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Old 11-23-2022, 03:14 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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November 23, 1997

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Sauronski decides that the strategic situation is growing increasingly intolerable, with the US, UK and Canada continuing to churn out tanks, troops, guns and aircraft with inpunity, while the USSR has suffered the loss of Kiev and Minsk and is faced with diminishing prospects of restoring East Germany to Soviet control. Accordingly, he directs that the nation's nuclear forces prepare to execute a strike on the American and British homelands, to decapitate their Capitalist regimes and create a favorable situation for a worker's uprising, or at least demand an end to the capitalist war of aggression. To prevent the attack from igniting an all-out apocolyptic response on the Soviet homeland, the attacks are to use no more than 15 missiles.

Janet Clancy, daughter of Vice President Pemberton and her father set out on their annual multi-day Thanksgiving cross country ski trip to the family's cabin in North Cascades National Park, Washington. Taking advantage of the cold weather, they travel on the frozen Lake Chalen to the isolated hamlet of Stehekin, accompanied by her Secret Service bodyguard, a former Marine sergeant that learned to ski at the Mountain Warfare Training Center in the Sierra Nevadas. The bodyguard is armed with his issue SIG-Sauer P229 pistol and a M-4 carbine. When they arrive at the cabin they are greeted by another agent and the family's cook, who arrived the day prior via snowmobile.

Soviet troops in Manchuria revolt when they receive word that they are to be sent to the front in Europe. The men feel that they have alreeady won a war for the Soviet Union and that the many reservists, rear area troops and other able-bodied men who did not contribute to victory in China should spend time at the front before they once again risk their lives. The men are heavily armed combat veterans, and the revolt must be handled delicately.

The American carrier Oriskany reaches a new milestone - its first full squadron sortie evolution, when VA-175 launches a training strike (in support of Marines training at Twentynine Palms, California) and returns to the ship.

NATO forces in Poland hold on to the Oder bridgeheads against growing Soviet pressure. The opposiiton is mostly Soviets, the Polish Army being diverted to support the Border Guards in the hunt for pro-NATO partisans, stay-behind parties and collaborators that may have betrayed the Communist Party.

The Freedom-class ship Springfield Freedom diverts from the North Sea into the British port of Felixstone for discharge of its cargo of vehicles (mostly new M939 5-ton trucks but also a quartet of M-1A2D tanks and several dozen old M-561 Gama Goats. They spend only a few hours ashore before being loaded onto the USS Boulder, a LST that can land vehicles on beaches.

As the orders to strike the US and UK are received by the leadership of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Long Range Aviation and Navy, planners begin to pull together the concept for the operation. (Existing plans largely cover an all-out strike on the West using all available weapons). They will be fully prepared to execute in three days.
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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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