[chico20854]

February 10, 1997

Denmark declares war on the Soviet Union following the prior dayss (and weeks') attacks on Danish facilities and ships.

Unofficially:

The Freedom-class cargo ship Wisconsin Freedom is delivered in Beaumont, TX and the Indiana Freedom is delivered in Pascagoula, MS.

The 56th Brigade, 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania National Guard) completes Rotation 97-4 at NTC-2 at the Yakima Training Center and is declared combat ready.

The escort carrier USS Shangri-La (CVHE-3) is commissioned at the Charleston Navy Yard. A week prior it had been a Korean-flag container ship.

The Canadian Navy commissions the patrol-minesweeper Nanaimo in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She begins a transit through the Panama Canal to British Columbia, joining westbound Convoy 117 for the first part of the trip.

There's chaos in the North Sea as simultaneous explosions on five offshore oil platforms disrupt production from the Forties oil field, the largest in the British sector of the North Sea.

The Soviet 2nd and 4th Guards Tank Armies halt their offensive actions, while their reserve formations construct hasty field fortifications. For the first time in a week, the front lines of the Oder bridgeheads are quiet.

The Soviet 1077th Ski Regiment grows to five battalions of all-female volunteers, mostly from the Leningrad area. The new battalion joins the rest of the unit patrolling 18th Army's open southern flank southwest of Murmansk as NATO troops push eastward.

Naval clash in the Aegean between the Greek and Turkish navies, when the Turkish 3rd Assault Boat Flotilla sorties into the Aegean and engages a Greek Surface Action Group composed of the destroyers Kanaris and Lonchi. Both destroyers are overwhelmed by Turkish SSMs and sink, taking down the Turkish missile boat Pelikan with them. An air battle follows overhead, when Greek A-7s swoop in, sink the Turkish missile boats Sismek and Gurbet, and are subsequently set upon by Turkish F-4s. Two A-7s are lost, and when Greek F-4s intervened one of each nation's Phantoms are downed before the engagement finally ends, 45 minutes after the first shot was fired.

Soviet bombers strike Brasov, Romania, hitting the ordnance plant once again. US Army Patriot missiles down two more Backfire bombers.

In Kaliningrad, the KGB arranges a meeting of the East German Communist Party, including party officials who fled reunited Germany, party members who were travelling elsewhere in the USSR and Warsaw Pact, political officers of East German Army units fighting in China and a number of officials arrested by the KGB during the retreat from East Germany. Following a script written by the KGB in Moscow, the Party meeting expels all SED members who supported or participtated in the reunification campaign and called for the formation of "Liberation Armed Forces" to free all of Germany from revanchist imperialist NATO-allied German authorities.