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Old 01-08-2022, 05:50 AM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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January 8, 1997

Feeling emboldened by Turkish success in Bulgaria, Cypriots of Turkish descent hold a rally in Nicosia. Some fly the Turkish flag, despite the reunification of the island in 1994. Greek youth heckle and jeer the rally, and the situation escalates into scuffles and broken glass.

Unofficially:

US Pacific Command launches Operation Steel Bandit - US Navy and USAF units, with support from allies, launch raid on Soviet naval station at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. The air strikes from the carriers Ranger and Abraham Lincoln and Clark AFB in the Philippines are nearly disastrous, but US Army Rangers from the 6th Ranger Battalion and allies land at the airfield and destroy vital facilities and tangling with responding troops from the 50th GMRD. Overall the costly raid is successful in halting the Soviets' use of the former US base for missions over the South China Sea and ferry bombing missions across China to Siberia.

The 163rd ACR (MT and TX NG) completes loading its troops, vehicles and heavy equipment on ships in Tacoma, Washington for transit to Korea. The group of ships is designated Convoy 205 and heads out that evening, escorted by a force of the destroyer Towers, frigate Lang and Coast Guard cutter Jarvis.

Remaining Pact troops are driven out of East German territory. German troops, a combination of the Schleswig-Holstein Territorial Command and East German 5 Armee, cross the Polish border west of Szczecin, intent on securing a solid front line along the Oder-Niesse line and giving the Polish Government in Exile a slice of Polish territory to bolster its legitimacy.

The Soviet destroyer Buliny, damaged early in the war in the Norwegian Sea but repaired and replenished, under the command of Captain 2nd Rank Mikhail Mischenko, slips across GIUK gap by hiding in iceberg fields in the Arctic night.

The attack submarine USS Bluefish takes up station off Burgas, Bulgaria to interdict the city. It sinks the Soviet troop transport Shota Rustaveli but is spotted by a Bulgarian Mi-14 helicopter, beginning a three-day ordeal to escape a Pact ASW task force vectored onto it.
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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