As an allied task force attempts to break the quarantine of Taiwan, missteps and miscalculations place China and the US on a fatal collision course. Background:What if the Berlin Airlift or the blockade of Cuba had not only failed, but ignited a war? This is what was in my mind when preparing for this episode. I also wanted to explore how, despite characters on both sides of the Pacific not wishing war, events can quickly spiral beyond control through miscommunication, mistakes and overconfidence. Lastly, I wanted to take a first, hard look at how fast and lethal a modern naval battle could be – in particular when in such close proximity where the benefits of range and SAMs are reduced. The 1980’s tanker war and the Falklands War both were great resources for this episode. Commentary:Pronunciations of places, names and translations are my best guess or through open resources such as Google Translation, etc. As always, uniforms are not exact. The rank shown on the uniforms of some of the characters are also inaccurate because they are not available in the gaming platforms used. Some of the ships, kit, etc., shown may be not be correct because of limited available mods. In some instances, replacements had to be made. I have to work with what I have!Lastly, for those in Poland who may be saying WTF, my intent here is not to throw the Polish Navy under the bus. The theme of this episode is about how the policymakers on all sides misjudged and miscalculated things that, as a result, spun us into the situation we are (story-wise) in and placed those on the front lines in harm’s way. So why pick Poland? After much research and discussion, Poland was the best fit politically and has precedence conducting joint counter-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean. Being at the end of their original tour and completely tossed into an operation they hadn’t trained nor prepared for, mistakes would be inevitable for anyone in that spot.