On this day 25 years ago

[chico20854]

August 11, 1997

The 106th Guards Air Assault Division, a high command reserve unit, is brought forward into Poland from its home station of Tula.

The 1st Tank Division enters action on the Polish-Ukrainian border; the veterans of the war in China, assigned to 1st Guards tank Army, face off against the German 2nd PanzerGrenadier Division.

Unofficially,

The Freedom ship Dallas Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas.

A Soviet spetsnaz team locates the rear headquarters of the Dutch 102nd Artillery Group; following its doctrine it immediately attacks and temporarily overruns it, capturing a number of documents before being driven off by a counterattack by a scratch force of Dutch mechanics, truck drivers and clerks. The remnants of the US Army Berlin Brigade (consolidated into two weak battalions) is alerted for deployment to the Warsaw perimeter, where its urban combat expertise could be best used.

The Battle of Baltiysk continues, with the 28th Marine Regiment ferried into the city overnight and a flight of A-7Es of VA-66, operating off the USS Coral Sea, stopping a Soviet reinforcement column with an attack with three B-57 nuclear bombs as they approached the city.

Convoy 161 forms in the North Sea for a voyage to North America. It contains many of the ships from Convoy 158 that brought the 5th Marine Division to Europe, the Freedom ships Austin, Birmingham, Michigan and Oklahoma Freedom and over 40 other assorted merchantmen. The escort consists of two American frigates (the Brooke and Kauffman), the former Coast Guard cutters Munro and Tahoma, the Canadian destroyer Maragee, all led by the American destroyer Harry W Hill.

At the next Albanian Politburo session, the minister of the economy reports that the mobilization has stripped approximately one third of the labor force and that as a consequence the goals of the latest Five-Year plan are unlikely to be achieved. Oil production has been halved from the nation's oil fields and four refineries, the copper smelters are operating at half capacity. The wholesale callup of the nation's educated men (who form the officer corps) will soon cripple the major industrial enterprises. The minister of agriculture reports that the fall harvest, which usually requires the deployment of over half the peacetime Army, will be catastrophic unless the units currently on alert are allocated to assist in the harvest. The minister of transport reports that the nation will soon have all recalled reservists en route to their mobilization stations, the national fleet of nearly 5000 buses able to reach most of the remote mountain towns along the Jugoslav and Greek borders.

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The carrier USS Independence, operating in the Arabian Sea, is struck by a Type-65 torpedo from the Sierra-class SSN K-534, and is lucky to stay afloat after receiving extensive damage. It loses two of its four propellers and a rudder is hopelessly jammed, along with a prop shaft blown out by the torpedo (the ship's Nixie torpedo decoy worked-barely). There is some internal flooding and shock damage as well.

The SS-23 test firing series is disrupted when the first of two missiles to be fired for the day explodes shortly after launch.

[chico20854]

August 12, 1997

Canon is silent on today. Unofficially,

The Canadian Navy recommissions the last of the St. Laurent-class destroyers, the Assinboine, which had been paid off in 1988 but used as a training and accommodation ship since then. The ship required extensive refit, but emerges with a modern 76mm gun, electronics and sonar. It is put into service on the convoy lanes.

The Japanese 1st Airborne Brigade is, at its commander's request, thrown into action in the final battle for Pyongyang. His troops seem less than eager, although his officers are enthusiastic about being there for the end of the North Korean regime. (Allied intelligence has not ruled out the possibility that the Kim dynasty is lurking in the tunnels under the 1st of May Stadium.)

Exploiting the documents captured from the Dutch 102nd Artillery Group headquarters, the GRU directs several other Spetsnaz teams into the area behind the Dutch front lines in Bavaria. Over a four-hour predawn period three of the Dutch 8-inch howitzer batteries are overrun, although an attack on the unit's tactical nuclear weapons storage site is driven off with heavy losses on both sides.

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As US Marines gain control of the town of Baltiysk, the Soviet command orders its surviving defenders out. Shortly after 10 pm the city is struck by a SSC-3 Styx coast defense missile fitted with a 15kt warhead, destroying much of what had survived. Casaulties among the marines were relatively light, as most were in fighting positions or inside buildings that provided protection from the worst blast effects.

The US Navy returns the carrier Eisenhower to service in the Atlantic after over six weeks of repairs at Scapa Flow. The damage has only been partially repaired, with the two waist catapults out of operation; fabrication of replacement machinery is expected to take another nine months.

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In Iran, Frontal Aviation makes another mass raid against Persian Gulf ports, with a fighter-bomber regiment tasked to neutralize the pipeline terminals. American and Saudi early warning aircraft detect the Soviet force as it forms up over northern Iran, and the raid is met with swarms of American, Iranian, Qatari and Saudi fighters.

The SS-23 test series is paused for additional inspections of the two remaining test missiles.

The 4th Battalion, The Kings Own Border Regiment, a TA regiment from Lancaster, closes on RAF Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands. One ex-regular sergeant had even been in the Falklands as a Lance-Corporal in 2 Para in 1982. A unit of Argentine commandos lands on West Falkland and moves into hiding.

[chico20854]

August 13, 1997

The 26th Infantry Division (Light) (Massachusetts and Connecticut National Guard) is withdrawn into reserve behind I Corps' front line following heavy action (unofficially) against the Soviet 30th Army. The fighting along the I Corps front is the first combat between American and Bulgarian troops when the Bulgarian 11th Tank Brigade's T-62s are thrust forward to try to take advantage of the withdrawal of the 26th.

The 40th Infantry Division (Mechanized), en route to a blocking position in eastern Poland, is struck by seven Soviet tactical nuclear weapons in the space of 15 minutes. The attacks inflict heavy casaulties and leave the division combat ineffective.

Unofficially,

The 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade is withdrawn from the ruins of Baltiysk; it has seen months of action, culminating in the Battle of Baltiysk and the Soviet nuclear strike on the city that served as the final act of that engagement. To the east, the 23rd Army, attached to 2nd Western Front and commanding a miscellaneous assortment of units from around the USSR, launches a counterattack in the Suwałki corridor, the short section of Lithuanian-Polish border between Kaliningrad and Byelorussia. The attack comes at the junction between the US III Corps and II British Corps and, supported by a trio of nuclear strikes, makes 10 km of progress in its initial 12 hours.

The Sierra-III class sub K-231 begins its sole combat patrol from the Balaclava naval base in the Crimea; the boat's voyage transits the Bosporus (submerged) and Mediterranean.

The 487th Tactical Missile Wing(-) in Turkey fires its first missiles, targeting the Bulgarian Black Sea ports of Varna and Burgas through which the Soviets are ferrying troops and supplies to the Turkish and Romanian fronts, with eight missiles.

In eastern Turkey the Turkish Third Army is able to hold the Soviet 42nd Corps' assaults at bay. The highly motivated Turkish troops are still somewhat well supplied and the units contain a sizeable proportion of experienced troops that have managed to avoid being redirected to the fronts in the Balkans and Cyprus.

In central Iran the 26th (my 295th) Motor-Rifle Division, advancing quickly through the Zagros in pursuit of XVIII Airborne Corps, is caught in a series of airmobile ambushes by the 101st Air Assault Division and the 6th AACB. The Soviet division pauses as nightfall approaches, each regiment and battalion establishing laagers along the narrow mountain road, with mutually reinforcing fields of fire. The inexperienced NCOs, however, fail to post observation posts on the nearby mountain peaks, judging the effort to climb them too taxing on their already exhauseted men. Taking advantage of the terrain and the enemy's lack of night vision equipment, the Americans land a series of ambush parties along the route the Soviet division will take during the next day's advance; these parties are well equipped with TOW-equipped FAVs and HMMWs and engineer squads, which lay mines and prepare to create obstacles. When the Soviet battalions begin moving in the morning, they are engaged from the heights above and trapped strung out along the roads. After nearly two hours of withering American fire the division's artillery and anti-aircraft weapons, coupled with air support from reinforcing Hinds of the 381st Helicopter Regiment, are able to suppress the American attackers, who slip back over the ridges into adjoining valleys, where their own helicopters quickly arrive to extract them. In total, the Soviet division loses nearly all of its tanks and 60 percent of its infantry and artillery in the attack and is rendered combat ineffective. The Americans lose fourteen TOW launch vehicles, six attack helicopters and two companies of infantry.

The SS-23 test series is concluded at Kapustin Yar. The overall improvement in accuracy is impressive.

The arrival of the Territorial Army battalion in the Falklands, just as the Argentine task force is in a position to launch, throws the Argentine plan awry. The Argentines back down with the Argentine government planning to let the islands gradually suffer with reduced support from the U.K. as the war in Europe and ongoing nuclear exchange drain resources, eventually, it is hoped, forcing the local population to come begging to establish closer links with Argentina on their own (and in years to come gradually become Argentinian).

[chico20854]

August 14, 1997

As nuclear attacks continue to strike Polish targets, a second wave of refugees arrive in the Wieliczka Salt Mine. They join others, mostly locals, who have been sheltering underground since June. The original residents have erected crude huts and tents, but these latest arrivals are forced to stay in vast common barracks in some of the mine's larger vaults and chambers.

Unofficially,

Naval fighter-attack squadron VFA-174, disbanded in June aboard the USS Independence after being reduced to 3 aircraft, is reactivated at NAS Leemore, California and assigned eight F/A-18s (three new production, three from the readiness squadron VFA-125 and two culled from test and evaluation duties). The "new" squadron's personnel are a mix of veteran VFA-174 personnel evacauted from the Middle East, new recruits and staff "borrowed" from the station's staff. It is assigned to the USS Ranger, which is in the midst of trying to reactivate an air wing after the heavy losses it suffered in Vietnam in January.

As the fighting in the ruins of the 1st of May Stadium in central Pyongyang has gone almost entirely underground, the commander of the Japanese 1st Airborne Brigade suddenly orders all Allied forces aboveground. Within an hour the order has been carried out, and one of the war's great atrocities unfolds when trucks arrive and begin dumping bags of dry chemicals on the ground by the entrances to the subterranean network. Right-wing officers soon pour liquid chemicals onto the bags and clouds of choking green chlorine gas, heavier than air, begin to form and sink into the tunnels below. Panicked North Korean troops, badly burned, are shot as they desperately try to escape the choking gas. The defense of Pyongyang has ended.

The headquarters, 2nd Marine Division prepares for the division to be reunited for the first time since the outbreak of war as each of its three subordinate MEBs are en-route to its location.

3rd Guards Tank Army launches another series of attacks westward, including with its relatively fresh 74th Tank Division, in an attempt to break through to Warsaw. To the north, 23rd Army continues its advance, with two divisions of elite paratroops (the 44th Guards Training and 106th Guards) in the lead.

The US 8th Marine Expeditionary Brigade re-embarks aboard amphibious shipping in the damaged port of Syracuse; they are being transferred to the Baltic.

The Albanian minister of defense reports that all the Army's 22 divisions have been fully formed and are in the process of issuing weapons and equipment and beginning training. At this news, the Albanian leader flies into a rage, demanding to know why it took so long, accusing the defense minister of wasting the vast sums dedicated to defense. As the startled communist leader stumbles to explain the diversion of resources to building bunkers, the lack of spare parts for the Chinese tanks, the inadequate numbers of officers, the constant diversion of men to support the economy and low education levels among the ranks he is instead arrested for treason.

The cat-and-mouse game over the North Atlantic resumes when a single Tu-22M2DP slips unnoticed over eastern Greenland and into the air lanes. The picking is slimmer than in the prior week, with a Canadian Air Force CC-137 (Boeing 707) of No. 437 Squadron falling victim to a missile, while the countermeasures aboard a USAF C-5B of the 436th Military Airlift Wing decoy the missile targeted at it. The tables are turned on the Soviets, however, when a USAF F-15 of the 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron locates the Tu-16 tanker orbiting southwest of Spitsbergen that is waiting to refuel the Soviet interceptor on its return flight. The tanker is downed and the raider is quite surprised when it discovers that the aircraft it is rendezvousing with is an American fighter, which downs it with a long burst from its 20mm cannon.

The 9th Infantry Divison (Motorized), serving as the rear guard of XVIII Airborne Corps as it retreats back towards the Persian Gulf, has been pushed back to the town of Kazerun, in the western Zagros Mountains. The 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment, operating largely independently of other American units but supporting the Iranian II Corps, hangs on to the town of Behbehan as it is pressured by the 9th (my 1st) Army, and the joint American-Iranian armored force north of Bandar-Khomeyni has fought the 7th Army to a halt, taking advantage of the salt ponds of the area to channel the Soviets into a narrower front.