On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

October 25, 1997

Another day with nothing in canon!

The Freedom-class cargo ship Las Vegas Freedom is delivered in Beaumont, Texas.

The light frigate USS Pride is delivered in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Guardian newspaper publishes an apology for the inaccurate story it ran on the 8th, alleging that the wealthy and influential were evading conscription. Nonetheless, the damage has been done to the perception that conscription in the UK is a fair and impartial process.

The Irish government closes the Donegal Air Corridor, a "unofficial understanding" which permitted British and NATO aircraft to access the Atlantic via a 4-mile long overflight of Irish territory between Belleek, Northern Ireland and Ballyshannon, Ireland.

With increasing Soviet artillery attacks on Poznan (ignoring the protests from their Polish Communist allies), the Polish Free Congress decides to evacuate its provisional capital. As the city's population's reaction varies from panic to mocking, the collaborators and exiles depart the city in a hastily-organized convoy headed for the German border.

The carrier Independence is successfully drydocked in Dubai and experts can begin cutting away damaged portions of the hull.

The 102nd Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron (New York Air National Guard) detaches a trio of helicopters from its home station at RAF Gibraltar to Mombasa International Airport, Kenya. Two of the squadron's HC-130 fixed-wing aircraft accompany the helicopters, refueling them inflight to allow them to transit to Cairo West Air Base in one flight.

[chico20854]

October 26, 1997

The American journalist Fanya Ayn Wilkerson is withdrawn from the Pegasus II airhead along with the remaining rangers and pathfinders.

Unofficially,

The (what was destined to be the) second to last FEMA emergency stockpile is sealed, this one at Ohio Caverns near Dayton.

FEMA officials are dismayed when they receive a report that the new Flemington Speedway evacuee camp in New Jersey has reached full capacity; word of the camp's opening quickly spread and nervous city dwellers from the New York and Philadelphia areas arrived in droves. Local officials are less than pleased, and the local sheriff (who is responsible for security in the camp) claims that the camp has attracted "a mass of neer-do-wells, troublemakers and shiftless folks looking for a handout from our fine community."

Fighting in Belfast intensifies. IRA forces, who in prewar years had amassed an impressive arsenal thanks to KGB support, enjoy an advantage in firepower, widely fielding RPG-7s and light machineguns. Added to this arsenal are weapons captured from Army and police outposts which were overrun in the past week. This firepower, combined with a superiority in young, enthusiastic volunteers, allows the IRA to accomplish a long-dreamed of goal in Belfast - conquest of the Loyalist Shankhill neighborhood, accompanied by a massive displacement of the population and widespread atrocities. The victory allows the Unionist forces to form a coherent pocket in primarily working-class areas from the city center to the northwest, which is surrounded by Loyalist suburbs, which the Catholics have yet to attempt to break into.

Soviet forces all along the front launch a day of coordinated attacks in an effort to dilute the efforts of the few remaining NATO tactical aircraft. The day's actions are somewhat successful, with advances in excess of 5 km on average, but the effort results in the expenditure of three days worth of supply deliveries. Many of the Allied aircraft that do respond, however, are armed with nuclear bombs as ELINT and reconnaissance teams desperately try to locate artillery and rocket batteries and headquarters.

In Bavaria, the Italian Army has drawn almost to a halt as depleted stocks of munitions and spare parts cripple its mechanized troops and its elite light infantry is unable to replace losses from earlier in the campaign. Platoons and squads of paramilitary Carabinieri troops, withdrawn from internal security duties at home, are increasingly shuffled to the front to serve as replacements; at least they are trained troops, unlike many new arrivals at fronts around the world at this stage of the war.

The first flight of workers from the Baku oil fields arrives in Ploesti, Romania. They were grabbed without any prior notice from their work sites and loaded onto an Aeroflot airliner for a harrowing low-level flight to Romania. Upon arrival, KGB and Communist Party officials give them a brief "inspirational" feat before ordering them to immediately get the unfamiliar plant back to maximum production.

The remnants of the battered Convoy 302 limp into European ports. Due to overcrowding in the few more lightly damaged ones (all medium to small in size, the largest ones - Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam and Bremerhaven - having been heavily bombarded or targeted by nuclear weapons), several ships have to remain at anchor in the North Sea or English Channel. One, the former East German freighter Hettstedt, is sunk by a drifting mine off Vlissingen, Netherlands.

The 241st Rear Area Protection Division is activated in Novosibirsk, Siberia, from the cadre and students of the MVD officer school in that city. Once formed, STAVKA intends to use it to assist the MVD with putting down the increasing number of uprisings and mutinies within the USSR. The MVD command objects to the Army takeover of its formation, sparking a harsh rebuke from STAVKA, which replies that if the MVD Internal Troops were doing their job maintaining order that the Army wouldn't need to.