June 7, 1997
Today is the final day of Battle of Czestochowa; the NATO assault on the Jasna Gora begins at 0100 and by 0430 American and German troops have reached the top of the hill. After a discussion with the American commander about a parlet, at dawn the Jasna Gora monastery is demolished. The Polish 6th Air Assault Division is destroyed as 300 survivors break out to join the 12th Tank Division and 230 Polish paras surrender. The Polish commander dies of his wounds and Major Filipowicz, CO of 6th Engineer Battalion, is wounded in explosions.
On the Kola Peninsula, the long-awaited NATO drive on Murmansk commences. (see details below).
Unofficially,
The commander and command sergeant major of the 5th Training Brigade at Fort Dix, New Jersey are relieved of their duties as investigators uncover widespread trainee abuse in the unit's basic training companies.
The 301st Air Refueling Squadron on Okinawa reaches full strength, with eight KC-135R tankers assigned and six more tankers attached from Strategic Air Command units stateside. The SAC tankers are available to support tactical and airlift missions in Northeast Asia, but if needed for nuclear missions they will be instantly pulled, despite the potential loss of other command's aircraft if a mission is abandoned mid-flight.
Adding to the fighting in Asia, the Chinese People's Liberation Army infiltrates hundreds of small, squad-size groups through the Red Army's widely spaced positions along the thousands of kilometers of front line, while in Korea the slow, grinding Allied advance continues.
The Des Moines surface action group departs Pearl Harbor, bound for the Korean theater.
Further to the west, the US Pacific Fleet (and its allies) begins a major offensive against Petropavlovsk, the (First) Battle of Kamchatka. The American carriers Midway, Constellation, Kitty Hawk, Nimitz, and Stennis move toward the Kamchatka Peninsula with the twin goals of attacking airfields and Soviet naval units operating in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. The Soviets are much less suicidal in this battle compared to December's Battle of the Norwegian Sea, and loses are comparatively light. The Soviets primarily rely on hit and run tactics, with many attacks from all directions throughout the day, and these tactics disrupt flight operations enough for many Soviet ships to retreat to safety. The carrier USS Constellation is sunk by a successful coordinated attack by missiles and aircraft from the carrier Varyag, the Slava-class cruiser Oktyabrskskaya Revolutsia, the Victor III-class submarine K-305 and the Oscar II-class submarine K-456. The Nimitz, Kitty Hawk and several cruisers are damaged, with the Bunker Hill, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, as well as the nuclear-powered cruiser USS Bainbridge and missile cruiser USS Gridley sunk. Four destroyers and three frigates are also sunk, with several more damaged, and two attack submarines, USS Drum and USS Omaha, are lost. The Soviets in turn lose four cruisers, including the battlecruiser Yuri Andropov (leaving the Frunze as the only ship of the class remaining afloat) and the Varyag. The light carrier Minsk escapes with heavy damage (later destroyed when Fokino was nuked by China) while the Oktyabrskskaya Revolutsia escaped to Fokino with no damage (later sunk by the Japanese submarine Arashio, while trying to retreat north to a base on the Okhotsk Sea), as well as several destroyers and frigates sunk or damaged, and at least nine submarines are lost, including the K-305 and the K-456, responsible for sinking the Constellation. The battle ends pretty much as a tactical US marginal victory, but considering the strategic objectives, the Soviets can rightly claim a decisive strategic victory.
Polish defenders turn back yet another attack by the German 1st Panzer Division along the Hel Peninsula. The final units of the 2nd Guards Tank Army are evacuated from the Gdansk Pocket and troops from the Polish 1st Army follow.
In the NATO rear area, the 220th Military Police Brigade (US Army Reserve) crosses into Poland and joins other NATO rear area security units in escorting supply convoys, hunting down anti-NATO partisans and Soviet Spetsnaz teams, evacuating prisoners of war, rounding up NATO deserters and fighting black market activity, especially the sale of supplies to the civilian population.
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Operation Reindeer II, the NATO attack on the Murmansk area, starts ashore and at sea. Ashore, the offensive opens with an artillery barrage and limited air strikes against the Soviet air defenses, followed by an attack by British and American infantry (the US 6th Infantry Division, reinforced by the 2nd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets) on the Soviet salient west of the Litsa River. The initial assault is rebuffed by dug-in Soviet troops of the 76th Guards Airborne Division and 134th Guards Motor-Rifle Regiment, and a few hours later and 10km to the south the Norwegian 6th Division crosses the Litsa and climbs the hills defended by the 77th Guards MRD. A planned landing by heliborne troops from the US 6th Infantry Division is called off after Soviet BM-30 “Smerch” rockets strike the Luostari air base, riddling the massed transport helicopters with thousands of holes. (The 66th Anti-Aircraft Division’s heavy guns, which have been brought forward, would have wreaked havoc on the slow-flying helicopters had they attempted to overfly the front.) Soviet jamming units disrupt the communications between the attacking American troops and their supporting artillery battalions. While the American infantry units use advanced SINCGARS radios with frequency hopping, their supporting National Guard artillery batteries are equipped with 1960s-era single-channel radios, vulnerable to jamming. When the Litsa line was static, this limitation was overcome by use of wire communications, but the advancing infantry carry manpack SINCGARS radios. Northwest TVD’s electronic warfare regiment sets up powerful transmitters that disrupt the Allied communications, forcing attacking American troops to string wire behind them or use couriers to coordinate fire support.
US X Corps receives a new commander, kicked off his permanent replacement, Major General James Collins. Collins has previously held a staff position at the Pentagon (he had commanded 4th Infantry Division in 1994), where he had criticized X Corps’ “lackadaisical sashay on to Murmansk”; his appointment is the result of political pressure in the capital.
Further south, Norwegian troops cross the border into Finland in a bid to bypass the Soviet defenses along the Litsa. In Helsinki, the Norwegian ambassador requests a meeting with the Finnish government, timed for ten minutes before the NATO incursion crosses into Finnish territory, in order to present Helsinki with a fait accompli while still attempting to maintain some goodwill with the token warning. (It is also calculated that initial crossings by Norwegian troops would be less of an affront than American troops; hence Prince Jungi’s force leads Brave Sleigh while Norwegian border troops kicked off Stiff Elf). The Norwegian drive through northernmost Finland, Operation Brave Sleigh, advances from Karasjok, through Inari and into Soviet territory. Prince Jungi is in the lead Leopard I tank as the dragoons crosses into Finland, sweeping aside the token guard force on the border. A secondary drive further south moves east from the border hamlet of Angeli. From there it is a short distance to the crossroads at Inari and the airport at Ivalo. The Norwegian force covers that distance in a little less than 12 hours, culminating in an assault on the airport. Prince Jungi detaches a battalion to guard the village and block the highway to the south, sending the 8th Brigade northeast into the USSR. To the south, Operation Stiff Elf, the American-dominated effort, enjoys similarly rapid initial progress. The token Norwegian Army element, a company attached to the American 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry, is quickly overtaken by other units of the 10th Mountain Division as the American force rushes parallel to the Swedish border and east across Finland, determined to quickly strike into the USSR before the Soviet 26th Corps can mass enough troops to halt the lone division. 10th Mountain uses its remaining helicopters to land troops in advance of its forward units, securing crossroads and bridges that otherwise would have to be captured at great cost.
Offshore, Strike Fleet Atlantic sails east for its long-planned assault on Murmansk. The Wisconsin surface action group merges with the much-battered amphibious force moving along the coast while the aircraft carriers travel in a mass 150 miles/275 km offshore Hammerfest, consolidating behind the remaining escorts. Land-based aircraft from 12th Air Force and RAF launch raids to suppress Red Banner Northern Fleet’s ships and shore bases. Naval Aviation reconnaissance aircraft and Soviet satellites track the oncoming fleet, keeping Northern Fleet commander Admiral Popescu informed of the NATO force’s progress. The submarine pens along the coast empty and small attack craft disperse to inlets and bays along the coast. A detachment of heavy anti-aircraft guns from the 66th Division emplaced near the coast tears through the American minesweeping helicopter force; their losses force NATO units into narrower lanes through the Soviet minefields.
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The carrier force launches a massed air strike on Red Banner Northern Fleet’s anchorages and bases in the Kola. It is a disaster, the fleet taking huge losses from the reinforced PVO air defense force (missiles, guns and interceptors), losing over 60 percent of the attacking aircraft. While damage is done in the strike, at the end of the day Red Banner Northern Fleet has more facilities surviving than it needed for its remaining ships, while NATO’s vaunted Strike Fleet Atlantic’s air fleet has been shattered.
The iron ore carrier Berg Nord completes its delivery voyage, over six weeks after leaving the shipyard in Korea. The massive ship was forced to avoid the Suez Canal and is too large to transit the Panama Canal, resorting to traveling through Indonesian waters, transiting the Indian Ocean and rounding Cape Horn to enter the Atlantic.
The defenders of the Romanian city of Timisoara surrender as food supplies for the civilian population of over 300,000 are exhausted. The Romanian government scrambles to move additional troops to the country's southeast, where the open, flat terrain favors the more heavily mechanized Soviet force.
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Soviet aviation attacks the amphibious force off Bandar Abbas, forcing the abandonment of the rescue effort for the stricken frigate Nichols. The bombers also strike the transport Sea-Land Explore when Soviet missiles targeting the amphibious assault ship Belleau Wood lock onto the containership. Ashore, the 350th Guards Airborne Regiment launches a counterattack, riding their BMD Airborne Infantry Fighting Vehicles into the Marine's lines. The paratroops blast through the front-line battalions but soon bog down in more house to house fighting as every building becomes a potential ambush site hiding a Marine with a LAW or grenade launcher.
The KGB and MVD troops in Khabarovsk complete "processing" the mutineers of the 73rd (my 122nd Guards) and 294th Motor-Rifle Divisions. Both divisions are disbanded, their colors returned in shame to Moscow. Every officer over the rank of captain is executed and 1500 surviving enlisted men are sent to the front in penal battalions, to be expended in mass wave attacks on the Chinese. The only men who remain are nearly 250 KGB informants from the two divisions, who are rewarded for their loyalty with a week's leave, two liters of vodka and an assignment to the 70th Border Guard Brigade as replacements for those lost in the fighting. The last elements of the 73rd (my 192nd) Motor-Rifle Division depart the city, returning to garrisons west of Vladivostok to once again rebuild.
Indian border guards discover the Pakistani infiltrators and move to evict them. Gunfire soon erupts, and by sundown a full-fledged battle is raging.