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Old 05-10-2009, 04:10 PM
Grimace Grimace is offline
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Well, truth be told, the Soviets hold the bread-basket of Alaska by holding the Anchorage area. Not only do they have access to port facilities, but they've got rivers that have fairly large salmon runs each year, AND they have the Matanuska Valley for growing their own foods. So food isn't necessarily one of their problems.

The range...distance...that constitutes Alaska probably has a large part to do with their lack of desire to make a push out of the Anchorage area. Where would they go to? North to Fairbanks to gain what? East into Canada to gain what? East to Canada to drive a really long distance south and into a well defended main body of the U.S.? Any of those options takes them away from the resources they have, away from port facilities where they still might get a meager trickle of supplies (if any), and puts them across not only vast distances where they have to expend precious fuel, but also into terrain not suitable for a lot of offensive actions.

The funny part is, as hard as it would be to fight their way out of the Anchorage area, at the same time it's equally hard for the U.S. forces to keep the Soviets hemmed in there. Sure they could have the passes covered during the summer. But come winter time, maintaining those chokepoints is going to get harder and harder. Without supplies coming in through Anchorage and any place on the Kenai Peninsula, everything would have to come up via the very long land route, or by plane. Both would be something that would get less and less common as the war went on. Places like Fairbanks, while having a great military base, would be without food and fuel in a very short time and would need everything shipped in from a very, very long way away.

So yes, while it might be hard for the Soviets, it would be even tougher on the Americans trying to hold the Soviets in.
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