[chico20854]

December 7, 1997

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Despite the chaos in Los Angeles, the first members of the 10th California Cadet Brigade begin to rally at their designated mobilization point, the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach. Many of the boys have armed themselves at some point in their travels.

Soviet missiles strike the Scottish naval bases at Rosyth and Faslane, where a number of British, American and even Dutch submarines are undergoing badly needed post-voyage repairs. The attack submarines USS Olympia, USS Alexandria, HMS Superb and HNLMS Tijgerhaai are lost, as is the aged British boomer HMS Repulse.

A B-2 bomber of the 529th Bomb Squadron, following up on the launch of the SS-20 against Alaska a few hours before, locates the Soviet launcher as it is reloading with a new missile and hits them with a B61 10-kiloton bomb, destroying the launcher and a part of the 586th Guards Missile Regiment's support force.

Having dealt a heavy blow to American refining on the 5th, the Soviets renew their attacks, this time targeting the east Texas and Louisiana oil industry. A pair of SS-18s of the 41st Guards Missile Division, from Alyesk in Central Asia, are launched and release 20 MIRVs. Nineteen explode, striking the petroleum center of Beaumont, Nederland and Port Arthur, the Port Allen and Baton Rouge refineries, the Garyville and St. Charles, Louisiana refineries, the Lake Charles and Westlake refinery complex, and the lone refineries at Convent, Louisiana, Belle Chase, Louisiana and Pascagoula, Mississippi. The attacks ignite massive firestorms that, fed by the thousands of tons of petroleum products, will burn for days and destroy entire towns. The shipyards in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Pascagoula are destroyed by fire, the ships under construction reduced to burned-out, twisted steel.

The 428th Field Artillery Brigade (US Army Reserve), in southern Denmark after months of action in outside Warsaw, is in appalling shape. The barrels of the howitzers are worn out by thousands of rounds and the engines and suspensions of the M110s need overhaul. The towed guns should have been scrapped according to prewar standards. While its parent XXIII Corps remains on the front lines, the unit is able to obtain spare parts and barrels for its M114 guns from Danish Army stockpiles as well as a handful of older-model 8-inch howitzer barrels found in the weeds behind a storehouse, allowing the unit to downgrade a single battery to M110s instead of the more modern M110A2 model.

A pair of Minuteman III missiles strike Novosibirsk, hitting the headquarters of the Siberian Military District, Sukhoi aircraft plant, bioweapons facility, tank plant and other military industry.

A DC-10 packed with heroin and cocaine, cash and gold krugerrands, crashes after missing the runway at Pearls Airport on Grenada while trying to land in an early morning thunderstorm.