On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[Targan]

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.

Ship losses have been high enough by that stage in the war that the newer Arleigh Burke-class USS John Paul Jones may have already been destroyed and the older Decatur-class destroyer USS John Paul Jones got to keep its name.

[shrike6]

Ship losses have been high enough by that stage in the war that the newer Arleigh Burke-class USS John Paul Jones may have already been destroyed and the older Decatur-class destroyer USS John Paul Jones got to keep its name.

Fair point, but since it hasnt been talked about it. I would assume its still active at this point.

[stilleto69]

I solved that issue by using the US Navy ship listing, that was created by Chico & the DC Working Group a while back. I have it listed as DDG-32 USS Stroddard and attached to SP 1 (CVL-34 USS Oriskany CVGB). But to your point, I did have both CA-148 USS Newport News & SSN-750 USS Newport News active at the same time. I figured US Naval Intelligence would leave a couple of duplicates in place just to mess with the Soviets. I also used the classic Star Trek trick of just adding a "II" to distinguish the difference, i.e. CVL-31 USS Bon Homme Richard and LHD-6 USS Bon Homme Richard II. Just my 2 cents, for what its worth.

[chico20854]

November 4, 1997

A single SS-17 Spanker ICBM is launched from southern Siberia (I have central Russia) and releases four MIRVs high over the Korean Peninsula. 500 kiloton warheads detonate over Seoul, Incheon and Kunsan, wreaking havoc and killing, in total, hundreds of thousands of civilians. Fortunately, the fourth warhead (also targeting Seoul) fails to detonate.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship St Paul Freedom is delivered in Beaumont, Texas. It was the last of the class delivered from the city, with four others under construction when Beaumont was struck by Soviet nukes later in the month. Ironically, the production of Phalanx CIWS anti-missile systems has now increased enough that the ship is the last delivered without one of the systems installed as standard equipment.

The 1st Brigade, 17th Airborne Division completes Rotation 97-11 at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Polk, Louisiana and declared combat ready. No immediate orders are issued, the unit placed on standby for deployment overseas when sufficient stocks of equipment have been assembled in theater and assigned civil security and disaster relief duties in the interim.

The British expert team arrives at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and is escorted to the heavily-guarded aircraft shelter that holds the captured Soviet SS-23 warhead. They are joined several hours later by a team of American engineers and scientists, and by midnight they feel confident disconnecting the warhead's conventional explosive, rendering it much less likely to detonate, although still not "safe".

The fires in Rotterdam have largely burned themselves out, allowing civil defense teams to assess the radioactivity and plan to clear roads so an evaluation of the damage to the refinery, chemical plant and port can be done.

In Bremerhaven, Germany the local defense leadership begins to hear increasing complaints about the side effects of the unusual defense measures in place to deceive Soviet intelligence. To make it appear that the port city was hit by a missile that actually landed offshore, city authorities have been burning a series of barges loaded with old tires. The dense, choking smoke covers the city and creates a very real refugee stream fleeing the city. This allows the port to quietly unload freighters carrying vital supplies and equipment.

In Poland, XI Corps renews its attacks, which are coordinated with a breakout drive by the German V Korps. Supported by four tactical nuclear strikes on Soviet troop concentrations, the German force is able to evacuate the city, leaving behind a fiendish collection of booby traps and damaged buildings. Wroclaw's industry and indeed much of its basic infrastructure has been thoroughly destroyed.

To the north, NATO forces complete the evacuation of Poznan; Pact forces driving west ot the north and south had created a large salient that was at risk of being cut off.

The remnants of the Red Banner Northern Fleet rally to defeat the great barrier that has defined the war in the Atlantic Ocean - the GIUK Gap. In a coordinated series of strikes, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles strike Keflavik, Iceland and Argentia, terminuses of the SOSUS hydrophone arrays on the sea floor as well as bases for NATO maritime patrol aircraft and air defense interceptors. Simultaneously, teams of Naval Spetsnaz frogmen cut the cables linking the SOSUS arrays to the continental US and Scotland and attach a limpet mine to the T-AGOS long-range sonar ship USNS Able, in harbor in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Lead elements of the 82nd Airborne Division and their Kurdish allies enter the town of Maragheh, driving out the Soviet garrison detachment.

[chico20854]

If I were to start this effort over from scratch I keep myself organized a little differently.

Right now I have about 10 Orbat excel spreadsheets - Pact Ground units, Soviet submarines, NATO cargo ships, the USAF, non-US NATO surface ships, and so on, as well as a pair of location spreadsheets - steel mills, C3I facilities, airbases, SAM sites, ICBM silos, refineries, power plants, etc - one for NATO and one for the Pact. They also contain details about the opposition's nuclear arsenals - range, yield, CEP, numbers built and deployed, etc. I keep notes in all these sheets on what happens with individual entries, ie "nuked 9/19/97" or "sank the Omaha Freedom on 7/19/97 with three torps". I also have draft vehicle guides in various stages of completion, four word docs for the US (Armored divisions, infantry divisions, independent regiments/brigades and corps/army HQs), one for the Soviets and about 6-8 for allies. And then there's all the v1 canon material and documents that some others here have shared to mine.

But its unwieldy to work with... I usually have 6-10 windows open in excel and two to four in Word, plus three google map windows and a wikipedia page, plus acrobat with Janes' Fighting Ships or some such. When I have time to include photos that's another couple windows going on my screen.

So if I was to start this from scratch I would probably construct a military unit database that would have air, ground and naval units from all combatant nations in it. I might also build a location database, or, if I had the technical skill, put it all in to one master file. It would certainly make things easier to work with and maybe prevent foul-ups like two USS John Paul Jones or Newport News!

So just a peak behind the curtain!

Enjoy the weekend!

[shrike6]

Its hard to keep track of the many detailed moving parts in your story. One of my favorite authors WEB Griffin had errors out the wazoo in his Brotherhood series. Dont feel bad about it. Your only human like the rest of us, just correct it and move on.

[chico20854]

November 5, 1997

The replica USS Constitution enters the South Atlantic for filming the next season of the sitcom "Darwin Was a Monkey's Uncle".

Military units from Eire move into the Northern Irish border counties - the Second Irish Civil War has begun.

Unofficially,

The commander of the 36th Engineer Group (Combat) orders his troops to take offline six hydropower plants between Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee, partially dismantling them and shielding their transformers and control components in underground storage. His independent move (not sanctioned by higher command) incurs the wrath of the Tennessee Valley Authority, owner of the plants, but the colonel's troops have control of the plants.

The Forrest Sherman-class destroyer USS Manley is returned to service at the Mayport Naval Station, Florida and begins local patrolling pending formation of another convoy.

The USS New Jersey battle group is ordered southwest from the vicinity of Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

The 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Protection) Division, en route to occupation duty in Austria, pauses for resupply in Bratislava before crossing the border. Local authorities are reluctant to part with their meagre supplies of food and fuel and have very little ammunition (from police stockpiles) to provide Soviet troops, despite orders from Praha to furnish the Soviet division with everything it needs.

In Bavaria, the Danish Expeditionary Corps (an ad-hoc higher headquarters that is commanding the hodgepodge of Danish units that are fighting in the region) drives southwest, hoping to drive the Italians out of the city of Ulm.

A USAF C-23 light transport flies the captured Soviet warhead to the UK after it is decided to examine it at the British Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.

SACLANT scrambles to seal the gap blown in the defenses of the GIUK Gap. The carriers Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt as well as the escort carriers Langley and Shangri-La are rushed to the area despite the dire state of their air wings and escort force. The light carrier Cabot, in harbor in the Netherlands recovering from its first operational voyage, is ordered to make ready with all due haste. Convoy 306 is routed to the south to avoid the anticipated (relative) flood of Soviet submarines and raiders, and two of the US Navy's remaining attack submarines are ordered into the breach.

The 82nd Airborne Division's center of gravity begins to move south. To avoid presenting a nuclear target the 82nd's battalions operate on a dispersed scale, the division exerting an area of influence that Soviet troops cannot enter rather than holding solid front lines. (Any Soviet units that enter the 82nd's area of control soon find themselves under attack from dismounted infantry from all directions, and that their supporting supply vehicles are shot to pieces before they can reach them).

[chico20854]

There's an article on the Freedom class ships coming out in the next issue of the fanzine, which I understand might be coming out in the next week or so! Stats, backstory, deck plans.

I received word that we're hoping for the next issue this week!

[chico20854]

November 6, 1997

The 6th Marine Division is activated using surviving personnel of the 4th (my 1st) Marine Division as a command and training cadre.

Fanya Ayn Wilkerson, the young American journalist that has become a legend in XVIII Airborne Corps, returns to the US for a well-deserved break following six months in combat covering the 82nd Airborne Division, including two combat drops with the division's pathfinders. She reunites with her husband and young son.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Oakland Freedom is delivered in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Irish troops clash with scattered and isolated RUC and UDR outposts as they seek to link up with IRA troops. Britain has cut off Eire from deliveries of petroleum and declared a naval blockade. France, sticking to its strict neutrality (despite Eire's protests that its intervention is a peacekeeping move to protect Ulster's Catholics and not part of the wider war), halts the export of fuel to the Irish Republic, unwilling to engage in a naval confrontation with the British.

Following a quick three days in port, the Missouri battle group heads back to sea, headed northeast along the Japanese coast.

The Luftwaffe's 12th Luftjaeger Regiment completes two weeks of familiarization training, integration of additional Luftwaffe airbase security troops and augmentation with Army NCOs recovering from wounds suffered in Poland, and is subordinated to the Army and thrown into action against the combined Italian and Warsaw Pact forces in Bavaria.

In Poland, following the evacuation of Poznan and Wroclaw, NATO forces are able to form a straighter front line, allowing more units to be pulled back to reinforce defenses along the Oder-Niesse line.

American Pershing II missiles strike six air bases in Ukraine and Byelorussia that intelligence indicates have been repaired and are being used by Soviet nuclear bombers.

A Soviet submarine (the Foxtrot-class B-821) spots the USS Coral Sea operating in the Baltic east of Lolland and radios its location to Leningrad. The transmission is located by nearby shore stations and a Marineflieger (German Navy) Breguet Atlantique patrol aircraft and a Danish Lynx helicopter sortie to intercept the sub. They soon find the Foxtrot at shallow depth (the Baltic not being very deep and the clear lanes through the defensive minefields limited) and sink her. However, the sighting of the carrier is of considerable tactical value, and the Soviets dispatch a pair of aircraft to respond; a Tu-16MR Badger-D naval reconniassance plane and a single Su-24 bomber from the 305th Bomber Aviation Regiment. With the Badger orbiting at high altitude over the eastern Baltic providing updated location information, the lone bomber, flying at 3m altitude, approaches the carrier to within 4 km, when it pitches up, releases a single bomb and turns back to home. The nuclear munition does not score a direct hit, but detonates slightly more than 200 meters off the carrier's starboard side. The blast rips the ship's island off, crushes the hull and blows the ship's aircraft off the deck into the sea; it begins sinking even before the munitions and fuel aboard start to burn. Within 15 minutes it has sunk below the waves. The destroyer Mitscher, providing close-in protection to the carrier, is also severely damaged by the blast and sinks six hours later.

Once again asserting that a 1859 Treaty has been abrogated, Guatemalan troops moving to the border with Belize. The Belizian government mobilizes its two infantry battalions and issues an urgent plea for help from Britain, its former colonizer and guarantor of its independence since 1981. British Forces Belize, which in prewar days included infantry, artillery and support units as well as a flight of Harriers and helicopters, has been reduced to 50 men operating a jungle training school and several officers seconded to the Belizian Defense Force.

[chico20854]

November 7, 1997

In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art's directors remove most of the paintings, transferring them to underground vaults on Long Island.

Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, an important transportation hub and industrial town (home of the Vitkovice Iron Works), is destroyed by a 200 kt nuclear bomb (unofficially) dropped by an American F-111 fighter-bomber, one of only a few dozen remaining.

Unofficially,

The light frigate USS Mosely is delivered in Mobile, Alabama and manned by a mix of USN and USCG personnel.

US Army authorities approve the resumption of AT-4 production at the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant.

In the mountains of North Korea, the remnants of the North Korean Peoples Army attempts to sustain their advance using their fairly successful tactics developed pre-war: take advantage of night and poor weather to infiltrate the Allied lines and attack from the rear. The easternmost American formation is the 41st Infantry Division (Light), which abuts a South Korean unit to its east. The ROK troops, while tough and skilled, display less initiative than the Americans and operate more rigidly. The 41st suffers the loss of one of its newest privates, Joseph P. Snoofie, who, not the brightest soldier, doesn't realize that the inscription "front towards enemy" on his Claymore mine means that he should face that side away from his fighting position.

The first technical assessment team arrives at the ruins of the Rotterdam refinery. Their initial assessment is that there is very left remaining to salvage following the blast and subsequent fire and that it will be several years and over a billion Dutch guilders to rebuild it.

Responding to the need for trained NCOs and technical experts, the Southwestern TVD command orders the return of the leadership of the 42nd Guards Tank Division to the Ukraine. The unit, which started the war as a training unit, leaves its junior soldiers and much of its equipment behind, to be distributed to other units, and moves to Chernigov.

NATO naval and civilian salvage and rescue craft move to the site of the sunken USS Coral Sea in an attempt to save what remains. The remainder of the Coral Sea battle group has suffered varying levels of damage and is evacuated from the area to Danish and German shipyard facilities for emergency repairs under a cover of NATO fighter aircraft protecting the flotilla from a Soviet follow-up attack.

The Sierra-class attack submarine K-534, which has been patrolling the Indian Ocean for many months, successfully intercepts the Diego Garcia supply ship, the Galveston Bay, and sinks it with a pair of torpedoes. The loss of the ship impairs the base's long-term viability, but USAF airlifters can provide any immediately needed critical items.

[chico20854]

I have never looked forward to Thanksgiving more.

Is started pulling together canon on the TDM and aftermath... so far I'm at about 15 pages. Hang on guys, it's going to be a long, rough ride!

[chico20854]

November 8, 1997

To impede the arrival of additional reinforcements from the US by way of Japan, the east coast ROK port cities of Busan and Ulsan are targeted for destruction. The Echo II-class sub K-34 surfaces in the early morning hours in the Sea of Japan and launches two nuclear-tipped P-1000 Vulkan cruise missiles, one each at Busan and Ulsan. Several minutes later, the 350 kt warhead aboard the first P-1000 detonates over Busan, wrecking the port and badly damaging the eastern half of the city. The missile targeting Ulsan suffers a critical engine failure soon after launch and crashes into the sea well short of the Korean coast (the warhead did not explode). A JDF P-3 Orion, on routine ASW patrol over the Sea of Japan, spots the smoky missile launch signatures on the western horizon and closes at speed to investigate. K-34 has difficulty retracting one of its missile launch tubes, delaying its escape. It attempts to submerge just as the JDF P-3 arrives overhead. The P-3 drops two Mk. 46 homing torpedoes, both of which track and hit the crash-diving K-34, sinking it along with all hands.

Unofficially,

Alarmed at the growing losses at the front, collapsing Soviet economy, massive damage already endured from NATO nuclear strikes and the utter impossibility of retaking East Germany, the Politburo confronts General Secretary Sauronski, demanding he reach out to seek a negotiated and immediate end to the war. The "peace faction" - composed of the Minister of Defense and nearly all the civilian members of the Politburo - argue that the USSR is in a better position than it was prewar, for while East Germany has been lost, the USSR now controls China, Romania, Jugoslavia, Austria and Turkey, and that the potential for a disastrous continuation or escalation of the nuclear war has the potential to destroy the USSR and the Communist Party. The opposition - Secretary General Sauronski, KGB Chairman Yangel and the aged ideologue Nikolai Kozlov - decry the defeatism of the peace faction and boldly claim that Western resistance is collapsing and that victory is nearly at hand.

Another Forrest Sherman-class destroyer, the USS Bigelow, is recommissioned in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

To provide more trained and combat capable small units to battered units at the front, the Army staff in Washington directs the "Bravo Company transfer" - all combat battalions in the strategic reserve (the 46th ID, 49th AD, 194th Armored Brigade, 197th Infantry Brigade and 13th Armored Cavalry Regiment) plus the 193rd Infantry Brigade in Panama - are to transfer their complete B Companies to the front and to stand up a new B Company with new replacements being sent from the training base. The battalions are to identify their highest performing soldiers in the remaining companies and promote them to leadership positions to staff out the new companies.

The nuclear attack forces the delay of the trial of the former commander of the battleship Missouri, charged with dereliction of duty for the unauthorized release of a nuclear missile in October.

Tensions grow higher in Bratislava as the 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Protection) Division's commander demands resupply from the city authorities in Bratislava. The Soviet general is forcefully ejected from the town hall after a confrontation with the city's Communist Party chief.

The American XI Corps and German V Korps evacuate Legnica, Poland after thoroughly demolishing the former Soviet Northern Group of Forces and Western TVD headquarters complex and the nearby command bunker. To the north II British Corps defends Gorz3w Wielkopolski, a town which it captured in May, holding on only by the determined efforts of its artillery gunners and intrepid Harrier jump-jet pilots who bombard the attacking Soviets with cluster bombs, rockets and iron bombs.

A team of engineers, contracting experts and civilian experts (American expats employed by the Saudi state oil company) arrive in Aden, Yemen to assess the condition of the city's refinery, which, thankfully, was only lightly damaged in the fighting for the city.

[chico20854]

November 9, 1997

The US responds to the nuclear attack on Pusan by launching a single Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missile from the USS George Washington Carver at the Soviet port and naval complex of Vladivostok. (unofficially) The eight MIRVs aboard all function, destroying the docks (three warheads), Pacific Fleet headquarters (two warheads), PVO headquarters (two warheads) and the ship repair yard (one warhead). American nuclear bombs will return to Vladivostok in the weeks ahead, but for now the city is crippled.

Unofficially,

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

The troop ship General Patch completes reactivation and is towed, with only a caretaker crew, to Atlantic City, New Jersey to serve as FEMA emergency housing. While thought is given to using the ship in its designed purpose, the decision is made to continue shipping replacements to Europe by air, using the many intact airfields in the UK, rather than cram thousands of recruits into a single hull, vulnerable to Soviet submarines and raiders, and uncertain as to the condition of any European port large enough to dock the 600-foot long ship.

The defense attorneys for the former commander of the battleship Missouri request a change of venue to the continental US, concerned about their personal safety (and that of their client) in a region increasingly targeted by Soviet nuclear weapons.

The commander of the 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Security) Division arrays his troops around vital sites in the city of Bratislava in an attempt to intimidate city authorities into releasing supplies to his unit. He dispatches battalions to the city's local and regional government buildings, the telephone exchange, refinery, truck plant, military academy and airfield.

In southern Germany, the US VII Corps comes under pressure on its northern flank as an attack from the Soviet 41st Army, heading south out of Nuremburg, begins.

As the 82nd Airborne moves south and they and their Kurdish allies rove across northwestern Iran disrupting Transcaucasian Front's rear area, General Suryakin orders 7th Army north to, initially, secure a supply line and following that to combat the marauding American force.

The Politburo is in turmoil as the various factions struggle for dominance. Sauronski and the KGB hold the upper hand, however, and one of the peace faction's leaders, Chairman of the Trade Union Council Ivan Maksimov, is arrested by the KGB and transported to the notorious Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. His children - sons serving as a fighter battalion commander in Iran, another son in a tank regiment in Poland and his daughter's husband serving in an air defense battery outside Moscow - are relieved of their commands and ordered to return to the capital, clearly a signal that they are to at least serve as hostages.

Britain dispatches reinforcements to Belize. The first two aircraft are British Air 767s carrying Territorial Army infantrymen from the 4th Battalion, The Kings Own Border Regiment, whose home defense duties are taken over by recently raised Home Service Force companies. 1st Battery, Royal Artillery, a training unit, is mobilized as well and moves to RAF Brize Norton to load on board one of the UK's odder transport aircraft, a chartered former RAF Shorts Belfast. Another of the gargantuan aircraft arrives to load the three Gazelle light helicopters of 25 Helicopter Flight for the transit to Central America.

[chico20854]

November 10, 1997

Nothing official for today! Unofficially,

The 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment completes Rotation 97-9 at NTC-3 at the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona and is declared combat ready.

The US Navy continues its cycle of rapidly bringing 1950s-era destroyers back into service as the USS Morton is recommissioned, under the command of Commander Michelle Lamberton, an experienced officer that previously commanded the landing ship USS Boulder

The officers of the 12th Motor-Rifle Division, battered in action in China and North Korea, return to their pre-war garrisons in Mongolia and prepare to activate a new division. The division's command structure is a shell, with some regiments commanded by captains and the entire reconnaissance battalion missing.

The last Allied troops cross the Taedong River, departing the northern half of the largely ruined city of Pyongyang and demolishing the remaining bridges to slow the Soviet and North Korean advance. On the east coast, Wonsan comes under heavy attack; the presence of the cruiser USS Des Moines is crtical to the city's defense.

The battleships Missouri and New Jersey rendevous north of Japan and pass through the Japanese-held Kurile Islands.

The Dutch 9th Amphibious Combat Group completes its initial training period and is rushed to the front, assigned to duty in the Baltic attached to the US 5th Marine Division as a tenth line infantry battalion.

In a remarkable feat of lucky timing, American forces unleash a Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missile on Bratislava-area industrial sites - the refinery, truck plant, military academy, airfield and regional government headquarters. The Soviet 155th Motor-Rifle (my 235th Rear Area Protection) Division, which has units at all of these locations, is destroyed in the strikes.

The British I Corps counterattacks west of Nuremberg, catching the 30th Guards Motor-Rifle Division in the flank and stalling the Soviet attack, saving US VII Corps from a disastrous flank attack.

In Iran, III MEF goes on the offensive against the supply-starved 40th Army. The lead attacks are from the Australian Brigade, whose tanks have superior gunners to the tired Soviet conscripts that have replaced the Afghanistan veterans that were lost in the earlier months of the campaign. The Soviets put up resistance that can be described as "slightly more than token", falling back in near-panic to the relative safety of the Zagros Mountains.

At the Tblisi electronics plant, the engineers are proud to have completed their prototype of a production SS-23 guidance package. It is immediately sent to Moscow for testing, while the Tblisi plant begins to tool up for an initial production run. In Moscow, the power struggle within the Politburo has played out, with three members of the peace faction fleeing the city and the Minister of Defense announcing his immediate retirement.

Guatemalan forces cross the border with Belize, immediately becoming engaged in fierce firefights with Belizian Defense Force (BDF) and police outposts. The posts are overrun after several hours of fierce fighting, giving time for word to reach the capital. The BDF dispatches two infantry companies to hold the road that cross the border, leaving companies to secure the airports and the harbor in Belize City, while again appealing to the UK for assistance and calling on the United Nations and Organization of American States to condemn the attack and lead efforts to restore the tiny Caribbean nation's borders. (The UN has been moribund since war broke out between Security Council members China and Russia in 1995, but many nations still participate).

[chico20854]

November 11, 1997

Survivors of the Dutch 304th Infantry Brigade, largely destroyed in the nuclear attack on Rotterdam on October 14, are reformed in the town of Edam, northeast of Amsterdam. Pitifully understrength, the "brigade" is only a few companies strong and is assigned only local security and relief duties.

Unofficially,

The first American war-built light frigate, the USS Poole, is commissioned and placed on duty at Norfolk, Viginia after two months of post-delivery workups and training. The ship is assigned convoy escort duty. It is assigned a newly-delivered SH-2G anti-submarine helicopter; due to shortages only a single one of the ship's eight Harpoon missile launch tubes is loaded.

The American Essex-class carrier Oriskany, construction of which started in 1944 and originally commissioned in 1950, decommissioned in 1976, is recommissioned once again at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. Present at the ceremony are the ship's commanding officer when she was decommissioned in 1976 and over a dozen "plank owners" - original crewmen from when she was commissioned in 1950. Its air wing, CVW-56, is training inland at NAS Fallon, Nevada. While Oriskany last operated F-8 and A-7s, the declining A-7 inventory is being used by larger fleet carriers, forcing CVW-56 to use older A-4s culled from training squadrons and the nearly empty AMARC in Arizona.

The battleships New Jersey and Missouri arrive off the coast of Sakhalin Island and begin pounding Soviet targets - ports, air defense radars, army garrisons, the airfields and transportation hubs. The Soviets in the region are so depleted by the nuclear attack on Vladivostok, months of action in the area and Japanese invasion of the Kuriles that they offer only feeble resistance.

The Soviet 30th Guards Motor-Rifle Division struggles to hold its positions, facing the British 1st Armoured Division on its west flank and the US 36th Infantry Division to the south. As the day drags on the 3rd Brigade, 1st US Armored Division arrives on the field and the Soviet formation is forced to give way. It is able to buy time to escape by calling down a strike by a nuclear-tipped SS-21 missile on the lead American battalions; the attack does little physical damage but throws the Americans off balance.

40th Army discovers that the mountains offer less protection than they had hoped as 1st and 4th Marine Air Wings' surviving helicopters are used to insert dismounted patrols of Gurkhas and Marines to hunt isolated Soviet detachments and capture key passes.

The 238th Rear Area Protection Division is ordered to complete its mobilization, a process that had been delayed innumerable times since it began activating and training in late 1996. The flood of refugees from the cities in the Volga region provide an abundance of recruits, but there are only three battalions worth of BTR-152 APCs and a single battalion of T-34/85s in the divisions stores. Nonetheless, the unit is sent by road to perform occupation duties in captured territories in Austria and southern Germany, freeing up other occupation forces for service at the front.