On this day 25 years ago

[chico20854]

January 3, 1997

The US 2nd Infantry Division's 1st and 2nd Brigades (both mechanized) engage North Korean mechanized forces, composed largely of the 820th Mechanized Corps, northeast of Seoul.

unofficial:

The North Korean command commits the 815th Mechanized Corps as a follow-on force. USAF surveillance aircraft note the movement of vehicles, and G Battery, 37th Field Artillery, 2nd ID's MLRS battery, plasters the area with submunitions, slowing the North Korean reinforcements. The US commander then lands 2nd ID's 3rd (light) Brigade in rough terrain to the North Korean flank, where they unleash a hail of Viper/Tank Breaker missiles into the attacking armored troops.

Convoy 109 departs New York, bound for Newfoundland before starting the North Atlantic crossing.

The Turkish 1st Army receives reinforcements, largely taken from 2nd Army on the Mediterranean coast. Bulgarian resistance is stiffening as more troops are shifted from the Romanian front. The Bulgarian Communist Party sends an urgent request to the USSR for military assistance as the impovershed country's economy slows following the callup of so many men of prime working age and the nation's stockpiles are rapidly being depleted.

Fighting continues in the eastern oukstirks of Berlin, with NATO gains measured by hundreds of meters. Along the Baltic coast progress is more rapid, as Polish troops fall back to their border and the ports of Stralsund and Sassnitz fall, shutting down Pact supply/evacuation points.

Following a disappointing rotation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California by the 1st Brigade, 49th Armored Division, the Department of the Army decides to pull the entire division from the deployment timeline and re-equip it with M1-series vehicles rather than the M60A4s it fielded. In a separate but related action, the brigade commander, two battalion commanders and seventeen other officers are relieved and the entire division is ordered to begin an intensive re-training regime in addition to the retraining and reorganizing needed for the transition to new Tables of Organization and Equipment with the new tanks.