[chico20854]

May 24, 1997

The Polish 6th Air Assault Division arrives in Czestochowa.

The lead elements of Panzergruppe Oberdorff begin Operation Rampart, advancing from Wroclaw to Olesnica and then to Namyslow. From Namyslow they will push on to Olesno via Kluczbork.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Pittsburgh Freedom is delivered in Beaumont, Texas and the Richmond Freedom is delivered in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The container-barge carrier Chengchow Carrier is delivered in Mobile, Alabama.

A patrol from the MP company guarding the Bedford, Pennsylvania POW camp (now with three prisoners present), led by the company commander, detains three local teenagers on suspicion of spying for the USSR.

The American aerial barrage on North Korea continues, with the first night of coordinated US and ROK efforts to beat back North Korean air defenses in the rear area behind the front line. American aircraft carriers launch their aircraft from the Yellow Sea, exploiting the corridor blasted open leading to Pyongyang before turning south to strike North Korean anti-aircraft missile and gun sites. B-52s of the 320th Bomb Wing fly far overhead, blanketing vast acreage with unguided high explosive bombs to eliminate small- and medium-caliber gun positions, while F-111s of the 27th Tactical Fighter Wing strike command and control and communications facilities with precision guided bombs. USAF and ROKAF fighter-bombers ride escort to the bombers and stand ready to engage any North Korean fighters that may emerge from their underground hangars. As the fighters return to friendly lines, 8th Army field artillery fires a additional volleys to suppress the defenses. The mission is largely successful, but the fighter-bomber forces suffer nearly a dozen losses to the vast numbers of anti-aircraft guns and one F-16 struck by a stray 155mm artillery round when the pilot, nursing a wounded bird, crossed the demarcation line into the active artillery zone.

The Polish 4th Army, with three mechanized and one armored divisions, counterattacks against the US 2nd Armored Division, advancing southwest out of the Tuchol Forest surrounding Chojnice. The American division is pursuing fleeing Polish troops into the area and is isolated from the rest of the corps. (The 1st ID is on the other side of the forest and 1st Cavalry is farther west and to the rear). The Polish commander has set up a trap for the American division, which is soon in contact all along its northern and eastern perimeter. The American Abrams are able to hold off the attacking lines of Polish tanks, while the artillery battalions report that they will be able to keep the guns going, but that the daily resupply convoy has been halted by a series of ambushes to the west and that there is only 12 hours of reserve ammunition on hand.

In central Poland, the 1st Guards Tank Army throws its last reserve formation, the 734th Independent Tank Regiment, into the gap between it and the 4th Guards Tank Army to its north, while the 11th Guards Army moves west from the Warsaw area to help halt the drive of the advancing US V and British II Corps.

American Green Berets withdraw from the area around the Saami village of Lovozero on the Kola Peninsula. They continue to train Saami nationalists in Norway, and operate throughout the Kola using a network of safehouses operated by sympathetic Saami, highly paid dissenters and criminals (often the same) and abandoned structures, in an ongoing cat and mouse game against Soviet internal troops.

Naval base workers begin minor repairs to the Sierra II-class nuclear submarine K-336 in Gremikha on the far eastern part of the Kola Peninsula.

Danube Front, composed of Soviet and Hungarian units attacking Romania from Hungary, and Southern Front (Pact forces in Bulgaria) begin preparatory fires for an upcoming coordinated attack on Romanian, Jugoslav and Turkish forces in the Balkans.

XVIII Airborne Corps begins ferrying the guns of the 434th Field Artillery Brigade (US Army Reserve) across the Persian Gulf into Iran, reinforcing the 24th Infantry Division.

The Air Detachment of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 58 arrive on Diego Garcia aboard a trio of Air Force transports to begin restoring the base to a suitable level of operating capability. A P-3 of VP-4 locates the Buliny nearly 550 nm to the southeast and orbits out of SAM range. When it runs low on fuel it is replaced by another aircraft from the squadron, and after nearly six hours a B-52G of the 65th Bomb Squadron arrives on the scene, firing four AGM-142 Have Nap missiles at the Soviet destroyer, ending its long raid across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

The detachment from the MVD 16th Convoy Brigade which dropped off 45 prisoners for "front parole" receives a contingent of 75 NATO enlisted prisoners for transfer to the MVD's vast camp system. (The MVD's camps have two populations intermixed - Soviet criminals (including political prisoners of all stripes, from ethnic nationalists to prisoners of conscience) and Prisoners of War captured on the various battlefields around the world. At this point there are few NATO prisoners, but the camps are already filled with Chinese and Iranian POWs captured over the preceding two years.