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Old 06-15-2022, 01:21 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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June 9, 1997

Nothing official for the day!

The peace talks in New Delhi continue, largely fruitlessly. At the end of the day, the lead Soviet negotiator (an experienced diplomat with decades of experience negotiating arms control agreements with the Americans) is recalled to Moscow.

The NATO Nuclear Planning Group decides to transfer weapons withdrawn from Italy to Turkey; if the front in Jugosalvia and Romania stabilizes enough to support American custodial units then those countries will be reinforced with tactical nuclear artillery shells, rockets and bombs.

The 347th Strategic Missile Squadron loads its vehicles (a mix of soft-skinned trucks and HMMWVs, M-750 armored cars and four Hardened Mobile Launchers) onto train cars for transit to Nevada from Gowen Field, Idaho, where it had been training for several months.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army launches a general offensive along the entire front line. Dug-in Soviet artillery batteries are attacked by infiltrators, and anti-Soviet partisans launch hundreds of attacks on Soviet supply convoys throughout occupied Manchuria. An air raid by F-16s of the American AVG II drops the bridges over the Sungari River at Harbin using Paveway laser-guided bombs, cutting the rail line supporting 1st Far Eastern Front.

Panzergruppe Westhoven, consisting of the 5th Panzer Division, 26th Panzergrenadier Division, elements of the US 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment and several West German jaeger divisions, breaks northeast through the scattered Polish detachments left behind by the retreating Soviets and captures Tomaszow. The lead elements report no enemy troops to the front.

Along the Baltic Coast, 1st Polish Army begins establishing a defensive line on the east bank of the Wisla. The 116th Armored Cavalry Regiment (Idaho National Guard) starts moving eastward, continuing Third German Army's conquest of Silesia.

Prince Jungi's mechanized force in northern Finland continues moving east, crossing over into the Soviet Union on a lonely gravel road. His detachment struggles to maintain its progress, relying on the handful of poor roads with an improvised logistic force. His tanks, which consume vast quantities of fuel, tear up the roads and require extensive maintenance support while proving vulnerable to ambushes while road-bound in the forested swamps of Lapland.

To the north along the Litsa, Allied troops make little progress. Each attack is met with furious resistance, bolstered by massed fire from mortars, artillery, rockets and anti-aircraft guns, burning through 18th Army’s stocks of artillery ammunition while 18th Army's deputy commander for the rear calls every contact he has in Leningrad, Murmansk and Moscow seeking more. The 116th and 77th Guards MRDs hold against the advancing Norwegians, with battalions from the reserve regiment launching local counterattacks whenever the NATO troops capture one of the hilltop outposts. Dug-in troops from the 76th Guards Airborne and Division Polyarnyy likewise turn back the American 6th Infantry’s attacks from the relative comfort of their fighting positions.

As the battered Strike Fleet Atlantic withdraws to the western Barents Sea, the surviving aircraft manage to sink the last operational Northern Fleet capital ship, the Admiral Lobov, finally achieving the prewar strategic goal of suppressing the Soviet fleet.

photo
The Soviet Kilo-class sub K-871 sinks the British frigate HMS Kent in the North Sea.

Soviet troops once again are forced to slow their advance in Romania as their tanks and vehicles run low on fuel and their artillery digs deep into their reserve stocks of ammunition. The Romanian government throws additional troops into the effort to halt the Soviet advance, while Jugoslavia dispatches its 37th Corps to reinforce the effort along the Danube.

In Iran, the Battle of Bandar Abbas continues even as the flow of American reinforcements continues. The defending Soviet paratroopers keep the airport and piers at the city's port under mortar fire, disrupting the effort the use those facilities to support and reinforce the Allied effort. Soviet troops have taken to sheltering in the city's buildings and the division headquarters moves to a location between a mosque and a hospital, limiting the ability of the USS Salem's big guns to attack it.

Flights of C-141 and C-5 transports arrive in Honduras to load the paratroopers of the 71st Airborne Brigade for immediate deployment to Romania.
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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