing Germans to killing the NKVD for being the sons of unmarried women that they were. Going even further into the height of the Cold War during the period of Detente there was attempts by various presidents from Nixon on to woo Tito on over to our side or at least go non-aligned, but lean towards the socialists. Similar the Soviets tried to woo Tito to fully come on their team. Offering loans, arms, advisors and even offering to train their officers. One of the most famous ones that I know of is Milan Vego. So there is much more to the politics at the time that the game was being drafted with regards to Yugoslavia in the grander scheme of the Cold War.

So I think far from it being a side show, there was a feeling that ownership of Yugoslavia would have allowed for further control into the Carpathians and into the oil production areas around Poletsi as well major industrialized regions along the Danube and into what amounts to be Hungry, Czech, Southern Germany regions of heavy industry and arms manufacturing. Again owership of those regions and plants like Škoda would have been useful to again continued the war with weapons and heavy weapons like tanks or even some tankettes.


That is just my two shiny Lincoln heads on the whole matter.