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Old 03-13-2023, 01:39 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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February 19, 1998

The 6th Marine Division, after a year-long training cycle culminating in a full-division live fire combined arms exercise, is declared operational and begins deploying to Korea.

Unofficially,

The Arctic troops of the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon)(Alaska National Guard) make slow progress moving cross-country over the frozen tundra south of Fairbanks while the remainder of X Corps continues its attacks on Soviet positions in the town. The weather clears enough for A-10s of the 18th Tactical Fighter Squadron to make an appearance overhead, clearing out a Soviet artillery battery that had concealed itself in a sawmill complex on the city's western edge.

Only two days after leaving their positions in Manchuria, the staff of the 1st Far Eastern Front notices that the Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brigade is not responding to radio calls.

An A-6 Intruder aircraft from the USS Kennedy battle group, supported by two others configured as tankers, strikes the Soviet submarine support base at Patros, Greece, following receipt of rumors about a nuclear submarine being prepared for a patrol in the Mediterranean. The lone aircraft arrives over the Greco-Soviet base at low level at 4 am, successfully dropping its load of a single B61-8 345-kiloton nuclear bomb. Its all-female crew of LtJG Pamela Shore and LtCdr Susan Williams escape thanks to a retarding parachute, which allows the low-flying bomber to duck behind the low hills that surround the city before the bomb detonates. The blast wrecks the submarine tender Magomed Gadzhiev, the upper works of the submarines B-164 (Foxtrot-class), B-854 (also a Foxtrot-class), the Tang-class B-546 and the Whiskey-class S-231 and rolls the Victor II-class SSN K-371 over, flooding her through a hatch in the sail left open by the war-weary watchman.
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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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