[chico20854]

October 29, 1997

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Delegations from the Greek and Bulgarian military governments meet in Erdine, Turkey to delineate administration of occupied areas in Thrace as Soviet forces begin withdrawing from the region. Both nations had lost sovereignty over the region in wars earlier in the century; while allies in the fighting against the Turks and Jugoslavs the two nations are both desperate to regain the lost territories and too weak militarily and economically to fight the other over them.

Another three Army truck companies are activated, one each at Fort Eustis and Fort Leonard Wood, with the third forming at Camp Perry, Ohio, from volunteers from the civilian trucking industry.

Soviet forces of the 1st Far Eastern Front conclude the clearing the last remaining pocket of Chinese Army resistance, the remnants of the 31st Group Army that had been sheltering in Dandong at the mouth of the Yalu. The suppression of the Chinese troops, who fought with a tenacity driven by fatalism and hate, is a bloody effort, and following its conclusion 1st Far Eastern Front directs the diversion of some of the less battered formations to reinforce Yalu Front's efforts in adjacent North Korea

The first ships of the ragtag evacuation fleet carrying the remnants of the British 6th Division arrive in Kowloon.

Soviet nuclear forces strike the main NATO aerial ports that receive reinforcements - Frankfurt International Airport/Rhine Main Air Force Base, Luxembourg International Airport, Amsterdam-Schipol International Airport and Dusseldorf International Airport - with IRBMs and cruise missiles, halting reinforcement operations at the bases. Aircraft already in flight are directed to land at Gatwick, Prestwick and Stanstead airports in the UK, where an ad-hoc aerial ferry system is implemented using smaller civilian transports and USAF airlifters flying to smaller (and in many cases damaged) airfields in Germany and the eastern Netherlands.

Convoy 306 departs Jacksonville, Florida, with 18 loaded freighters, two tankers and six escorts as well as an umbrella of maritime patrol aircraft overhead.

A particularly heavy day of flights into the Tabriz bridgehead, taking advantage of heavy air tasking by 9th Air Force with cooperation from the IPA and the Saudi Air Force.

Detachment 1, 102nd Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron is declared operational at Mombasa International Airport, Kenya. Two of the squadron's HC-130 transports return to Gibraltar.