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Old 03-31-2022, 03:27 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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March 31, 1997

A really busy day considering that there is nothing in the canon!

TF 40.1 (the Lexington and her escorts) is ordered north to counter Soviet raiders operating out of Cuba.

In Oakland, California the Victory Ship Hannibal Victory exits the shipyard and moves to the commercial terminal to load bulk food for Korea, while the freighter Joseph Lykes moves to the Concord Naval Weapons Station to load ammunition for Korea.

The Vol'nyy, one of the Skory-class destroyers which broke out of Petropavlovsk earlier in the month, reaches the Philippines and finds cover in one of the thousands of islands, where it meets up with the Soviet fishing tanker Ust-Karsk, which has been hidden since the outbreak of the war.

Over Poland, a second night of NATO airstrikes, on a smaller scale than the night before, continues the effort to disrupt the Polish transportation network and attrit Pact formations close to the front.

Command arrangements for the forthcoming offensive into Poland are finalized. Nine NATO Corps are split between the three German armies (four corps in First German Army, three in Second and two in the Third), with each supported by an additional corps of German regulars, territorials and border guards in East Germany providing support). Logisticians limit the advance to 21 divisions, the most that the road and rail network can sustain. Engineer and artillery units are detached from the supporting German corps and brought to the front to support the assault across the Oder.

A retired Bundeswhehr Feldwebel, Wilhelm Schoenbohm, begins working on a design for an expedient 90mm anti-tank gun, using stored ordnance retired in the 1980s.

The final German jaeger divisions are formed: the 5th and 7th Grenzjaeger and the 11th, 14th and 15th Jaeger Divisions. The units are formed from the myriad regiments and brigades of territorial and border guard troops. Light on armored vehicles, artillery and heavy weapons, they will fight in close and built-up terrain and perform rear area and flank security roles.

Soviet forces raid Bornholm Island in the southern Baltic. The garrison is composed of three infantry battalions (two with trucks), an artillery battalion and a tank battalion with M-41 light tanks, mostly younger recalled reservists and conscripts due to Bornholm’s strategic position in the eastern Baltic. The combined Soviet-Polish force (the Polish 7th Marine Division and the Soviet Baltic Fleet's 336th Guards "Belostok" Marine Brigade) craters the runway at the airport and demolishes the tower and control center of the electronic intelligence facility on the island’s southeastern coast. Naval spetsnaz troops of the 4th Naval Spetsnaz Regiment (landed by hovercraft from Baltiysk) attack the Danish command’s communications facility and jam their mobile radios, allowing the Pact force to withdraw before the Danes can mount a coordinated counterattack.

The British amphibious force south of Teriberka force masses and overruns the Soviet outposts, but is soon rocked by a mechanized counterattack by the 76th Guards Airborne Division, supported by their contingent of BMD armored fighting vehicles, sweeping in on the southern flank, nearly cutting the road. Under pressure, the Royal Marines wheel and drive the Soviet paratroops back from the road, calling up the US Marine’s mechanized vehicles, laden with the Dutch battalion. NATO artillery and airstrikes break up the Soviet force’s integrity, but when the American armored vehicles arrive the sun has gone down, forcing an all-night hunt for individual vehicles, a hunt complicated when heavy American tanks bog down when they leave the road. Soviet artillery rains on the American armored force, and while the position is held NATO’s momentum is lost and the front freezes in place, in a mirror reflection of the stalemate to the west along the Litsa.

Dutch naval minesweepers clear the area around the damaged Norwegian bulker Star Hansa outside of Rotterdam, and clear three more mines that had been laid earlier in the month by a Soviet submarine. Following the clearance, tugs are able to tow the damaged ship into port.

Additional Dutch minesweepers, in cooperation with their British counterparts, sweep the path of the Coral Sea battle group as it transits the North Sea. (The carrier's squadrons make their combat debut in the evening's airstrikes over Poland).

The Soviet Kilo-class submarine B-177 sinks the German-owned cargo ship Trina as it approached Mersin, Turkey. The Trina was carrying 200 containers of food, ammunition and parts from Israel.

A Soviet raider sinks the American transport Margaret Lykes in the North Atlantic.

Seventeen General Staff officers are shot by the KGB for insubordiantion.

The Victor I-class submarine K-469 arrives off the port of Kamsar, Guinea and nearly immediately sinks the (Japanese-owned but) Liberian-flagged Massy Phoenix, departing with over 35,000 tons of Bauxite aboard.
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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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