On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

Probably more efficient to make it a "On this week 25 years ago" thread from here on. Heroic effort so far. A very enjoyable read.

Thanks!

I've been really busy at the office lately - the biggest change in the primary responsibility of my jobin over 50 years and a lot of associated travel. Entertainingly, it has been past a lot of sites mentioned in this thread... one SAC base and about 6-10 refineries. A nice addition to the couple targets I pass on a more regular basis.

I'd like to try to keep it a daily update for the next couple weeks (once I get caught up). As far as conventional fighting I'd like to detail X Corps' counterattack out of Fairbanks, the collapse of the Allied defense in British Columbia and counterinsurgency operations in Iran as well as the re-emergence of anti-Soviet forces in Jugoslavia. Later this year there is the 1998 Pact South German offensive and its aftermath as well as the Mexican invasion of the US. (I have tried to assimilate the collective wisdom of the couple of threads here on the topic as well as the Mexican sourcebook that was done up a couple years back; spoiler - I'm not going to have the Mexicans nearly as beefy as described in that book). I'm thinking maybe in later March and April as well as the fall (and most of 1999 and the first half of 2000) a weekly update will work better.

[chico20854]

February 19, 1998

The 6th Marine Division, after a year-long training cycle culminating in a full-division live fire combined arms exercise, is declared operational and begins deploying to Korea.

Unofficially,

The Arctic troops of the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon)(Alaska National Guard) make slow progress moving cross-country over the frozen tundra south of Fairbanks while the remainder of X Corps continues its attacks on Soviet positions in the town. The weather clears enough for A-10s of the 18th Tactical Fighter Squadron to make an appearance overhead, clearing out a Soviet artillery battery that had concealed itself in a sawmill complex on the city's western edge.

Only two days after leaving their positions in Manchuria, the staff of the 1st Far Eastern Front notices that the Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brigade is not responding to radio calls.

An A-6 Intruder aircraft from the USS Kennedy battle group, supported by two others configured as tankers, strikes the Soviet submarine support base at Patros, Greece, following receipt of rumors about a nuclear submarine being prepared for a patrol in the Mediterranean. The lone aircraft arrives over the Greco-Soviet base at low level at 4 am, successfully dropping its load of a single B61-8 345-kiloton nuclear bomb. Its all-female crew of LtJG Pamela Shore and LtCdr Susan Williams escape thanks to a retarding parachute, which allows the low-flying bomber to duck behind the low hills that surround the city before the bomb detonates. The blast wrecks the submarine tender Magomed Gadzhiev, the upper works of the submarines B-164 (Foxtrot-class), B-854 (also a Foxtrot-class), the Tang-class B-546 and the Whiskey-class S-231 and rolls the Victor II-class SSN K-371 over, flooding her through a hatch in the sail left open by the war-weary watchman.

[chico20854]

February 20, 1998

The replica USS Constitution arrives in the Cape Horn area, discharging cargo for Capetown and picking up several American servicemen to replace crewmen lost to malaria.

Unofficially,

X Corps' offensive in Fairbanks makes slow progress as American paratroops carefully blast Soviet troops out of individual buildings. The 11th Airborne Division has few armored vehicles and its supporting artillery batteries are short of ammunition. Adding to the difficulty of the operation is the fact that the battlefield is still occupied by friendly civilians, requiring precision fires against enemy targets rather than more indiscriminate use of area-effect munitions to clear entire sectors.

The final American fighter aircraft of the war is completed, a F-20 Tigershark built at the Beechcraft aviation plant in Wichita, Kansas. Originally intended for delivery to South Korea, the aircraft is instead flown to Dover AFB, Delaware, Air Force authorities hoping that it can be partially disassembled, loaded aboard a C-5 transport plane and delivered to the CENTCOM AOR.

The next round of attacks against the embattled 158th Motor-Rifle Division in Bosnia begins. The Jugoslav forces have moved a platoon of four T-34/85 tanks captured from the division's 151st Tank Regiment from Saarajevo to outside the division's headquarters in Zenica, where they begin to systematically enage the position's strongpoints with precision heavy fire.

[chico20854]

February 21, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

The 402nd Field Artillery Brigade gets in its first firefight, between one of the brigade's platoons and the militia of the small town of Chillicothe, Texas. The soldiers retreat, leaving five dead behind.

The fighting in Fairbanks continues as the desperate troops of the Soviet 147th (my 261st) Motor-Rifle Division give up positions in the citys downtown, shifting the focus of resistance to the railroad yard and industrial area on the north side of the Chena River.

The Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brgade is able to requisition sufficient railroad rolling stock to load all of its troops and heavy equipment; the commander authorizes the outfitting of several cars with anti-aircraft weapons, armored vehicles and armor to allow the formation (probably to be split into three separate units) to fight its way through opposition.

The attacks against the 158th Motor-Rifle Division expand in scope, with Jugoslav partisan fighters (coordinating with US Green Berets of the 6th Special Forces Group) surrounding all of the division's outposts along the valley of the Bosna River.

The Bulgarian freighter A.B. Buzko, with a partial load of grain and iron ore aboard, arrives in the Greek port of Patros, only to discover that it has been hit by an American nuclear bomber. The ship's captain, unable to reach Bulgarian naval command (the headquarters bunker was struck in the fall and alternate facilities have gone offline in the chaos of post-nuclear Bulgaria), heads back to sea, instructing his radio officer to try to reach any Warsaw Pact naval headquarters.

[chico20854]

February 22, 1998

Another day with nothing in canon. Unofficially,

The fighting continues in Fairbanks, Alaska as the 11th Airborne Division attempts an assault crossing of the frozen-ovver Chena River. With artillery and mortar ammunition running low, the paratroops are forced to cross with little supporting fire and suffer heavy casaulties from Soviet machinegun fire.

Throughout the front lines of 4th and 7th US and 1st, 2nd and 3rd German Armies, engineer troops, having largely constructed nearly adequate winter quarters for troops, are diverted to hardening defensive positions along the front lines as commanders realize that there will be no NATO offensive anytime soon; strong defensive positions allow a longer front line to be held with fewer troops.

The 61st Training Motor-Rifle Division in remote Ashkabad, Turkmenistan (just north of the Iranian border) graduates its last class of trainees. There are too few local civilians to draft (doing so would collapse the local collective and state farms), so the unit dispatches the new trainees to the fighting in Iran and maintains a local garrison dedicated to protection of local order.

[chico20854]

February 23, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

In Alaska, the fighting in downtown Fairbanks continues as American airborne troops attempt to gain a foothold on the north bank of the Chena River and National Guard troops of the 1st and 2nd Arctic Recon Brigades close in on Highway 2, the sole road leaving the city to the west. Troops of the 1st Brigade move slowly and carefully as they advance around the forested slopes of Ester Dome, the mountain that dominates the city's skyline, slowed by temperatures of -50 F.

Pact forces in Poland are slowly rebuilding their logistic structure after the havoc wreaked by NATO occupying forces and nuclear and conventional strikes. A major challenge is the change of railroad gauge along the Polish-Soviet border; the pre-existing change of gauge stations were thoroughly destroyed by NATO engineers before they evacuated the area in August. The Linia Hutniczo-Siarkowa (Metallurgy-Sulphur Line), a Russian-gauge line that reaches nearly 250 miles into eastern Silesia, is the highest priority, although Soviet engineers are unsure of their ability to repair the Wisla bridge at Kolonia, whose western abutments were destroyed by an American atomic demolition munition. The Soviets urge the Polish Communist Party to rally manpower - military, POW, civilian, refugee - to manually unload the few train cars that are arriving from the USSR for further transport to the front.

In the Ionian Sea, the Bulgarian freighter A.B. Buzko makes radio contact with another friendly ship, the Soviet Ignatius Sergeev, which is in the Black Sea. The Soviet captain reports that he has been ordered to Cuba with a cargo of foodstuffs for the isolated Soviet garrison there, but is unsure of being able to pass through the Bosporus. The two captains make a pact - the Bulgarian ship will deliver its cargo of grain to Cuba while the Soviet ship diverts to Bulgaria; both leaders reckon that in these desperate situations that the arrangement makes some lvel of sense.

Party officials in the Tver region north of Moscow, faced with rapidly diminishing food supplies and ever more refugees from Moscow, decide to demonstrate their commitment to the war effort by sweeping the refugee camps for men of military age. The local MVD quickly rounds up nearly 500 men (and some young women in their late teens and 20s) and loads them onto railcars, dispatching them to the front in Europe as reinforcements.

[chico20854]

February 24, 1998

Another day where canon is silent! Unofficially,

The 402nd Field Artillery Brigade returns to Chillicothe, Texas in mass. The brigade deploys two companies of infantry, which overrun the town, burn it to the ground and execute all males between the ages of 14 and 70.

In Canada, the Quebecois force on the eastern front continues its offensive, delayed to allow time for reinforcement and training. Using a hodgepodge fleet of fishing and recreational boats as well as three ferries pressed into service, they make an amphibious landing that quickly overwhelms the loyalist force along the Labrador-Quebec border and cuts the coast road between the border guard force and the main base at Goose Bay.

The 53rd Hungarian Brigade completes the outfitting of several railcars as gun platforms, with armor to protect against shrapnel and light small arms fire (sufficient to stop an AK-47 bullet, but not a PK machinegun or heavier). It begins loading aboard the trains; most of the troops are housed in boxcars or aboard a suburban commuter train; the brigade's engineers drain the fuel from several damaged locomotives and an underground fuel tank into a tank car placed at the center of the formation. Simultaneously, the unit mechanics strip the local railroad maintenance shop of tools and spares that may be needed. The local authorities are powerless to object, the town (Naushki in eastern Siberia) being overrun with heavily armed Hungarians, nearly all of whom are unable to speak Russian and interteract with the local civilians.

The new destroyer USS Howard, which was commissioned in Maine in September and entered a period of training before entering active service, finally completes its shakedown training and enters port at Mayport, Florida for minor refit and resupply prior to commencing active service.

Third US Army directs its sole subordinate MP brigade, the 16th, to coordinate with the paramilitary Iranian National Security Force, on efforts to secure the supply lines between ports on the Persian Gulf and forward positions in the Zagros Mountains. The MPs are provided the remnant of the Australian Expeditionary Brigade (reorganized into two nearly-full strength battalions and a robust headquarters and support element) to deal with the most heavily armed bandits and deserter groups.

[chico20854]

February 25, 1998

Nothing official today!

Six A-37 light attack jets which have been reactivated from retirement for transfer to Colombia are requisitioned while awaiting arrival of Colombian pilots at Columbus AFB, Mississippi. The base commander authorizes the release of pilots and a single crew chief for each aircraft and sufficient fuel for each aircraft to fly to Chambers Field at Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia.

The commander of the 2nd Far Eastern Front reluctantly orders the dispatch of the veteran 27th (my 90th Guards) Tank Division to to the western front.

The crew of the destroyer USS Howard is distressed when it discovers the dire conditions ashore in northeastern Florida. The naval base is crowded with shattered survivors of the nuclear attacks on the Atlantic Fleet's other southern bases - Charleston, Kings Bay and Norfolk - both human and floating. The base is held by a heavy security force, holding off masses of desperate refugees fleeing the chaos elsewhere in the state.

In Lithuania, a platoon from the MVD's 357th Convoy Regiment is dispatched to deal with the insubordinate occupier of Trakai Castle, Colonel Česlovas Skrebys. The detachment, survivors of the desperate drive to evict American and British troops from the republic, is but 17 men strong, with a pair of worn out GAZ-66 trucks and a single Second World War-era SG-43 machinegun.

[chico20854]

February 26, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

Quebecois forces in Labrador advance northwest and inland, heading for the NATO air base at Goose Bay. They are largely unopposed.

In Alaska, the Soviet defending force has been largely pushed out of the industrial area north of downtown Fairbanks, shifting the focus of Soviet resistance to the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where the remannts of the 147th (my 261st ) Motor-Rifle Divison's reconniassance battalion and anti-aircraft regiment have fortified the school buildings and cleared resupply and reinforcement routes through the campus' steam tunnel system.

The 199th Infantry Brigade arrives at the Korean port of Ulsan, one of the few remaining South Korean ports. It begins its transit to the III MEF area of operations.

The USS Howard's supply officer is crestfallen when she discovers (and verifies) that there is no fuel available at the Mayport, Florida naval base (or further inland, in Jacksonville) to enable the ship to depart. There also is little ammunition available to arm the ship, with some rounds for the ship's guns and torpedoes for its torpedo tubes and helicopters (a single SH-2G Seasprite rather than the two SH-60s she is designed for). The ship's complement is pressed into service as a security force ashore, despite the captain's insistence that his warship needs desperately to get into action at sea.

SEALS from SEAL Team 4 severely damage the Italian tanker Norvegia G at anchor off Bizerte. The ship's double hull would defeat most demolition charges, forcing the commandos to attach the charges to blow out the propeller shaft seals & and ignite a fire in the accomodation block. The ship and its escort, the corvette Sfinge, had been positioned to transport the cargo from the local refinery that the US has just loaded aboard the USNS Paul Buck. An attempt to attach limpet mines to the Sfinge is thwarted by alert sentries aboard the ship.

The MVD detachment sent to Trakia, Lithuania to force Colonel Skrebys to comply with the orders of Party authorities (and eliminate him if he refuses) scouts out the town, noting that defensive works have been thrown up, manned by armed defenders. Recalling earlier reports that Skrebys had armored personnel carriers, the detachment commander calls for additional forces before launching his attack.

[Homer]

February 24, 1998
The 402nd Field Artillery Brigade returns to Chillicothe, Texas in mass. The brigade deploys two companies of infantry, which overrun the town, burn it to the ground and execute all males

Well, that escalated quickly. Cant wait to see how the rest of the area reacts when word gets around

[Spartan-117]

Well, that escalated quickly. Can't wait to see how the rest of the area reacts when word gets around...

Won't even make the papers in El Paso (or in this case, Wichita Falls)...

https://www.youtube.com/watchv=IBJbqV3IROM

[chico20854]

February 27, 1998

Nothing official for the day!

As word of the Chillicothe Massacre spreads, active resistance to the 402nd Field Artillery Brigade from the local population stops, allowing the unit to provide a trickle of supplies to XIII Corps headquarters and the Milgov capital throughout 1998 and 1999.

West of Fairbanks, the 1st and 2nd Infantry Brigades (Arctic Recon)(Alaska National Guard) link up, cutting the sole remaining land route out of the city. The battered guardsmen, however, are suffering greatly from exposure and a dreadful shortage of food, ammunition and shelter.

In Krakow, the disease outbreak among the refugee population has killed thousands and spread to the city's population. Losses among medical professionals are high, and the situation is made worse by the general lack of food and heating fuel. In central Germany, the last French-supported convoys arrive with cargo from US Air Force bases in the occupied zone; the evacuation of Army bases will take some time longer.

The American tanker USNS Paul Buck arrives in Bremerhaven, Germany, loaded down with a load of Tunisian diesel fuel. The ship's cargo is fed into the NEPS (Northern European Pipeline System) for transfer further south; as much as Allied naval commanders want the fuel to return their ships to sea and Army commanders are eager to restore the mobility of armored formations, the vast majority of the ship's 237,000-barrel cargo will be used to move food reserves to the desperate German population and allow operational repositioning of battered units into reserve positions where they can rebuild.

The MVD detachment sent to Trakai, Lithuania receives word that it will receive air and artillery support for its attempt to drive the renegade Colonel Skrebys and his followers from the town's castle. The riot policemen, overjoyed at the news, take up positions in nearby woods while awaiting word of how to contact the promised support.

[chico20854]

February 28, 1998

French and Belgian civil servants have resolved the major issues regarding the unification of the two nations; Belgian territories will be treated as additional departments of France, as will (eventually) the occupied areas of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany. Belgian officials will be transferred to Paris, and some ministries (Transport and Solidarity and Health) will relocate to Brussels, a co-capital that the unified legislature will meet in at least four months a year. The French franc will be legal tender in both nations, and Belgian francs will be converted over at a favorable exchange ratio.

The first of three two-aircraft flights of A-37 Dragonfly attack planes arrives in Norfolk, Virginia. The planes are prepared for shipboard transport and towed to the nearby pier.

Polish units begin experimenting with distilling alcohol from edible grains and waste vegetable material for fuel, since Polish oil production is minimal (especially given the devastation inflicted by the prior years campaigns) and the Warsaw Pact command has placed Polish units low on the priority list for provision of fuel and other resources from the trickle that arrives from the USSR.

Outside Trakai, Lithuania, the MVD troops wait for further information from higher headquarters on what support it will receive and how to communicate with it. As the morning turns to afternoon, the troops become increasingly disheartened as no contact is made. Shortly after 3 p.m., a pair of Su-25 attack planes from the 76th Guards Shturmovik Regiment fly overhead, releasing a volley of S-8 80mm rockets at the castle; 20 minutes later a lone Su-17 fighter-bomber overflies the town and drops a pair of 200-kg iron bombs. Both strikes are made with no prior coordination (the MVD troops do not have the proper radios) and have little effect other than alerting the defenses of the town. The annoyed commander orders his troops to rally and attack the town nonetheless, taking the lead. They are advancing across open ground towards the town when the artillery support arrives, a volley of long-range 180mm gun fire (from the mobilization-only 70th Artillery Division's 438th Cannon Artillery Regiment), which tears the attacking force to shreds. The attack, obviously, fails, and the three survivors are captured by the town's defense force. Two agree to join it, and the third is hanged from the castle's battlement at dusk.

[Homer]

Good stuff, youre really fleshing out whats a pretty sparse period WRT cannon resources.

I guess the MVD just learned that friendly fire isnt!

[chico20854]

March 1, 1998

The 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania National Guard) is withdrawn from the lines to reorganize and refit after suffering heavy casulties from enemy conventional and nuclear attacks in the withdrawal across Poland.

Unofficially,

The second and third flights of A-37s are arrive in Norfolk and are prepped for ocean transit as the first two (and its pilot and crew chief) are loaded aboard the American ro/ro ship El Moro, part of an overdue resupply convoy for AFRICOM.

Quebecois forces arrive at the NATO air base at Goose Bay, Labrador, where they are confronted by a composite defensive force made up of troops from around European NATO, mostly administrative, maintenance and logistic support staff of the NATO air training detachment at the base. The overextended Quebeckers do not have the firepower to immediately attack the base, and instead try a bluff, demanding the base's immediate surrender. The Canadian base commander and the somewhat befuddled German Luftwaffe Oberst (Colonel), the senior non-Canadian officer, reject the demand out of hand.

Attacks on the beseiged outposts of the 158th Motor-Rifle Division in central Jugoslavia continue. As supplies of ammunition and fuel dwindle, demoralized soldiers at some isolated outposts begin to surrender; others just slip away from their positions at night, casting aside their uniforms and joining the growing numbers of desperate armed men wandering Eastern Europe.

A French tanker lingers in the port of Bizerte, Tunisia, awaiting the opportunity to purchase the output of the refinery ashore. Rumors abound about the loss of the Italian Norvegia G, the possibility of collusion between the Americans and the French to deny the valuable resource to the Italians, and even about the quantities of gold aboard the French ship, which is quite ostentatiously armed and crawling with dangerous-looked armed men.

Pro-NATO guerrillas overwhelm the guards of a stalled Soviet supply truck 25 km northwest of the city of Isfahan. The truck yields food, ammunition, and most valuable, a pair of SA-14 shoulder-launched SAMs.

MVD authorities in Lithuania disavoy any further responsibility for suppression of the renegade Colonel Skrebys in Trakai, declaring that they have made a valiant attempt but ultimately it is the Army's responsibility to maintain the discipline of its own officers, of which Colonel Skrebys is one.