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Old 02-16-2022, 03:12 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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February 16, 1997

The Soviet ground offensive in Iran resumes as the first battalions of the 82nd Airborne Division land in Saudi Arabia.

Unofficially:

The Swiss ambassador hosts a short meeting in New Delhi between the NATO and Soviet peace delegations. The Soviets demand immediate withdrawal of NATO troops from the Kola, Bulgaria and Polish territory along the Oder-Niesse. NATO rejects the demands out of hand, prompting the Soviet delegation to storm out.

The AGM-142 Have Nap missile is cleared for use from F-15E Strike Eagles.

HQ, VIII US Corps is formed from the 124th ARCOM at Fort Lewis, Washington and assigned training support, security for the Tacoma Port of Embarkation and civil support functions throughout the Pacific Northwest.

SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One launches its second attack, landing at Korsakov on Sakhalin Island. One part of the team raids the airfield, demolishing a dozen Mi-14 and Mi-8 helicopters, while the rest of the team attacks the port facility, attaching limpet mines on the minesweeper Admiral Khoroshkhin and commandeering a civilian trawler, which was scuttled in the channel exiting the harbor.

US Pacific Command launches a major strike on North Korean naval bases in the Sea of Japan, known as Operation Sea Dragon. Operating under cover of land-based interceptors (USAF, USMC, RoKAF and JASDF), the USS Independence group raid on the Sagon-ni naval base. F-111s bomb the North Korean Navy's shipyard at Wonsan, destroying the headquarters for the North Korean Navy's East Fleet and damaging the Soviet destroyer Lovkiy, which was undergoing repairs before heading home. At the Mayangho naval base, F-111s sink an aged North Korean submarine, several patrol boats and three Soviet cargo ships.

SACEUR recieves a request from the Free Polish Congress to support the creation of military units to defend the slivers of Polish territory under NATO control (Szczecin and the three bridgeheads) and lay the groundwork for the restoration of a noncommunist Polish Army.

On the Kola Peninsula, the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division is detached to capture the naval bases on the western side of the Litsa Fjord, a mission that ends in disaster when Soviet naval troops blow up the nuclear waste storage facility at Andreeva Bay, raining radioactive waste onto the advancing infantrymen.

The US 103rd Field Artillery Brigade (Rhode Island National Guard)'s final men and guns (two battalions of towed 155mm howitzers) arrive in X Corps' rear area along the Norwegian-Soviet border, ready for action.

The battlecruiser Kirov sorties from the Orinoco River Delta, soon launching six missiles each at the refineries at Point Fortin and Pointe-a-Pierre on Trinidad. The missiles are not intercepted (or even noticed by local air-traffic controllers), and the fuel-air explosive warheads cause extensive damage to both refineries, stopping all production at both of them.

As a result of the increased raider threat and ongoing naval losses the American heavy cruiser Newport News, reactivated the previous summer as a training vessel, is ordered to Sunny Point, NC to discharge its midshipmen and load ammunition, to assume convoy escort ASuW (anti-surface warfare) duties.

SACLANT orders as many combatants as can reasonably be made ready to sea immediately to hunt down raiders. The Navy and Coast Guard are ordered to redouble their air searches, and areas less than 100 miles offshore are to be visually searched by members of the Civil Air Patrol, a paramilitary volunteer US Air Force auxilary.

The escort carrier Shangri-La sails from Jacksonville with its first convoy, Convoy 8, headed to the Mediterranean, carrying supplies, fuel and equipment to support Turkish, Romanian and Jugoslav allies as well as US forces in the Mediterranean.
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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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