On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

April 15, 1997

Advent Storm deep strike aircraft attack the State Chemical Establishments at Dwory in Silesia, setting it ablaze.

Unofficially,

Troops from the 56th New York State Guard Brigade, guarding the Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie, discover explosives on the bridge. A quick-thinking NCO pulls the blasting caps while the police bomb squad was enroute.

The cargo ship Reliance arrives in Long Beach to load vehicles and heavy equipment of the 40th Infantry Division.

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The troop ship Barrett is reactivated in Baltimore and moves to the Norfolk Port of Embarkation to load troops for Europe.

The 214th Field Artillery Brigade, an Active-duty unit at Fort Sill, Oklahoma with a single MLRS battalion and a Pershing II intermediate-range missile battalion, is placed on alert for possibly deployment to Germany.

The 164th Engineer Group (Combat) (North Dakota National Guard) is declared combat ready for Germany and begins movement to the front in Poland, ready to support the offensive. In the German Second Army area, the troops of the US 1st Infantry Division (now fully located on the east bank of the Oder) link up with the amphibious landing to the north.

US Navy Rear Admiral Thomas M. Lowell is promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral and assigned to US Naval Forces, Europe in London as the Deputy CINC.

Operation Sand Storm commences, with airstrikes from the Kennedy, Enterprise and America's air groups. The air strikes are quickly followed by an amphibious landing in Tripoli, Libya. (While the landing force was headed to the beach the Marines spontaneously began singing the Marine Corps Hymn, with its line about "the shores of Tripoli"). The landing is guided in by SEALs of Seal Team Four, landed from the submarine Hyman G Rickover.

The last flights carrying the troops of the 9th Infantry Division (Motorized) arrive in Saudi Arabia.

The Soviet submarine K-534, operating in the Persian Gulf, attacks the Saudi corvette Hitteen, which was hunting for it following the attack on the Neve Hampton the prior day. The small Saudi ship disintegrates over the explosion of over 250 kg of high explosive. Patrol aircraft of VOJ-204 search for the Soviet sub; the Gulf's shallow waters make visual searching less futile than it would be in the open ocean. The squadron's HU-25 and Fokker F-27 aircraft have limited ASW capability, and ultimately the wily Soviet boat slips away, back out of the Gulf.

In the South China Sea, the convoy carrying the 28th ANZUK Brigade is located by a Soviet Tu-95 Bear recon aircraft flying out of the partially repaired Cam Ranh Bay airbase. The Soviet scout plane vectors the destroyer Vol'nyy on to the Allied force.

The Victor I-class sub K-469 sinks another bulk carrier headed into the Guinean port of Kamsar. The ship's loss is the final straw; the Guinean prime minister meets with the Soviet ambassador to inform him that Guinea will cease selling bauxite to warring nations. The presence of Soviet naval and air units in the city (and their lack of activity to quell the recent rioting) had a similarly telling effect on the prime minister.

[chico20854]

Admin note... busy weekend! I'll get caught up on Monday.

[chico20854]

April 16, 1997

In Boston, an enterprising reporter gets an anonymous source to do a live interview. The woman details how the area refineries had been instructed by the federal government to crack all processable crude into the highest possible proportions of naval light fuel oil and aviation fuels for shipment overseas. The result is that reserves of heating oil and civilian fuels (which were to be replenished by the supplies on the Universe Carolina) are now very short. The area is moving into summer, and the heating oil shortage will not be severe, but the sudden shortage of automotive gasoline and diesel fuel causes considerable unrest. While the rest of the nation can drive where it wanted, New England feel discriminated against. Conditions remain fairly calm everywhere but Boston.

Convoy 214 arrives in Ulsan, Korea, carrying troops and equipment of the 45th Infantry Division.

The fire at the Dwory State Chemical Works near Oswiecim results in a cloud of deadly fumes from the destruction that kills or drives off much of the region's original population and kills much of the local wildlife.

Unofficially,

The tanker Salomonie is delivered in Baltimore, Maryland and put into naval service as the USNS Salomonie, T-AOT-206.

XXIII Corps Headquarters is activated at Fort Snelling, Minnesota from the the 86th and 88th ARCOMs.

In Poland, troops of the German VII Korps make progress along the junction between the 1st Polish Army and 2nd Guards Tank Army, which is facing the Germans to its northwest and the British to its southwest. The Pact troops fall back, leaving the town of Chojna to be captured by the 27th Panzer Division.

Advent Storm deep strike aircraft return to the Pokoj Steel Works in Bytom, Poland. Polish anti-aircraft guns down a pair of British Tornado strike aircraft from No. 16 Squadron.

Operation Sandstorm continues in Libya. Ashore in Tripoli, American marines of the 8th Marine Expeditionary Brigade make a concentrated push to the leadership compound on the southwest side of the city, bypassing most of the city's urban area. The M1s of the accompanying C Company, 2nd Tank Battalion quickly blast holes in the compound's formidable defenses, fiercely defended by fanatical loyalists. Helicopters bring in more troops, and Harriers operating from the assault ships offshore (and naval gunfire by escorting destroyers) help the advance. By dusk the surface and buildings of Colonel Qaddafi's palace has been overrun, but the leader and many of his most loyal lieutenants have slipped away into an extensive tunnel network that stretches underneath the teeming city. Offshore, the American sub Hyman G Rickover hits a mine after inserting a SEAL team in the Gulf of Sidra. The sub is forced to head to NS Rota, Spain for repairs. The escorting attack submarine USS Batfish is sunk by a Libyan patrol boat in the Gulf of Sidra.

The 180th Motor-Rifle Division enters the lines in central Bulgaria, facing Turkish troops in the rugged Balkan Mountains.

The helicopters of the 9th Infantry Division's Aviation Brigade conduct their first post-voyage shakedown check flights.

Soviet Naval Aviation Tu-22Ms and Frontal Aviation MiG-27s attack one of the two drydocks in Middle East capable of docking an aircraft carrier. The raid on the Arab Ship Repair Yard in Bahrain is successful in destroying the gates, flooding the dock (with a mine-damaged tanker inside it, which flooded as well, preventing the fire which started aboard from spreading ashore).

An artillery duel erupts along the Indian-Pakistani border in Kashmir. A Pakistani round strikes an Indian command post, killing a colonel, three of his staff officers and 14 soldiers.

The Soviet destroyer Vol'nyy, in the South China Sea, is ordered to attack Allied shipping located by the Tu-95 the previously day. The captain is given the number of enemy ships (12), their plotted location, course and speed but is pointedly NOT told that five of the dozen ships are escorts. Capitan Second Rank Frolov waits until sunset to begin his aged ship's high-speed approach to the ANZAC-escorted convoy, pressing his chief engineer to squeeze every know of speed from the 40-year old turbines. Cranking an impressive 31 knots (sending up a long cloud of dense black smoke), the Soviet destroyer closes on the Allied task force. An alert watchman aboard HMNZS Canterbury sees the smoke cloud and a SH-2G Seasprite helicopter is launched to investigate. The helo's radar immediately locates the Soviet destroyer and the contact information is shared amongst the escorts. The convoy commander orders an immediate missile attack, and within five minutes four Harpoon missiles are in flight, while flight deck crews scramble to fit anti-ship missiles to the frigates' helicopters. That proves unneccessary, as the ship-launched missiles are enough to tear the aged Soviet destroyer apart. The helicopters instead are launched to rescue survivors. Four of the eight destroyers that broke out of Petropavlovsk on March 10 are still at large.

[chico20854]

April 17, 1997

Nothing official for today! Unofficially,

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

The 81st Infantry Brigade (Washington National Guard) completes Rotation 97-7 at NTC-2 at the Yakima Training Center and is declared combat ready. The brigade's troops load the unit's vehicles aboard trains for transit to the east coast.

VII German Korps occupies the town of Chojna and begins sending patrols along its flanks to link up with the bridgeheads of III US Corps to its north and II British Corps to its south. Elsewhere along the front progress is slow; the series of defensive lines, mutually reinforcing and with armored reserves close at hand, makes achieving a breakthrough impossible for the moment.

Tonight is the first night of several with NATO air raids targeting military industry in Katowice, Poland.

The Victor I-class sub K-469 is ordered to cease the blockade of Conakry, Guinea and transit to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to disrupt the flow of raw materials and war supplies flowing from Canada to Western Europe.

A Soviet submarine (never identified) sinks the crude carrier Mediterranean Orion heading to the refinery in St. John, Nova Scotia. The loss of the tanker makes the fuel shortage in northeastern North America even more severe.

With loyal Libyan army units heading towards Tripoli and Colonel Qaddafi's escape, the Marines of the 8th Marine Expeditionary Brigade begin their withdrawal. The fighter-bombers of the three carrier battle groups offshore have a field day with the masses of Libyan armor that clog the roads leading to Tripoli.

Two of the surviving Soviet destroyers in the Pacific arrive off of Midway and begin shelling the installations there. The island, however, has diminished in importance since the Second World War, being used mainly as an emergency diversion landing spot for civilian airliners and as a weather observation station; most of the island is a wildlife refuge with minimal military presence even in wartime. The park rangers there nonetheless call in the attack.

The commander of the Far Eastern TVD reports to STAVKA that only half of his losses from last month's Chinese offensive have been made whole. The high command responds that the situation is serious on all fronts and that he will have to make do. The Far Eastern TVD loses its priority for supplies and replacements, and the flow of supplies to other regions increases proportionally. (The Transcaucasian Front, for example, receives an allocation for the following week that is a 25% increase. Marshall Suryakin immediately plans to resume the offensive against the battered Iranians.)

The Indian Air Force responds to the prior day's artillery strike along the border in Kashmir by striking the Pakistani Chandhar Air Force Base. The Indian MiG-27s of No. 29 Squadron strike the base's control tower and fuel dump, inflicting moderate damage.

[chico20854]

April 18, 1997

Nothing in the canon for today.

Exploiting resentment of the Soviet government's decades-long effort to Russify and settle the semi-nomadic Saami people of the Kola, American Special Forces troops open a training camp in Kautokeino, Norway to train Saami that slipped over the borders as anti-Soviet partisans.

A checkpoint on New York Route 9 stops a car carrying a Soviet spetsnaz team heading into New York City. The commandos kill three state guardsmen as they escape.

Troops of the German 27th Panzer Division move over 10 kilometers to the north and south, while making minimal forward progress. The US III Corps commits the 1st Cavalry Division to action in Poland, taking the northern portion of the bridgehead gained by the 1st Infantry Divsion over the prior few weeks.

NATO airpower returns to skies over Katowice to continue working over military industry in the city.

In the Mediterranean, Operation Sand Storm winds down with the predawn evacuation of the last marines. The carriers America, Enterprise and John F Kennedy provide cover for the withdrawing amphibious force as they move west, heading to Gibraltar for reconstitution. Libyan coastal defense units strike the American frigate Miller with a SS-C-3 Styx cruise missile as the American task force retreats, sinking the ship.

The Independence battle group in the Indian Ocean turns north, heading back towards the Iranian coast.

Third US Army reports that the 9th Infantry Division (Motorized) has cleared the ports and is combat ready. The Army's G-4 (Logistics Officer) reports that shipping allocations are being cut back in favor of moving supplies to Europe, which will slow the buildup of supplies needed for Third Army to sustain combat operations.

The pair of Soviet destroyers that struck Midway retreat at high speed, heading west until over the horizon, then turning north to raid the shipping lanes following the Great Circle Route from the US west coast to Asia. They plan to link up with their sister the Vertkiy in the Aleutians so they can strike the major American air base at Shemya, with its complements of F-15 fighters, P-3 patrol aircraft, early warning radar and spy planes. The commander of the US Third Fleet dispatches a carrier task force composed of the carriers Constellation and Midway to hunt down the raiders.

Air strikes by the USAF 24th Tactical Air Support Squadron, guided by an A-Team of the 1st Battalion, 8th Special Forces Group, hit a large FARC base in the jungle in northwestern Colombia.

[Targan]

April 16, 1997The Soviet destroyer Vol'nyy, in the South China Sea, is ordered to attack Allied shipping located by the Tu-95 the previously day. The captain is given the number of enemy ships (12), their plotted location, course and speed but is pointedly NOT told that five of the dozen ships are escorts. Capitan Second Rank Frolov waits until sunset to begin his aged ship's high-speed approach to the ANZAC-escorted convoy, pressing his chief engineer to squeeze every know of speed from the 40-year old turbines. Cranking an impressive 31 knots (sending up a long cloud of dense black smoke), the Soviet destroyer closes on the Allied task force. An alert watchman aboard HMNZS Canterbury sees the smoke cloud and a SH-2G Seasprite helicopter is launched to investigate. The helo's radar immediately locates the Soviet destroyer and the contact information is shared amongst the escorts. The convoy commander orders an immediate missile attack, and within five minutes four Harpoon missiles are in flight, while flight deck crews scramble to fit anti-ship missiles to the frigates' helicopters. That proves unneccessary, as the ship-launched missiles are enough to tear the aged Soviet destroyer apart. The helicopters instead are launched to rescue survivors. Four of the eight destroyers that broke out of Petropavlovsk on March 10 are still at large.

This warms the cockles of my usually cold, dead heart

[chico20854]

April 19, 1997

Nothing official today!

The tanker Kaskaskia is delivered in Newport News, Virginia. It is "placed in service" (not commissioned, as it is civilian-manned) as the USNS Kaskaskia, T-AOT-207, under control of the US Navy's Military Sealift Command.

The car used by the Spetsnaz team in New York state is discovered abandoned in the Bronx. The NYPD is placed on even higher alert, and state guard and National Guard units redeploy into the city.

The troops of the 81st Infantry Brigade (Washington National Guard) are granted an unusual 2-day pass so they can spend a precious few days with their families before deploying to Europe. Sadly, it will be many of the soldiers' last time seeing them.

Under a secret plan known as Operation Peripheral, the UK is split into 11 Civil Defense Districts, each with a regional seat of government bunker facility. The last of the 11 command facilities (at Loughborough in Leicestershire) is activated today with a small staff of local and central government officials.

The battleship USS Missouri takes up station off the coast of North Korea to provide fire support for the 8th US Army.

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A patrol from the 27th Panzer Division makes contact with outer pickets of the US 1st Infantry Division's 4th Battalion, 16th Infantry. Unfortunately, the American troops mistake the former East German division's T-72s for Polish tanks, and five of the German tanks are destroyed in the resulting American firefight before the error is discovered.

The Katowice industrial center is subjected to a third night of NATO air attacks.

British SAS troops, who maintain a safe house in Leningrad, attack the Kirov tank plant, which manufactures T-86 tanks.

The convoy carrying the US 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania National Guard) arrives in Bremen and Bremerhaven, Germany and begins discharging.

A flight of F-15Es from the 334th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, locate a supply train south of the Soviet-Iranian border. They attack the train with a combination of general purpose and cluster bombs, completely destroying it and releasing a large cloud of deadly gas from the five boxcars of chemical weapons aboard, which Transcaucasian Front had planned to use to kick off its upcoming offensive.

Soviet transport aircraft and heavy lift helicopters begin to converge on airbases in the Caucasus and Turkmenistan.

[chico20854]

This warms the cockles of my usually cold, dead heart

We aim to please!

[Targan]

How does the Moskva's end come in the Twilight War, or is that a future tale too good to be spoiled here

[shrike6]

I gotta admit I'm curious about the Soviet Aircraft Carriers. Not so much the Helicarriers like the Moskva but the Kievs, Kuznetsovs and possibly Ulyanovsk. Have they already been sunk or are they up to something

[chico20854]

I gotta admit I'm curious about the Soviet Aircraft Carriers. Not so much the Helicarriers like the Moskva but the Kievs, Kuznetsovs and possibly Ulyanovsk. Have they already been sunk or are they up to something

Most of the Northern Fleet units were sunk in the Battle of the Norwegian Sea... only Baku survives, and she does so only because she was transferred to the Pacific in 1996 to aid in the war in China. Tblisi and Kiev went down in December 96 in the Norwegian Sea. Minsk and Novorossisk (the other two Kievs) are in the Pacific, as is Tblisi's sister Varyag. Ulyanovsk, the nuclear-powered carrier, is trapped in the Black Sea - she was doing workups still when the Turks closed the Bosporus under the Montreux Convention.

You'll have to stay tuned for what happens in the Pacific!!!

[chico20854]

How does the Moskva's end come in the Twilight War, or is that a future tale too good to be spoiled here

She's still known as Slava in my T2kU, assigned to the Black Sea Fleet. I haven't written her into anything yet, but I'll get working on it! I have the fleet command onboard the helicarrier Moskva, whose sister Leningrad is in extended refit in Nikolaev.

[chico20854]

April 20, 1997

The Iran Nowin government withdraws from Esfahan to Shiraz. The Iranian Crown Jewels are to follow as soon as a safe location for them can be prepared for them in Shiraz.

Unofficially,

The Freedom ship Philadelphia Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas.

30th Infantry Brigade, 36th Infantry Division (North Carolina National Guard) completes Rotation 97-6 at NTC-3 at the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona and is declared combat ready.

Headquarters, XXIII Corps arrives at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for a pre-deployment command post exercise.

Colonel Tumanski's spetsnaz team launches another attack, this one on a column of coaches carrying reinforcements to RAF Brize Norton, where they were to be flown to battlefields around the world. 28 soldiers are killed and 32 more wounded.

NATO's deep strike aircraft take a night off to allow the crews (air and ground) to rest and recover from two weeks of high intensity operations.

Survivors of the 7th Guards Air Assault Division, mauled in the fighting in Norway and the Kola, are reorganized into a single regimental battle group in the barracks in Petrozavodsk, near Leningrad. The demands of the war are such that only a few dozen replacements have arrived, and only a trio of BMD-3 armored fighting vehicles; the rest of the VDV's replacement system is replacing losses suffered by the 13th and 76th GAADs and bringing the 103rd, 104th and 105th GAADs to 110 percent strength for the assault on Iran.

The Tango-class submarine B-489 attacks a small convoy between the Cape Verde Islands and Senegal. The commander does not realize that it is a French convoy. Luckily, the escorts (the frigates Prairial and Jean Moulin) have limited anti-submarine capabilities and the the sub manages to slip away after sinking the freighter Ursula Delmas.

Task Force 61 returns to Gibraltar. Sixth Fleet's carriers call at the nearby Naval Station Rota, which has not seen such a mass of warships in many decades. The ships refuel, replenish and make minor repairs.

Convoy 132 arrives in Europe, carrying the equipment and vehicles of the 32nd Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) (Wisconsin National Guard), several support units (such as truck companies, water purification detachments and field hospitals) as well as large amounts of ammunition. The escort commander turns his flagship, the nuclear missile cruiser USS Virginia, east to support the offensive into Poland.

The USS Independence battle steams west, to be positioned to support Ethiopian rebels operating in the Red Sea.

[stilleto69]

April 19, 1997


A patrol from the 27th Panzer Division makes contact with outer pickets of the US 1st Infantry Division's 4th Battalion, 16th Infantry. Unfortunately, the American troops mistake the former East German division's T-72s for Polish tanks, and five of the German tanks are destroyed in the resulting American firefight before the error is discovered.

God, this brings back memories. Having to remind my gunner during Desert Storm that Syrian tanks look like Iraqi tanks, so make sure we were shooting at the right ones.

[chico20854]

April 21, 1997

photo1 photo2 photo3 photo4
The Soviets launch a multi-division airborne assault in Iran. The 103rd Guards Airborne Division air-assaults Bandar Abbas. The 104th Guards lands at Bandar-e Khomeyni while the 105th Guards Air Assault Division seizes Bushehr while the 94th (my 57th) Air Assault Brigade seizes Chah Bahar. The assault uses nearly the entire Soviet airlift fleet, and the 94th (57th) is landed by heavy lift helicopters. The success of the assault is greatly assisted by the actions of supporting Tudeh rebels, who soften up the defenses and wreak havoc in the Iranian rear areas.

Unofficially,

Headquartery, XIII Corps is formed at Camp Mabry, Texas from the 89th and 90th ARCOMs. The new headquarters is assigned support duties in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

The troops of the 81st Infantry Brigade (Washington National Guard) return to Fort Lewis following their two-day pass. Only 14 fail to report; they are replaced by recalled reservists from the replacement pool maintained at the fort while the State Police are sent to their homes to retreive them.

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A F-15 of the 48th Fighter Interceptor Squadron from Langley AFB, Virginia, successfully launches a ASM-135 ASAT missile against Cosmos-2579, a Soviet Yantar-4 photoreconnaissance satellite that had just been launched from the Plesetsk space center.

Over Poland, the Advent Storm air attacks resume, with a multi-wing raid on the Kraśnik munitions plant.

The Soviet 26th Army Corps headquarters is redeployed from Arkhangelsk to Belomorsk, ordered to strengthen the landward defenses of Leningrad and the Finnish border.

The missile cruiser USS Virginia launches four TLAM (Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles) against the Soviet naval base in Liepaja, Latvia. The conventionally-armed missiles strike the KGB Border Guard naval detachment pier, sinking the patrol boat P-663 and inflicting significant damage to the facility.

In Iran, a massive artillery bombardment (with many chemical rounds) is fired at the Iranian positions (this is however of less power than originally planned as a US air strike had destroyed a sizeable proportion of the stores). Despite fierce resistance by the Iranian People's Army the Soviets push into the Zagros Mountains. In Bandar Abbas, under chemical attack, the Iranian militia flees, although some units put up a spirited resistance. The Gurkhas fight a desperate battle to keep the port open for reinforcements (the 27th Infantry Brigade).

Responding to continued instability in Central America and the Caribbean, the US 71st Airborne Brigade (Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma National Guards) is deployed to Honduras to assist the embattled government and make inroads against Sandanista-controlled and pro-Soviet Nicarauga.