On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[Homer]

Originally Posted by Claidheamh

I don't remember if there's a canon ruling on who the NSA sides with (MILGOV or CIVGOV)? I assume that by the end of '98-'99, there's so little left of their equipment, networks, and resources that it hardly matters.

I’d go with the three DoD Combat Support Agencies (DIA, NIMA/NGA, NSA) all following DIA’s lead and siding with MILGOV. NRO as well since they’re also under DoD.

DIA would have been hit by the loss of their HQs at Bolling AFB, National Maritime intelligence center (NMIC) in Suitland, and Armed Forces Medical Intel Center (AFMIC) at Detrick. but they’ve still got analytic capacity through the service intel centers at NGIC and NASIC plus any dispersed personnel. What’s going to be hard for them is the Directorate of Ops at DIA is tiny. OTL Pre 2001 there were very few case officers.

NSA took a huge analytical and collection hit. In addition to the facilities losses, ground based collection sites (elephant cages) have been lost or destroyed, which will magnify the effects of declining air, maritime, and degrading overhead collection. The bright spot is Buckley has the mission ground stations for overhead collection, which is probably the most reliable remaining collection method.

NIMAs in a pretty good position. The facilities around in DC are probably compromised, but the main production facilities in Missouri are probably intact. They’re going to suffer from the loss of collection, but they maintain the mapping data as well, which will be valuable post exchange.

NRO is likely compromised due to its location. With the loss of the launch sites in Florida and California and satellite manufacturing capacity, they’re likely focused on using their remaining assets to keep the surviving overhead platforms viable.

Just my thoughts.

I'm with Homer - they go MILGOV.

Tara Romaneasca has a short section on the impact of the NSA's loss and MILGOV alignment on page 93, which is informative. Because when the NSA has a problem generating COMSEC KEYMAT, it's a whole of government problem that point. It's not like most Agencies are using any other COMSEC material - certainly not for national security information.

So reconstituting that capability by the NSA for MILGOV will be a priority, as will CIVGOV seeking alternative encryption systems that don't rely on NSA KEYMAT, which they can't get. Again, the new Romania sourcebook has an entry on this issue, with DOE taking up the mantel on one-time pad production, "and hand-building a limited number of radio encryption modules not based on existing DOD or NSA software architecture."

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by Spartan-117

I'm with Homer - they go MILGOV.

Tara Romaneasca has a short section on the impact of the NSA's loss and MILGOV alignment on page 93, which is informative. Because when the NSA has a problem generating COMSEC KEYMAT, it's a whole of government problem that point. It's not like most Agencies are using any other COMSEC material - certainly not for national security information.

So reconstituting that capability by the NSA for MILGOV will be a priority, as will CIVGOV seeking alternative encryption systems that don't rely on NSA KEYMAT, which they can't get. Again, the new Romania sourcebook has an entry on this issue, with DOE taking up the mantel on one-time pad production, "and hand-building a limited number of radio encryption modules not based on existing DOD or NSA software architecture."

Yeah, there isn't a split until 1999 anyway, since through May 1998 there is technically a POTUS in charge of everything.

[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by ToughOmbres

My take-

[...] The old Quartermaster adage of "keep the best, issue the rest" would go out the window by, say, the second year of the war.

I'd say, that goes out the window much, much quicker. It's a all hands on deck war very much from the beginning. That means big politics will want to micromanage quickly. So they start issuing orders for single divisions or brigades even. Sometimes certain elements in the militaries' apparatuses might be able to stop stupidities like this early on, but sometimes they won't.

Look at the current conflict in Ukraine: The good stuff went out the warehouses starting in June. That was 5 months into the war. The German Bundeswehr had exactly no SPGs to spare and no IFVs either. The industry didn't either. The Panzerhaubitze 2000 went out anyway and now, after the German defense minister has kept her hand on our 50 year old Marder IFVs for 10 1/2 months, the Bundeskanzler announced, we're giving them away nonetheless.

Yes, the numbers are minuscule compared to what was available in the mid-90s, but that doesn't change the general idea. I think, if in T2K a US ally would have asked for F-16s to switch from F-5s or F-104s in the face of a Soviet invasion, the US would easily have donated/sold/lend-and-leased a full wing. And why not? The F-16C/D was in full production, why not give away Block 10 frames from an ANG wing and reequip the ANG anew down the line with brand new F-16Cs? If that keeps the Soviets out of "nameless ally 6,000 miles to the East", it's better for them to fight on their soil (or not) than for the Soviets to creep closer and closer and eventually attack US forces directly.

I'd say, by year two of the Twilight War, we'd see ramping up of production for M40 recoilless rifles and M3 Carl Gustaf and their munitions. The former was in use by National Guard units during the last decade of the Cold War and the latter had just been introduced to the Rangers. With the ramping up of productions of ATGMs and other guided munitions since the war loomed or started, certain parts will become rather scarce. A recoilless rifle is a good support weapon for many applications, and with tandem shape charges becoming available to the M3, it can replace shoulder launched single purpose weapons like the Panzerfaust 3 (which, ironically, was bought to replace the Carl Gustaf M2). Certainly, neither the M40 nor the M3 can fully replace TOW, Javelin, Milan & Co., but better to have than have not. And once prime tier MBTs become sparse and their shiny sensor's start going dark, anti-tank warfare tools from the 60s and 70s will face their contemporary tanks (with minor upgrades). And then, a Carl Gustaf with tandem charge warheads will be king and thousands will go into all the light infantry divisions the US can still muster after 1997 and by early 1998.

[chico20854]

December 31, 1997

The Soviet 236th Rear Area Protection Division in Alma-Ata in the Central Asian Military district deserts and declares the city a "free city."

Unofficially,

Year end finds the world in dire shape. The nuclear exchange, which has expended less than 1200 of the world's nearly 50,000 nuclear weapons, has killed over 10 million people directly while halting the world's transportation and communications systems and set the stage for mass suffering on a scale not seen since medieval times. Conventional fighting has raged across Iran, Poland, Romania, North Korea and southern Germany, leaving the land and its hapless occupants in shambles. Millions of civilians have become refugees fleeing fighting, cold and darkness, seeking comfort in imagined safety somewhere other than their homes. The world's militaries have been torn apart, the shiny weapons and proud ranks of soldiers of 1995 reduced to desperate ragged forces struggling to obey the orders of political masters who cannot fully grasp the scale of losses sustained.

The final American strategic nuclear attack on the USSR occurs, with strikes on military production sites (a Su-27 aircraft plant, submarine-building yard and steel mill) and military targets (the headquarters of the PVO 8th Corps, bomber base, nuclear weapons storage site) in and near Kosmolosk-na-Amure in the Far East delivered by 12 TLAM cruise missiles fired from the attack submarine USS Columbus. Munson also authorizes attacks on two other Soviet strategic targets - the transportation hub and production center of Omsk in western Siberia (where the headquarters of the Strategic Rocket Forces' 33rd Guards Missile Army, the tank plant, a refinery and an Antonov aircraft plant were all hit) and Chita in far eastern Siberia, location of headquarers of the Transbaikal Military Distrct, 53rd Guards Missile Division and 50th PVO Corps as well as several bomber bases and the city's railroad station, further hampering operations on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Those cities are each hit by lone B-1Bs from the 28th Bomb Wing, operating from the remote western Chinese air base; the bombers recovere to the base, where KC-10 tankers are waiting with additional fuel and a reload of B-61 bombs and SRAM II missiles.

In central Alaska much of fighting has come to a halt for the winter. The flow of supplies to both American and Soviet forces has come to a crashing halt, victims of the vast distances and nuclear attacks on the homelands. Both sides find shelter, hoping that the fuel and food supplies on hand will be sufficient to last the winter. The commander of the 25th Corps in Anchorage, however, has other ideas. While the passes into British Columbia from the Alaskan ports seized in the fall have been closed by massive snow falls, the weather along the Alaskan coast east of Anchorage is more mild and Alaska's largest city offers reserves of supplies and wealth unheard of to most Soviet commanders. More importantly, the city's occupation force is composed of battle-hardened Arctic troops and Siberian natives, well adapted to fighting in the harsh winter conditions against an enemy that has likely grown complacent about the threat they are facing. Accordingly, he orders an offensive to drive the remannts of the 47th Infantry Division out of Alaska and launch a successful invasion of Yukon.

At RAF Alconbury, the 95th Reconnaissance Squadron, which operates TR-1 reconnaissance aircraft, assumes control of Detachment 1, 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at RAF Mildenhall as well as the detachment's two SR-71s.

RainbowSix reports a number of MP’s who had not been in London on Black Thursday are under military protection at various bases throughout the country (amongst this group is the Progressive Party’s George Graham). Parliament consists of just over forty MP’s and nearly thirty members of the House of Lords who survived the nuclear attacks and the chaos that followed (many by taking shelter at military bases). A number of MP’s and Peers who survived the nuclear exchanges remain elsewhere in the UK, either unable or unwilling to undertake the potentially hazardous journey to the south of England.

The destroyer USS Morton and container-barge carrier Harbin Carrier arrive off Manila, capital of the Philippines. Due to the unrest ashore following Soviet nuclear strikes the ships remain offshore. A long-range radio message directs the Morton to proceed to the AFRICOM area once it is able to secure additional fuel.

French and Belgian military units from their respective nations reach positions within 5 km of the frontier as darkness falls. The French III Corps has travelled through Belgium to line up along the Dutch border, augmented by French-speaking Belgian territorial troops. Units are issued live ammunition as deeper in France the troops of the 4th Airmobile and 11th Parachute Division are trucked to airfields in preparation for combat drops.

The Soviet 254th Motor-Rifle Division, a high quality unit exhausted by a year of hard combat in Romania, Austria and southern Germany, is withdrawn to Steyr, Austria for rest and to absorb what few replacement men and vehicles arrive in the region.

The light frigate USS Petit and its two charges make a safe passage through the minefields off the ruins of Gibraltar and proceed across the Mediterranean at 16 knots.

[Higgipedia]

Originally Posted by Claidheamh

I don't remember if there's a canon ruling on who the NSA sides with (MILGOV or CIVGOV)? I assume that by the end of '98-'99, there's so little left of their equipment, networks, and resources that it hardly matters.

I would imagine that the Army and Marines would have moved a lot of their linguists ahead to Europe for the voice intercept mission there, so it would mostly be staffed by Air Force and Navy Linguists as well as civilian employees.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by chico20854

December 31, 1997

The Soviet 236th Rear Area Protection Division in Alma-Ata in the Central Asian Military district deserts and declares the city a "free city."

Unofficially,

Year end finds the world in dire shape. The nuclear exchange, which has expended less than 1200 of the world's nearly 50,000 nuclear weapons, has killed over 10 million people directly

Seems...low.

[chico20854]

January 1, 1998

France seizes the Rhineland west of the Rhine River from Germany and sends its III Corps alongside Belgian units into the Netherlands. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade, a territorial unit holding the Breda-Tilburg area, is attacked by the French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch successfully defend their positions, while the Bundeswehr, with its efforts split between internal security/disaster relief duties and preparing for a counteroffensive in the south, offers less vigorous reistance. Unofficially, French progress is slow. While airborne and heliborne troops are successful in securing key chokepoints near the border, the roads are clogged with abandoned civilian vehicles and the advancing columns are mobbed by swarms of desperate refugees, who assail the advancing troops with requests for food. Armored units are able to deploy their tanks' dozer blades to clear roads, while other formations are forced to shuffle their engineer units to the front; units reliant on trucks or wheeled APCs make minimal forward progress through the morass of humanity.

NATO operations in the Mediterranean (competing with the French) are dependent on the last sizeable operating refinery in North Africa, at Bizerte, Tunisia.

The new year starts off with good news for the Americans in the Persian Gulf. 2/325th Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division makes contact with the forward outposts of the 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade (Georgia National Guard). The American paratroopers are an incredible sight. Many of them are wearing a mixture of Kurdish clothing and US camouflage fatigues. The 82nd's commander, Major General Jack Joyner, rides out on horseback looking for all the world like a Kurdish hill chief.

The beginning of the year also sees the French FAR in action against pro-Soviet rebels in Senegal, Mauritania and the Horn of Africa.

Unofficially,

In a briefing about plans for 1998, the acting head of FEMA reveals the existence of the 37 strategic reserve stockpiles to President Munson. Given the quantities of food on hand, remaining electrical and petroleum production and security situation, Munson concurs with the recommendation not to reveal their existence to state authorities and local FEMA officials and to reevaluate the decision in the fall, when the food and other supplies in the caches might be more strategically directed. The stockpiles established and maintained separately by the state of Texas are broken open by their guard forces (dispersed platoons of the Texas State Guard and guards at state penitentaries) and used to sustain their ongoing operations.

In northern California, leaders of the Hells Angels and affiliated outlaw motorcycle clubs/gangs gather following the activation of the agreed-upon Plan Alpha worked out a year ago. Over 1500 members of the clubs, all heavily armed, have come together at a ranch owned by a club member just south of the Oregon border. A similar gathering is occurring in southeastern Ohio, despite the damage done by nuclear strikes on Ohio and Kentucky.

RainbowSix reports that Headquarters, US Naval Forces Europe (USNAVEUR) is reformed at the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth.

The Belgian Army's I Corps' two divisions make little progress on the first day of the invasion as they struggle in difficult terrain around Maastrcicht and Aachen, the corps' initial objective. While the Dutch resistance in the region is disorganized (Dutch forces largely consist of lightly equipped territorial security companies and platoons, which are highly motivated and able to take advantage of prepared defensive structures due to the former presence of NATO high command posts in the area). To their south, the French I Corps overruns Luxembourg, easily overwhelming the nub of the Luxembourgois Army that survived the previous year's action in Norway. The French II Corps' offensive moves north along the level terrain along the west bank of the Rhine, which has become crowded with makeshift refugee camps.

RainbowSix comments that while the British Ambassador in Paris protests the “act of unprovoked aggression”, the UK is in no position to offer more tangible support to either the Netherlands or Germany.

The remaining Red Army command staff at "Moscow Center" (actually a bunker outside the city) decide to call up the remaining mobilization-only divisions to combat the growing internal unrest and prepare for a final offensive that will wipe NATO forces from Western Europe. Making this happen, however, will prove challenging, to say the least.

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

Seems...low.

It probably is!!!

[chico20854]

January 2, 1998

Rationing around the world becomes severe; many civilians perish in the winter.

Relations between the U.S. and France deteriorate. The U.S. government views the invasion of the Rhineland as self-aggrandizement at the expense of Germany. There is not much they can do about it, however, as all their available forces are tied down elsewhere.

Survivors of the 8th Marine Regiment are reformed in northern Germany and reunited with the 2nd Marine Division.

The 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division, a hardened, veteran division that has been at the core of the Group of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan (the remnant Soviet occupation force that remained behind when 40th Army entered Iran in early 1997), is ordered into Iran to shore up the crumbling Soviet position.

Unofficcially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Lubbock Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas. The shipyard will struggle to complete another ship, but it is never delivered.

Elsewhere in the US, military production is slowly grinding to a halt as stocks of raw materials and parts run out, electricity fails as the grid remains down and backup generators fail or run dry and workers are evacuated or lost to civil unrest. Even when final production sites remain operational (such as the F-15 plant in St. Louis, Missouri), the breakdown of the transportation system and damage from the attacks on the US and subsequent disorder brings production to a halt, with the last F100-PW-229 engine delivered today.

In Anchorage, Alaska the troops of the Soviet 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade and 13th Guards Air Assault Division move east, with the former unit's hovercraft escorting convoys of seized school and city transit busses carrying the paratroopers east of Valdez towards the Canadian border. The remnants of the 130th Air Assault Brigade establish a blocking position to prevent the American 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) at Fort Greely from cutting off the attacking force, while the 130th Motor-Rifle Division remains on occupation duty in Anchorage and along the road to the east.

The Dutch government informs SACEUR that it is wthdrawing all its forces in Germany, except for the 9th Marine Combat Group along the Baltic Coast, from NATO command and devoting them to home defense. SACEUR concurs and orders the release of sufficient fuel to fill the Dutch combat vehicles tanks for the trip home.

The Dutch I Leger Corps is ordered to return home to stop the French invasion; the 1st Mechanized Division is the first to move, having been held in a reserve position behind the lines as 4th US Army desperately casts about for replacement troops to hold the line.

In the Rhineland and Netherlands, the French and Belgian force is still bogged down. The airborne and air assault units that were dropped in the predawn hours of the 1st have not been relieved yet and find themselves beseiged by Dutch and German territorials and police determined to defend their homelands. The Belgian Army suffers considerable unrest within its own ranks as Dutch-speaking Flemish troops balk at fighting against their kinsmen. Poor weather overhead prevents the French Air Force from intervening, while the Dutch 302nd Territorial Brigade, facing the French 2nd Armored Division, actually increases in strength as scattered iindependent territorial and constabulary platoons arrive in the sector. The effort to seize the mouth of the Scheldt River fails spectacularly, as Dutch marines of the 2nd and 8th battalions repulse the French third-line 108th Infantry Divsion's ill-executed amphibious assault on the port of Vlissingen.

[castlebravo92]

Chico,

Errata note: "Even when final prodction sites remain operational (such as the F-16 plant in Fort Worth, Texas)"

The General Dynamics plant (now Lockmart) is immediately adjacent to the west of the Carswell AFB runways. I actually took a couple of sloppy pictures of it on my way to West Texas just before Christmas. VERY unlikely to still remain operational after the 500 kt strike there in canon (on mobile so can't see if you logged Carswell in your version of the hitlist). Bell Helicopter over in Hurst would be far enough away not to have any damage though.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by chico20854

January 2, 1998Relations between the U.S. and France deteriorate. The U.S. government views the invasion of the Rhineland as self-aggrandizement at the expense of Germany. There is not much they can do about it...

Well, there's quite a lot they and the UK could have done about it. Not that the world needed any more mushroom clouds sprouting at that point, but I do wonder when and how seriously discussions of nuclear retaliation might have gone on among what was left of the US and UK governments.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by chico20854

It probably is!!!

FWIW, using the GDW Hit List, I have 8 million dead*, 14 million injured for 123 targets in the United States for just blast and thermal effects (not fallout - still working on generating a model for that; DTRA.mil hasn't given me access to HPAC yet so I'm working on reverse engineering the fallout generation from HotSpot and incorporating that with historical meteorology data to generate something that looks a little more realistic than the WSEG-10 smear fallout model).

So, that's my reasoning for 10 million global deaths from 1200 nuclear weapons seeming low by an order of magnitude (especially with China getting plastered).

Attaching the fatality curve I used to calculate deaths. It's a curve fit model generated from Hiroshima fatalities that in effect combines blast, thermal, and firestorm casualties. The net effect is that the curve shifts to the left more strongly than some other casualty models due to the basic assumption that most people seriously injured in the 4+ PSI zone would not be able to self-evacuate and would perish in the firestorm.

Note also, that this casualty model is less severe than some other models that have the hypothesis that even uninjured people would be unable to evacuate 5+ PSI areas before perishing in a firestorm.

And yes, this is probably way too nerdy.

* Edited to add - I didn't include the Windsor, ON attack in the initial calculations. Assuming a DGZ between the Chrysler and Ford plants for a 1 MT airburst, that adds another half million casualties (almost equally split between dead and injured) to the US tally in Detroit. Downtown and midtown Detroit would have been seriously damaged, but the Detroit Arsenal would have been about 6 km north of the end of the 1 PSI blast ring so would be completely undamaged and intact barring civil unrest and damage.

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

Chico,

Errata note: "Even when final prodction sites remain operational (such as the F-16 plant in Fort Worth, Texas)"

The General Dynamics plant (now Lockmart) is immediately adjacent to the west of the Carswell AFB runways. I actually took a couple of sloppy pictures of it on my way to West Texas just before Christmas. VERY unlikely to still remain operational after the 500 kt strike there in canon (on mobile so can't see if you logged Carswell in your version of the hitlist). Bell Helicopter over in Hurst would be far enough away not to have any damage though.

Thanks for the catch! I edited the post to switch the last engine delivery to the F-15 line in St. Louis. That plant was outside the damage radius from the Wood River, IL strike.

[chico20854]

January 3, 1998

The winter of 1997-98 is particularly cold. Civilian war casualties in the industrialized nations have reached almost 15%, although the worst is yet to come.

The California coast from Santa Barbara south has been devastated by the nuclear strikes, and the city of Los Angeles suffers most severely. Blast, radiation, and fire, combined with panic and disease, cause millions of casualties. The city has less than 20 percent of its prewar population remaining. The Bay area has also been devastated by nuclear strikes, but the presence of military forces in the region provide a modest level of organization.

In Maryland, the capital of Annapolis has been largely abandoned following is contamination with fallout from the Fort Meade attack and the relocation of the state government (such as it is) to Columbia (located between Baltimore and Washington).

The Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade moves south from the Leeuwarden area to reinforce territorial troops. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade repulses another attack by French paratroops of the 8th Marine Parachite Regiment in the Breda-Tilburg area as they try to break out and join the (very slowly-advancing) French armored force. Frogmen from the Dutch 2nd Amphibious Combat Group sink the French frigate Balny as it anchors off Vlissingen in the pre-dawn hours blocking Dutch naval intervention and standing by to offer fire support to French troops.

With the the linkup between the 82nd Airborne Division and the rest of XVIII Airborne Corps completed, both the 82nd and 24th ID and their Kurdish auxiliaries begin an orderly withdrawal back to the Bandar-e-Khomeyni area.

Unofficially,

The last planeload of replacements departs Fort Jackson, South Carolina for service in Europe. The base's training brigades are devoting increasing amounts of efforts to assisting the state government in maintaining order, distributing food and organizing relief following the Soviet nuclear strikes on Charleston and the base commander judges that he cannot afford to lose trained and ready troops when his situation is so severe. Reinforcing this bias, his higher authorities (Training and Doctrine Command and 2nd US Army) had both been struck in Soviet nuclear strikes, as had Transportation Command and Military Airlift Command, the authorities responsible for arranging for reinforcement flights. Finally, Shaw Air Force Base, from which the flight departs, has limited amounts of fuel remaining in its tank farm and the base commander has been ordered to conseserve it for that base's tanker fleet, which is tasked to support nuclear strike operations. The move strands several requisitioned airlines at the base.

In Alaska, the Soviet 130th Air Assault Brigade (reduced to a single battalion of hardened troops) occupies a blocking position north of the hamlet (and road junction) of Gakona, Alaska, preventing the American force at Fort Greely from cutting the supply line of the 13th Guards Air Assault Division and 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade, which are continuing to advance northeast along Highway 1.

HM Government authorizes a roundup of known Soviet agents and sympathizers, determined to limit internal dissent that could hamper the already extremely diffcult relief effort in the nation.

7th Fleet is able to direct the oiler USNS Neosho to the South China Sea, where it rendevous with the destroyer USS Morton and the cruiser USS Sterett and refuels both ships before turning north, accompanied by the cruiser while the Morton makes her way to the Indian Ocean.

The Dutch royal family accepts the British government's offer to evacuate their home as rumors fly of French military intelligence and special forces teams roaming the country seeking them out. A Royal Navy Sea King helicopter extracts them, flying at low level over the dark North Sea.

French and Belgian troops encounter an obstacle that their commanders had not adequately considered - British, Canadian and American rear area facilities, air bases and storage sites. Many of the air bases have been struck (some multiple times) by Soviet nuclear weapons and are nearly abandoned, while others (such as Ramstein) are fully operational, guarded by German territorials and USAF security troops and harbor American tactical nuclear weapons. In there areas an informal truce prevails, with the Franco-Belgian units giving these sites wide berth and avoiding any engagemnet with their defenders. The commander of the French 1st Army, General Francois Bescond, reaches out to SACEUR, a well-respected colleague from prewar days. After a "heated and frank" discussion between the two commanders, an agreement is reached. After the French forces have reached the Rhine River, they will offer all assistance to all bypassed NATO personnel, regardless of nationality, to evacuate the zone. The generals agree upon a 1-km exclusion zone around all American, British and Canadian facilities and, in exchange for non-belligerence from the troops at these facilities, the immediate provision of adequate food and fuel to sustain them until they have been evacuated. The two generals also agree that they will support NATO proposals for the provision of covert French and Belgian logistic support to the war effort, including food, fuel, electricity and munitions, in quantities to be agreed upon by the diplomats and intelligence agencies. While the French general was later criticized for accepting such terms, Bescond responded that the British and Americans still retained tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and that what was later perceived as a bad deal was vastly preferable to the elimination of the French nation by its ertswhile allies.

The stripping of the USS America is completed and Sixth Fleet transfers the remaining shoreside spares and supplies to the newly arrived freighter Wolman Expert, while the remaining American and Allied personnel begin to collapse the area of Sicily under NATO control. The troop transport Barrett arrives with the Expert (both escorted by the light frigate USS Petit) to take aboard passengers.

The crew of the full-rigged ship Iron Duke (formerly the property of the late eccentrick rock star Ted Hendrix) arrive in St. John, US Virgin Islands and seek shelter from the war there.

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by Targan

Well, there's quite a lot they and the UK could have done about it. Not that the world needed any more mushroom clouds sprouting at that point, but I do wonder when and how seriously discussions of nuclear retaliation might have gone on among what was left of the US and UK governments.

Thanks for that pointer, an angle I hadnt really considered. (The language about the US having little option is straight out of RDF Sourcebook.) Hopefully today's post adds a little clarity, although I welcome discussion on its reasonableness!

[Homer]

The 1km exclusion zone is going to frustrate some French leaders. Places like Buchel and Norvenich have USAF Munitions Squadrons supporting dual key special weapons on Luftwaffe bases while Woensdrecht hosts a GLCM wing on a Dutch airbase.

[chico20854]

January 4, 1998

As relocation and disorder continue in the US, city dwellers flee to the country and the country folk are not prepared to deal with what rapidly comes to seem to them as an invasion. Initial efforts of humanity and goodwill toward the victims of a nuclear attack rapidly turn into a grim battle of survival between seemingly endless mobs of refugees and the embattled farmers trying to save their food crops, then their seed crops, and finally themselves and their families from the ravaging deprivations of hungry, cold and desperate city folk. Northern Ohio has been severely depopulated by the nuclear strikes on the cities of Lima and Toledo and the fallout from the Michigan and Canadian nuclear strikes. Most of the population of the large urban centers of Ohio flee to the rural areas without encouragement by the relocation orders.

Even with all the goodwill and humanitarian intentions in the world, nothing could have prevented much of the suffering of the winter of 1997-1998. In Florida, there were just too many people and not enough of anything else. Left to freeze in the dark, New England's urban populace began a blind search for warmth and food. More than ten million people began descending on the farms and picturesque towns in the countryside. Hundreds of thousands died each month of illness, hunger or winter exposure. Thousands more died each day in the fighting that erupted as the farmers and citizens of the towns tried to stop the locust-like approach of the urban refugees. Even when there were surplus foodstuffs, the resources could not be delivered to where they were needed most; no communications network existed to identify stocks, and no effective central authority remained to coordinate the relief effort.

Unfortunately, there was more than enough evil, malicious and deliberately criminal misconduct, misinformation, and out-and-out disinformation circulating to compound the horror beyond any hope of retrieval by men of goodwill.

The fires and destruction in the US caused by the bombs are gradually brought under control, and governmental control of most urban areas is slowly regained (although some cities, like Boston, are never really brought back to order after the strikes). Civil unrest in New England has settled down as it becomes clear that New England is not to be a target. Only extreme measures bring back a semblance of order to New York City. Millions have died in New York City during and after the nuclear attacks and millions more have fled. Because of the damaged transportation network and the lack of fuel, there are minor distribution inequalities and some civil discontent, but little out-and-out rioting.

The American harvest of 1997 was larger than average, but it is not evenly distributed through the country. Most of it is still in silos and elevators in the Midwest. The large harvest had driven commodities prices down, and many farmers have withheld part of their harvest in hopes of getting higher prices later in the year. Theoretically, this grain is also subject to rationing, but there is a great deal of concealment in on-farm storage bins by individual farmers. Fuel is also hoarded, although both of these actions are illegal.

The mayor of Aldergrove, BC, Walter Rousseau, with support from local RCMP members, assumes dictatorial powers over the town.

One of the Atlantic fleet's last operable nuclear attack submarines, the USS Newport News, surrenders her berth and heads back to sea, leaving New London for the last time.

Unofficially,

The container-barge carrier Kirin Carrier is delivered in Mobile, Alabama. It, like its sister delivered a week and a half prior, is taken over by the US government. This marks the end of new ship construction in Quincy.

Paratroops of the 13th Guards Air Assault Division fall upon the lightly held outpost line of the 1st Brigade, 47th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry (Iowa National Guard) in a driving snowstorm, driving the startled guardsmen from their positions into the snow.

In northern California, members of the Hells Angels biker gang knock out the power to the Pelican Bay State Penitentiary with well-aimed rifle fire, then descend on the prison. The prison's guard force, understrength due to the draft and desertion in the weeks since the nuclear attacks, is oriented against threats from inside the prison, and within 15 minutes the bikers have captured the prison's command center (assisted by liberal application of demolitions against barriers and heavy steel doors). The bikers release the inmates within; their members and other prisoners that have a biker vouch for them remain at the heavily protected facility. The Hells Angels have gained a hardened facility and over 300 additional recruits.

More French and Belgian units arrive in southern Holland, linking up with the previously isolated French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch territorials of the 302nd Infantry Brigade have expended their remaining artillery ammunition and anti-tank weapons (mostly 1950-vintage M20 3.5-inch Super Bazooka rounds, everything more modern long ago sent to fight the Soviets). They begin retreating to the northwest as engineer parties complete the opening of dykes and irrigation systems, turning the low-lying polder into freezing swampland.

To the east, the 101st Mechanized Brigade arrives in Eindhoven from the Leeuwarden area minutes before the lead Scimitar and Scorpion light tanks of the Belgian 4th Regiment of Chasseurs à Cheval, the lead reconnaissance element of the Belgian I Corps. (The Belgian Corps has split, with the main body heading up the Meuse valley and a secondary effort headed for Dusseldorf on the Rhine). The French II Corps has overrun the final organized elements of the German territorial 45th Grenadier Regiment and reached the Rhine opposite Wiesbaden, leaving several large American garrisons isolated. In the center of the Franco-Belgian effort, I French Corps has brushed aside the remnants of the territorial 42nd and 46th Grenadier Regiments and advanced, despite the efforts of the various German obstacle detachments, past the exclusion zones surrounding Spangdahlem and Bitburg Air Bases where they are held up by a scratch force of Luftwaffe trainees at Ulmen.

[chico20854]

January 5, 1998

The unusually harsh winter which followed the nuclear exchange compound the real problems Florida faces a hundred-fold, and finally this constant and effective hate campaign smashes the floodgates of insanity. The attempts by what remains of the civil and military authorities to keep a lid on things fail dismally. A war of extermination begins to be waged across what could have been a semitropical garden of Eden. The resulting hysteria makes it an absolute risk to one's life to admit even knowing someone from Tampa or any of the other stricken communities within the state. People are pulled out of cars on the highway and lynched by fear-crazed mobs because they have automobile tags that had been originally issued in Hillsborough County. Others are summarily shot for the crime of having been born in one of the stricken zones. Wild rumors fly about stating that this or that innocent and unsuspecting community is a radiation "hot spot" and that those coming from such places bring the unseen and undetectable "germs" of radiation poisoning with them to contaminate places not yet stricken. Within a week the population of Tampa has plummeted to less than 10 percent of its prewar total. Within a month the city is a virtual ghost town, and the survivors are being hunted and harried over the countryside.

The main actors in this communal bloodbath include not only the displaced criminal elements of the big city, but also ordinary urban dwellers - mothers and fathers with children to feed and somehow protect from the freezing rains and unchecked diseases. Millions of these people battle a relative handful of farmers trying to save their own livelihoods and the lives of their own wives and children. Even without the artificially stirred-up hatreds, the twin scourges of disease and famine are hard at work winnowing the dead chaff from the few survivors. The harsh winter brings other dislocated and hungry people down into the zone of darkness and blood. Armed marauder bands spread chaos and destruction and waste more than they took.

Soviet troops cross the border from Alaska into Yukon Territory, able to mass sufficient firepower to overrun the scattered outposts of the 47th Infantry Division. Supplies begin to run low, however, as the distances increase and the winter weather takes a toll on the requisitioned civilian vehicles the Soviet troops are relying on for mobility.

The nuclear attacks force an abandonment of the effort reactivate the 106th Infantry Division. Only the 422nd Infantry Regiment, formed in early 1997 from reservists and draftees, constituting three battalions of the 422nd and two batteries of the 591st Field Artillery, has been fully trained and equipped.

As the nuclear exchange peters out and the home situation deteriorates, a number of British battalions are sent from Germany to England to help enforce martial law.

KGB Colonel Borisov, living off the British countryside during the winter, is one of the few agents not rounded up during the army's purge of known Soviet agents.

Unofficially,

A patrol of the 78th Training Division in Trenton, New Jersey, is unexpectantly engaged in a firefight when they stumble across an organized group of looters who have just finished sacking a neighborhood which the division's troops had just finished evacuating two days before. The poorly trained troops (most have completed basic training but not their advanced skill training, led by their training company's admin clerk) lose three men and are unsuccesful in preventing the looters from escaping.

The Belgian 16th Mechanized Division's 10th Mechanized Brigade engages the Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade on the southern outskirts of Eindhoven. The Dutch fall back and the Belgian division's 17th Armored Brigade comes swooping in from the east, the guns of their Leopard Is inflicting havoc on the hapless Dutch reservists. The command falls apart, with bands of men drifting away to the north. The lead units of the Dutch I Corps cross the Waal and Meuse between 's-Hertogenbosch and Nijmegen. The French III Corps' 2nd and 10th Armored Divisions (each with about half the troops and firepower of an equivalent prewar NATO division) clear the towns of Breda and Tilburg, respectively, and clear the continued resistance of territorials, reservists and constabulary troops that offer scattered resistance south of the Rhine. The Luftwaffe recruit detachment at Ulmen sustains a day of furious French artillery fire and several dismounted infantry attacks, turning each back in turn. In the far west, the Dutch defense of Vlissingen comes to an end as the defending marines and territorials come under attack from land and sea; after darkness falls the remains of the Dutch 2nd Marine Amphibious Combat Group slip out of the burning city aboard a fleet of small craft, intent on waging a continuing guerrilla campaign against the occupying Belgian and French troops.

Massive fires light the night sky over Sigonella, Sicily as the final American and Allied personnel evacuate the naval base and adjacent airfield. The departing troops burn the repair facilities, headquarters, barracks, warehouses, create craters in the airfield's runway and taxiways, collapse aircraft shelters and, the action that hurts the American sailors the most, set the damaged carrier USS America ablaze.

The Coast Guard medium-endurance cutter Thetis arrives at Diego Garcia, which was struck by a pair of Soviet nuclear missiles 30 days prior. The ship launches its helicopter for an aerial survey of the damage, conducting a radiological survey (what little residual radiation from the 200-kiloton airbursts has largely dispersed by trade winds and tides in the month since the attack) and identifying sunken obstacles to navigation in the atoll's lagoon.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by chico20854

January 4, 1998
They begin retreating to the northwest as engineer parties complete the opening of dykes and irrigation systems, turning the low-lying polder into freezing swampland.

That's dike. "Dyke" is an offensive term for certain segments of the population that I won't go into here. Don't want us to get into any inadvertent trouble.

[kato13]

Dykes is the preferred plural

[chico20854]

January 6, 1998

The first pitched battle between local landowners and refugees is fought at a large refugee camp outside Butler, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh).

Since certain zoo animals - the large carnivores particularly - represented a danger to humans, zoo officials were ordered by local governments and by military authorities to destroy them in the event of a nuclear attack. Not all of the dangerous animals are killed, however. In the chaos following the nuclear attack, many zookeepers die or flee before they could carry out their duties. Others release favorite animals rather than kill them. Some people release animals en masse, believing that all living creatures deserve a fair chance. Some animals become desperate for food and water and break out when their keepers no longer come. The animals which are released or escape meet various fates. Most die, temperamentally unsuited to life on their own. Many are killed for food or because they are obviously dangerous. Others die in the harsh winter weather after the attacks, and a few manage to escape the cities completely.

By this point, many people who are in an American undamaged city are reluctant to simply pick up and leave. Conditions are still not too bad over most of the nation, and nobody wants to desert the security of their homes and possessions (relocatees are only allowed 50 kilograms of baggage) to go to some unspecified place in the country. The relocation buses, trains, and boats become increasingly difficult to fill. Rumors of what happens to relocatees when they arrive do not help matters. Rural communities are unwilling to have large numbers of outsiders forced upon them. There are shortages of just about everything, and the "relokies," as they are called, are subject to almost constant hostility from the local populace.

Conditions continue to deteriorate across the United States. Rural Americans are not happy to have untold thousands of homeless hungry urbanites thrust upon them, and violence flares against the refugees in many places. More often, a rural community accepts its quota of refugees, then turns them out when the troops had left. It is not surprising that a sizable number of "relokies" chose to leave at the first opportunity.

A number of British ports remain functional, most notably Margate in northern Kent and Portsmouth in Hampshire. Anglesey becomes a haven for surviving British forces in Wales as it is physically untouched by the war and is naturally easy to defend.

The Dutch 5th Mechanized Division is hit hard by French airstrikes in the vicinity of Nijmegen as it closes on the town of Eindhoven in an attempt to halt the advancing Belgians.

Unofficially,

Turmoil roils the high level of NATO command as the alliance struggles to respond to the French invasion of Germany and the Netherlands. The Dutch and German military commands (which are effectively their national governments in the wake of the nuclear devestation of their homelands) are livid with SACEUR for his deal with the French that essentially yields their territory without bringing the full military might of the alliance to bear to stop the invasion. SACEUR replies that the deal is the least bad option and that it at least will yield some compensation from the French while simultaneously relieving the respective governments of the responsibility for sustaining the refugees in the territory (he had demanded that there be no expulsions of population by the French and Belgian authorities). Pointing to the dire condition of NATO combat forces at the front, SACEUR has no non-nuclear means available to halt the French agression, as pulling troops from the line or allocating additional scarce resources will leave the front against the Soviets dangerously vulnerable. The German command grudgingly accepts this statement, noting that it has been unable to divert significant resources to defending the territory, other than cancelling the planned offensive against the Czechs and Soviets in the Hof-Nuremburg-Regensburg area.

The Belgian air force's F-16 fleet is grounded as the clear skies over the front allow the remaining Dutch F-16s to make an appearance overhead; the Franco-Belgian command fears fratricide as well as wanting to preserve the limited supply of spare parts and munitions for the fighters. The Dutch 1st Mechanized Division, hardened veterans after a year of action and the Czechs, Soviets and Italians, tear into the French 5e Régiment d'Infanterie, part of the 2nd Armored Division, southwest of 's-Hertogenbosch. The French combined-arms battalion is strung out along the highway through flooded fields, where the guns of the remaining Dutch Leopard II's are able to wreak the French column. Dutch MLRS rockets of the 101st Artillery Group sow submunitions among the column and the road behind it, preventing reinforcements from hurrying to the rescue.

In Germany, the Luftwaffe training unit is finally blasted out of its positions outside Ulmen as the French commit the 4th Airmobile Division to leapfrog the blocking position and direct precision fires against the German positions.

RainbowSix reports that HM Government is preparing an assessment of surviving facilities. One is the Hamworthy refinery located close to the Port of Poole. The refinery had suffered particularly heavy damage during a series of concentrated raids in August 1997 that forced it to shut down whilst the damage was repaired. The British Government managed to successfully fool the Soviets into thinking that their airstrikes had destroyed the facility when MI5 arranged for false documents to be passed to a known Soviet agent. The ruse worked and the refinery was spared a Soviet nuclear warhead.

The Freedom-class cargo ship Buffalo Freedom is delivered in San Diego, California.

The Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes is sunk by four 65-76 torpedoes fired by the Victor III-class submarine 60 Let Shefstva VLKSM 325nm NNW of Ascension Island while on an voyage to secure supplies of food from Argentina.

The USCG cutter Thetis lands its assessment team on Diego Garcia. While the overpressure and heat from the blasts stripped the occupied area of the island of vegetation and destroyed all unhardened structures in the central part of the base area, it left the airbase's twin 12,000-foot runways intact and several secondary underground faciltiies (overflow fuel tanks and such) intact, as well as the extensive magazine complex, space observation station and communications facility several kilometers away on the remote southern end of the island.

[chico20854]

January 7, 1998

Although Chicago itself was not a target, the oil refineries at Joliet were, and this is enough to panic the population of the city and surrounding suburbs. Food shortages are not severe except in large urban areas, and most deaths are caused by epidemics and rioting.

A mass prison break from Matsqui Penitentiary in British Columbia, orchestrated by Tom "Fang" Strakes occurs. Most prisoners disperse into the countryside south of the Frasier River, but some remain and form the Razorheads marauder gang.

Anglia has escaped damage during the first nuclear exchange, which attracts many refugees to the area. The local population resists this invasion, and open warfare erupts. Some towns manage to force back the refugees, but in the majority of cases, sheer weight of numbers win the battle. When the refugees get into the towns, they find that the situation is not as good as they had been led to believe and fighting for the few good spots breaks out among the refugee groups. The fighting dies down as winter approaches.

The Dutch 105th Recon Battalion inflicts heavy casualties on the Belgian 7th Mechanized Brigade on the approaches to Arnhem.

Konstantin P. Yermolaev, commander of the 10th Guards Motor-Rifle Division, is promoted to Major General in Iran.

Unofficially

The 49th Armored Division struggles under the burden of trying to secure one of America's largest cities and is forced to cede control of some areas (most notably the remnants of Chicago's South Side) to the armed gangs that have threatened food and fuel convoys, requiring more resources to escort than the divisional commander has.

In order to conserve fuel, the destroyer Morton is travelling alone at 12 knots through Indonesian waters. (The ship's bunkers don't carry enough fuel for the 5500-mile voyage at the usual cruising speed of 17 knots, and refueling is unlikely along the way). The warship is approached at dawn by a small flotilla of armed small craft (the largest is an 8-meter customs boat mounting a 20mm cannon), who approach the destroyer despite radio calls to keep a distance. Soon a surface action has erupted, the destroyer using one of its 5-inch main guns to blast the customs boat out of the water and deck mounted 25mm cannons and machineguns to drive off the smaller craft.

The Dutch 5th Mechanized Division (in reality less than a brigade in strength after the attrition of the German campaign of 1997 and the prior day's French airstrikes) tries to hold the advancing Belgians from entering Nijmegen, but short of fuel and ammunition, is forced to displace, leaving many of its remaining vehicles behind, their gas tanks empty. To the west, the 1st Mechanized Division fights another sharp engagement against the invading French, launching another flank attack, this one on the 8th Infantry Division's 67e Régiment d'Infanterie; the French motorized infantry unit's VAB armored cars proving exceedingly vulnerable to fire from Dutch APCs and AIFVs emplaced in the engineer training center at Vught outside 's-Hertenbosch.

On the German front, Belgian reconnaissance units have reached the Rhine opposite Duisburg, halting while German territorials destroy the road and rail bridges over the Rhine. The French II Corps resumes its drive north along the banks of the Rhine, creating a large pocket of disorganized German troops and tens of thousands of displaced civilians sheltering in and near the cluster of American installations in Baumholder.

At Diego Garcia, a team from the USCG's cutter Thetis continues its survey of the lagoon's anchorage. One pier is blocked by the sunken Cypriot freighter Ever Happy, as are three of the atoll's 20 dredged anchorage sites. The team ashore, haven broken into one of the explosives magazines, reports that there likely are several hundred tons of iron bombs present but that the airfield facilities (hangars, landing aids, fuel pipeline system, power, water and accommodations) are all destroyed beyond repair. Tactical or field-expedient systems will be needed to restore the base to operations, limited by the capabilities of those systems.

[chico20854]

January 8, 1998

The 49th Armored Division, which has been deployed in a disaster relief and emergency security role in the northern Illinois and Indiana area, is moved out of the Chicago metropolitan area. The division's 1st Brigade moves to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, 2nd Brigade to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, and 3rd Brigade and division headquarters to Springfield, Illinois. Likewise, the 46th Infantry Division is deployed on a variety of security and disaster relief missions along the eastern seaboard. Also leaving the Chicago area is the 35th Engineer Brigade (Combat), which moves into downstate Illinois to secure the energy resources there (oil fields, coal mines, the Robinson and Mount Vernon refineries) and food reserves of the region's bountiful farms. In Texas, a Navy salvage expedition withdraws the remaining operable aircraft from the lightly-damaged Corpus Christi Naval Air Station to the (unofficially) Memphis Naval Air Station.

The Dutch high command orders the remnants of the 5th Mechanized Division withdrawn across the Rhine for reconstruction. The Dutch 105th Recon Battalion is forced back to the Rhine from its defense of Arnhem. As it falls back, the advancing French and Belgian troops are engaged by the Dutch 4th Mechanized Division in a classic meeting engagement.

Unofficially,

The 1st Armored Brigade (Training) halts training at Fort Knox, Kentucky and dedicates all resources towards accommodating the over 100,000 refugees seeking shelter on and around the base.

The destroyer USS Morton is once again approached by pirates in Indonesian waters. Once again the crew is forced to open fire to drive off the attackers.

To the west, the 1st Mechanized Division is under pressure in 's-Hertenbosch as the French III Corps (provided with abundant air support by the French Air Force and the Mirage 5s of the Belgian Air Force) has massed troops on all the approaches to the city. The 101st Artillery Group fires its last two Lance missiles at logistic sites in northern Belgium. (The missiles are conventional cluster munitions, their American nuclear weapon custodial units having remained behind in southern Germany when I Dutch Corps displaced).

French and Belgian troops are busy establishing occupation authorities in the Dutch provinces of Zeeland and Limburg and the areas of Brabant that they control, as they are as well in areas in Germany that they control.

The campaign in Germany is winding down as remaining German troops are either defeated or withdraw across the Rhine. French field commanders grow increasingly irritated with the restrictions on their operations imposed by the presence of (mostly) American garrisons and the attendant exclusion zones, as well as the demand that they restore electrical power and water to the bases, with requirements for food and fuel still being developed by the isolated American commanders.

With winter weather arriving, the Danish containership Susan Mae weighs anchor from the New York Bight and sails around Long Island, seeking shelter in Long Island Sound.

In Iran, the units of XVIII Airborne Corps and III MEF begin falling back into the Zagros Mountains following the success of Operation Pegasus II. The move frees up several infantry battalions for duty securing the supply lines and rear areas, which have grown increasingly chaotic as various armed bands of deserters, smugglers, bandits and enemy special operations teams seek to eke out an existence preying on the civilian population and military traffic in the allied area of control. To their north and east, Transcaucasian Front is in no condition to occupy the territory evacuated, starved of supplies and replacements; Soviet commanders devote their efforts to securing food and fuel for their units and trying to prevent desertion from wearing their units down past the point of ineffectiveness.

STAVKA (or the remnants thereof) orders the deployment of the 260th Motor-Rifle Division in the Ural Military District. The mobilization-only division, located at Shadrinsk on the steppes of Siberia, has been forming since July, although other divisions were higher priority in receiving men and equipment. In fact, the declaration is more a reflection of the dire circumstances of the Soviet government than of the division’s condition, but nonetheless the division takes responsibility for maintaining order in its area of the country.

[chico20854]

January 9, 1998

In New York City, grocery stores, convenience stores, drug stores, liquor stores, gun stores, jewelry stores, electronics stores, waterfront warehouses, gas stations, apartments more or less easily accessible from the street-these and countless other possible sources of salvageable items are emptied. Another waterborne gang is formed. The Ferrymen are under the leadership of Cap Winston, a longshoreman who seizes control of a Staten Island ferry, securing the fuel already aboard and a small store ashore.

Unofficially,

The West Point student body and cadre is designated the 1st Cadet Brigade and assigned internal security and disaster relief duties as streams of refugees continue to travel up the Hudson River Valley.

In a bid to prevent the British from using its output, the Whitegate Oil Refinery in Cork, Ireland, the nation's sole refinery, in peacetime producing over 40 percent of its fuel, is hit by a Soviet SS-C-4 cruise missile fired by the 101st Missile Regiment, 44th Missile Division in the western Ukraine. (The missile flight is noted by NATO air defense radars as it passes overhead at low level, but commanders are unable to successfully engage it, such is the shortage of missiles and poor state of the C3I network).

Another day of heavy fighting rages in southern Holland as the French III Corps faces off against the Dutch I Corps. The veteran Dutch troops are running low on supplies, while the lavishly-supplied French troops are exploiting the lessons they have learned at such great cost over the preceding week. Outside Arnhem, the 4th Mechanized Division is engaged in heavy fighting against French armored units as the Belgians are shunted aside, while the 1st Mechanized Division (reinforced with the 103rd Recon Battalion) holds onto 's-Hertenbosch despite intense French bombardment.

Tension in the Romanian city of Târgu Mureș is steadily rising as the local population, already hostile (as most loyal Romanians are), grows increasingly irate at the failure of the Soviet occupation force (built around the 146th Motor-Rifle Division) to provide either security, food or fuel, instead hoarding what little is available in the harsh post-exchange environment for itself. A demonstration outside the division headquarters, which quickly escalates to scuffles with the headquarters guard, is broken up with gunfire ordered by the panicked senior lieutenant on duty.

[chico20854]

January 10, 1998

The Special Facility at Mount Weather is abandoned for other, more secure locations within the so-called Federal Relocation Arc, an area within a 100-mile radius of Washington, DC. The Charters of Freedom (the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights) are sealed in a deep secure vault under the facility, which retains a small security and caretaker staff.

UBF leader John Carlucci receives word that his wife, Tamara, last reported in Boston, likely became a casualty of the disorder.

Unofficially,

US XI Corps consolidates its surviving corps-level artillery troops and systems into the 151st Field Artillery Brigade, disbanding the 45th Field Artillery Brigade, whose remaining guns and gunners go to the 151st and excess command and support personnel are assigned to other XI Corps units.

As Dutch lines begin to give way after another sleepless night under unrelenting French artillery fire, the Dutch high command reluctantly orders the abandonment of the positions south of the Rhine. The 1st Mechanized Division crosses into the Utrecht area, while the 4th Mechanized withdraws into the ruins of the city of Arnhem, destroyed in battle for the second time in the 20th Century.

The remaining five F-16s of the Dutch Air Force are evacuated to British RAF bases in East Anglia.

Local resistance leaders (the ethnic Romanian remnants of the former city and military administration) in the Romanian city of Târgu Mureș organize a blockade of the Soviet 146th Motor-Rifle Division's headquarters in the city's historic medieval citadel. The city's local Hungarian minority is less hostile to the Soviets, although sharing the Romanian's outrage at the lack of food and fuel in the harsh Balkan winter. Lone Soviet soldiers are kidnapped and killed, lone vehicles attacked and columns of vehicles foolish enough to venture through the city after dark are ambushed.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by chico20854

Thanks for that pointer, an angle I hadnt really considered. (The language about the US having little option is straight out of RDF Sourcebook.) Hopefully today's post adds a little clarity, although I welcome discussion on its reasonableness!

When I was writing the UK stuff I thought about that angle but always presumed that it would be a classic example of realpolitik in action and there was no way that the UK would want to invite either French nuclear retaliation or the possibility of dragging the French into the War in Europe as an enemy. Hence the line in my work that the British Ambassador in Paris delivers a note of protest and that's as far as it goes (although it was probably a strongly worded note of protest...)

In other words, forget NATO article 5, western Germany would be thrown under the bus.

[chico20854]

January 11, 1998

As the battered and bruised attack submarine USS City of Corpus Christi remains in drydock, the remaining powers that be in the US Navy decide that, while she is badly needed at sea, she is due for a reactor overhaul. The remaining shipyard workers begin to amass the material needed for the job.

Colonel Alfred White (US Army, Ret.) repeats his offer to form a volunteer combat unit formed from WW II re-enactor groups and civilian military vehicle collectors. When he previous offered the unit to the military in early 1997, he was rejected out of hand. Now, after the Thanksgiving Day massacre and the losses worldwide as the war went nuclear, his offer is accepted. He begins to rally his volunteers and their vehicles at the now-emptied Savannah Army Depot on the banks of the Mississippi in northwestern Illinois.

Opposite French forces in Germany, refugees pile up on the French and Belgian frontiers, a large lawless zone springs into existence. Open fighting for food is followed by mass starvation and disease, until the lawless zone has become barren and empty.

Unofficially,

The 199th Infantry Brigade is ordered, ready or not, to Korea from Hawaii to reinforce Eighth Army.

RainbowSix reports that the region of the Welsh border counties of Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester is caught between two waves of large scale refugee movements as people pour out of the cities of the West Midlands and South Wales seeking the perceived safety of the countryside, leading to a number of clashes between locals and refugees. To the west, North Wales has escaped any direct damage from the nuclear attack on Britain, although the eastern regions are very close to the heavily populated north west of England which was heavily damaged by the nuclear detonations. The mass influx of refugees and marauding gangs from England prompts the formation of the Welsh Assembly Government (in Welsh Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru or LCC) after parts of North Wales are overrun by marauding gangs from England. GDW reports that the Welsh Nationalist Party takes advantage of the chaos to seize control of the country.

Fighting south of the Rhine in the Netherlands comes to a halt with the withdrawal of the last Dutch combat formations, although occupation forces are frequently engaged by holdouts and stragglers as an active resistance network begins to form. French reconnaissance units approach Utrecht but are halted by Dutch roadblocks; the commander of III French Corps orders that they hold their position. (The recon troops had advanced to determine the status of Dutch military forces north of the river in case French and Belgian units would need to secure the opposite shore of the river to prevent infiltration of refugees; the presence of Dutch troops indicates that the Dutch government retains active control of the region).

[chico20854]

January 12, 1998

In Pittsburgh, many who had fled the city have returned. The city has not been nuked yet… and the winter is cold, and the residents of surrounding rural communities are unenthusiastic in their reception of urban refugees. To the east, many of those trapped in the crossroads of Breezewood, Pennsylvania die fighting over remaining reserves of gasoline and food, and others manage to escape to other areas. The survivors are soon joined by refugees coming east from New Jersey and New York, seeking safety in the mountains. The large number of empty motel rooms, though lacking heat or electricity or even running water, provide the beginnings of a refugee city with a population of well over 5,000.

The Canadian 4th Mechanized Brigade (my 1st Division) is transferred from command of the US V Corps to the US XI Corps when V Corps is moved to occupation duty in central Germany.

Unofficially,

Ellsworth Air Force Base is abandoned, six weeks after it was struck by Soviet ICBMs. The remaining Security Police begin an epic midwinter trek across the frozen plains guarding several heavily loaded trucks that contain the assembled nuclear warheads from the base's missiles and remaining bombs from the munitions bunkers. The convoy is headed for Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In Atlanta a rumor spreads that CNN has been operating thanks to a large cache of food and fuel hidden in the network headquarters' basement. A crowd of 30,000 desperate people soon gathers and overruns the building, ending American TV broadcasting for several years.

NATO naval commanders in Europe, facing a severe lack of fuel for their combatants and a collapse of the worldwide trading system, organize the layup of much of the shipping in the North Sea. Idle ships have begun to clog the few remaining intact ports, crews have started to abandon their vessels and there are more cargo ships available than there is cargo for them. Facing harsh winter weather, several convoys are organized to remote anchorages in Norwegian fjords and sheltered harbors along the British coast.

[chico20854]

January 13, 1998

The destruction of Toledo and Lima in Ohio in December triggered a vast migration east from Cleveland, Akron, and Columbus. These refugees avoid Pittsburgh itself, fearful of another escalation in the continuing nuclear exchange, but vast refugee camps grow up in smaller towns throughout the region between the Allegheny Mountains, Lake Erie, and the Ohio Border. Refugee camps are established outside many of the towns and cities in the region, especially in such transportation centers as New Castle, Butler, the towns along the Ohio River, and, once fear of further nuclear attacks had receded, near Pittsburgh. The relatively small populations of the smaller towns are rapidly overwhelmed in numbers and in political power by the refugees, and Pittsburgh, partly depopulated during the chaotic weeks following the nuclear attacks, is overrun by them. Refugee migrations from the west enter Beaver County along the Pennsylvania Turnpike and from the area around New Castle to the north. Large numbers have already crossed the Ohio River and settled around Aliquippa and in Raccoon Creek State Park. In Washington County to the south, citizens alarmed at the influx of refugees and by reports of what is happening north of Pittsburgh, form a self-defense militia.

Unofficially,

As a result of the harsh words and clashing visions between USCG Commandant Holsbirger and First Maritime Defense District Commander Scott MacDowell, MacDowell begins developing a plan to use his remaining forces to maintain control of two facilities he believes are absolutely critical to the future of the Navy and Coast Guard: Portsmouth Naval Yard and Bath Iron Works. At the same time, MacDowell intends to provide security and support for the fishing fleets operating out of Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Massachusetts. Holsbirger can take care of the fishing fleets operating out of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and points south with his own ships and people.

With the fighting in the Rhine wound down, French and NATO authorities meet to make arrangement for the repatriation of Allied forces and the evacuation of facilities from the occupied zone. The burden of supporting the effort is to fall solely upon the French and Belgian governments, which begin mobilizing civilian trucking and rail assets as Army and Air Force engineers work to clear and improve transit routes. The first shipment of foodstuffs are delivered to the USAF Ramstein Air Base, which hosts over 2500 American airmen and soldiers and 15,000 refugees. The DIA Amsterdam station chief travels to Paris to meet with DGSE officials to hammer out the details of the larger assistance package agreed to by SACEUR and French commanders; the American ambassador in Paris implores the General not to refer to the package as "reparations".