On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

Caught up finally! Thanks for your patience and support!

[chico20854]

October 29, 1997

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Delegations from the Greek and Bulgarian military governments meet in Erdine, Turkey to delineate administration of occupied areas in Thrace as Soviet forces begin withdrawing from the region. Both nations had lost sovereignty over the region in wars earlier in the century; while allies in the fighting against the Turks and Jugoslavs the two nations are both desperate to regain the lost territories and too weak militarily and economically to fight the other over them.

Another three Army truck companies are activated, one each at Fort Eustis and Fort Leonard Wood, with the third forming at Camp Perry, Ohio, from volunteers from the civilian trucking industry.

Soviet forces of the 1st Far Eastern Front conclude the clearing the last remaining pocket of Chinese Army resistance, the remnants of the 31st Group Army that had been sheltering in Dandong at the mouth of the Yalu. The suppression of the Chinese troops, who fought with a tenacity driven by fatalism and hate, is a bloody effort, and following its conclusion 1st Far Eastern Front directs the diversion of some of the less battered formations to reinforce Yalu Front's efforts in adjacent North Korea

The first ships of the ragtag evacuation fleet carrying the remnants of the British 6th Division arrive in Kowloon.

Soviet nuclear forces strike the main NATO aerial ports that receive reinforcements - Frankfurt International Airport/Rhine Main Air Force Base, Luxembourg International Airport, Amsterdam-Schipol International Airport and Dusseldorf International Airport - with IRBMs and cruise missiles, halting reinforcement operations at the bases. Aircraft already in flight are directed to land at Gatwick, Prestwick and Stanstead airports in the UK, where an ad-hoc aerial ferry system is implemented using smaller civilian transports and USAF airlifters flying to smaller (and in many cases damaged) airfields in Germany and the eastern Netherlands.

Convoy 306 departs Jacksonville, Florida, with 18 loaded freighters, two tankers and six escorts as well as an umbrella of maritime patrol aircraft overhead.

A particularly heavy day of flights into the Tabriz bridgehead, taking advantage of heavy air tasking by 9th Air Force with cooperation from the IPA and the Saudi Air Force.

Detachment 1, 102nd Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron is declared operational at Mombasa International Airport, Kenya. Two of the squadron's HC-130 transports return to Gibraltar.

[chico20854]

October 30, 1997

After several weeks of sheltering from fallout in local coal mines, the first inhabitants of Pyskowice return to their homes. They have deteriorated somewhat during the interval when they were abandoned but overall are still habitable and far preferable to conditions in government-operated refugee camps.

The 82nd Airborne and the Rangers begin to break out of their airhead and begin raiding south.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Milwaukee Freedom is delivered in Portland, Oregon.

NATO transportation planners assess the implications of the prior day's attacks on airports as well as the ongoing effort to cripple European seaports. The twin developments challenge NATO's ability to replace even a portion of the losses its forces are suffering at the front, for while the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command is churning out hundreds of recruits daily and American (and Canadian and British) industry is building armored and unarmored vehicles, the inability to get them to into the theatre threatens the alliance's ability to hold off the advancing Pact forces. The US Navy offers up the idea of troop ships - both purpose built ones brought out of mothballs and requisitioned cruise ships - but they are slower than airlift and require use of the same damaged port facilities that are currently unable to unload supplies and fuel. No decision is reached other than to continue to make maximum use of smaller, undamaged facilities; the available tactical assets (landing craft and C-130-scale transports) are too few and too urgently needed to divert to logistic support missions.

Hearing the approaching thundering horde of Convoy 306, the Sierra-III class sub K-231 moves east into the Atlantic to ensure that a 120-km square area of the Atlantic north of Bermuda and away from the shipping routes is clear of enemy activity.

The first vehicles of the 353rd Engineer Group (Combat) arrive at Corpus Christi, Texas for movement to Europe.

[chico20854]

October 31, 1997

The 82nd Airborne Division and Rangers have done as much damage as they can to the Soviet base structure and communications routes in the Tabriz area as they can. To their south, Soviet troops are running out of supplies while XVIII Airborne Corps, I MEF and the IPA begin a limited counteroffensive. Caught in a vice, the Soviets begin withdrawing northward from their positions threatening Allied positions along the coast of the Persian Gulf.

The fires in the outer city of Warsaw have nearly died out. The firestorm had swept through those areas of the city which were not in the rubble, destroying most of those structures which withstood the blasts. The destruction is nearly complete. Over half of the native population died in the initial blasts and the firestorm which ran through the city. While many structures still remain standing, they are, for the most part, only shells, standing ominously over the sea of rubble which is modern Warsaw.

Unoffiicially,

Having had an entire two weeks (!) to organize, the 476th Truck Company is ordered to the nearby port of Norfolk for immediate deployment to Europe.

As the IRA consolidates its positions in Belfast and struggles to hold Derry it introduces involuntary conscription of all males between the ages of 13 and 62. Some affected men manage to slip away, while others willingly take up arms against the Loyalists.

One of the Soviet units involved in the elimination of the Chinese 31st Army, the 12th Motor-Rifle Division (3500 men, 25 tanks), is ordered south into North Korea to reinforce 35th Army. It crosses the Yalu later in the day, its infantry mostly on foot except for a lucky battalion which rides the exterior of the tanks.

The last elements of the British 6th Division arrive in Kowloon, having been evacuated from the mouth of the Yalu River, bringing an end to the "Dunkirk of China".

Convoy 306 is off the Hampton Roads area and picks up an additional nine ships and another escort, the frigate Koelsch, returning to sea after being damaged in March.

[Ewan]

October 29, 1997
Aircraft already in flight are directed to land at Gatwick, Preston and Stanstead airports in the UK, where an ad-hoc aerial ferry system is implemented using smaller civilian transports and USAF airlifters flying to smaller (and in many cases damaged) airfields in Germany and the eastern Netherlands.

Do you not mean Prestwick rather than Preston.

All in Im really enjoying the diary of events and the detail is amazing.

[Nyrond24]

Definitely not Preston

Sorry preston hasn't got an airport, i live in Blackpool about 20 miles away and we have an airport, its not open at the moment but was an international airport in the t2k timeline.
Keep up the brilliant work mate , its a great read.

[chico20854]

Do you not mean Prestwick rather than Preston.

Sorry preston hasn't got an airport, i live in Blackpool about 20 miles away and we have an airport, its not open at the moment but was an international airport in the t2k timeline.

I had meant Prestwick but was working too fast and didn't double check the name! Thanks for the correction! I've gone back and fixed it. I think Prestwick saw (and continues to see) an awful lot of military traffic, making it a logical choice for a diversion field for troop carriers.

[chico20854]

November 1, 1997

The first convoy to Kenya from the United States arrives after being attacked by two Soviet submarines off the coast of Madagascar. The convoy loses two freighters, including one carrying the balance of the Sheridan tanks assigned to the 173rd. The escorts, aided by P-3Cs, manage to sink both submarines but lose one frigate and have another so badly damaged that it barely makes it to Mombasa. The rest of the convoy arrives intact, bringing the remainder of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 228th Aviation Regiment along with various support elements.

Unofficially,

The Army Chief of Staff reports that as of October 31, total casualties (KIA, wounded, missing and captured) have exceeded 100 percent of the Army's prewar (January 1996) Active Duty strength. (Noting, of course, that the Army Reserve and National Guard made up 58 percent of the total Army). While shocking, the Commandant of the Marine Corps notes that his force reached that milestone in July and that the nuclear exchange has put the equivalent number for the Marine Corps approaching 150 percent.

The government of Eire, noting the instability in Northern Ireland, calls up the FCA, the Army's reserve force. Reservists repeat the experience of most reservists around the world from a year ago, nervously leaving loved ones, reporting to mobilization stations and rushing through paperwork and store issuance.

In North Korea, Soviet artillery strikes the city of Wonsan on the east coast as Allied defenders continue to withdraw. To the west, fighting spreads in Pyongyang as the Soviets commit additional numbers of North Korea troops (a mix of pre-war regulars, reservists and People's Militia with a sprinkling of civilians forced to fight fleshing them out). Allied airpower, operating closer to its home bases, is able to provide slightly more effective support.

The US Pacific Fleet orders the withdrawal of the battleship Missouri from the western coast of North Korea, ordering it to Yokosuka, Japan for a brief period for minor repairs, resupply and minor electronic upgrades.

The German 23rd Missile Brigade, which has shot off it's entire stock of Scud-D missiles and taken grievous losses in the fighting in Poland, is disbanded. Survivors of the unit are distributed to other Bundeswehr formations.

The Dutch Air Force resumes flying missions from the Gilze-Rijen Air Base, which was struck by a Soviet missile a month earlier. The Dutch 314 Squadron's three remaining F-16s are able to take off and land from the base's taxiways, which were constructed specifically with this emergency option in mind.

Elsewhere in Germany, some Luftwaffe and USAF aircraft have begun to operate from small civilian strips and closed sections of Autobahn to reduce the risk of being struck by Soviet nuclear weapons while at one of the few remaining intact bases. NATO's remaining E-3 AWACS aircraft operating over the front have retreated to Stavanger, Norway and RAF Alconbury, relying on tankers to make up for the lost range.

The German defenders of Wroclaw, mostly the V Korps, are surrounded by Pact troops of the 2nd Polish and 8th Guards Soviet Armies.

The NATO attack submarines HMS Ursula and HNLMS Bruinvis blast their way out of the Murmansk Fjord following nearly two weeks of lurking. They follow the Soviet minesweeper Pavel Malkov out through the minefields, then sink her and her escort, the Grisha-class corvette MPK-33.

The USS Virginia remains in drydock in Norfolk, Virginia being repaired from damage sustained in mid-October. The ship's helicopter pilot, Lt. Hans Brupp, is promoted to Lieutenant Commander, partially in recognition of his role sinking the submarine that attacked the ship.

Following a long and difficult journey Cobra and Echo Flights, 487th Tactical Missile Wing, with nine GLCM missiles and launchers, arrive at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. Incirlik is quickly evolving to be an enclave of relative order in the chaos that is Turkey, with a combination of local, Dutch, and USAF Security troops who are securing the miles-long perimeter. The base is slowly gathering stragglers from other NATO formations in Turkey that are able to make it there; most of 16th Air Force's surviving aircraft are recovering to the base after flying missions from their damaged home stations.

[Targan]

All these decades of playing and running T2K campaigns and I'm only now getting a solid sense of what a total mangled mess the war was BEFORE the ICBMs started hitting CONUS. I struggle to understand how the war continued in any meaningful way through '98 and '99, let alone NATO's final push into Poland in 2000.

[chico20854]

All these decades of playing and running T2K campaigns and I'm only now getting a solid sense of what a total mangled mess the war was BEFORE the ICBMs started hitting CONUS. I struggle to understand how the war continued in any meaningful way through '98 and '99, let alone NATO's final push into Poland in 2000.

Yes, hopefully this is putting an exclamation point after the line in the referee's manual that peace might have come following the initial nuclear exchange if any governments had remained intact to seek it.

To a certain extent the 98 campaign will depend on salvage. I guess the 2000 offensive is drawn from the meagre (and described as foolish/questionable) reinforcements of 1999...

[chico20854]

November 2, 1997

Irish troops begin to move to the northern counties in response to the growing conflict across the border in Northern Ireland. The government of Eire, which relies on Sinn Fein for support, claims that the deployment is wholly defensive.

Unofficially,

The light frigate USS Menges is delivered in Pascagoula, Mississippi and manned by a mix of USN and USCG personnel.

The 1950s-vintage Decatur-class destroyer USS John Paul Jones, is recommissioned in Norfolk, Virginia and sets sail for the Pacific. The ship had last been in commission in 1982; such is the need for escorts that in January she and her sisters were ordered back into service, obsolescent as she is. The reactivation process included installation of modern radars, electronics and self-defense systems but she still lacks helicopters and a modern sonar.

ROK stay-behind special forces troops in North Korea spot the columns of the reinforcing 12th Motor-Rifle Division heading south after crossing the Ch'ongch'on River and within hours the formation is stuck by a South Korean nuclear-tipped Lance missile, largely ending the divisions war.

Allied forces in Korea have established a semi-prepared defensive line across North Korea from Wonsan to Pyongyang, using the south bank of the Taedong River as an obstacle. Engineers destroy the river crossings, while 8th Army headquarters acquiesces to ROK concerns and denies the use of atomic demolition munitions or nuclear strikes to create a nuclear dead zone on the north bank. ROK and US light units establish a screen through the central mountains, and the most battered units are withdrawn from the front lines for reconstruction.

ROK naval units move into the estuary of the Taedong River to provide naval gunfire support to Allied forces. The South Koreas are willing to risk the destroyer Jeon Ju, a World War II-era ship with six 5-inch guns, in the effort.

The Luftwaffe 2nd Luftjaeger Regiment reaches the safety of the German border and is assigned a sector along the Oder River south of Frankfurt-Oder.

The 930th Tactical Fighter Group (USAF Reserve) relinquishes the last of its surviving A-10s to the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing. It receives a composite force of six A-37 and six Boeing Skyfox light attack aircraft as replacements; it has been nearly six months since the unit had a dozen combat-ready aircraft.

Panzergruppe Westhoven, another ad-hoc multinational formation formed in the spring and assigned to First German Army, is disbanded, its constituent units returned to their national corps.

West of Wroclaw, the US XI Corps prepares a counterattack to once again rescue an encircled friendly unit, in this case the V German Korps.

NATO technical intelligence specialists score an amazing prize when a SS-23 missile lands within the perimeter of Ramstein Air Base and its nuclear warhead fails to detonate. Air Force Security Police immediately secure the site and EOD personnel arrive; unfamiliar with Soviet nuclear weapons they are unable to make the warhead safe but transport it (very! gingerly) to a hardened aircraft shelter.

Convoy 304 arrives in the North Sea following a nearly-unopposed voyage from North America. Naval commanders are dismayed to discover that some ships from Convoy 302 are still at anchor awaiting berths. The smaller ships are able to proceed to shallower ports such as Esbjerg, Denmark and Eemshaven, Netherlands.

Convoy 306 is off St. Johns, Newfoundland.

Red Banner Northern Fleet surges many of its remaining nuclear and diesel-powered submarines into the Barents Sea.

While 5th Special Force Group's Green Berets work with the Kurds of northwestern Iran, the 7th Group works in central and Eastern Iran, among the Baluch and Lur tribal groups. 7th Group even deploys several A-teams across the border into post-nuclear Pakistan, more gathering intelligence than active combat operations.

Kenyan stevedores work to unload the convoy that arrived in Mombasa. American commanders are frustrated to learn the slow pace that the workers work at, and are forced to choose between unloading supplies for the units already in action and unloading additional combat capability. Ultimately, the decision is made to unload several days worth of munitions and fuel as well as desperately needed parts, then switch over, if the ships' loading permits.

[shrike6]

November 2, 1997

The 1950s-vintage Decatur-class destroyer USS John Paul Jones, is recommissioned in Norfolk, Virginia and sets sail for the Pacific. The ship had last been in commission in 1982; such is the need for escorts that in January she and her sisters were ordered back into service, obsolescent as she is. The reactivation process included installation of modern radars, electronics and self-defense systems but she still lacks helicopters and a modern sonar.

I have a question for the Naval experts out there and admit I'm a bit curious on this. Since its successor ship the USS John Paul Jones, Arleigh Burke class was commissioned in 1993, would the Decatur class ship still be called the John Paul Jones or would they have to rename it something else on recommissioning

[chico20854]

November 3, 1997

Nothing in canon for the day!

NATO dispatches a team of experts from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the British Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to examine the captured SS-23 warhead.

The tanker Manatee is delivered in Baltimore, Maryland.

The refinery in Ashland, Ohio is shut down for six weeks of maintenance and upgrades, some of it long overdue.

The lead Irish Army battalions begin arriving to hastily erected camps within 5 km of the border with Northern Ireland.

The remnants of the 12th Motor-Rifle Division are split. The surviving enlisted troops are assigned to 35th Army as replacements and the remaining officers are returned to their prewar garrisons in Mongolia, ordered to stand up a new 12th Division.

The Missouri battle group arrives in Yokosuka, Japan.

The US XI Corps launches its drive to relieve the surrounded German V Korps in Wroclaw. The 1st Shock Army is forced to halt the counterattack east of Legnica with the battered remnants of the 321st Motor-Rifle Division, which was a low-quality unit from the beginning and has been roughly handled over the last several months. The 321st succeeds in stopping the advancing tanks (its few remaining artillery pieces being used as makeshift anti-tank guns in direct-fire mode), but at the cost of nearly all of its remaining men and all of its artillery.

The amphibious assault ship USS Nassau arrives off the southern coast of Turkey, where its embarked helicopters are able to reach isolated detachments of non-Turkish NATO troops and evacuate them.

The last vehicles of the 353rd Engineer Group (Combat) (US Army Reserve) arrive in Corpus Christi, Texas to await a ship to carry them to Europe. The group's personnel move by bus to Fort Hood, Texas, where they are released for two weeks of leave before deploying.

In distant McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, the annual summertime resupply of the American scientific research station (by the tanker Delaware Trader and freighter Green Wave, escorted by the icebreaker Polar Sea) is interrupted by the arrival of a Soviet raider, the destroyer Velichavyy. The raider was last identified by NATO when it broke out of Petropavlovsk in March alongside seven of her sisters; it has spent the prior months sheltering with the massed fishing fleet in a remote area of the South Pacific. The destroyer sits off the station and shells it, sinking all three ships and setting the station ablaze.

[chico20854]

I have a question for the Naval experts out there and admit I'm a bit curious on this. Since its successor ship the USS John Paul Jones, Arleigh Burke class was commissioned in 1993, would the Decatur class ship still be called the John Paul Jones or would they have to rename it something else on recommissioning

My bad! I should have caught that...

I read that when a ship is decommissioned the name is released although the hull number is not. (i.e. the battleship USS South Dakota BB-57 when decommissioned became the ex-South Dakota, freeing the name up for the new USS South Dakota SSN-790). Usually the old ship is long gone by the time the name is reused - there hasn't been a USS Kansas in 100 years!

So the old Decatur-class destroyer should have been renamed before being recommissioned.

[shrike6]

My bad! I should have caught that...

I read that when a ship is decommissioned the name is released although the hull number is not. (i.e. the battleship USS South Dakota BB-57 when decommissioned became the ex-South Dakota, freeing the name up for the new USS South Dakota SSN-790). Usually the old ship is long gone by the time the name is reused - there hasn't been a USS Kansas in 100 years!

So the old Decatur-class destroyer should have been renamed before being recommissioned.

I kind of thought so. It would become confusing to have two ships with the same name. The good news is you have a wide range of names to choose from.