Norfolk, VA - Homecoming

[Adm.Lee]

I think there is some wiggle room here if you want to add some detail or play with the background a little.

Now what all of this makes me wonder, is what is going on across Hampton Roads on the Virginia Peninsula. Over there, you've got Newport News Shipbuilding, Langley AFB, Fort Eustis, Fort Monroe, and the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station. At first glance that strikes me as a better place to set up a cantonment if the south side of Hampton Roads took a 1 Mt. nuke.

This sounds a lot more likely/workable to me. "This fleet is heading to Norfolk" might really mean, "well, close to that, anyway."

[raketenjagdpanzer]

This sounds a lot more likely/workable to me. "This fleet is heading to Norfolk" might really mean, "well, close to that, anyway."

Someone mentioned regarding the Going Home boarding handout I bashed together that the tone of it was good (and important) because it painted a picture of things not being quite so bad. Perhaps the Norfolk destination is meant to be the same thing to US Servicemen and Women. Hey, we're going home - to Norfolk, the big US Navy base. Things are still up and running back home! Woo! Versus Hey, we're going to run the ships aground near Myrtle Beach and everyone has to scramble off via nets because every port on the East Coast is fucked beyond believe thanks to saturation nuclear strikes.

[Bullet Magnet]

Versus Hey, we're going to run the ships aground near Myrtle Beach and everyone has to scramble off via nets because every port on the East Coast is fucked beyond believe thanks to saturation nuclear strikes.

I'd never accuse a government of being afraid to mislabel a product. Of course they're going to try to make it sound like everything is just fine back home.
Hell, look at the military recruitment brochures! they make it sound like a luxury resort, with a bit of a free college education thrown in.

[James1978]

Virginia Peninsula

This sounds a lot more likely/workable to me. "This fleet is heading to Norfolk" might really mean, "well, close to that, anyway."

That was my thought. Norfolk is a location that more people are likely to be familiar with than say the Virginia Peninsula. Substitute "Hampton Roads area" for Norfolk, and you really expand the possible geography. Newport News Shipbuilding seems like as good a place to come ashore as anywhere. I'd say there is a good chance that there is a damaged carrier in one of the drydocks, and possibly the remains of one that was under construction. Add damaged ships right near you with a view of wrecked naval facilities on the other side of Hampton Roads, and I think we've got a grim homecoming.

If Norfolk Naval Station survived, it's certainly someplace I'd see MilGov trying to hold onto for as long as possible. But if the Virginia Peninsula came through relatively unscathed by the nukes, it seems like a better location to set up a regional base of operations since you can build a barrier at the base of the peninsula. But for me, I just think it would be cool to set up HQ at Fort Monroe.

[Adm.Lee]

Newport News Shipbuilding seems like as good a place to come ashore as anywhere. I'd say there is a good chance that there is a damaged carrier in one of the drydocks, and possibly the remains of one that was under construction.

I brought this up on another thread, there were potentially 2 CVNs under construction at Newport News. USS Harry Truman was launched in '96 and commissioned in '98 IRL, so I think we can assume she was finished earlier in the Twilight War. USS Ronald Reagan wasn't laid down until Feb '98 IRL, that may not have happened after TDM If it were my game, I suspect she may have been barely started, but never finished. Maybe used parts to repair one or more of her damaged sisters

[James1978]

I brought this up on another thread, there were potentially 2 CVNs under construction at Newport News. USS Harry Truman was launched in '96 and commissioned in '98 IRL, so I think we can assume she was finished earlier in the Twilight War. USS Ronald Reagan wasn't laid down until Feb '98 IRL, that may not have happened after TDM If it were my game, I suspect she may have been barely started, but never finished. Maybe used parts to repair one or more of her damaged sisters

Or . . . build rates don't slow down after 1989 because the Cold War never ended and CVN-76 (Reagan) was laid down earlier. Ditto for CVN-75 (Truman).

It doesn't really affect the game or the naval war, but if anyone wanted to have an under construction CVN at Newport News, I think an earlier lay down for CVN-76 can be justified given the continued Cold War. GM's choice.

[Olefin]

If you look at Challenge Magazine 42 you get this tidbit in A Rock in Troubled Waters

Monitors: These are a variation on a Vietnam-era modification. LCM6s drawn from the amphibious base at Norfolk received boiler plate armor and whatever weaponry was handy.

To me that sounds like the Little Creek Amphibious Base wasnt hit by the nuke and has intact LCM6's there for MilGov to build these monitors

[Targan]

Or . . . build rates don't slow down after 1989 because the Cold War never ended and CVN-76 (Reagan) was laid down earlier. Ditto for CVN-75 (Truman).

It doesn't really affect the game or the naval war, but if anyone wanted to have an under construction CVN at Newport News, I think an earlier lay down for CVN-76 can be justified given the continued Cold War. GM's choice.

I agree completely. I've argued the same myself in the past.

[James1978]

If you look at Challenge Magazine 42 you get this tidbit in A Rock in Troubled Waters

Monitors: These are a variation on a Vietnam-era modification. LCM6s drawn from the amphibious base at Norfolk received boiler plate armor and whatever weaponry was handy.

To me that sounds like the Little Creek Amphibious Base wasnt hit by the nuke and has intact LCM6's there for MilGov to build these monitors

Now that is helpful!

Playing with NUKEMAP and using a 1 Mt. nuke, Little Creek and most of the Norfolk Naval Station are "safe" when I plant GZ on Norfolk Naval Shipyard. BUT, the Coast Guard Station and Craney Island fuel depot are within the thermal radiation radius.

So if you want to have Little Creek intact, it can work.

Alternatively, those wanting to have Little Creek unusable for whatever reason - fire, radiation, nuke GZ, etc. - could say the monitor conversions were done at Newport News Shipyard, or possibly Fort Eustis.

[Webstral]

I'm coming to this one late, so I'll be quick. It seems to me that the nuking of the main Atlantic base has to be handled delicately. Outright destruction of the whole place is out, as many have said. Negligible destruction is out, too, because the Soviets will follow up and finish the job. There has to be enough destruction that the Soviets, who know the US will go warhead-for-warhead, don't want to put another nuke on the table. There has to be little enough destruction that parts of the place are quite usable.

I agree that the returning Europe vets are going to be passed on as quickly as possible. Cantonments on the Atlantic seaboard, the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi Watershed, and adjacent to major rivers draining into the Atlantic are good candidates. This pretty much leaves out the West Coast and the Southwest. Colorado might get some folks, though. Milgov appears to own a swath of territory running from Colorado across Oklahoma and much of Arkansas to the Father of Waters. Provided the locks and dams along the Arkansas River are in operation, the Arkansas River is navigable by barge to the vicinity of Tulsa, OK. At the very least, 49th AD could get some troops.

Would this be an appropriate place to bring up the utility of airships again

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I'm coming to this one late, so I'll be quick. It seems to me that the nuking of the main Atlantic base has to be handled delicately. Outright destruction of the whole place is out, as many have said. Negligible destruction is out, too, because the Soviets will follow up and finish the job. There has to be enough destruction that the Soviets, who know the US will go warhead-for-warhead, don't want to put another nuke on the table. There has to be little enough destruction that parts of the place are quite usable.

I have a suggestion about this, one that is highly speculative guesswork and requires stepping out of the literal, hard-numbers strategic point of view, but bear with me a moment:

Let us suppose that Norfolk was a near-miss. The spread was too far apart, the pattern was badly programmed and the warhead missed off the coast, whatever. From the point of view of the poor civilians there, they were most definitely nuked. Enough of the city is irradiated rubble, enough people went through a "The Day After" or "Threads" type scenario that if you ask anyone who was there what happened they'll tell you "A nuclear strike."

Norfolk was, by our own lingo, a counterforce strike. To wit: the destruction of an enemy military base to reduce his force capability. Presuming the Soviets "saw" what happened (sleeper cell did a direct observation, satellite, nearby sub, later strategic overflight, whatever) there might have been some thinking along these lines: we hit that city, or rather, we brushed it. There's wrecked ships, there's probably in excess of a hundred thousand dead civilians, the port facilities are for the time being, unusable. However if we hit it again the Americans may well view it as a countervalue strike - that we are at this point "terror bombing" and just trying to kill people for no good reason other than to kill people. That might lead beyond even where we are now, with 3000+ nuclear weapons coming out of their remaining subs, silos and bombers. No, we've hurt them, that's enough.

That's very thin, but it's all I can think of at the moment.

[JHart]

Seeing as I've lived in Hampton Roads for 25 years and have been on nearly every military installation listed here I thought I'd say chime in.

I think raketenjagdpanzer has the best idea. One nuke wouldn't do Hampton Roads any favors, but it is survivable and odds are it would be an airburst. With all the potential targets around, (I live less than two miles from NAS Oceana) I would think the Soviets would sling a few more ground burst nukes with priority given to Newport News SB&DD and other shipyards, and the airbases at Langley and Oceana to crater the runways. None of the local Army bases and smaller Navy installations are worth nuking in in the limited tit for tat T2K nuke slinging in my opinion.

Assuming it was only one "close" or "near miss" 1MT nuke, or 1MT and a few smaller KT at the targets selected above then Hampton Roads and Norfolk could still be in business. Ft. Eustis and Story are transport centers and might have some resources left to help with the returning Omega fleet in addition to all the beached sailors, odd Marine guards and grounded airmen. There is also Ft Lee and Pickett up the road near Richmond that might be able to lend support.

Another factor is the large retiree community whose experience and manpower could be drawn on, at least from those who survived the nuke attacks.


The last factor could be the weather, assuming Omega arrives late November or early December, it will be little warmer in Hampton Roads than a port farther up the Eastern seaboard.

[Legbreaker]

And don't forget you don't have to completely destroy the docks to make them essentially useless. Hitting a nearby transportation hub will result in ships still being able to tie up, but not being able to load or unload cargo and passengers all that efficiently. If the rail yards were wiped out, everything would have to come by truck or animal, skirting the possibly radioactive areas. Rubble from the burst(s) is likely to interfere with that also, blocking roads, canals, footpaths and requiring a major effort to clear.
One only has to look at the results of WWII bombing raids to see what might be faced.

Rubble from dockside warehouses could have been blown into the water, making the waterways too shallow for much beyond a canoe. Without heavy machinery, dredges and time, there's very little that could be done to make them usable again even if the other infrastructure is still good.

Sunken ships have also been mentioned previously. To me there seems a reasonable chance saboteurs could have had an impact either before the nukes, or after to ensure the port was out of commission. A couple of limpet mines detonated as the ship is passing though a choke point and the whole port can be closed.

[Olefin]

Well Legbreaker that may explain what the 40,000 plus troops that are at Norfolk are assigned to - i.e. clearing the roads and whatever of debris so the docks can be put back into full operation

The Japanese used mainly manpower with almost no machines to do it both during and right after WWII so I can see that happening here as well. And that would keep them occupied for quite a while - and would earn them their pay - in this case food.

[Legbreaker]

Perhaps, but Op Omega has "selected units will remain in service and the remainder stood down for muster out."
This has been previously discussed here: http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=3130 and http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=2408
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=2088, here, http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=1957, and here http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=1745