[chico20854]

August 9, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

The Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars are deployed to the continent to reinforce I British Corps in Bavaria. The Chieftain tank battalion comes from UK Land Forces' strategic reserve.

The Foreign Minister calls the Argentine ambassador to confront him about the departure of the Argentine naval task force (its movement confirmed by American satellites). The ambassador (truthfully) reports that he is unaware of the development and relays the message to Buenos Aires. Nonetheless, HM Government orders reinforcement of the garrison infantry company on the islands.

As the lead American battalions of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division bash their way through Soviet lines, the division's support command tries to impose some order among the thousands of panicked Chinese troops that want to accompany the American force south. Working with the division's MP company, many of the Chinese troops are disarmed and assigned duties as porters. The most experienced (and especially, those that can speak English or Korean) are assigned as squad leaders for ad-hoc CATUSA (Chinese Augmentees to the US Army, modeled on the long-standing KATUSA program that bulked up US Army units with South Korean conscripts) squads, assigned to round-up American infantry platoons. In Pyongyang, South Korean troops close in on the ruins of the 1st of May Stadium, last holdout of the fanatical defenders o Pyongyang.

The 60th Bomb Squadron, 43rd Bomb Wing disperses some of its B-52s to Guam International Airport, out of the blast zone of nuclear weapons that might be targeted at Anderson Air Force Base or Guam Naval Station.

The 257th Motor-Rifle Division arrives at the front, where it is assigned to reinforce the battered 3rd Guards Tank Army.

II MEF (the US Marine's 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force), previously located in Denmark and previously mostly concerned with coordinating support for three widely spread Marine Expeditionary Brigades, takes an active role as a front-line corps with 5th Marine Division, the 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade and the German 18th Coast Defense Regiment under command. It also secures the release of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade from Norway along with its associated Marine Aircraft Group 14. The headquarters moves into northeastern Poland, assaulting Kaliningrad along the coast.

XXIII US Corps rotates the battered 40th Infantry Division from the lines in southern Warsaw to the front in the east, where its AFVs and tanks will be more fruitfully employed. The 40th's positions are assumed by the former West German border guards of the 2nd GrenzJaeger Division.

As rough weather approaches the Baltic, and given the poor condition of the ship, the commander of the USS Iowa salvage effort makes the decision to beach the battleship on a gentle section of the German Baltic Coast. Within a few hours the view from the pretty resort town of Boltenhagen is drastically changed, with 58,000 tons of steel lurking offshore.

Catania is the last major town in Sicily to fall under NATO control when Spanish Marines arrive. American and Canadian troops begin a sweep of the island to round up any surviving defenders.

It being a week after the mobilization order was given, the dictatorial Albanian ruler Kiço Bedaj and the Politburo demand a status report. The defense minister reports that the Army and the Voluntary Forces of Popular Self-Defense militia have manned the 175,000 bunkers scattered around the country and are ready to repulse a combined NATO-Pact-Jugoslav invasion. If a combined air and amphibious assault is launched, like the one just unleashed on Sicily, it would fail as the landing force would be brought under immediate fire from the nearest bunkers while one of the nation's tank brigades would soon arrive to overrun the landing site. Bedaj asks about the Army's ability to intervene to protect the oppressed Albanian minorities in nearby Kosovo and Macedonia. The defense minister explains that the Army is not deployed to carry that mission out, with the tank brigades spread around the nation to counter an enemy invasion, and a repositioning will take weeks since the Army only possesses a dozen tank transporters.

The USAF 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron and the 465th Tactical Fighter Squadron in Keflavik, Iceland scramble all available aircraft to prevent a repeat of the prior day's massacre in the air lanes across the North Atlantic, while NATO airlift planners route more aircraft across the mid-Atlantic, flooding the Azores with as many aircraft as it can land and refuel. Anticipating such a response, the Soviets ground the Tu-22M2DPs temporarily.

Allied logistics teams in Iran complete their cleanup of the battlefield from the Battle of the Valley some weeks prior. Australian fitters are able to recover all of the damaged Leopard tanks that had been lost in the battle and restore over 80 percent of them to service, while Iranian teams (many composed of grizzled veterans of the superhuman efforts needed to sustain the war effort against Iraq in the 80s) have amazingly been able to recover over 100 T-34/85s lost by the Soviet 69th Tank Division. Forty are restored to running condition and issued to lower-quality infantry divisions while the rest are hauled off to be emplaced as pillboxes around Shiraz and guarding choke points in the Zagros Mountains.

At the Kapustin Yar test site in south-central Russia, scientists and engineers from the Kolomna Machine-Building Design Bureau launch the first of a series of six SS-23 missiles fitted with an experimental new guidance package that, using technology developed from salvage from downed and crashed American Tomahawk cruise missiles, is nearly 7 times more accurate than the seeker currently fitted. The test is a success, hitting 12 m from the aim point when fired 500 km.