On this day 25 years ago

[chico20854]

April 4, 1997

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

The American heavy cruiser Des Moines follows its sister Salem back into commission in Philadelphia following a similar refit. Once it completes its post-commissioning workup it will be assigned to the Pacific Fleet.

The US 23rd Infantry Division, hastily formed at Camp Zama, Japan in February from miscellaneous Army troops located in Japan, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific, augmented by several aircraft loads of freshly trained recruits fresh from training bases in the United States, begins battalion-level exercises at Marine Corps facilities at Camp Fuji and in Okinawa. Equipment is mostly issued from war reserve stocks in theater, with some new equipment from the US and other shortages made up by “informal” transfers from the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force.

Convoy 214, carrying troops and equipment of the 45th Infantry Division, departs San Francisco Bay under heavy escort. The Midway carrier battle group transits 300 miles to the north, with fighter-bombers patrolling the area around the convoy and airborne radar aircraft sweeping the region. P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft sweep the convoy's route, searching for Soviet submarines and surface raiders.

NATO electronic warfare units along the front line in Poland focus their efforts on identifying and locating Pact counterbattery radars so NATO artillery and air power can concentrate on them.

The Danish Odense shipyard delivers the massive container ship Kirsten Mae, the last of a series of five 90,000-ton containerships. Each ship can carry over 6400 containers. The ship is immediately dispatched to New York to load ammunition and supplies.

NATO forces southwest of Teriberka on the Kola Peninsula are still 20 miles from the Severomorsk bomber base and 50 miles from Murmans and face continuing fierce Soviet resistance. Offshore, the invasion fleet is in need of replenishment and has been actively engaged against a stream of Soviet submarines (losing a third landing ship, the transport USS Charleston in addition to the two frigates that have been lost since the landing almost two weeks ago).

The Bundesmarine (German Navy) commissions the former Al Zahraa, an Iraqi landing ship that had been interned in Hamburg since 1990. Requisitioned at the outbreak of war, the ship required extensive shipyard work before being placed in service.

The first aircraft carrying troops of the 9th Infantry Division (Motorized) arrive in Saudi Arabia.

Soviet commanders in Iran have their allocations of supplies and fuel cut by 25 percent as resources are diverted to the Far East to make good the losses sustained in March. Their problem is made worse by a coordinated series of airstrikes on their supply lines made by F-15Es of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing and F-16s of the 149th Tactical Fighter Group operating out of eastern Turkey. The airstrikes prove particularly devastating since they are guided in by Green Berets of the 5th Special Forces Group, operating with Kurdish guerrillas.

The Victor I-class submarine K-469 sinks another bulk carrier, this time the Panamanian-flag Frontier Star, only a year old, as it arrives in Guinea to load bauuxite.