[chico20854]

August 17, 1997

Kenya’s six F-5E and two F-5F’s prove themselves superior to the Tanzanian Air Force, destroying fifteen Tanzanian aircraft in fierce air battles over Nairobi and Mombasa while losing three F-5E and one F-5F in the process.

Unofficially,

An international incident occurs outside Wichita Falls, Texas when a when a platoon of the 4th Texas Brigade (a state guard unit) stops a convoy of Soviet POWs being escorted by US Air Force security police to a work site, overpowers the guards and beats a dozen of the prisoners in retaliation for the outbreak of nuclear warfare in Europe.

As the Des Moines battlegroup in the Sea of Japan uses its guns to support the Marines of the 1st MEB and their Korean allies as they slowly withdraw along the North Korean coast it is attacked by an enemy submarine group. A helicopter from the frigate George Philip detects a sub contact and chases it down, assisted by a SH-60 helicopter from the destroyer Fletcher. After nearly 45 minutes, three torpedoes are dropped and the submarine, a North Korean Romeo-class boat, is sunk. Unfortunately, while the battlegroup command was concentrating on the North Korean boat a second sub, the Soviet Kilo-class boat B-175, slipped closer to the battle group, taking advantage of the shallow water and difficult coastal currents. The Soviet sub fires a spread of straight-running Type 53-66 torpedoes at the Des Moines; luckily (for the Americans) all of them miss after the cruiser makes a (pre-ordered) turn. A lookout aboard the ship sights the torpedoes and sounds the alarm, sending the whole battlegroup on alert. Despite hours of frantic searching, B-175 is able to escape, its commander intent on striking Des Moines in a future encounter.

A task force of Dutch marines assault a farmhouse where members of the Dutch Red Army have taken hostages. The terrorists and their hostages are killed. This is that last combat action against the Dutch Red Army, which has been broken by months of aggressive counterterror operations on the part of Dutch intelligence, police and special forces.

In Bavaria, the Soviet 21st Army assumes responsibility for the sector between the Italians and the Czechs, facing NATO forces from Regensburg to Ingolstadt. That permits the Italians to shift forces west to attempt to outflank the dug-in defenders of Augsburg and reinforce the westernmost drive into Baden-Wurttemberg, which is bogged down by the US XX Corps west of the Iller River.

Convoy 418 from Oman to US arrives off Capetown, South Africa. The Victory ship Wayne Victory is one of 38 cargo ships and tankers, escorted by but two escorts, the British frigate Juno and the destroyer USS Kincaid, in the convoy.

The US Navy's Patrol Hydrofoil Missile Squadron Two begins operations along the west coast of Italy, seeking to keep the Italian fleet off balance and prevent it from breaking south into the Mediterranean shipping routes.

In Sicily, six F-111Fs of the 495th Tactical Fighter Squadron arrive at Comiso airbase, which it had attacked just weeks before, and begins using the base to fly strike missions against targets on the Italian mainland and in western Greece.

The Albanian secret police, the Sigurimi, hold a hasty trial for the former minister of defense. He is quickly convicted of being a quadruple agent, working for the USSR, China and NATO to cripple the valiant Albanian people's efforts to defend themselves in a world bent on destroying its only true Marxist state.