[chico20854]

September 16, 1997

Nothing in the canon for today. Unofficially,

As tensions in the city of Boston subside, the 43rd MP Brigade (Rhode Island National Guard) is able to withdraw the last of its troops from the streets.

BMSA Cutler, after a week working on the under-construction USS Makin Island in Brownsville, Texas, has discovered that the construction program on the ship is a disorganized mess. Construction of the ship is the responsibility of the shipyard, but the yard is short of workers (many of its prewar staff has been called up for military service and the Navy will not authorize the employment of Mexican day laborers who cross the Rio Grande daily). The Navy has made numerous changes to the ship's design as lessons learned from its sisters are received; while welcomed by the Navy the changes slow construction and often result in costly re-work. Delivery of required equipment, supplies and materiel is often delayed. Cutler realizes that the Navy is using the pre-commissioning unit to hang on to excess trained personnel - the unit is approaching half of the ship's complement in size yet should be less than 20 percent given the state of construction progress. The unit itself is a mess, a poorly organized mishmash of raw recruits, resentful recalled inactive reservists and shell-shocked survivors of naval battles around the world; each day the available sailors are assigned to "augment" the shipyard workforce. There is considerable tension between the sailors and the civilian workforce, not helped by the grumbling of senior managers on both sides who blame each other for the lack of progress on the ship.

The first British officer candidates report for training. Many come from the same universities that had anti-draft riots last week.

With Warsaw liberated, NATO forces in retreat along a broad front and Krakow, Torun and Gdansk all under Pact control, the Romanian front on the verge of collapse and additional Soviet units arriving from China each day, SACEUR orders the execution of Operation Barnyard Tiger - a massive interdiction strike. Over a three-hour period, NATO nuclear forces from four nations (the US, UK, Canada and Turkey) strike 26 rail bridges across the Dniester, Bug and Neman Rivers in the western USSR as well as six rail facilities in eastern Poland and western Ukraine and Byelorussia. The attacks sever the rail lines between the Baltic and Black Seas, isolating Warsaw Pact forces to the west of those targets from rail connections to the rest of the USSR.

The USS Olympia begins searching for the SSBN that the Akula was protecting.

In Romania, the 6th Guards Tank Army begins fighting through the valley of the Olt River, Gorge which carries a highway and railroad through the Carpathian Mountains, connecting Transylvania with the Danube plain. The valley is defended by highly motivated Romanian troops, who lack heavy weapons and are short of supplies. The Soviet formation takes heavy losses from attacks from overhead, and is forced to divert considerable combat power to defending its supply lines as well, since it seems that every town, village and hamlet that it has captured harbors armed civilians or Romanian stragglers that are more than happy to take shots at passing supply trucks.

USS Independence, tied dockside in Muscat, Oman following a torpedo attack, is struck by an AS-4 missile launched in a Backfire raid. The hit disables an elevator, further delaying the ship's return to operational status.

The 48th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized), reinforced with 4th Marine Division's 4th and 8th Tank Battalions and 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, breaks through the 201st Motor-Rifle Division's perimeter, overruns the forward airfield at Sirjan and breaks northwest towards 1st Marine Division.

Regional military commissariat officials arrive in central Ukraine to re-form the survivors of the nuclear strike on the 341st (my 22nd Guards) Tank Division into a useful military unit and organize the salvage of useful vehicles and equipment from the sites where the division's trains were struck by a dozen American nuclear warheads.