On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

June 7, 1998

The reinforcements, aircraft, armored vehicles and ammunition that arrived in the convoy in May allow US forces in Kenya, who had been short of
supplies, to resume offensive operations against the Somalis and Sudanese in the north.

Unofficially,

The lieutenant governor of Tennessee receives word from federal authorities that, due to the strategic importance of the bridges over the Mississippi River and other transportation links, the federal government is willing to commit resources to bolster state defense forces to secure the city of Memphis. The 2nd Regiment, Tennessee State Guard, which is occupying a series of roadblocks and refugee camps along the Interstate 40 corridor between Nashville and Memphis, is identified as the nearest and most readily available unit.

The violence over the border continues, with a bloody dawn massacre of Mexican refugees by renegade state guardsmen of the 1st Texas Brigade.

In Mexico City, there is heavy military traffic throughout the city as midnight approaches.

The Soviet 16th Army continues its pursuit of the retreating VII US Corps, with the 19th and 20th Guards Tank Divisions augmented by the 57th GMRD's 51st Guards Tank Regiment advancing slowly towards the town of Uffenheim, defended by the American 1st Infantry Division.

[chico20854]

June 8, 1998

A PRI-PPS alliance seizes power in Mexico. It immediately issues secret orders for an invasion of the U.S.

The replica USS Constitution picks up American POWs from a wrecked Bulgarian freighter.

Unofficially,

The commanders of the Presidential Guard Brigade and Brigada Ciudad Mexico are replaced by PRI loyalist lieutenant colonels and by nightfall the armed standoff in the streets of the capital has ended as the new regime displays a firm hand.

Specialist Cutler is loaded aboard a KAMAZ supply truck alongside other American POWs (along with a pair of German Territorial Army deserters that had been swept up in Ansbach) for evacuation from the combat zone.

Bundeswehr intelligence analysts note that many recently arrived Soviet conscripts are equipped with non-standard body armor, some dating to the 1950s, others wearing bulletproof vests designed for MVD police use. Soviet troops are also appearing at the front wearing Second World War SSh-39 helmets, phased out of production in 1942.

The Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Brigade, having paused for several weeks gathering food and fuel, resumes its westward journey. The brigade reconnaissance company sends out several patrols to the Krasnoyarsk area, seeking a useable and lightly defended bridge over the Yenesei River.

[chico20854]

June 9, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

Mexican units rush towards the border as the Mexican Army establishes command and control structures for the invasion of the US: 2nd Army is responsible for operations west of the Sierra Madre Occidental, 3rd Army for operations in New Mexico and west Texas and 4th Army for operations in eastern and central Texas. American intelligence agents in the border region, mainly from the Drug Enforcement Agency, have been inactive for some months and in any case would be unable to relay news of the troop movements to the Joint Chiefs, such is the state of both communications and command and control within the US government at this stage. The DIA station chief in Mexico City was killed in anti-American rioting earlier in the year and has not been replaced; the three-man CIA team in the capital is absorbed with trying to determine who holds the reins of power, investigating rumors that the PPS-PRI alliance may have the support of narcotrafficers. The CIA team attributes the sudden disappearance of Mexican Army APCs and troops to their returning to barracks, not noticing that the 1st and 2nd Mechanized Brigades are in fact loading onto railcars on the city's outskirts, or that the parachute brigade is moving to the international airport, where a stream of transports is arriving.

The Soviet 41st Army receives a trainload of reinforcements from the USSR. It includes another two dozen T-34 tanks from deep storage near the Urals, which are assigned to the 62nd Tank Division, partially replacing the heavy losses it sustained in the capture of Erbach an der Donau. The train from home also brings fresh replacement troops, over 200 young men from Uzbekistan, some of whom even speak Russian.

The commander of the John F Kennedy battle group, deeming the Soviet air threat greatly diminished, detaches the cruiser USS Gettysburg to conduct an anti-surface sweep through the Ionian Sea and islands, responding to rumors of enemy naval and merchant traffic through the Corinth Canal. The remainder of the battle group continues to patrol the central Mediterranean at low speed to conserve fuel, maintaining a single aircraft aloft during daylight hours with additional planes on deck, armed and ready to respond to any enemy activity.

[chico20854]

June 10, 1998

Another day with nothing official. Unofficially,

The Mexican troop movements continue; the mechanized and motorized units relying the rail network to move their vehicles, while infantry units make use of requisitioned civilian trucks and buses. The many months of fuel rationing hampers this effort, as the civilian sector has been largely fuel starved, leaving many theoretically available vehicles inoperable from disuse and lacking drivers.

The Canadian military effort against the secessionist Quebecois has largely halted. A French aid convoy is reportedly en route, but the primary reason is the inability of the Canadian Army to continue the offensive with an assault crossing of the St. Lawrence River. Its few combat engineers lack bridging equipment or boats sufficient to cross the over 2-mile wide river.

RainbowSix reports that the western part of Cornwall begins to receive refugees from chaotic conditions elsewhere in the UK. Some of them meet Marcus Rose, a former Major in the Parachute Regiment, who offers them self-defense training.

Specialist Cutler and the other POWs captured in Ansbach, Germany are transferred to a boxcar for further evacuation. At nightfall the train heads east, taking the roundabout route through Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia to the USSR.

[chico20854]

June 11, 2998

The replica USS Constitution calls in Porta Delgado, Azores.

Lead elements of the Mexican Army cross the border in force along five major axes - from Tijuana into San Diego, into California's Imperial Valley, into Arizona south of Tucson, against El Paso for a drive on Albuquerque, New Mexico, and on a broad front along the Rio Grande in Texas.

[The following is a mix of canon and unofficial material]

The California assault is carried out by the 2nd Army, which sends the Ensenada Brigade across the border, overrunning the startled Border Patrol agents and squad of California State Guardsmen on duty at the busy San Ysidro border crossing point. Within an hour they have overrun the border post and the nearby Naval Outlying Landing Field Imperial Beach and by sunset they have covered most of the 14 miles between the border and the city of San Diego.

The Mexican 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment crosses the border overland a few miles to the east, while in the predawn hours the Marine Parachute Regiment lands (the first two companies by parachute, the last two later in the day air-landed) on Naval Air Station Miramar. They overcome the USN security troops, mechanics, pilots and technicians stationed there, destroy the few remaining aircraft that are based there and seizing the remaining fuel supplies before they can be destroyed. The 1st Mechanized Brigade remains in reserve to exploit any breakthroughs or reinforce any units that need it.

In the central sector of the 2nd Army sector, Brigade Mexicali crosses the border at Calexico and overruns the USMC air station at El Centro. When the truck-borne infantry catches up with the brigade's 18th Motorized Cavalry Regiment at the air station the cavalry once again leaps forward, capturing the parched fields of the Imperial Valley. The Nogales Brigade crosses into Arizona, sending mechanized detachments north along Interstate 19 towards Tucson while deploying flank security detachments to protect its right flank from the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade at Ft. Huachuca.

Throughout the 2nd Army sector the advance is assisted by local guides, local ethnic-Mexican criminal gangs, some of which defended Mexican refugee camps and others allied with the narcotrafficing gangs that have operated in the region for years. Handsomely rewarded drug lords have made an arrangement with the PPS-PRI alliance in Mexico City to assist in the invasion in exchange for the right to "repatriate" the wealth of the captured territory.

In West Texas the 3rd Army crosses the Rio Grande. The Ciudad Juarez Brigade invades El Paso, pushing through the crowded built up area to try to capture Fort Bliss in a coup-de-main. The Torres Motorized Cavalry Brigade advances to the west, moving cautiously up Interstate 10 to try to surround the base from the northwest. It only advances a mile and a half when it encounters the first ambush by state guardsmen of the 9th Texas Brigade, losing a French-built VBL armored car. The ambush is quickly suppressed with some heavy weapons fire and the use of a Milan anti-tank missile, but the cavalry's momentum has been broken by the soldiers' desire to avoid more ambushes, three of which are encountered in the next two miles. The Chihuahua Brigade crosses the Rio Grande nearly 200 miles to the southeast, at the Presidio, Texas border crossing. Largely unopposed, the brigade advances up Highway 67 towards Odessa, commandeering civilian vehicles to enhance its mobility.

The 4th Army invades on a broad front further east in Texas. The Monterrey Brigade crosses the border at Laredo, immediately encountering the state guardsmen of the 1st Texas Brigade, who just days earlier were massacring unarmed Mexican civilians. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment remains on the Mexican side of the border, ready to lunge forward up Interstate 35 towards San Antonio and Austin once the infantry clear the Texan blocking force. To the west, the Monclova Brigade crosses the Rio Grand at Eagle Pass, where much of the unit turns northwest to face the combined might of the 3rd Texas Regiment and the trainees of the USF basic training wing at Laughlin AFB.

The fiercest resistance comes along the Gulf Coast, where the Matamoros Brigade and 2nd Mechanized Brigade cross into Brownsville and McAllen, respectively. Brownsville is garrisoned by the sailors of the USS Makin Pre-Commissioning Unit. The mechanized troops' advance to Highway 77 is stalled by resistance from the cadets and cadre of the Marine Military Academy, a private military school in Harlingen, who are fiercely defending their campus and blocking traffic on the highway.

Unofficially,

The Mexican Air Force operates in the skies overhead. The sole fighter squadron, the 401st, with eight flyable F-5 aircraft, supports 4th Army's ground troops with rocket and gunfire as well as bombing fixed emplacements, to little effect overall. The 402nd Squadron, operating in the west, flies close support missions assisting the paratroops at Miramar with its ancient T-33 trainers, while 3rd Army is nominally supported by several squadrons of turboprop PC-7 armed trainers, which struggle to avoid the heavy anti-aircraft defenses of Fort Bliss, home to the US Army Air Defense Center and School.

In all sectors, the American response is weak and uncoordinated. Almost uniformly they are surprised by the arrival of Mexican units and out of position to mount a coherent defense. The troops are poorly supplied - those on civil relief and internal security missions have but a single magazine of ammunition, many Navy and Air Force training units only have enough small arms for a third of their troops, food and fuel are scarce and combat units are in most cases awaiting deployment overseas, with vague promises that heavy weapons and equipment will be provided in theatre. The Mexicans have achieved strategic and tactical surprise, leaving the Joint Chiefs struggling to form a response.

In Germany, having had two days to integrate the reinforcements and replacements, the 62nd Tank Division is ordered back into action as 41st Army attempts to surround (rather than overrun) the city of Stuttgart.

The USS Virginia crosses into the Pacific Ocean, braving fierce winter storms in the treacherous waters of Cape Horn. Despite the potential shelter of the channels to the north in Tierra del Fuego the cruiser's captain decides to remain offshore, unwilling to risk his ship in constrained waters where it would be vulnerable to attack or interdiction from ashore.

[chico20854]

Sorry I'm a few days behind. As you can imagine, today's post required quite a bit of legwork!

Enjoy!!!!

[The Zappster]

Please don't apologise. Your work is outstanding and well worth the wait. Carry on and many many thanks.

[chico20854]

June 12, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

Throughout the world, nearly all of the carefully husbanded reserve stockpiles assembled so carefully and at great expense in the months and years leading up to the nuclear exchange have been emptied. Even the most ambitious plans were for at most 90 days of supplies of food, fuel and strategic materials; by this point it has been nearly a year since the first nuclear weapons were used and over seven months since the attacks on the Soviet, British and American homelands. Most of the few remaining stockpiles are intact because they have been lost or because various small groups are maintaining tight control over their contents, usually for nefarious purposes.

Ex-corporal Nathan Snyder, now a marauder in New York City's Hells Own gang, leads a group of six other gang members (including his girlfriend, the gang leader's younger sister) in an attack on an isolated New York State Guard outpost. The attack succeeds in killing three guardsmen and driving the others off, yielding the dead militiamen's M1 Garand rifles and ammunition, steel helmets and a cache of food and a TA-1 field phone.

2nd Mexican Army's assault on California continues, with Brigade Ensenada reaching the San Diego Naval Base's southern perimeter, which has been hastily reinforced by armed sailors from the San Diego Recruit Training Command. The Mexican Air Force flies six additional companies of paratroops in Miramar Naval Air Station; the growing airborne force aggressively pushes combat patrols out in all directions. One of these patrols, which has set up ambush positions along Interstate 15, intercepts a USMC convoy headed into the city. The convoy of trucks carries over 100 tons of ammunition from the range complex at Camp Pendleton, ordered hastily loaded by recruits training at the rifle ranges and rushed to arm the recruits training at MCRD San Diego. The trailing 5-ton truck, commanded by an aggressive Corporal who lost an eye during 1st MarDiv's evacuation of Yadz and manned by three privates, escapes the ambush and takes back roads onto the base, bringing nearly 300,000 rounds of 5.56 ball ammo to the the defenders. The truck, however, does not carry any grenades, anti-tank weapons, linked ammo for machineguns or SAWs, mines or grenade launcher ammunition.

The Mexican 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment has reached Interstate 8, blocking what little traffic the limited fuel supply permits. The Mexicali Brigade's cavalry regiment continues northward, with lead elements arriving in Palm Springs, while its 8th and 78th Infantry Regiments turn east to deal with the American forces at MCAS Yuma and the garrison of the National Training center at the Yuma Proving Ground.

The Nogales Brigade's advance on Tucson continues, facing light resistance from scattered law enforcement officers, armed civilians and veterans, while warily watching its eastern flank lest the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade emerge from its garrison at Fort Huachuca.

The fighting in El Paso continues, with the Ciudad Juarez Brigade's troops maneuvering room limited by the desire to avoid the blast damage zone from the Soviet strike on the El Paso refinery in December. The limitation provides the garrison commander time to reinforce the basic training companies from the base with anti-aircraft weapons systems from the Air Defense Center and School; the Diana systems' 25mm guns and the 20mm PIVADs provide massive direct firepower to the otherwise lightly equipped infantry. The Torres Motorized Cavalry Brigade is still tied up with the Texas State Guard's 9th Brigade, which has retreated to high ground dominating the northern exits to the city.

The remote town of Marfa, Texas falls to the Chihuahua Brigade's 10th Motorized Cavalry Regiment; the 20th Motorized Cavalry Regiment is closing on the town while the horsemen of the 30th Cavalry Regiment provide screening for the brigade's three battalions of infantry, who are advancing on foot through the scorching desert heat.

Further east in Texas, the Monclova Brigade, reinforced by informal militias from refugee camps at the Eagle Pass Auxiliary Airfield and Laughlin Air Force Base's auxiliary field, wheels northwest along Highway 277 to move on Del Rio and its garrison of Texas State Guardsmen and the trainees and staff at the USAF basic training center at Laughlin.

The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment drives the 1st Texas Brigade out of the town of Laredo, inflicting heavy casualties on the Texans who have no means of halting the Mexican armored vehicles. The 2nd Mechanized Brigade has hit a roadblock when trying to advance through Harlingen, with unexpectedly fierce resistance from the cadets of the Marine Military Academy, who have fortified their campus over the preceding months. An advanced detachment's DN-V Toro armored personnel carrier falls victim to an improvised anti-tank mine, and the Mexican attempt to rescue the crew is thwarted by cadet machinegun fire. The brigade's commanding general (the Mexican Army, with more than 500 generals, has generals commanding brigades) orders a halt to forward progress while the situation can be evaluated. The Matamoros Brigade has linked up with the remaining inhabitants of the largest two refugee camps in Brownsville and cleared out several outposts of sailors from the Makin Island. At dusk the brigade's troops have the five-story high partially completed amphibious assault ship, still on land at the shipyard, in sight and place it under harassing fire.

The skies over the southwestern US are a little more active. The Mexican 401 Squadron's F-5Es fly photoreconnaissance missions at dawn, overflying sites as far north as the outskirts of Dallas, and after lunchtime fly a second sortie in support of 4th Army, striking runways and barracks at Laughlin Air Force Base. The 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade commander at Fort Bliss authorizes the use of all anti-aircraft missiles on base against the PC-7 turboprop light attack aircraft that are harassing movement on the base; the shootdown of one of the aircraft two hours later by a Patriot missile marks the low point on the value of missile-to-target tradeoff but succeeds in convincing the Mexican pilots to be much more conservative in their behavior over the lines. 402 Squadron's aged T-33 trainers spend the day scouting for reinforcements headed for the San Diego area, attacking some Marines at Camp Pendleton and strafing the flight lines at NAS North Island and Camp Pendleton. American aircraft make their first appearance over the battlefield, with a flight of four AT-38 trainers from Holloman Air Force Base's 433rd Tactical Fighter Training Squadron dropping 250-lb bombs on the Torres Cavalry Brigade, a mission guided by spotters with the Texas State Guard. The mission is partially successful, but one of the trainers was nearly downed by an American Roland missile fired by an enthusiastic gunner at Fort Bliss which mistook the fast, low-flying fighter for a Mexican F-5.

In Colorado Springs, the Joint Chiefs struggle to get a clear picture of the situation. Communications with the combat zone are spotty at best and no remaining national-level intelligence collection assets (satellites, aircraft) are oriented towards the border. The units of the strategic reserve are fully committed to domestic duties and shortages of fuel limit the options for response. By the end of the day the first centrally-directed assets are preparing for movement towards the combat zone, as the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing at Hill AFB, Utah arms and prepares two flights of F-16s for transfer to Tinker AFB, Oklahoma. A courier is dispatched by light plane (a USAF Academy Cessna T-41 trainer) to Fort Irwin, California with orders for the 177th Armored Brigade and 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division to move south to contain the invasion.

Naval commanders in San Diego use the array of harbor craft to ferry civilians, dependents and non-combatant personnel from the naval base to the Marine Corps base, returning with armed boot camp graduates who are rushed to the base perimeter or to throw up blocking positions on the narrow spit of land south of the Coronado Naval Base.

Mexican naval squadrons sortie from Veracruz in the Caribbean and Acapulco in the Pacific. Each task force contains a single LST and several auxiliaries loaded with Marines for follow-on landings to support the efforts along the coastlines.

The American cruiser USS Gettysburg, operating independently in the Mediterranean, strikes a defensive mine while conducting a gunfire raid on the Greek airbase at Araxos after failing to find any Greek surface craft other than small fishing boats and other small civilian craft. The AEGIS cruiser begins to rapidly take on water, and as midnight approaches the ship settles beneath the waves.

[chico20854]

June 13, 1998

The School Brigade at Fort Bliss, which has served as served as a chain-of-command parent organization for a variety of training units assigned to the Air Defense School for training and activation, is activated as a troop unit, complete with infantry battalions out of the local basic training barracks, artillery from the New Mexico National Guard, and the 1-124 Cavalry Squadron (Texas National Guard) from Waco. The Air Defense Center naturally provides an abundance of air defense units, including a Patriot missile battalion, a battalion of composite air defense weapons, and the 5-62 ADA. The brigade uses its available mix of weapons to create unorthodox operational units. Infantry drawn from basic training camps at Fort Bliss is attached to ADA gun batteries (PIVAD and Diana) to create heavy machinegun combat teams. Because the brigade has no organic field artillery, it relies heavily on infantry mortars and develops its own doctrine for employment of ADA gun systems in the indirect fire role.

Unofficially,

Additional Mexican C-130 transports land at Miramar Naval Air Station, bringing in reinforcements to the airborne force that seized the base. Interestingly, the planes land with only a thin reserve of fuel aboard, refueling from the hydrants on the base before returning home. Upon arrival back in Mexico, the aircraft transfer most of the fuel remaining to the base's fuel system - the Mexican Air Force has started to stretch its fuel supply by using captured American stocks.

In San Diego, the frigate USS Donald B Beary is reactivated (it has been partially deactivated as the supply of fuel diminished, its crew assigned to food distribution duties ashore) and immediately engages the Mexicans with its 5-inch gun; the short-range direct-fire is devastatingly effective. Mexican troops hidden among shoreside buildings return fire, riddling the lightly-armored warship with hundreds of holes from small arms fire. When available visible targets are all engaged and the ship's magazine running down the ship withdraws a few miles north to the large shipyard, where a hastily assembled crew of workers joins the ship's company in repairing some of the damage.

Elsewhere in the Battle of San Diego, Mexican troops of the Ensenada Brigade fail in their first direct assault crossing of the Sweetwater River into the southern portion of the naval base; however the brigade has used the engagement to slip the 8th Motorized Cavalry Regiment past Navy outposts further east. The motorized cavalry sweeps deeper into the city, taking advantage of the cover provided by the dense urban buildup.

In eastern Texas, Mexican progress is slow. 401 Squadron's F-5s are diverted from close air support missions to attack grounded aircraft on the ground at Bergstrom AFB outside San Antonio, succeeding in destroying a pair of B-1Bs that have been sheltering there since December. In Brownsville the Matamoros Brigade drives the crew of the USS Makin back over 250 meters in fierce house to house fighting; one of the Americans killed is Rodney Cutler, twin brother of Specialist Randolph Cutler, who catches a sniper's bullet when running for cover. In Harlingen, the troops of the 2nd Mechanized Brigade continue to discover unpleasant surprises from the cadets of the Marine Maritime Academy when it is discovered that one of the school's alumni has provided his alma mater with weapons not authorized to any Junior ROTC units, most notably a M50 Ontos light anti-tank vehicle as well as various .50-caliber rifles to supplement the four M-60 machineguns the school cadre sweet talked a friendly logistician into providing for "educational purposes." The Ontos uses its six 106mm recoilless rifles to make quick work of a pair of AMX-13 light tanks, once again forcing the Mexican brigade to suspend follow-on attacks.

The 868th Tactical Missile Training Squadron is ordered to withdraw from its home station of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, in advance of advancing Mexican forces.

On New York's Upper East Side, marauder Nathan Snyder asserts himself as being the custodian of the gang's small cache of weapons and food.

The Danish Expeditionary Corps is driven out of Stuttgart by the Soviet 41st Army after Italian troops of the 3rd Corps advance on the Rhine, having severed the connection between the Danes and the now-isolated XX US Corps. IV German Korps, holding the line between the Danes and the US VII Corps, retreats to the north; German commanders have to restrain their troops from engaging in a scorched earth withdrawal, promising that they will be back soon. XII German Korps troops, brought forward from reserve near Limburg, occupy defensive positions along the Main River west of Wurzburg, control of which has been ceded by the overstretched and exhausted US VII Corps.

[chico20854]

June 14, 1998

Nothing in canon for today. Unofficially,

The challenges facing the Joint Chiefs expand dramatically today as the Soviet forces in British Columbia launch their long-feared spring offensive, using carefully husbanded stocks of supplies and ammunition which has trickled in on small ships from home over the prior several months and been laboriously transported to the front. With allied Canadian units hobbled by lack of supplies (as a result of Alberta's border closure), the main force resisting the attack is the American 47th Infantry Division. The Soviets open the attack with a trio of artillery-delivered tactical nuclear strikes which spook the front-line troops, who retreat and disperse to avoid becoming the next recipients of armageddon.

A wave of patriotism accompanies the Mexican invasion of the US and thousands of men (and more than a few women) flock to military bases around the country, eager to volunteer to fight the gringos.

As the fourth day of combat along the border begins, Mexican commanders begin to realize the challenges that an army organized for internal security and home defense duties faces when engaged in expeditionary warfare - logistics. The supplies of food, fuel and ammunition that Mexican Army units carried with them when they crossed the American border have been exhausted, and the hastily organized and mobilized brigades have no support battalions, and the respective Army headquarters are having a difficult time coordinating combat operations of units spread out over hundreds of miles, let alone organizing resupply convoys. Staffers at the Ministry of National Defense in Mexico City are pushing stocks from depots around the country north by rail, but the forward combat formations have very limited numbers of trucks (averaging a 50-truck company, with aged 2 1/2- and 5-ton trucks, all cargo variants, per Army) to try to move supplies forward from hastily organized railheads.

The Mexican Army makes little progress during the day. The fighting in San Diego continues, with Mexican units moving north through the city to link up with the paratroops at Miramar Naval Air Station and closing off escape routes for American defenders all around the harbor. In El Paso, the School Brigade and its German allied personnel turn back a dawn attack by the Ciudad Juarez Brigade, while the Torres Cavalry Brigade makes some progress moving north along the city's western outskirts. The fighting in Brownsville is bogged down by fierce resistance as well, while overhead the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing's F-16s fly their first sorties against the Mexicans.

The US Navy Landing Ship Tank Barbour County arrives in Kokura, Japan to pick up the cargo of trucks and the handful of armored vehicles that were aboard the mine-damaged Rhode Island Freedom, which has been abandoned in the Japanese city's harbor.

Advance positions of the German X Corps, manned by the (former East-German) border guards of the 7th GrenzJaeger Division, engage lead elements of the Soviet 30th Guards Motor-Rifle Division as the Soviets advance on Heidelberg. Italian mechanized troops of the Legnano Mechanized Brigade push past scattered territorial resistance in Pforzheim, rushing on the Karlsruhe on the Rhine.

To the east, V US Corps and II British Corps have taken up posiitions along the northern bank of the Main River, taking advantage of the defensive value of that major water barrier and with knowledge that Pact engineer troops are very short on assault bridging assets after the 1997 campaign. The Hungarian II Corps has occupied Bamberg; security troops go house to house searching for "collaborators" who worked for the US Army in the decades that the town hosted 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division. The Hungarians, however, seem most interested in obtaining control of the wealth that the Americans brought the community, and the Corps commander isssues a decree that nothing is to removed from the US Arrmy base without his express permission, pushing the looting out into the town.

The Czech 1st Army has been less successful in advancing through rough terrain north of Bayreuth, meeting continued fierce resistance from the German 24th PanzerGrenadier Division.

The remnants of the Soviet 1048th Assault Gun Regiment, a SU-130 formation that was nearly annihilated in the 1997 campaign that has been serving as the defense force for the Baltic Front commander's villa in northwestern Poland, receives unexpected reinforcements - a detachment of 20 Second World War-era ISU-152 heavy assault guns, dropped off from tank transporters along with 125 teenagers from Estonia armed with AKMs and a few truckloads of ammunition and fuel for the behemoths.

The American aircraft carrier USS John F Kennedy is damaged by an Italian mine in the Mediterranean. This is the second time the ship has sustained serious damage, having been hit by a Soviet mine in the first days of the war. This blast renders one of the ship's four propeller shafts inoperable. Nonetheless, the carrier and its remaining escorts move into the Adriatic Sea in an effort to hamper Italian supply shipments along the coast and to its occupation forces in Jugoslavia.

[chico20854]

June 15, 1998

The 49th Armored Division (Texas National Guard), on civil security and relief duties in the Upper Midwest, is ordered south to halt the Mexican invasion.

Command of surviving fixed-wing elements of the US Navy and the US Marine Corps 1st Marine Air Wing is transferred to USAFCENT (9th Air Force) for operational and administrative purposes. (Unofficially) Resistance to this development from Marine officers, who insist that 1 MAW should continue to be dedicated to supporting I MEF, is overruled by General McLaren, who declares the situation too serious for Marine commanders to hoard such scarce assets and rightfully points out that the move allows the most efficient use of the remaining combat aircraft.

Unofficially,

The 47th Infantry Division gives ground in British Columbia, trying to delay as long as possible to give local civilians time to evacuate.

In Colorado Springs, the FEMA laison officer to the Joint Chiefs passes away due to complications of the bubonic plague. He is the last FEMA official still serving that had knowledge of the Strategic Reserve Stockpile system assembled at great expense in the prior two years; his deputy, who has assumed his responsibilities, never was cleared to be briefed on the program. This development assures that the Joint Chiefs are unaware of the vital assets that could be used to assist American recovery.

The Joint Chiefs order the evacuation of nuclear weapons from Texas south of San Antonio and California south of Bakersfield.

The US Navy begins evacuating non-combatants and civilians from San Diego as overland ties to the rest of California are cut. The evacuation effort makes use of the vast numbers of harbor service craft, excess support ships stranded in port from lack of fuel and ships in or awaiting repair that are still seaworthy. The Marines holding the perimeter (which have largely replaced the sailors facing Brigade Ensenada) repel another Mexican attack, although they lack armored vehicles, heavy weapons or even machinegun ammunition to try to break the 1st Mechanized Brigade's blockade of the harbor area. Mexican cavalry troops and paratroops begin tentative probes north into Camp Pendelton.

To the east, the Mexicali Brigade has established a series of blocking positions along Interstate 8 to, hopefully, slow any advance of the 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment and 223rd Armored Regiment (the OPFOR for the Yuma Proving Ground's National Training Center), should those units attempt to cut off the lone Mexican brigade.

The Battle of Fort Bliss continues, with repeated attacks on the garrison while the Mexican Torres Mororized Cavalry Brigade issucceeding in suppressing the Texas State Guard's 9th Brigade, advancing to the northern outskirts of El Paso. Back in Mexico, the Durango and Torreon Brigades are ordered to reinforce the effort; they begin preparing their cavalry regiments for immediate deployment while transport is arranged for the infantry. To the east, the Chihuahua Brigade has dramatically increased its mobility through requisitioning civilian vehicles and stocks of fuel stored on various ranches and oil wells. Given the desperate situation in El Paso and near-total lack of coordinated resistance (after overrunning the border patrol stations the brigade has only faced at most 10 armed civilians and no armed troops), 3rd Army orders the brigade to rush north to Pecos, then turn northwest to execute a double envelopment of the American force at Fort Bliss (and the base's extensive back country that runs into White Sands Missile Range and Holloman AFB).

The Nogales Brigade in Arizona has slowed its advance on Tucson, wary of its deep exposure on both flanks and shortages of fuel. Advance parties have Tucson in sight, but the main body remains farther south lest it be cut off by troops from Ft. Huachuca.

In central Texas the Monclova Brigade turns northeast after having smashed the Aggies of the 3rd Texas Regiment (part of the former Texas A&M Cadet Corps) and overrun Laughlin Air Force Base and its training squadrons. The Monterrey Brigade and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment continue their advance up Interstate 35 towards San Antonio, slowed by low fuel supplies. To their east the battle for Brownsville is seeing Mexican progress, with the partially-completed hull of the USS Makin island now ablaze after mutliple hits by Mexican heavy weapons; the sailors' resistance begins to wane as ammunition and food runs low and the commander has authorized the evacuation of nonessential personnel to small and civilian craft operating in the Intracoastal Waterway. In Harlingen, the Mexican 2nd Mechanized Brigade has fought its way onto the campus of the Marine Military Academy, taking advanbtage of the massed artillery (as it happens to be) of 4th Army.

The managers of Lone Star Oil, a small oil company that is still operating a handful of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, order the shutdown and evacuation of their platforms south of Corpus Christi, including Gulfwind 40 and Gulfwind 42.

map of front lines
The Soviet 21st Army launches another spoiling attack on the US XV Corps, ensuring that the unit diverts scarce ammunition, fuel and air support from other units farther to the west. The Soviet troops, however, do not press their attacks and have not, in fact, even overrun the American outpost line to reach the main line of resistance.

After five days of stop and start travel in a crowded and claustrophobic boxcar, during which ten prisoners die, Specialist Cutler and his fellow prisoners are unloaded at a remote siding in eastern Czechoslovakia. They are greeted by Czech SNB internal troops and Czecch militiamen, who begin marching the dazed prisoners (they were served two meals during their journey) along the tracks.

STAVKA realizes that the veteran 27th (my 90th) Tank Division is still stuck in eastern Siberia, en route to the European theatre, and directs that local and regional Party authorities make the division's passage to the front "highest priotiry". The decree is sufficient to compel authorities in the Krasnoyarsk region to release six heavy-duty LV steam locomotives, each with 225 tons of coal to propel the division (and its thousands of hungry, armed troops) far across the USSR.

[chico20854]

June 16, 1998

As the struggle in Germany consumes more and more troops and supplies, Italian and Hungarian formations in the Balkans are starved of replacements, and the Pact high command issues calls for excess troops from the region to be transferred to the fighting in Germany.

Major General Helmut Korell, commander of the 1st Panzer Division, assumes de-facto command of II German Korps.

Unofficially,

The US Army puts a formal command structure in place in the Southwest, with 89th (my II )Corps headquarters (located east of Los Angeles coordinating disaster relief duties) taking command of units at Fort Irwin and Yuma Proving Ground as well as other US military ground forces in the area and 63rd (my XVI) Corps, in the Bay area, ordered to move south along with troops from Forts Ord and Hunter Liggett and Camp Roberts to operate along the coast. In Texas, 90th (my XIII) and 122nd (my XIX) Corps are assigned to command the scratch forces opposing the Mexican 4th Army.

SOUTHCOM issues orders for diversionary strikes on Mexico via Guatemala. A B-team from the 8th Special Forces Group departs its base at Soto Cano air base in Honduras, en route to Chiapas, Mexico to "stir up some trouble" and divert Mexican forces from the American front. SOUTHCOM also dispatches attack aircraft to Soto Cano, six AT-33E Boeing Skyfoxes, for a strike on Mexican territory.

The 868th Tactical Missile Training Squadron arrives at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, with all 48 GLCM missiles intact and mission ready.

The Mexican high command empowers a new coordinator for the logistics effort supporting the war - the former chief logistics officer of a large American retailer, now (like most worldwide retailing) out of business. The new coordinator quickly seizes on the possibilities of using the vast fleet of commercial long-haul trucks and drivers, used to regularly crossing the border. Orders are quickly issued to mobilize the drivers and their vehicles to establish a relay from railheads in Hermosillo, Chihuahua City, Monterrey and Matamoros.

The 177th Armored Brigade departs Fort Irwin, California to halt the Mexican invasion. The brigade's VISMOD (Visually Modified) M551 Sheridans have, in many cases, been returned to combat-capable status, although the supply of Shillelagh missiles and main gun ammunition is short. Thankfully, however, the issues the Sheridan experienced in combat in Vietnam with the gun's recoil disabling the missile's guidance electronics, have been long resolved, allowing the system to be somewhat effective. (Commanders consider the Sheridan more than adequate to deal with the Mexican Army's armor). The 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division will follow the 177th when the tank transporters return from moving the 177th to the vicinity of the desert town of Yucca Valley.

Mexican Marines land on South Padre Island and begin advancing on the Queen Isabela Causeway to the mainland, detaching a company of troops to assault the Coast Guard station and lighthouse at Brazos Santiago.

photo
The evacuation of San Diego continues as a force of Marine trainees and their drill instructors attempt to break through the Mexican lines to link up with the ad-hoc Marine force defending Camp Pendleton. The attempt is thwarted by elite Mexican paratroops and marines who exploit their superior firepower to keep the American force from advancing. Mexican Marines land on Coronado Island and begin driving north, pushing back the defending Marines and sailors; the Mexican naval task force beats a rapid retreat lest it be engaged by the superior American fleet departing the harbor.

The Mexican 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment has advanced along Interstate 15 to Temecula, part of the Inland Empire and considered the outer edge of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

The first evacuation vessels arrive at Port Hueneme, California; the harbor master directs the smaller craft to the nearby yacht marina to keep berth space open for larger vessels.

In Yuma, Arizona, the 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment headquarters issues an order for the unit's troops, scattered over 100 miles of territory protecting evacuee camps, distributing food and assisting local law enforcement, to abandon those duties and rally at the NTC-3 for combat actions.

In the vast stretches of empty desert between Yuma, Arizona and El Paso, Texas, the invading Mexican forces remain immobile for a second day as supplies of food, water and fuel run low. Mexican Army scavenging parties roam El Paso in search of food and fuel; commanders and NCOs have to exert strict control over their troops to prevent the parties from becoming looters.

The Chihuahua Brigade departs the town of Pecos, Texas, advancing against minimal resistance up the west bank of the Pecos River towards Artesia, New Mexico, reaching the state line at sundown.

American resistance in the Brownsville area is crumbling as the remaining sailors of the USS Makin Island begin to surrender, their ammunition, food, water and will to fight exhausted and Mexican marines cross to Port Isabel from South Padre Island. To their west, the 2nd Mechanized Brigade's AMX-13 light tanks and the massed artillery of 4th Mexican Army pound the campus of the Marine Military Academy into dust, destroying many of the defensive positions with direct fire while lighting the buildings afire. In central Texas, the lead patrols of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment clash with mobile American detachments, primarily HMMWVs mounting machineguns and Mk-19 grenade launchers, while the Monclova Brigade troops secure the shotgun factory in Eagle Pass, taking many of the guns for their own use and sending thousands of others south to equip newly forming units.

The 2nd Regiment, Tennessee State Guard is reinforced with federal resources - 200 sailors previously assigned to the Memphis Naval Air Station as well as a complement of small arms (M1 Garands, M3 greaseguns, M1911 pistols and M1919 Browning machineguns), 90mm recoilless rifles and ammunition, which arrive by truck from the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. The Regiment is tasked to assemble excess fuel trucks (with fuel rationing in effect, not a difficult task) at the Memphis Refinery, which has received a shipment of five barge-loads of crude oil from Oklahoma to process.

Specialist Cutler and several dozen other prisoners arrive at a work site along the railroad in the hills of eastern Czechoslovakia. They are shaved, hosed off, fed a meal of thin stew and introduced to the camp commandant and his staff, then ushered to an equipment shed, which has been converted to housing for the prisoner labor force. At dusk the shift of workers that has been toiling all day arrives, a motley collection of prisoners from all over NATO, exhausted from a hard day's labor. The new arrivals discover that they are going to be put to work restoring the rail line between Czechoslovakia and Poland, which was damaged by NATO conventional bombing as well as an American nuclear strike which left a massive crater in the railbed.

A firefight breaks out in Bamberg between Hungarian troops and a KGB Border Guard "rear area security detachment" that passes through town, seeking to "conduct an inspection of the American Army base." When the KGB troops are denied access (yet can see consumer goods being loaded onto a truck in the caserne) tensions rise, and for 30 minutes it is an intense battle between Pact allies.

In the area between Heidelberg and Frankfurt, American and German support troops and hastily drafted civilians are hurriedly evacuating maintenance and medical facilities which have supported the war effort to date, unsure of the ability of German troops to hold back the Pact offensive which has already captured thousands of square kilometers of southern Germany.

[chico20854]

June 17, 1998

It is obvious to Major General Femerov, commander of the Soviet troops in Cuba, that Guantanamo II (the enclave at Mariel in which the Cuban government has confined Soviet troops in Cuba, nearly a division in strength) presents a very tempting target for the U.S. This fact, combined with pressure from a Cuban government anxious to appear increasingly neutral to America, causes Femerov to look for a means to get out of Cuba while striking a blow for the USSR. The opportunity to deliver a blow into America comes from the Marxist PRI/PPS coalition in Mexico. The PPS offers Femerov and his ""Division Cuba"" a passage off of the island and back to the USSR, in return for a short detour. Femerov and his soldiers are to assist
in the invasion of America, to drive into the Yankee heartland, and end the war.

At the Marine Military Academy campus in Harlingen, Texas, the stubborn, last-ditch stand of the Academy students in the face of overwhelming numbers comes to an end. There are no known American survivors of the battle, which will compared to Travis' stand at the Alamo. The final pockets of resistance are shattered by a terrific artillery barrage before being overrun by Mexican infantry of the Matamoros and 2nd Mechanized Brigades.

Unofficially,

On New York's Upper East Side, there is turmoil within the Hells Own marauder gang. One of the gangsters gets in a verbal argument with ex-Corporal Nathan Snyder, who then refuses to allow the member to collect his allocation of food (a bag of stale potato chips and can of chicken soup taken from a local salvager as "tax") for the evening. The gangster calls Snyder out, and in the brawl that follows Snyder and his girlfriend end up killing the upstart and injuring his best friend in the gang. There are few challenges to Snyder's control of the food from then on, and other gang members treat Snyder and "his old lady" with more respect, although it s unclear if that respect is out of admiration or fear.

The 347th Strategic Missile Squadron, operating on the Nellis Air Force Base range complex, observes the 868th Tactical Missile Training Squadron's dispersal near its stationary sites and makes contact.

The B-Team from the 8th Special Forces Group, travelling in a small convoy of unmarked civilian vans and trucks, crosses the border into Guatemala. The liberal application of cash and the grim looks on the faces of the rough, heavily armed men assures a welcome entry into Mexico's southern neighbor. At Sato Cano Air Base a C-130 arrives carrying ground crew, support equipment and a small stock of munitions to support the AT-33E Skyfoxes that arrived the day prior.

The troops of the Chihuahua Brigade encounter their first organized resistance, an entrenched infantry force blocking the highway into the town of Carlsbad. The outer pickets fall back when Mexican armor attacks under cover of infantry mortars; the dead left behind wear uniform patches from a military academy in the town.

American F-5Es from the 65th Aggressor Squadron, using some of the last stocks of aviation fuel at Nellis Air Force Base, launch a surprise raid on Mexican airfields. The defenders, believing the aircraft are in fact Mexican F-5s, hold their fire as a pair of fighters, with another pair trailing, approach the runway at Santa Lucia near Mexico City. The fighters come in low and slow, placing them in prime position to release the stick of runway-busting munitions that they soon release before hitting their afterburners and zipping away, leaving the pattern clear for the second pair to finish off the other runway.

As the fighting in San Diego continues, Mexican Marines advance on the Coronado Amphibious base. As they enter the perimeter, the captain of the landing ship USS Cleveland orders his crew to set the ship, damaged in the prior year's naval battles and unable to be repaired rapidly enough to be evacuated, afire. The few remaining munitions in the ship's magazine are used to set a large mine, which is detonated as the Mexican troops approach the dock.

In the desert east of LA, the 177th Armored Brigade disembarks from the motley collection of civilian trucks and military tank transporters that has brought it to the north end of the Imperial Valley.

The Mexican 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment cautiously moves north, scouting for organized American resistance but is mostly encountering desperate refugees from the strikes and chaos of Los Angeles.

The opposition encountered by the troops of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment are identified as members of the US Air Force, trainees and cadre from the Security Police training program at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio acting in a mobile role while basic trainees (and graduates from the prior months, who have remained at the base thanks to the breakdown in transportation, performing relief and security duties) man fixed defensive positions.

The Mexican Marines in the Gulf of Mexico complete their disembarkation from the array of naval craft onto South Padre Island as the fleet is engaged by patrol craft from the USCG, now under naval command. The USS Steelhead is sunk by the Mexican destroyer Vincente Guerrero while the USS Point Nowell rakes the Mexican transport Manzanillo with 20mm fire before turning and fleeing north at high speed, dropping to 8 knots when out of range of the Vincente Guerrero's guns to conserve the last gallons of diesel aboard, allowing it to reach a friendly port.

In the early morning hours Specialist Cutler and his fellow new arrivals at the remote POW camp in eastern Czechoslovakia are roused to begin their first brutal 12-hour shift filling in a 100-meter wide, 49-meter deep crater (created by a 150-kiloton Ground Launched Cruise Missile ground burst) with their bare hands, a handful of shovels and no protection from residual radiation. At the end of the day the exhausted prisoners eat a meal of potato-barley stew before collapsing into a deep slumber.

XX US Corps, cut off from the remainder of NATO forces in Germany, is sustained by two C-130 flights daily, which bring in food (mostly French combat rations), fuel (like the Mexican Air Force, USAF Europe uses C-130's fuel tanks for transporting fuel, draining the excess in the aircraft before departure) and ammunition and evacuate the wounded. The flow is insufficient to maintain stock levels, but it helps morale and helps keep supply levels from dropping to critical levels. Aiding the situation is that the opposing Italian 4th Corps is equally starved of supplies, most of what arrives via the circuitous route through northeastern Italy, Austria and overland from Munich going to support 3rd Corps' mechanized troops.

NATO forces in Central Germany have established a somewhat-continuous defensive line along the Main River from Frankfurt to Kulmbach, with a significant Soviet-held salient north of Wurzburg. Retreating Allied forces had attempted to bring any small boats they could locate with them as they withdrew, to deny their use to the Soviets for assault crossings of the river.

The A-37s of the 169th Tactical Air Support Squadron (Illinois Air National Guard) fly their first deep strike sorties in Kenya, supporting the offensive against the Sudanese. Intelligence has identified three villages as supply depots and rest areas for the Sudanese, and refugees report that the Sudanese Army has driven all the Kenyans from the town. Satisfied that no civilians will be hit, the 169th's commander authorizes a strike by a lone A-37. The Dragonfly is carrying six M47A2 white phosphorous bombs, six CBU-24B cluster canisters and two SUU-11A gun pods, each pod weighing 323 lbs and mounting a 7.62mm Minigun identical to the aircraft's fixed armament. In a single sortie the Dragonfly is able to level to the ground all but three or four of the approximately 100 huts and other small buildings that comprised the group of villages.

In its first pass, approaching the nearest village in line, the aircraft opens fire with a simultaneous two-second burst from all three Miniguns. The shattering and splintering effect of these 600 rounds on the buildings in line of fire make the village look to the pilot like "hay going through a threshing machine."

As the aircraft passes over the village it drops two cluster canisters, each weighing 718 lbs and containing 600 bomblets. The bomblets release a total of 300,000 steel shards, densely meshing in all directions at hundreds of feet per second, cracking stone, deeply pitting wood, and shattering into fragments any less sturdy or less pliable materials, all in a matter of ten seconds.

To the aircrew above, it looks like "hundreds of sparklers going off."

People are seen running from the next two villages as the Dragonfly approaches, but the pilot believes that the first village had been taken fully by surprise. The subsequent villages are struck in the same manner, and on their second pass the crew drops their phosphorous bombs. As each bomb hits, the ground structures at the explosion's epicenter collapse in a cloud of brilliant white smoke, and long trails of phosphorous shot out of the cloud and arched for hundreds of feet in the air. Wherever they land, and all along the length of their trails, the particles of phosphorous stick to buildings, trees, vegetation and anything else with which they came into contact, immediately setting it afire. When the aircraft turns for base, the entire area is in flames.

The attack has taken about three minutes.

[chico20854]

June 18, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

Fighting continues in San Diego as the ammunition supplies within the American perimeter dwindle to critically low levels. Captains of evacuation vessels refuse to return to the embattled ports, some out of fear, some because their craft are out of fuel; either way the harbor at Port Hueneme is now full of evacuation craft and the commander closes it to new arrivals, ordering them to the San Francisco Bay, the next series of harbors able to accommodate large craft.

The commanders of the 868th Tactical Missile Training Squadron and 347th Strategic Missile Squadron, having served together in prewar assignments, agree to consolidate their positions. The 868th moves into the secure area around the Desert Rock Airfield.

The lead battalions of the 49th Armored Division either hand over their areas of responsibility to state and local officials, or, unfortunately, abandon their disaster relief and internal security duties and prepare to move south and combat. The division commander inquires where his troops will be issued ammunition for their heavy weapons and armored vehicles; he authorizes the division's company armorers to remove the plates in their unit's M16A2s that prevent them from being placed on "burst" (the plates are a standard addition to National Guard M16s, semi-permanently installed for riot-control duties.)

Troops of Brigade Ciudad Juarez launch another attack on Fort Bliss, finally capturing the post MP station on the south side of the cantonment area. Far to the northeast, Brigade Chihuahua launches an infantry fixing attack on the cadets of the New Mexico Military Institute while dispatching an mechanized cavalry company with ERC-90 armored cars and infantry mounted in VAB APCs on a sweep to the east, hoping to encircle the cadets. Their attack is disrupted by a retired Korean-War veteran tanker and his two sons, who are singlehandedly defending the Highway 62 bridge over the Pecos River in his lovingly restored M24 Chaffee light tank. The Mexican advance is held up as the "old man" manning the 75mm gun destroys two ERC-90s; a duel ensues for the next three hours as the light tank dodges in and out of buildings and jockeys for firing positions to disrupt the cavalry's crossing. Eventually he runs out of ammunition and has to retreat, but has bought valuable time for the cadets to retreat to the cover of the city, where they are able to inflict heavy losses on the initial Mexican infantry incursion.

In Texas, additional Mexican reinforcements are arriving in the theatre. The Ciudad Victoria Brigade crosses into Brownsville, joining the 2nd Mechanized Brigade and the Matamoros Brigade in forming a division-sized "Coastal Column" beginning to move north towards Corpus Christi. The Saltillo Brigade crosses the Rio Grande at Roma and Pharr and quickly moves north, maintaining communications between the now-advancing "Coastal Column" and the armored drive towards San Antonio, where the Monterey Brigade has arrived and begins adding pressure to the US Air Force defense of the city. American reinforcements are less numerous, with the Governor of Texas committing his personal guard of State Guards and Texas Rangers to the city's defense.

The Joint Chiefs, facing massive shortages of fuel and ammunition worldwide, simply does not have anything available to commit to the front; the strategic reserve is, absent the 49th Armored Division and the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, frozen in place by lack of fuel.

The F-16s of the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing launch their most devastating strike yet, an air raid on the Mexican Air Force base at Monterrey, where the remainder of Mexico's F-5 fighter force has been deployed following the disabling attacks on their home base. The F-16s catch four F-5s on the ground between missions, destroying them as well as five other aircraft when they blanket the base with cluster bombs.

Mexico is under aerial attack from the south as well, with the appearance over the town of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border of the Boeing Skyfox light attack aircraft of the 198th Tactical Fighter Squadron. The converted trainers concentrate on the Tapachula Brigade's garrison, working it over with cluster bombs and rockets. Return fire is limited to small arms and machinegun fire, with the resident unit, like most of the Mexican Army, completely lacking in air defense systems. After five minutes and several passes the brigade's cantonment area is ablaze, leaving the unit (the only one with armored vehicles in the Chiapas and Yucatan Armies) struggling to maintain its own integrity and completely incapable of providing reinforcements to the war effort in America.

After weeks of effort, John Greendeer, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and 1996 graduate of the University of Minnesota's engineering school, is able to bring the aged electrical turbine at the Hatfield electrical power plant back online. The 6-megawatt generator is capable of meeting the tribe's power needs in the months when the Black River is not frozen over.

The USS Barbour County arrives at the South Korean port of Pohang with a cargo of vehicles (mostly 3/4 and 5/4-ton trucks) salvaged from the mine-damaged Rhode Island Freedom, which was abandoned in the Japanese port of Kokura.

In northwestern Poland, at the urging of the Western TVD commander, the Baltic Front renews its attacks on the Marines and allied troops of II MEF. The assault is led by the three remaining SU-130s and 29 ISU-152s of the 1048th Assault Gun Regiment, with several dozen scared Estonian teenagers riding on the outside of the guns like their grandfathers in the 1940s. Most of the guns complete the road march to the departure point without breaking down and the behemoths prove remarkably resistant to the American’s LAW rocket fire and the infantry mortars that are the Marine's first line of defense. Six guns are lost breaching the defensive minefield and three more fall to TOW missiles while closing in on the embedded Marines. The surviving guns push into the American rear area, but the troops of the 3rd Guards Motor-Rifle Division, assigned to follow through on the breakthrough, remain passively in their positions.

The commander of Carrier Air Wing 10, from the damaged USS Independence, meets with his new commander, LtGen Thomas Forberg, USAF, commander USAFCENT and CG, 9th Air Force. Forberg is already familiar with the capabilities of many of the wing's aircraft, having served a combat tour aboard the USS Coral Sea during the Vietnam War as a F-4 pilot. The Navy Captain and the General discuss the training, personnel and logistic needs of the Naval Aviation squadrons, some of which can be more easily addressed than others. One of the most challenging issues is that of aviators' carrier qualifications - landing a tactical aircraft on a heaving flight deck, especially at night and bad weather, is a highly perishable skill that needs to be practiced regularly and which appears impossible with no operable carrier within thousands of miles.

[Matt Wiser]

They'll need a field somewhere-Saudi, Qatar, or UAE, where FCLP (Field Carrier Landing Practice) can be conducted. It's not the same as a real trap, but it would be the best possible under current circumstances.

[pmulcahy11b]

Was the Twilight War ever a declared war, by anyone?

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Was the Twilight War ever a declared war, by anyone?

According to the v1 Referees Manual:

"On July 1st, Greece declared war against the NATO nations, and Italy, in compliance with her treaty obligations, followed suit on the 2nd."

but according to Howling Wilderness:

"Vice President Pemberton, after identifying herself, issued a proclamation of the existence of a state of war (only Congress has the power to declare war, and that body was not in session), and ordered retaliatory strikes on the USSR."

So a mixed bag...

[chico20854]

June 19, 1998

The remnants of the Greek government/Army (unofficially, in actuality, a cabal of leftist field-grade officers that asserted control of the military in the chaotic last weeks of 1997, in no small part due to the intervention of a KGB hit team that eliminated various rightist or centrist generals and politicians) issues a declaration directly annexing the Jugoslav republic of Macedonia.

The 106th Guards Air Assault Division is ordered to the Ryazan area from its reserve positions near Grodno, Byelorussia.

Unofficially,

In the wake of the evacuation of the military facilities in San Diego literally thousands of seamen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen are brought to the San Francisco Bay Area. The fighting for control of the city's military bases continues, with troops from Brigade La Paz arriving on the front lines. Elsewhere in the city the population (many of which returned home over the winter, realizing life in an unpowered home may be preferable to that in a desert refugee camp) is suffering from lack of water and widespread fires that are burning unchecked. The final navy combatants and auxiliaries depart the harbor, taking minor damage from long-range Mexican small arms fire and taking the last noncombatants out of the perimeter.

East of San Diego the Mexican drive is encountering its first serious resistance as forward patrols of Brigade Mexicali clash with the 177th Armored Brigade's forward reconnaissance screen. The American commander has ordered his troops to maintain an active mobile defense while 89 (my II) Corps tries to scrape together enough ammunition and fuel for 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division to join his command. The Mexican commander is able to begin shifting additional troops to face the Fort Irwin Contingent as Brigade Hermosillo begins arriving in the area and taking over the roadblocks on Interstate 8.

The Mexican 3rd Army, in the Battle of El Paso, is nearing a crisis. While a trickle of supplies is beginning to arrive, the School Brigade and its allied and Texas State Guard augmentees have fought Brigade Ciudad Juarez to a halt and, the Army commander, General de división Jose Gonzalez, fears that his command is vulnerable to an American counterattack if reinforcements do not arrive. (He is unaware of the dire situation on the cantonment area of Fort Bliss, where ammunition, food and fuel are all reaching critically low levels).

With Brownsville behind them, the so-called Mexican "Coastal Column" makes progress moving north, with parallel columns on highways 77 and 281 and forward detachment capturing the Kingsville Naval Air Station. The airfield is deserted, the aircraft having been flown off over a week ago and the garrison evacuated, taking everything of value along or burning what they couldn't carry. Many ranchers in the area are fleeing ahead of the Mexican Army, although others remain and defend their land. (These encounters rarely end well for the outnumbered and outgunned Texans). Some of this resistance is out of patriotism; for others it is a matter of survival, as the Mexican Army and refugees both are slaughtering their livestock at an alarming rate in order to survive.

South of San Antonio, skirmishing continues between Mexican Army and US Air Force contingents, the Mexican 4th Army rushing additional formations north as quickly as the ragtag transportation net can feed them.

RainbowSix reports that Faisel Khan, an immigrant to Leicester that in the years prior to the war had been a very successful businessman and charitable benefactor, has become the city's de-facto leader. This feat is not out of any desire to become a leader but instead the natural evolution that occurred as Leicester threatened to fall apart and descend into chaos and anarchy. Khan finds himself thrust to the forefront, bringing calm first to the Asian community and then to the city in general.

An odd truce reigns along the Rhine River between the German-Italian lines south of Heidelberg and the American-Italian lines opposite Strasbourg. The French Army has been maintaining active but low-key patrolling in the so-called "Dead Zone" opposite French territory. Those patrols are now running into Soviet-allied Italian troops; French commanders issue orders identical to those on the Italian border in southeaster France: correct relations, no assistance, and minimal cooperation, oriented towards deconfliction of space in an attempt to avoid NATO accusations of re-entering the conflict on the Pact side, which would raise the possibility of NATO nuclear retaliation.

The isolated guns of the 1048th Assault Gun Regiment are circled together in the rear of the US Marine's 6th Marine Regiment, low on fuel and ammunition, fight tank-hunting teams. The designated exploitation force that is supposed to advance through the hole in the lines the guns blasted, the 3rd Guards Motor-Rifle Division, remains largely immobile, its officers unable to motivate their troops to leave the safety of the forward trenches to advance on the American positions.

[chico20854]

June 20, 1998

In Cuba, Major General Femerov, after several days of consideration, accepts the Mexican government's offer and begins preparing his troops for movement to Texas. (Unofficially, he has no amphibious shipping but a motley collection of shipping of various types; he is hoping the Mexican offer to transport his command to the combat zone involves sufficient shipping, his Cuban "allies" unwilling to part with any of their small fleet.)

Unofficially,

The Mexican supply situation begins to improve as the hastily reorganized supply and transportation effort begins to show results; the railheads are getting organized and regular convoys of requisitioned civilian 18-wheeler trucks are being dispatched into captured territory. On the other hand, the Mexican Army's pre-war structure, emphasizing internal defense, is increasingly hampering operations as maintenance on the many disparate weapons systems and vehicles comes due. The support structure is oriented towards maintaining vehicles from permanent facilities in garrisons throughout Mexico, often with contract or civilian staff; the brigades in combat lack the necessary mechanics, tools, spares and expertise to performs maintenance above the operator level. For unarmored vehicles this shortcoming is partially rectified by seizing similar vehicles from Americans in the occupied zone, but commanders are reluctant to send lightly damaged armored vehicles hundreds of miles south for repair, opting to keep them in action until they break down completely.

The 49th Armored Division's G-4 (supply officer) informs the commander that there is insufficient fuel and heavy trucks available to convoy the entire division to Oklahoma by road. (The tracked vehicles need to be moved by truck; they are so maintenance intensive that the few vehicles that could complete the drive to Fort Sill would need an overhaul upon arrival). There is a possibility, however, to make use of the many barges and towboats tied up along the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois Rivers to transport the division to Muskogee, Oklahoma, about 225 miles from the division's rally point at Fort Sill, via the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers. The Commanding General approves the plan and within hours troops are seizing tugs and barges along the rivers.

The lead battalion (the 5th Battalion, 37th Armor) of the 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division, equipped with a full complement of IPM-1 tanks (the stock maintained at the National Training Center for units rotating through), arrives on the front lines north of Palm Spring California. To its west, the scout platoons of the 40th Training Division are attempting to identify clear routes through the post-nuclear chaos of the Los Angeles basin to reach the front.

In southeastern New Mexico, the resistance offered by the cadets of the New Mexico Military Institute runs its course as ammunition supplies run out after several days of fierce urban fighting in the town of Carlsbad. At dusk, Brigade Chihuahua resumes its advance and by midnight a forward detachment has arrived in the town of Artesia.

The crisis in the 3rd Mexican Army zone is avoided when the first reinforcements from the Mexican interior arrive at the front in El Paso - the 17th Motorized Cavalry Regiment from the Torreon Brigade and the 50th Mechanized Cavalry Regiment from Brigade Durango. The cavalry's ERC-90 armored cars add much-needed firepower to Brigade Ciudad Juarez's tired and depleted infantry. As more Mexican troops (Brigade Monterrey and the 51st Infantry Regiment from Brigade Monclova) arrive on the front line south of San Antonio, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is withdrawn from contact with the city's American defenders and resupplied.

The Mexican Air Force has largely faded from the skies over the front following American raids on its bases and as shortages of fuel, spares and munitions begin to bite. Similar shortages also force the US Air Force to scale back its activity over the front.

The B Team from 1st Battalion, 8th Special Forces Group has completed its transit of Guatemala and crosses over into southern Mexico. A Drug Enforcement Agency field agent (a former Army Military Intelligence warrant officer) links up with the Green Berets to act as a local guide and to introduce them to some of the local indigenous leaders.

A contingent of Dutch Marines that remained with the American 2nd Marine Division score a victory against the guns of the Soviet 1048th Assault Gun Regiment, disabling the last remaining SU-130 with a well-placed Carl Gustav shot to the behemoth's engine compartment. Several other guns have been destroyed as well; in two of them the crew remains inside, continuing to fire back with small arms.

Along the front in Southern Germany, Soviet troops have paused their attacks as they await additional supplies of ammunition as well as the (likely vain) hope for replacement troops, weapons and vehicles to replace their losses in the advances to date.

Reflecting the poor condition in many navies around the world, the ammunition ship USS Mount Shasta is destroyed by a massive internal explosion while at anchor in Okinawa.

Sudanese and Somali forces in Kenya begin a general retreat under pressure from the combined forces of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, 30th Marines and Kenyan forces.

[chico20854]

June 21, 1998

The Albanian Army, always a reluctant ally, protests the Greek annexation of Macedonia.

Cape Cod is completely under UBF control. The USCG and naval commands in the area, as well as the 43rd MP Brigade, have their plates full dealing with multiple crises in other areas and are unable to take any action.

Headquarters, 63 (my XVI) Corps issues orders redesignating the 40th Training Division (less 1st Brigade) back to an infantry division, as well as ordering its reinforcement with a hodgepodge of armored vehicles. Accompanying these is a directive for it to proceed south to halt the Mexican invasion. Orders are also issued to the 221st MP Brigade to move south, and (unofficially) for the 91st Training Division to provide trained troops to the 40th and 196th Infantry Brigade to allow those units to move south; the 91st is also to assume the internal security and disaster relief duties that the 221st and 196th had been performing. The 91st, which has been training locally-drafted troops continuously since the nuclear exchange, has excess troops that are available for these duties, although weapons and vehicles are in short supply.

Unofficially,

Mexican troops of Brigade Ensenada cut off the narrow corridor between the San Diego Naval Base and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to the northwest, taking heavy losses in the effort as Mexican Marines advance under heavy fire across the runway of the heavily burning Naval Air Station North Island, former home of the Pacific Fleet's helicopter force.

Brigade Mexicali and Brigade La Paz's 160th Infantry Regiment launch a frontal attack on 89th (my II) Corps' positions north of Palm Springs; the American armored force easily turns back the largely dismounted attack.

3rd Mexican Army pauses offensive operations for the day to allow its exhausted troops a chance to rest and to allow the rapidly evolving support organization time to resupply the widely-scattered units. The day also sees the arrival of the first infantry companies from Brigade Durango arriving in El Paso.

Farther east in Texas, a task force built around the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and Brigade Monclova's 47th Infantry Regiment (motorized with captured vehicles) strikes out north from the former Hondo Airfield west of San Antonio, the beginning of an effort to bypass American resistance in the city. The column is attacked by an ad-ho force of Texas Rangers and armed civilians as it enters the hilly terrain, but beats the resistance back with machinegun and mortar fire. The so-called "Coastal Column" dispatches its first scouting parties into the ruins of post-nuclear Corpus Christi.

The Mexican Navy begins mobilizing a motley collection of ships and craft, dispatching them to Cuba to pick up the Soviet "Division Cuba" and its equipment.

The Soviet 2nd Southwestern Front begins planning the next wave of tis offensive, the effort to capture Frankfurt.

After assessing the situation in Byelorussia, the Byelorussian Military District commander, Colonel General Vitaly Ragozin, directs the conversion of one of his last remaining uncommitted forces, the cadre and student body of the Minsk Higher Military-Political Combined Arms School, to the 138th Motor-Rifle Division with the incorporation of any number of stragglers as well as men from the ages of 16-55 in refugee camps in the district. Equipment is appallingly short, but since the division is intended for internal duties the shortages are not crippling.

[Homer]

Great stuff. Keep it up!!

[chico20854]

June 22, 1998

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

The thousands of volunteers who have signed up for service with the Mexican Army are being processed, trained and formed into units. Nearly half are sent home for various reasons (health problems, addiction, criminal history or family responsibilities), and the rest are formed into over 80 independent companies of "voluntarios", volunteers. They are given training in basic first aid, marksmanship and small unit tactics; due to a general shortage of modern G3 and FAL rifles most are armed with M1954 bolt-action rifles.

Scout teams from the 40th Infantry Division identify three routes through the Los Angeles area that can, with sufficient troops, be secured for the unit's passage. The command elements of the teams return north to relay the route information to command, establishing observation posts in the Hollywood Hills and other high ground to maintain surveillance over the routes.

The Mexican 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment has transited the Temescal Valley on Interstate 15 into the town of El Cerrito, giving wide berth to the feared glowing remains of March Air force Base, which was nuked by the Soviets in December. The Mexican Marines have pushed the remaining defenders of the North Island naval station into the warren of (nearly entirely empty) ammunition bunkers in the southwest corner of the base, while another Marine detachment secures the western abutment of the Coronado Bridge; sailors defending the other end detonate demolition charges which drop the 1,880-foot long central span into the harbor, blocking the channel. Mexican paratroops have continued their advance north along Interstate 5, clearing the suburban areas between the city and Camp Pendleton of organized resistance. The rear areas in San Diego County are increasingly patrolled by armed Mexican street and criminal gangs allied with the Mexican Army, relieving combat troops for duty fighting the remnant American defenses; additional gang members are active throughout Orange and Los Angeles Counties, attacking small isolated American military units, interdicting supply routes and scouting for enemy troops.

North of Palm Springs the Mexicans adopt a defensive posture while sending small teams of dismounted infantry overland to try to interdict the supply lines supporting 89th (my II) Corps' troops in the Morongo Valley. To the east, the 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment has mostly reformed at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona and begins drawing armored vehicles and supplies maintained for units rotating through the base for training. Ammunition and fuel are in short supply.

Brigade Chihuahua resumes its advance as the eastern and northern pincer of 3rd Mexican Army's double envelopment of the garrison of Fort Bliss, leaving the Pecos River behind and turning west into barren desert terrain for Alamogordo and Holloman Air Force Base. The School Brigade launches a combined-arms counterattack across Fort Bliss, with the infantry of the 3rd Battalion, 56th Air Defense Artillery and its attached battery of 12 Diana self-propelled AA guns driving back troops of the Ciudad Juarez Brigade across the parade ground into the southern portions of the cantonment area.

As the reinforced 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment continues its offensive sweep west of San Antonio, Brigade Monterrey launches another series of spoiling attacks to hold down the city's defenders. Adding to the American challenge, Brigade Saltillo has crossed Interstate 37, the highway connecting San Antonio and Corpus Christi, protecting the dead zone between the forces attacking San Antonia and the Coastal Column. That formation's advance on Corpus Christi continues, with forward parties of 2nd Mechanized Brigade's 67th Infantry Regiment probing the defenses of the Chase Field Naval Air Station.

1st Czech Army renews its attacks on I German Korps as it attempts to continue its drive north out of Bayreuth. The fighting is confused as Czech-built T-72s battle the Soviet-built T-72s of the 29th Panzer Division in the dense woods and hills of the border region.

The sailing ship Statsraad Lehmkuh returns to its homeport of Bergen, Norway with its precious cargo of canned beef from Uruguay. After much celebration the task of unloading the ship (it has no cargo handling gear) begins.

A survey of available airfields in the CENTCOM AOR has identified three candidate airfields for CVV-10, the USS Independence air wing, to practice carrier landings. A US Navy SH-3 helicopter is made available to the wing staff to inspect conditions at each of the sites.

[Drgonzo2011]

Great stuff as usual. Wondering if you plan on addressing what always seemed like a hole in canon - why the US doesn't just flatten Northern Mexico with nukes. Even with the weapons expended and destroyed, there should be enough to wipe out Mexican supply and transportation centers. In my campaign, I solve this by having far fewer nukes used in general and with the Soviets (who are more active in the Mexican invasion) threatening a tit for tat exchange if the US bombs Mexico. I don't recall GDW ever addressing this (although I could be wrong). Anyway, looking forward to more of your posts.

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by Drgonzo2011

Great stuff as usual. Wondering if you plan on addressing what always seemed like a hole in canon - why the US doesn't just flatten Northern Mexico with nukes. Even with the weapons expended and destroyed, there should be enough to wipe out Mexican supply and transportation centers. In my campaign, I solve this by having far fewer nukes used in general and with the Soviets (who are more active in the Mexican invasion) threatening a tit for tat exchange if the US bombs Mexico. I don't recall GDW ever addressing this (although I could be wrong). Anyway, looking forward to more of your posts.

Thanks for asking! Spoiler alert: it's coming. The Soviets already took out nearly all of Mexican oil refining with strikes in December. I have Division Cuba pretty much completely out of contact with STAVKA and their deployment is a strictly local arrangement.

The US hasn't released any of its tremendous remaining nuclear arsenal on Mexico for somewhat technical reasons... delays in command and communications, the lack of target intelligence and loss of nuclear weapon mission planners, even things as basic as knowing where the railheads are. (Once that is known then weapons need to be allocated, targeting information developed then sorties planned. SAC took a direct hit during the TDM, seriously depleting its ability to plan strikes. The prewar SAC planners didn't maintain the detailed information on Mexican targets, so that needs to be gathered... Tomahawk cruise missiles, for example, use radar terrain matching guidance. The US doesn't have the detailed terrain mapping in the form needed to feed that guidance system and needs to do radar mapping first, which is easier said than done at this point of the war.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that the US nuclear response is delayed but building...

Thanks for your patience and allowing me to explain my reasoning!

[chico20854]

June 23, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

The Joint Chiefs, seeing the continued success of the Mexicans, especially in Texas, order planners to develop options for use of nuclear weapons to slow or halt the invasion. The G-3, operations staff, requests a day to determine what will be needed for such planning to occur, since it is not an area that the Joint Chiefs have previously been involved with. (Strategic nuclear planning had been the purview of the Joint Strategic Planning Staff at SAC headquarters before the TDM, while theater and corps commanders planned theater and tactical nuclear employment).

As Mexican marines clear up the last pockets of resistance at Naval Air Station North Island the commander of the Mexican 2nd Army requests they launch an amphibious assault across the harbor, landing on shores of the international airport and advancing through that complex to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. The marine commander refuses, referring the Army commander to the Naval Ministry in Mexico City, which directs his operations rather than the Ministry of National Defense, which commands the Army and Air Force. Although it has taken over 40 percent casualties, Brigade Ensenada continues its assault on the San Diego naval base, making progress in reaching the harbor between the base and the massive shipyard, which has now been burning for several days, destroying the destroyer Harry W. Hill, cruiser Mobile Bay and the under-construction replenishment ship Conecuh as well as an unnamed Freedom-class freighter.

The Mexican command issues a strongly-worded directive to the commander of Brigade Nogales, urging him to continue his brigade's forward progress towards Tucson, progress that has been largely halted since the initial days of the invasion. The brigade commander replies with a request for reinforcements for his isolated command, noting the presence of the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade to his east and the reports from his scouts (and criminal gang allies) of a coherent defense of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on the city's southern limits.

The Battle of El Paso drags on, with inconclusive fighting raging throughout the day. To the west of the city, Mexican trucks are replenishing the Torres Motorized Cavalry Brigade, reinforced with cavalry regiments from Brigade Durango and Brigade Torreon, while the Chihuahua Brigade brings its troops together for an assault on Holloman Air Force Base. The brigade's concentration means that the long supply line back along the unit's route of advance is secured solely by allied civilian gangs, who are more often than not more interested in pillaging than patrolling for American infiltrators or counterattacks.

2nd Mexican Army forces the commander of the San Antonio garrison to decide whether to abandon the city, its military bases (including the large Medina Regional Security Operations Center ELINT station) and population, or to subject it to a costly siege. His calls for assistance to the commanders of the nearby 46th Infantry Division and 95th Training Division are rebuffed by those generals, who plead that their troops are overwhelmed by their ongoing civil relief and rear area security duties and noting that what ammunition and fuel they can spare have already been sent to the city.

The First Regiment of Thirds (which will soon become known as the "Big Bad One") is raised in Florida as part of the City of St. Petersburg Militia. On the other side of the state, the commander of the Jacksonville-Mayport Naval Base and Naval Air Station has formed the sailors from the bases as well as the crews of the various ships and squadrons stranded in the area into a relatively efficient fighting force. The city fathers have by this time requested extensive assistance from the Navy; the action of the naval force has allowed the Jacksonville area to remain an island of stability in the general chaos that is post-nuclear Florida.

All of the 1048th Assault Gun Regiment's vehicles have been disabled, although four of them continue to harbor crewmen that continue to resist. Two of the ISU's main guns are still functional, forcing the surrounding Marines to avoid their limited arcs of fire. The surviving Soviets are effective in covering the blind spots of the other vehicles, and over 40 Marines have been lost in close-in anti-tank actions to neutralize them.

SOOCCENT (Special Operations Command Central, CENTCOM's special operations headquarters) reaches an agreement with XVIII Airborne Corps to allow special operations troops to use the newly established airborne school at Ad Damman, Saudi Arabia. SOCCCENT agrees to provide a small training cadre to establish a HALO course at the school, supplementing the school's basic parachutist, jumpmaster and pathfinder courses.

[Homer]

Somehow, I think pathfinder might be the most practical application of the school. Mass tacs are probably a thing of the past given aircraft availability and fuel, but ensuring aerial delivery of high priority supplies and equipment, establishing HLZs and DZs, controlling the few remaining attack helos and medevacs, or ensuring the safety of loads slung under the precious remaining rotary wing aircraft are probably all valid skills.

OTL many maneuver companies and troops have the 92Y30 supply sergeant billet coded for the F7 (Pathfinder) ASI. A fact which has frustrated many a “high-speed” LT badgehunter who wanted to go to “Badgefinder” rather than focus on being good at LT’ing as they see the flatliner, tabless supply sergeant earn his pathfinder torch!

[chico20854]

June 24, 1998

With Greek troops remaining in Macedonia and beginning the process of annexation, the Albanians withdraw from the temporary alliance between the two nations. Albanian units are directed to cease cooperation with adjacent Greek units.

photo
The Soviet Division Cuba begins movement out of Cuba on Mexican transports. (Unofficially) The hastily-assembled Mexican fleet is insufficient to haul the entire force, so the Soviets press some of the various friendly vessels in port into service, including the Bulgarian freighter A.B. Buzko, which arrived in Cuba in March, the Polish bulker Orlęta Lviv and the Greek Paraguay Express, which sought shelter in Cuban waters when Greece entered the war against NATO in June, 1997. Most of the tanks (export-model T-72 originally intended for the USSR's Caribbean allies, never delivered when war broke out, the Soviets planning to return them home for Red Army use but never confident in their ability to move them securely) are loaded aboard the Soviet Ro/Ro ship Skulptor Golubkina.

Unofficially,

The G-3, Operations officer, for the Joint Chiefs reports his staff's preliminary assessment of the request for nuclear strike options to halt the Mexican invasion. First, political guidance is needed as to the type of targets to be considered - population centers, military bases, command and control facilities, transport hubs, industrial facilities, or something else, as well as the levels of damage assurance and tolerance for civilian casualties. The Joint Strategic Planning Staff was destroyed in the attack on SAC Headquarters in Nebraska in November, and the mobile small staff that survived does not have target information for Mexico, so a reconnaissance effort will be needed. Soviet strikes and the subsequent months of disorder has severely disrupted communications with remaining units equipped with nuclear weapons; while many have been concentrated in "safe" havens, those havens are not necessarily located alongside the delivery systems. Coordination with the G-4 (Logistics) and G-6 (Communications) staffs will be required to develop implementation plans.

In addition to considering nuclear options, the Joint Chiefs attempt to identify additional conventional forces that can be sent to the fight in the Southwest. Noting the impressive performance of the Marine recruits in San Diego, the ongoing resistance offered by the School Brigade at Fort Bliss and the heroic stand of the cadets of the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Texas as well as the general breakdown of conscription in CONUS, they condsider it appropriate to convert training formations to combat units. Consequently, they direct the Army Chief of Staff to proceed with converting the many training brigades and divisions in the US (10 divisions and over a dozen brigades) to combat formations.

The fighting in San Diego drags on for another day, although resistance in the burning naval base is beginning to crumble as ammunition and food supplies dwindle and losses mount. The Mexican 1st Mechanized Brigade makes an assault on the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, advancing under the cover of the urban sprawl to within a quarter mile of the Marines' perimeter. Advance patrols from the Mexican 2nd Army and US 63 (my XVI) Corps are independently scouting conditions in the urban waste of Los Angeles and Orange Counties; the Mexican patrols cooperating with the Los Amigos motorcycle gang.

Brigade Chichuahhua's movement out of the Sacramento Mountains to the town of Alamogordo and the adjacent Holloman Air Force Base is delayed by a salvo of MLRS rockets which rips through its leading formations. This is the first time the Mexican unit has come under enemy artillery fire, and it is a sign that they are within range of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Field Artillery, which is covering the 214th Field Artillery Brigade's retreat from the area. (The formation had been operating at White Sands Missile Range since early in 1997). There is no sign of the American artillery beyond the smoke trails in the sky overhead, the brigade commander wisely deciding to keep his vulnerable command at at least stand-off range. The brigade's other battalion, the 3rd Battalion, 9th Artillery, is concurrently on the road north, headed for the relatively safe haven of Canon Air Force Base 250 miles away with its 36 Pershing II intermediate-range missiles.

The School Brigade in Fort Bliss withdraws back north across the parade ground, now a torn-up field of craters and debris, taking cover in the ruined buildings on the northern perimeter, where fighting positions have been created for the brigade's anti-aircraft guns. The open area presents an excellent killing ground for any Mexican frontal attacks; Brigade Ciudad Juarez has begun shifting troops east to attack the post cantonment area through the airfield on the east end. On the northern outskirts of town a patrol from the Torres Motorized Cavalry Brigade captures a small group of stragglers from the Texas 9th State Guard Brigade, which has been smashed over the last few weeks' fighting. The group contains the unit commander, a 68-year old colonel (who incidentally had left the Army in 1971 as a 1st Lieutenant after a combat tour with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam).

The Mexican 4th Army in Texas continues its relentless advance as the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment crosses Interstate 10 and has Highway 281 north of San Antonio under fire, leaving Interstate 35 as the only major road out of the city. To the east the Coastal Column begins bypassing the ruins of Corpus Christi to the west, with the 2nd Mechanized Brigade capturing Chase Field Naval Air Station following a day and a half long battle against the base security detachment, a battle in which all surviving aircraft were either flown off or burned by he defenders.

The Boeing Skyfoxes of the 198th Tactical Fighter Squadron return to the skies over southern Mexico once again, striking the gas processing facilities at Reforma on the Yucatan. Taking advantage of Mexico's complete lack of air defenses, the counterinsurgency aircraft are able to attack a target usually allocated to advanced medium bombers or fighter-bombers; the strike disables 40 percent of Mexico's remaining natural gas production.

X German Korps, guarding the Rhine frontier near Heidelberg, and XII German Korps, stationed along the Rhine northwest of Frankfurt, are ordered onto the lines south of Frankfurt.

Behind Soviet/North Korean lines, supplies are pushed forward to front-line units, while many Soviet divisions begin to call in more dispersed detachments that have been spread out through the country maintaining order, concentrating near the front lines.

[chico20854]

June 25, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

After an overnight session discussing options, a dialogue usually held by the nation's highest political leaders, the Joint Chiefs respond to their G-3's request for orders. Having ended debate with "Let the historians 50 or 100 years from now debate whether or not this is the right decision. We don't have the conventional forces to stop the invasion. Nonetheless, this effort will be to halt offensive operations, not kill millions of Mexicans. We've got to live with these people after the Recovery, after all." GEN Cummings, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, directs that American nuclear forces are to strike the headquarters of the Mexican Ministry of Defense in Mexico City and the logistic/transportation hubs in northern Mexico that are supporting the invasion. The minimal possible yields required to neutralize the targets are to be used, minimizing civilian casaulties and, hopefully, fallout over American territory. Cummings realizes that the transport hubs are relatively "hard" targets, likely requiring fallout-creating ground bursts, but decides that the tradeoff is one that must unfortunately be made.

One of the 40th Infantry Division's observation posts in the Hollywood Hills, taking advantage of the disappearance of smog over the Los Angeles area with the death of LA's automobile culture, observes the green fields of the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach in the vast field of ruins that was LA. The observation is relayed up the chain of command and the division's Aviation Brigade is tasked to dispatch a patrol to examine it. The main body of the division's 2nd Brigade departs Camp Roberts, headed south, behind a screen established by the 1st Squadron, 18th Cavalry (-). To the east, the 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division has sent another battalion (the 3rd Battalion, 51st Infantry) to the front, bolstering the flank security as 89th (my II) Corps prepares for an armored counterattack to drive Brigade Mexicali back from the Imperial Valley.

It is an inauspicious day for the American defense of the Southwest, with the collapse of resistance at the San Diego Naval Base and the evacuation of key assets from San Antonio as the commander of Lackland Air Force Base prepares to surrender his command to the Mexican 4th Army. Fires rage at the Merida Annex as the intelligence operators destroy their sensitive signals intelligence equipment and burn years worth of records, while their supply specialists hurriedly rush to issue them all uniforms grabbed from Lackland's Air Force basic training barracks, allowing the intelligence specialists to blend in with the new recruits. Meanwhile, the commanders of the major military hospitals in the city, which have been an island of calm and comfort for some of the most severely wounded survivors of battlefields around the world, address their staffs and prepare them for the oncoming reality of life under Mexican occupation, offering them the opportunity to abandon their patients and evacuate; few do.

To the north, the commanders of Army units that have seemingly done their level best to avoid preparing for the upcoming battle are rattled out of their stupor by the impending fall of San Antonio. The 46th Infantry Division dispatches six companies, from six separate battalions, to the south to contain the oncoming Coastal Column; the division's heavy weapons and armored vehicles were sent to Europe as replacements earlier in the year and the division has not been able to replace its B Companies, which were sent overseas as replacements in the fall as well. The 95th Training Division at Fort Hood forms a reaction regiment, formed around the three battalions of trained tanker privates that graduated training earlier in the year but remained assigned to the division after transportation system breakdown stranded them at the base; the privates are assigned tank commanders from among the division's drill sergeants and recovering wounded located on and near the base. The formation tries to wrangle enough fuel to try platoon and company-level manuevers in the hodgepoddge of training tanks the division maintains as part of its mission to turn out replacement tank drivers and loaders.

The bad news for the American defenders of the Southwest continues, with the Chihuahua Brigade overrunning Holloman Air Force Base in central New Mexico. With news of the base's capture the Torres Motorized Cavalry Brigade launches its portion of 3rd Army's double envelopment of the Fort Bliss garrison, striking north along Interstate 25 through uncoordinated Texas State Guard roadblocks.

The diversion of troops and supplies from rear areas in Germany to the front creates opportunities for many of the armed bands roaming the country's interior to intensify their ravaging of the country. Along the northern portion of the former Inner-German Border, 5th Squad and its allied group 5th Squadron begin establishing semi-permanent control of rural areas.

Unloading of the sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuh in Bergen, Norway has been completed and the ship is moved to the shipyard for minor repairs following its long voyage to South America and back.

The carrier USS John F. Kennedy, damaged by a mine off the Greek coast, limps into Marsaxlokk Bay on the southeastern end of the island of Malta, accompanied by its escorts. The local authorities object to the entry of combatant warships into their neutral port - legally they are obligated to intern the ships and their crews for the duration of the conflict if they remain beyond 24 hours, and international law (the Hague Convention of 1907) limits combatant vessels to three in any single port, while the Kennedy is accompanied by three escorts and the oiler USNS Lenthal. The carrier's commander is claiming the right to refuge while repairing the ship to a seaworthy state, and offers to order some of his escorts to sail to Valetta, the capital, to comply with the limitation on vessel numbers.

3rd and 4th Marine Aircraft Wings, operating from a number of fields in and around Bandar Abbas along with a rear reserve base at Al Minhad Air Base in the UAE, is able to maintain its aircraft better than nearly any other combatant air formation in the world thanks to the support it receives from the advanced maintenance detachment on board the aviation maintenance ship SS Curtiss, a US government-owned, civilian manned freighter outfitted with a large helipad and extensive containerized workshops and spare parts stores. The converted merchantman is semi-permanently moored in Bandar Abbas, servicing helicopters onboard while a detachment ashore overhauls fixed-wing aircraft at Havadarya airport, adjacent to the port.

The 27th (my 90th) Tank Division, loaded on a series of six steam-powered trains, reaches the Volga River at Zelenodolsk, where the railroad troops have repaired one of the two spans of the bridge which was destroyed by an American B-2 bomber in December. The division's locomotives are replenished with additional coal from semi-abandoned river barges tied up nearby, giving them enough fuel to continue their journey west.

[chico20854]

That's all I've got for a little while, folks. Family in town for the next week or so, I'll be back around late next week.

[chico20854]

I was remiss in not crediting Matt Wiser and Webstral for the General Cummings quote. Thanks Guys!!!