[chico20854]

May 6, 1997

After three days of heavy fighting Soviets begin to withdraw from the Bandar-e-Khomeni area, a battered, but still cohesive fighting force. The 82nd is ordered to hold its positions until the 24th Infantry Division can relieve them.

Unofficially,

The tanker Guadalupe is delivered in Baltimore, Maryland and put into naval service, with the hull number T-AOT-209.

In New Orleans, the Victory ship Wayne Victory begins loading a cargo of bagged corn meal destined for war-torn Iran.

Headquarters, XXIII Corps completes its command post exercise/wargame at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The staff there noted the corps' exceptional performance and recommended its immediate deployment overseas.

The Bundeswehr forms the 2nd Military Police Command to coordinate support and operations for three territorial military police battalions that had been operating independently under direct command of Territorial Command Ost, the Bundeswehr liaison command in the former East Germany.

Along the Polish Baltic coast, amphibious forces (the German 18th Marine Regiment and elements of the US 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade) establish a lodgment on the coast west of Kolobrzeg. Allied troops all along the front continue to push back defending Pact forces.

The first graduates of the Saami partisan training course in Kautokeino, Norway, are armed with small arms and ammunition abandoned by the Red Army in the retreat from Norway and cross the border back into Soviet territory.

Turkish troops continue to capture Bulgarian territory, reaching the northern slopes of the Balkan Mountains overlooking the wide Danube Valley. The Romanian border is less than 100 km to the north, and an advance to it would cut the lines of communication between Bulgaria's capital and the Black Sea Coast.

Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic assembles the largest convoy of the war to date, Convoy 140. The convoy will bring an entire armored division (the 44th (my 20th), roughly two-thirds of the 36th Infantry Divison and the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment to Europe under unprecedented escort. It departs Jacksonville, Florida at sundown, with five ships loaded with the 1169th Engineer Group (Alabama National Guard) as well as over a dozen ships carrying munitions, fuel and supplies.

In the Indian Ocean, the Soviet raider Buliny, under the command of Captain 2nd Rank Mikhail Mischenko, makes its first strike in many weeks. A GRU source provided information about the at-sea rendevous of two ultra-large bulk carriers, the Rio Leonard and the Rio Lawrence, for the Leonard to transfer a spare part to the Lawrence. When the two massive ships (each capable of carrying over 175,000 tons of Australian coal to Europe) meet the Soviet destroyer is not far away and pounces. The ships' massive size makes them hard to sink, but the Buliny eventually does so - by sending boarding parties aboard to place demolition charges against the hull.

The Leningrad SAS team feels confident to resume operations, sending out a two-man team to observe conditions and begin assessing targets.