[chico20854]

October 17, 1997

NATO nuclear strikes target an array of industrial sites in Silesia to ensure that the Polish communist government cannot mobilize them. (The speed of the German Third Army's withdrawal from the region did not permit a thorough demolition of the sites). The Bytom-Katowice-Sosnowiec-Chorzow-Zabrze industrial conurbation is leveled by 2 megatons from a submarine-launched ballistic missile and Gliwice by a trio of 200 kt bombs.

Unofficially,

The light frigate USS Harveston is delivered in Panama City, Florida and manned by USCG personnel.

Stavka orders the battered 58th Air Assault Brigade to redeploy from Manchuria, where it has largely been on occupation duty, to Austria, to help secure the restive mountains. The unit, which lost its BMD armored airborne fighting vehicles in the 1995-6 campaigns, is able to rapidly redeploy aboard Aeroflot airliners, with its heavy equipment filling a number of Military Transport Aviation's carefully husbanded An-22 and An-124 heavy lifters.

The Whiskey-class submarine S-392, returning from a successful patrol in the Bering Sea (where it sank an oiler and the frigate USS Davidson during the 2nd Battle of Kamchatka) strikes a mine while returning to its homeport of Petropavlovsk. It is never determined if the mine was Soviet or American.

1st Shock Army throws its 321st Motor-Rifle Division at XI Corps' attack force, now nearly back to its start lines. The veteran American troops savage the Soviet division, which was formed of Zampolits in training, Ukrainian workers and peasants, prisoners rushed to the front on “combat parole”, the MVD guards who escorted them to the front and whatever other semi-able-bodied men that could be found on the streets of Lvov, poorly equipped and exhausted from months of fighting across Poland. As the Soviet formation falls back to friendly lines, XI Corps' 151st Field Artillery Brigade (South Carolina National Guard) hits the exposed infantry with a trio of W82 "neutron bombs" that rip the formation apart.

The 134th Guards Motor-Rifle Regiment, the remnant of the 45th Guards Motor-Rifle Division that survived the Kola Campaign, is pulled back to the Leningrad area, where it is felt the presence of loyal veterans would help the MVD maintain order.

The first sub-units of the 53rd Guards Motor-Rifle Division arrive in Romania. The weak Category C division from the Kiev Military District took so long to get ready for deployment that it missed active fighting against Romanian Army units. The division is assigned to 6th Guards Tank Army, serving as the occupation force for the city of Dej.

The damaged American aircraft carrier USS Independence arrives in Dubai, where shipyard workers, assisted by US Navy sailors, are preparing the giant drydock there to accept the ship.

The dazed and confused survivors of the 321st (my 252nd) Motor-Rifle Division are distributed to other units in 1st Ukrainian Front.