[chico20854]

October 20, 1997

The airship Columbia crashes in the Ozark Mountains in the early hours of the day. Columbia's altimeter is an old model which worked by reading air pressure, replacing a more modern laser altimeter which had been removed several days before because of a technical fault. The pilot knows about the change; the air pressure altimeter gives altitude from sea level rather than from the ground, a fact which has to be taken into account by the pilot during flight. Lack of sleep, the strain of handling the unfamiliar airship in the darkness, and the fear that he might at any moment be blown from the air by a stray nuclear explosion all contribute to pilot error. As the airship approaches the Ozark Mountains, the severe low-pressure zone of a nearby, rapidly building thunderstorm causes the altimeter to give consistently higher readings than it should. The mountainous region of northern-central Arkansas averages 1,500 to 2000 feet above sea level with peaks reaching to 2300 feet or more. Columbia rises to 2800 feet to clear the mountains, but at 2800 feet in that low-pressure weather cell her altimeter reads 3400 feet. The pilot, not wishing to go too high, cuts back on the power to bring the ship lower. Columbia flies into the side of a mountain, effectively ending her journey 9,500 miles short of her goal. Damage is surprisingly light. The airframe is twisted and damaged enough that Columbia will never fly again, but her cargo is intact, and only three people (engineers working among the gas cells, who had fallen on impact) are killed. Her speed, fortunately, is low enough, and the angle of collision shallow enough, that she merely bulldozes a path through a patch of pine timber and comes to rest in the heavily wooded semi-wilderness between Harrison and Osage, Arkansas. New American soldiers are there, guns drawn, almost before the Heliumair people had crawled clear of the wreckage.


Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Omaha Freedom is delivered in Portland, Oregon and the tanker Aucilla is delivered in Erie, Pennsylvania.

The 292nd Motor-Rifle Division, a mobilization-only division from the Siberian Military District formed from the faculty and student body of the Tomsk Higher Command School of Communications, has advanced over 450 kilometers from its start line in Inner Mongolia. The division’s vehicles have run out of gas and is out of radio contact with headquarters. The division commander, General Piskunov, forms a laager of the vehicles and heavy weapons and leaves it under the command of his deputy and continues the advance on foot, taking most of his young charges with him.

As Allied forces in North Korea continue to give ground, Soviet troops of the 35th Army enter the norther outskirts of Pyongyang.

The 85th Tank Training Regiment, which despite its name is a veteran formation with years of combat experience in China, arrives in Poland, assigned to the 11th Guards Tank Division, replacing one of that division's battered regiments. The survivors of the 43rd (my 274th) Motor-Rifle Davison reach friendly lines; less than 700 survive.

An article in Der Spiegel blows open the German government's covert efforts to obtain more armor for the embattled Bundeswehr. The article reveals that there have been secret shipments of Leopard II tanks from Switzerland (which was producing the type under license), TAM tanks from Argentina and BMPs from Israel. The revelations cause considerable controversy, more in the supplier countries (who fear their neutrality being revealed as compromised), nearly leading to the fall of the Swiss government.

In a highly unusual operation, a pair of NATO's most modern diesel submarines - HMS Ursula and HNLMS Bruinvis - penetrate the defenses of the Murmansk fjord and attack the Soviet Gadzhiyevo Naval Base. They succeed in sinking three moored submarines - the reactivating Whiskey-class boats S-286 and S-381 and the Kilo-class Vologodskiy Komsomolets, but their greatest success is in collapsing entrance to one of the tunnels drilled into the mountainside, trapping two Delta-class SSBNs, the K-487 and K-472, inside.

The USSR launches a flurry of attacks on NATO air bases in Turkey in a bid to knock them out of the war. Konya Air Base is struck by two SS-12 Scaleboard missiles armed with nuclear warheads. The attack devastates the base's infrastructure and destroys the rump headquarters of the 487th Tactical Missile Wing as well as the wing's technical support elements and three Ground Launch Cruise Missiles and their launchers. The bases at Batman, Erhac, Eskisehir and Afyon are also hit, while the Dutch air defense battery at Incirlik manages to shoot down an incoming SS-12 with a Patriot missile. The attacks are generally successful in destroying the bases' infrastructure and in some cases cutting the runway; however they are not intense enough to crack open hardened aircraft shelters. Nevertheless, the loss of the other bases facilities and effect on the airmen's morale is sufficient to reduce the NATO air presence over the country to a nuisance rather than a threat to Soviet operations.

The commander of the 302nd Guards Tank Regiment, all that remains of the 341st (my 22nd Guards) Tank Division in central Ukraine, issues orders to prepare to depart for the front in the Balkans. He is shocked when his junior officers report that the enlisted men are mutinous and are unlikely to follow his orders. He demands a meeting with a delegation of the men.