On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

January 14, 1998

The northern gulf coast of Texas has been devastated in the nuclear attacks, along with most of the population of the metropolitan areas of Houston and Galveston (as well as the urban centers of Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and El Paso further inland). Thomas J. Kingsly, owner of a marina in Galveston, who also smuggled drugs - mostly marijuana and cocaine - up and down the Intracoastal Waterway in small craft and excursion boats, has escaped the nuking of Galveston-Houston and comes to live with his brother oeTexas Bill Kingsley on their fathers horse-raising ranch in Jackson County at the head of Lavaca Bay.

The final German Army unit in southwestern Poland, the 28th Panzergrenadier Division, crosses the Neisse River into Gorlitz, Germany. The unit distinguished itself in the long months since it fought in Ukraine, responsible for the destruction of four Pact divisions during the retreat.

The 76th Guards Air Assault Division is called back to the Leningrad area to perform local security duties.

Unofficially,

The first convoy of excess ships in the North Sea departs the region off Bremerhaven. Consisting of 26 ships, it moves out at 8 knots (to conserve fuel), escorted by the Danish corvette Beskytteren. Four of the ships are under tow, already stripped of excess fuel and stores and somewhat readied for long-term storage.

Pro-NATO guerrillas in northern Iran note the passage of the 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division from Afghanistan into Iranian territory. The Green Berets of the 5th Special Forces Group accompanying the partisans call the movement in to SOCCENT headquarters.

[chico20854]

January 15, 1998

It has become apparent that the bombs have petered out. Both sides seem to believe that an unlimited nuclear exchange will inevitably result in the extermination of human life and have seemed to be determined to keep nuclear strikes under some control (almost by mutual agreement). As it turned out, the effect is not to destroy humanity - only civilization.

As far as restoring power, however, the situation is grave. There are not enough technicians left in any one place to keep a nuclear power plant operating. Even with conventional power plants (thermal and hydro), as time passes, trained technicians become scarce and more units have to be shut down. Fossil-fueled plants not adjacent to fuel supplies become inoperable as the transportation system fails to deliver more fuel; even plants that maintain a stockpile are rapidly depleting them as the cold winter and extreme demand force them to produce the maximum possible output.

American fighter-bombers arrive over the troop columns of the 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division and drop a trio of B61 nuclear bombs on the massed vehicles. The strike halts the division's movement to the front.

Unofficially,

RainbowSix reports that many refugees have entered the area of Avon and Somerset and a large number linger at Minehead in Somerset, on the edge of Exmoor, where they have occupied a former Holiday Camp (the site's chalets offer ready-made accommodation).

The American destroyer USS Nicholson, a survivor of the battleship Iowa's surface action group, performs a solo anti-shipping patrol in the Baltic, hoping to interdict rumored supply runs by Soviet and Polish craft into ports along the Polish coast. It locates a small craft moving south at high speed towards the Polish coast near Kolobrzeg and closes at 30 knots. (The destroyer's sole remaining helicopter has been grounded due to lack of fuel and anti-ship missiles). When in visual range it confirms the target as a Soviet Poti-class corvette and opens fire with the its forward 5-inch gun. Seven shots are sufficient to sink the Soviet ASW ship (which fails to fire a single effective shot at the destroyer). As it slows and turns back toward deeper water, the American ship detonates a bottom-laid mine, ripping the bow off and sending the ship to the bottom.

CNN Reporter Wolf Blitzer is executed by firing squad in Perm (in Siberia) as a CIA Spy. While it is true that the CIA made use of his reporting over many years, he was never an agency employee and never knowingly and actively worked for the agency.

[Ursus Maior]

January 8, 1998
STAVKA (or the remnants thereof) orders the deployment of the 260th Motor-Rifle Division in the Ural Military District. The mobilization-only division, located at Shadrinsk on the steppes of Siberia, has been forming since July, although other divisions were higher priority in receiving men and equipment.

Actually, this website (http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/260msd.htm) lists the division as a category III (or "C") division, not a mobilization-only division. But, that might be nitpicking.

[chico20854]

Actually, this website (http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/260msd.htm) lists the division as a category III (or "C") division, not a mobilization-only division. But, that might be nitpicking.

Thanks!

I extensively mined that website; it is an incredible resource the likes of which I'm sure the DIA would have killed for (or prosecuted anyone that revealed if they had their own internal version!) back in the 80s. The page above that in the structure http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/msd.htm lists it among the mobilization-only divisions, which is why I categorized it as such. There was an earlier version of the site that had a heirarchy of readiness from A all the way to G. (A to C are the familiar ones, D is a unit like this that has a fairly substantial equipment pool and cadre, F are training divisions and G are more along the lines of "a warehouse full of SKSs and RPDs, two colonels and a list of local reservists."

[chico20854]

January 16, 1998

The Mid-Atlantic states are, in some ways, the hardest hit by the war. The famine and dislocation resulting from the nuclear attacks causes these states to experience a reduction in population levels unprecedented in human history. Linden, Perth Amboy, Paulsboro, and Westville New Jersey have all been subjected to nuclear attacks. Almost a million people became casualties in these strikes, and more die in the civil strife that followed. The northern areas of Manhattan are almost completely abandoned. Inhabitants this far north had always lived with some minor fear of the motives of their neighbors to the south and are among the first to flee to northern New Jersey and upstate New York. The remaining major urban centers in Pennsylvania - Harrisburg and Pittsburgh - remain intact except for the inevitable episodes of looting and food riots that winter. Electricity and fuel are sharply rationed everywhere, of course, and the general breakdown of transportation and food distribution leads to severe food shortages and widespread starvation just as they did in most other parts of the country. Most rural areas, however, possessed of long-standing traditions of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, continue very much as they always had, their inhabitants enduring lean, hard times with patience, determination, and outright stubbornness. The region's principal problems stem directly from the controversial refugee relocation program first proposed as a civil defense option twenty years before the war began. Most of the refugges from the Washington, DC area are absorbed into the more rural areas of Virginia and Maryland.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Providence Freedom is delivered in San Diego, California, the last of 150 of the class delivered.

In Paris, General George Stark, DIA station chief in Amsterdam (and the senior DIA station chief alive in Europe) has agreed to "assistance" terms with the French government. In addition to providing for French and Belgian government sustainment of NATO troops that are not (or were) belligerents in the recent invasion until those same governments can provide for the evacuation of them and their equipment and supplies, the French and Belgians are to provide 10 million of the following: rounds of small arms ammunition, pre-packaged combat meals and gallons of diesel fuel. The fuel will be transferred along with 1 million gallons of aviation fuel using NATO's Central European Pipeline System, which despite multiple Spetsnaz attacks, remains partially functional. The French and Belgians will also provide 100,000 rounds of 20-40mm autocannon ammunition, 100,000 mortar rounds, 100,000 artillery rounds, 25,000 105mm tank gun rounds, 25,000 120mm tank gun rounds and 100,000 tons of bulk food. The Belgian Air Force will transfer 12 F-16As, 500 Sidewinder Air-to-Air missiles, 2,5000 dumb bombs and a package of spare parts, as well as providing parts and assistance in returning the 50th and 86th TFWs' grounded F-16s at Hahn and Ramstein Air Bases in the occupied zone to service. (The fuel required for the evacuation flights of USAF and RAF aircraft from the zone is to be provided by the French and is in addition to the aviation fuel transferred under the agreement). The French Air Force will also provide assistance in returning six grounded C-130s and two E-3 AWACS to service. Finally, the transmission lines across the Rhine are to be reactivated, with 500 MW of electrical power to be continuously provided at no cost for the remainder of the year. (These amounts are much reduced from Starks initial demands, but both sides realiized that the former pre-war allies were in a complicated situation, that France and Belgium are both officially neutral in the NATO-Pact conflict, and in some ways having to adjust their thinking as both sides retain sufficient nuclear weapons to inflict enormous damage on the other).

The sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl is released from the shipyard in its homeport of Bergen, Norway, where it was completing a retrofit that modernized the ship's systems and restored much that had deteriorated over the ship's 84 years of service. The work is nearly complete and the owners (a school ship consortium) want the ship available rather than completely updated.

The 289th Motor-Rifle Division is activated in the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan from surviving students and faculty of the Baku Higher Combined Arms Command School, a motor-rifle officer training academy. Conditions in the area are terrible and it will be some time before the division is ready to support Transcaucasian Front.

[chico20854]

January 17, 1998

The 40th Training Division is formed at Camp Rilea, Oregon from surviving personnel of the 40th ID(M), which was decimated in fighting outside Warsaw the prior summer.

Aside from Charleston, South Carolina has suffered little damage in the nuclear exchange, while nuclear strikes along Mississippi and Alabamas gulf coasts have disrupted the fishing trade.

The new year of 1998 in the USSR is ushered in with famine and epidemic. The nuclear exchange has ruined almost the entire harvest of the Soviet Union. Fuel shortages, coupled with the extremely cold winter, lack of water and medical care, and the breakdown of civilian control all contribute to the huge number of deaths in the country.

Unofficially,

The Belgian defense minister objects to the terms agreed to the prior day by his French counterpart, especially when word is received by his logistics chief that much of the ammunition and fuel to be provided under the deal are to come from Belgian stocks. (While a valid complaint in regards to the relative burden between the two nations, much of the Belgian materiel is of German, American or Dutch origin, or already in widespread use among NATO combatant nations and therefore, less likely to be detected by the Soviets as aid that violates the nations' neutrality. Likewise, Belgian fuel depots are already linked into the CEPS pipeline system.)

The Royal Australian Navy takes delivery of its last ship for a great many years, the frigate HMAS Arunta, from the Williamstown shipyard near Melbourne.

The mobilization-only 106th Motor-Rifle (my 232nd Rear Area Protection) Division is activated at Slavuta in the Carpathian Military District. The unit, the shadow formation of the 97th Guards Motor-Rifle Division, is initially assigned anti-partisan duties, where its woeful equipment stocks (with two battalions with BTR-152s and two and a half battalions of T-34/85s) are less of a problem than if it were to face NATO troops or even the heavily armed remnants of the Jugoslav and Romanian armies in the Balkans.

[Homer]

CEPS runs through France and Belgium in addition to the belligerent NATO countries and is also carries civilian capacity on a space available basis. I wonder how much activity there's been by Soviet/WARPAC SOF and sabotage assets Or how many small scale engagements by French and Belgian security forces.

[Ursus Maior]

Thanks!

I extensively mined that website; it is an incredible resource the likes of which I'm sure the DIA would have killed for (or prosecuted anyone that revealed if they had their own internal version!) back in the 80s. The page above that in the structure http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/msd/msd.htm lists it among the mobilization-only divisions, which is why I categorized it as such. There was an earlier version of the site that had a heirarchy of readiness from A all the way to G. (A to C are the familiar ones, D is a unit like this that has a fairly substantial equipment pool and cadre, F are training divisions and G are more along the lines of "a warehouse full of SKSs and RPDs, two colonels and a list of local reservists."

The internet is just such an awesome place for geeks to find information on their subjects of passion. It's amazing what one can come across here. I bet DIA had those infos in the 80s, a lot of the barracks are clearly referenced with US terminology and names, but imagine a broader public of experts could have had these information back then: Big data analyzes are just so powerful when compared to smaller data studies.

[chico20854]

January 18, 1998

Quebec declares its independence from the Confederation of Canada and closes its borders. The Quebecois say that the destruction of Quebec is the fault of the English-dominated government and their French puppets in Ottawa. The new government of Quebec establishes a national capital at Sherbrooke and calls to France for assistance in defending Quebec's right to nationhood if the need arises. The various police, militia, and army personnel in Quebec are organized into a national army.

The 126th (my 92nd) Guards Motor-Rifle Division, a Category C unit from the Odessa Military District, is ordered to depart its home station to bolster Soviet anti-partisan operations of Jugoslavia.

Unofficially,

A French VAB APC of the 94e Rgiment d'Infanterie, on patrol outside Breda in occupied Holland, is destroyed by a roadside explosion and unknown assailants open fire on the survivors. None of the French soldiers live long enough to see the arrival of the relief force.

A second convoy of excess cargo ships departs the North Sea anchorage off the German port of Bremerhaven. Meanwhile, the shut-down of the ships of the first similar convoy is nearly complete in a fjord outside Stavanger, Norway. The ships are drained of fuel (both heavy fuel oil and diesel), their light armament removed and all ammunition transferred to support vessels, and all food and consumables removed. All hatches and portholes are sealed, ships of similar size are "rafted" together and secured to moorings on the seabed.

Colombias civilian government is overthrown by Army and National Police units that are in the pay of the drug cartels, joined by the forces of the FARC and ELN. The Colombian Navy and Air Force, joined by the AFEUR anti-terrorist unit and about a quarter of the Army and National Police remain loyal to the government as civil war rapidly breaks out, with the rest of the Army and National Police, joined by FARC and ELN guerrillas and cartel militias opposing them. USMC trainers and US Army Special Forces troops that are training and assisting the Colombian military are caught up in the fighting.

[chico20854]

January 19, 1998

Despite the nuclear strike near Omaha, the city is not abandoned because of its central location and proximity to the grain belt, and the fact that it is a rail transportation hub. West Virginia, while not a target of the nuclear strikes, is undesirable as a relocation site due to its remoteness. The only nuclear target in Indiana is the Whiting oil refinery facilities in the extreme north. Casualties from radiation are significant, due to the heavier strikes in Illinois. The large cities are not evacuated, since food is relatively easy to get to them, but civil unrest reduces the population. Wisconsin was not a target of the nuclear strikes and is not severely damaged by radiation. Disease, shortages, and exposure take their toll, however.

Colonel Piotr Bulganin, a GRU agent in the UK, is captured by the British Army.

The armies of the world are in sad shape following the long 1997 campaign and nuclear attacks on both the forces in the field and their homelands, the source of ammunition, reinforcements and replacements, fuel, spare parts and new weapons and vehicles. The average strength of NATO combat divisions at the front has fallen to about 8,000, with U.S. divisions running at about half of that. Warsaw Pact divisions now vary widely in strength, running from 500 to 10,000 effectives, but mostly in the 2-4,000 range. Lack of fuel, spare parts, and ammunition temporarily paralyze the armies. There are no surviving governments to negotiate peace, which, unfortunately, could have come if they had existed. Only the military command structures remain intact, and they remain faithful to the final orders of their governments. In a time of almost universal famine, only the military has the means of securing and distributing rations. Military casualties have been much lower than casualties among civilians.

Filming of sitcom Darwin Was A Monkeys Uncle aboard the replica USS Constitution is halted when it becomes apparent that TV sitcoms will no longer be aired.

Unofficially,

The Belgian Defense Minister is replaced as the Belgian Prime Minister travels to Paris for discussions on the administration of the occuplied territories. As he leaves Brussels his motorcade is confronted by mobs of angry Dutch-speaking Belgians, livid about the treatment of their ethnic kinsmen in Holland.

STAVKA orders the activation of another mobilization-only division, the 160th Motor-Rifle, in the North Caucasus Military District. The division is formed from troops assigned to a PVO missile training brigade and excess personnel from the Yeysk naval air base. Most of the units stockpile of equipment has been depleted in the years of war that preceded its activation, leaving a handful of relics from the Great Patriotic War as the divisions artillery and tank park.

SOUTHCOM is only in intermittent contact with government and military commanders in the United States due to the chaos from the attacks. Traffic through the Panam Canal is almost non-existent as power and fuel shortages sweep the United States and other countries cutting shipments by sea.

[chico20854]

Janaury 20, 1998

France recognizes Quebec as a sovereign nation and pledges its support of its independence.

The state of Utah has not been touched by the nuclear exchange (except for a few radiation-linked deaths). The post-strike food shortages do not cause the casualties they do elsewhere. This is partially due to the state's agricultural self-sufficiency, and partially to emergency food supplies kept by LDS church members and the philanthropic principles urged by that church's teachings. Despite the nuclear strike on Cheyenne Mountain, damage from radiation and famine is not severe in adjacent Colorado. The refineries and the aerospace industry of Washington have been destroyed in the nuclear exchange, while almost 13 percent of the megatonnage of the nuclear strikes fell on targets in the state of California. In Alaska, the North Slope oil fields were not a target of the nuclear strikes, since there are no refinery facilities there. However, the Alaskan pipeline has been cut in several places by Soviet ground troops, and the storage and shipping facilities at the pipeline's southern terminus were rendered unusable when X Corps withdrew in the fall. Most of the oil fields in the rest of the state (around Anchorage, for instance) are severely damaged as well, even if not in areas occupied by Soviet troops.

Colonel Piotr Bulganin, the GRU agent captured the prior day, kills himself before the Army can obtain any major secrets from him about the GRU.

The commander of the 126th (my 92nd) Guards Motor-Rifle Division responds to STAVKA's orders for his division to depart Ukraine and assume anti-partisan duties in Jugoslavia. (Unofficially), He notes that his division is severely under strength and has no food, fuel or service ammunition and that STAVKA has made no transport available to move the unit to Jugoslavia. He also notes that his division, even if at full strength, lacks the ability to self-deploy over such a long distance. He therefore respectfully declines to move his unit until such resources are made available.

[castlebravo92]

Just as an aside, Texas got 20% of the raw megatonnage...and that's without counting the Robison and Lemont "TX" strikes.

Simulated blast/thermal casualties using 1997 population numbers:

Row Labels    Sum of DEAD    Sum of INJURED
  AK              56,458         63,775
  AR              17,068          4,804
  CA           2,351,092      3,959,548
  CO              80,312        212,910
  D.C.           154,505        209,690
  DE              29,978         72,862
  FL              78,144        155,504
  GA              96,106        113,808
  HA             142,806        173,417
  IL             161,965        382,009
  IN             292,938        687,750
  KS              74,068        128,815
  KY              18,108         31,010
  LA             317,448        434,875
  MD              73,376        196,922
  MI               3,084          2,312
  MO              70,093        124,063
  MS              33,175         29,282
  MT              22,008         22,743
  ND              13,808          1,490
  NE             128,254        157,453
  NJ           1,190,951      2,482,863
  OH             239,258        395,548
  OK              85,812        102,746
  ON             227,526        248,054
  PA             394,571      1,337,164
  SC               6,553         34,633
  TX           1,423,363      2,088,855
  VA             438,193        646,737
  WA              16,691         25,812
  WY              26,419         23,055
Grand Total     8,264,131    14,550,509

Sometime this annum I hope to have fallout casualties modeled with a decent fallout model (decent means better than the quick and dirty elliptical WSEG-10 algo used by NukeMapTools) capable of producing a nice fallout map as well.

The ON casualties are ONLY the Windsor Ontario attack, and all of those are actually Michigan, US casualties (I don't have gridded population data for Canada added to the population database), so obviously MI is grossly undercounted in the above pivot table.

Howling Wilderness states the population of the United States was reduced to 68% of it's prewar level by Jan 1 of 1999, or about 87 million dead after 13 months. If we use a rule of thumb and say half of the injured in the above table died from their injuries, and throw in another 5 million deaths from fallout, that gets you to ~20 million dead, so you need to fill in another ~67 million dead due to famine, disease, and civil unrest through 1999.

And then another 50 million dead through June of 2000. That's a lot of narrative writing to fill in the handwaving details that GDW left to the referee (or Chico in this case).

And if you go with the Howling Wilderness bleakness, another 100 million dead once the drought induced famine winds it's course, landing you at ~34 million survivors by 2002-2003 timeframe.

As an aside, I think the drought should be retconned into something a little more milder than killing off 75% of remaining population. The severity of the drought simply is not realistic given the size and water diversity in the United States (the US has a more reliable and redundant agriculture water structure at the national level than just about any other country, ESPECIALLY in the Deep South, where - even if you turned off the rain for a year or two, there's enough ground water able to be tapped to sustain subsistence agriculture for the half-sized surviving population.

[Homer]

Drought

The drought always felt a bit contrived from my position. Kind of like they needed a way to keep the badness going.

The big killers I could see would stem from a disruption of petroleum based society, leadership casualties, and a loss of population and resource control. The final straw was the Mexican invasion, which finally destroyed any progress made towards addressing the above.

Society in 1997 (and now) runs on petroleum. That's everything from a lack of petrochemical feedstocks for fertilizers to fuel for the firetruck coming to put your jury rigged chimney fire out. Systems just grind to a halt until alternative sources can be found or production restored; think the last harvest scene in Threads. Coal, burning trash, etc. hydro might answer some requirements, but they lack the ability supplant the omnipresence of petroleum. That said, there's going to be "islands" of (relative) better off (NW PA/W NY, ARK-LA-TEX, OK, etc.) where some oil still flows, and things limp along with shortages.

The strikes and chaotic post-strike environment prevented a smooth succession of leadership. Cannon and Chico's history have done a great job of showcasing the effects of disruption of leadership across the nation on unity of effort. Despite having a shell of a plan in place, with national caches, evacuation plans, and prepared refugee areas there was no one in authority post-strike to ensure execution and more importantly adjustment. While a functioning NCA was able to execute a series of strikes against the USSR, there was no corresponding authority to conduct a concurrent campaign to mitigate (control seems unachievable) the effects of damage and ensure the "islands" were identified and connected into what remained of a national web. Or, for that matter, to conduct triage of surviving populations and allocate resources.

Both of the above feed the problem of population and resource control. In the post-attack environment, the challenge of marrying vital sectors of the population up with the resources needed to rebuild elements of the national production, distribution, and storage networks was unmet. Instead, both Cannon and Chico's history show the effects of uncontrolled groups of refugees consuming resources that could be better used else where. Functioning leadership protecting the productive "islands", determining distribution of resources on a state and national level, with the wherewithal to either enforce order or enforce a blockade of non-essential areas was required for effective management of the crisis.

People die in dribs and drabs due to the failure of the above. Without an effective means of providing the resources of a petroleum based society, there's less of everything to go around, and fewer ways to keep what there is; so people starve, die for lack of soap and bacitracin, or freeze. Lack of effective leadership lets the crisis continue and deepen- nobody is making the calls to stop throwing good money after bad and resources (food, fuel, security forces, spare parts) are squandered (Just look at what's lost when SUBBASE Groton is overrun). Finally, by not adjusting plans to protect and reallocate what was left to surviving industry resources were squandered in ineffective sectors or responding to ancillary threats (imagine a full court press to muster enough production to properly process and distribute the 1997 harvest or if the response to the Mexican invasion had been handled by not denuding the country of remaining military forces).

Just my thoughts

[chico20854]

January 21, 1998

Nothing official for today!

Officers and senior NCOs of the small French garrison of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland board a light transport aircraft for a low-level flight to Sherbrooke, capital of the newly independent nation of Quebec, to help form and train the new nation's army.

US Army Europe begins a series of organizational and logistic streamlining as the first evacuation convoys from French occupied zone begin arriving. Administratively, the flow of replacement troops and equipment has almost entirely halted, requiring the losses sustained in the prior year's campaigning to be filled from resources already in theatre. The Army's support structure is in apalling condition between attacks from Soviet Spetsnaz teams and pro-Soviet partisans, the tactical nuclear exchange and the French invasion. The first evacuation convoys carry troops of the 21st Theater Army Command, who are tasked to establish a new support structure in central Germany. The command establishes a headquarters in the Kransberg Castle, a prewar US Army facility with extensive bunkers north of Frankfurt and begins planning to reoccupy a variety of Bundeswehr and US Army storage sites and ammunition dumps (all long emptied of materiel) to house the troops being withdrawn from the occupied zone. Likewise, the Air Force reassembles the remnants of 17th Air Force headquarters (its home station at Sembach Air Base was nuked in September) at the air defense control bunker under Erndtebrck, not far away from 21 TAACOM and begins coordinating the reassembly of USAF Germany.

The mobilization-only 283rd Motor Rifle Division is activated in the Crimea, formed from stay-behind troops of the 126th Motor-Rifle Division. By 1950s standards it would have been considered underequipped, with three battalions of BTR-152 APCs, a full complement of T-34/85 tanks and various Second World War and 1950s artillery pieces and FROG-5 SSMs; the division's sole anti-tank weapons are a battery of 57mm ZiS-2 anti-tank guns and less than 50 RPG-2 rocket launchers.

[chico20854]

January 22, 1998

Noting in canon for the day

The El Paso area is on the verge of being overwhelmed by streams of refugees from Mexico. 9th Texas Brigade's harsh methods of dealing with the flow soon cause tensions with the Mexican government.

The destroyer USS Morton, approaching Kenya through the Indian Ocean, is intercepted by an A-1 Skyraider of the 2nd Battalion, 228th Aviation Regiment, which is performing a routine surface sweep.

The first evacuation flights of F-16s depart Hahn Air Base in the occupied zone to Jever Air Base near the German North Sea Coast.

Several German corps (VI, X, XI and XII Korps) are repositioned internally to reinforce the remnants of the territorials that were overrun during the French invasion as well as provide internal security and spread the burden of supporting troops across larger areas.

Within the US Army in Europe, instructions are issued to selectively deactivate subordinate units, reassigning their remaining troops and equipment to other subunits pending receipt of limited numbers of additional troops from rear area, naval and air force commands. Commanders are given wide discretion to promote soldiers who displayed leadership aptitude over the preceding months into leadership positions, pending receipt of additional troops.

7th Army and 4th Army's G-4s (supply officers) issue a directive to centralize control of key supplies currently held at division and corps level. Fuel, rations, guided missiles, MLRS rockets, chemical and tactical nuclear weapons and FASCAM, ICM and Assault Breaker artillery rounds are all to be managed centrally; initially commanders must cease issuing them without further permission and report stock on hand, permitting US Army Europe to reallocate these scarce resources to where most needed.

To the west, French Army commanders are taken aback by the sheer quantity of US Army and USAF materiel to be evacuated as American commanders refuse to abandon the smallest scrap of assets built up in over 50 years of occupation. Belgian Air Force technicians complete the transfer of the first F-16A, handing it over to a small American team that inspects the aircraft before flying it off to Jever Air Base.

Rains in eastern Africa begin to slow military operations as the limited road network, already heavily damaged by fighting and overtaxed even in peacetime, degrades under flooding and poor drainage. The weather also limits aerial resupply operations, even if the small fleet of support aircraft (and requisitioned civilian aircraft) had fuel and sufficient capacity to resupply the fighting forces.