Dark Earth Timeline

February
February 1: The US Joint Intelligence Committee notes that beginning of scrapping of four Soviet light fleet carriers at Severodvinsk indicates that their feared transfer to Soviet satellites and neutral states will not occur.
February 2: Governor George Romney announces that he will run for the Republican nomination for President.
February 3: Princess Benedikte of Denmark marries Prince Michael of Kent in Copenhagen.
February 4: Loss of a third British merchant ship off the coast of Iceland. RN investigations and the garbled report of the sole survivor indicate a sea monster attack.
February 5: A massive eruption of Popocatapetl sends volcanic ash clouds billowing into the atmosphere, shutting down air traffic into Mexico City and sending thousands fleeing the flowing lava. 
February 6: Emperor Alexander of Byzantine Greece announces that he is willing to meet with the Ottoman Sultan in order to normalise the mutual border and relations between the two states.
February 7: NVA forces equipped with PT-85 and T-55 tanks overrun a US Special Forces camp on the Khe Sanh complex perimeter, leading to a massive American response, with naval gunfire from five battleships and air strikes from eight aircraft carriers halting the NVA advance.
February 8: The largest artillery barrage of the Vietnam War to date marks the beginning of Operation Eagle, the US counteroffensive at Khe Sanh aimed at destroying the enemy and severing the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It consists of four main thrusts. Firstly, the 3rd Marine Division and the 1st Marine Raiders are to reinforce Khe Sanh in a massed Rotodyne airlift and push forward to the Liberty Line. Secondly, the I Marine Amphibious Corps commanding the 1st and 5th Marine Divisions and the South Vietnamese Marine Division are to strike from Dong Ha up Route 9 to
the Laotian border. Thirdly, the US Army’s XXV Corps, consisting of the 1st Air Cavalry, 17th Airborne, 23rd Americal and 101st Airborne Divisions and supported by Special Forces and three Army Ranger regiments, is to dropped and airlifted north from their current positions in the A Shau Valley to cut off any retreat into Laos. Finally, XX Corps is to advance to the DMZ from Quang Tri with the 15th Infantry, 29th Infantry, 32nd Infantry and 10th Armored Division, eliminating enemy support bases and preventing reinforcement. Following the barrage, over 400 USAF, USMC and USN tactical aircraft provide continual close air support of advancing troops, whilst 219 B-47s and B-52s carpet bomb NVA positions around Khe Sanh.
February 9: Ceremonial opening of the Rotterdam Metro by Crown Princess Beatrice and her husband, King Baldwin of Belgium. In Vietnam, hundreds of American aircraft are employed against NVA forces now in full retreat from Khe Sanh. Forward elements of I MAC report limited link ups with the reinforced Marine garrison, whilst the offshore battleship force provides continual support fires.
February 10: Extremely heavy fighting at Khe Sanh as US Marines, supported by tanks and armoured carriers, relentlessly push back NVA forces towards the airborne blocking force. F-111s bomb Hanoi heavily overnight.
February 11: The world’s largest man made structure, the KXJB Tower in North Dakota, is knocked over by a USMC helicopter on a training mission.
February 12: Unveiling in London of the new 72t Crusader main battle tank currently under development, along with the privately developed Vickers Valiant and Armstrong-Whitworth Ardent tanks.
February 13: The expiry of the original concession for the Suez Canal Zone is met by heavy protests against the ongoing British military presence in Egypt.
February 14: US Army Vietnam Headquarters in Saigon announce the successful conclusion of Operation Eagle, declaring that five enemy divisions have been destroyed with losses of over 30,000 killed in exchange for 1572 US KIA or MIA and 9682 WIA.
February 15: President Kennedy gives a prime time speech on Vietnam on all five networks, laying out a clear timetable for victory and rejecting any need for further use of nuclear weapons. He states that the victory at Khe Sanh is just the beginning in a greater victory in Indochina.
February 16: Two Irish schoolboys are rescued by helicopter from a County Cork cliff after fleeing the consequences of an escalating child war between two rival gangs from neighbouring villages; they are subsequently remanded to the Craggy Island Reformatory.
February 17: Mu Gia Pass is attacked by over 350 US bombers, with the raid inflicting shattering damage on the road and surrounding area.
February 18: Opening of a US-Soviet special meeting in Geneva. Soviet diplomats are surprised by an immediate US push for an agreement to avoid escalation in Vietnam and their willingness to guarantee that the United States will not invade North Vietnam.
February 19: Debut of the children’s television programme Mr Rogers’ Neighbourhood, which combines educational tours with a puppet neighbourhood populated by an array of characters.
February 20: Senator Hubert Humphrey announces that he will run for the Democratic nomination as President.
February 21: The British Empire Trans-Arctic Expedition departs Point Barrow, Alaska on what is described as one of the last great pioneer expeditions left for mankind on Earth.
February 22: Thor Heyerdahl proposes an international effort to search for the lost continent of Atlantis at an adventurer’s congress in New York City.
February 23: Pravda publishes an unusually candid editorial which discusses how the Soviet Union has caught up to the West and where it still requires additional efforts, stating that the current circumstances of Soviet citizens having only a third as many automobiles and radios per capita as the United States and half the meat and dairy consumption were factors that would be caught up in 10 years.
February 24: British germ warfare scientists at Porton Down successfully develop a new combination of a novel Congolese haemorrhaging fever, the Red Death and gangrenous blackpox. It is ordered destroyed three days later by express order of the Prime Minister on the grounds of it being a threat to mankind.
February 25: French special forces and commandos stage Operation Chacal, a series of midnight raids across Algeria, arresting or killing several hundred FLN operatives and decapitating its command structure after several months of painstaking planning and intelligence gathering. Am Armee d’Afrique spokesman states to foreign journalists that the “enemy would long rue the day of the Chacal.”
February 26: An Anglo-American special naval task force tracks down and destroys a massive 120ft super megalodon off Cape Matapan, towing its corpse back to Crete.
February 27: CBS News broadcasts ‘A Special Report from Vietnam’ presented by Walter Cronkite, where he states that the triumph at the Battle of Khe Sanh indicates that victory for the United States and its allies is in sight.
February 28: A special meeting of the General Assembly of the League of Nations passes a resolution endorsing an international campaign to wipe out the megalodon.
February 29: First public exhibition of the French Exocet anti-ship missile.

Indonesia and Poland, for starters.

These are very small 30,000t light carriers only suited to helicopters by this point. What is the big use of a ship with 20 helicopters on it in this period and what country lies in the way of progress west?

Also account for the larger White Sea Canal.

No, although that is of a secondary potential use.

Amphibious assault. If the Soviets are to have any hope of breaking out, they need to get to Denmark. To do that, they need to take Aland, Oland, Gotland and Bornholm and get past Southern Sweden.

The Swedes know this, which is one reason they have a pair of very light Harrier carriers as follow ons to the previous generation of aviation ships.

Not really. For all its size, it is still a fish and they are 20th century warships.

Steve,

1.) The losses off Iceland were from a different cause to the Mediterranean Mysteries...
2.) It was an @ accident.
3.) There won't be a contest per se. The British Army is committed to the Crusader, which is in the M1/Challenger 1 class of @, or a heavily armoured MBT for the European and Middle East battlefields. The Valiant, like the @ Vickers MBT Mk.4, is lighter and designed for export, with the largest expected markets being the Indian Army and the Royal Marines. The Ardent is a bit lighter still and is going for the South American and African markets.
4.) The concession was a standard 99 year job; it has been effectively extended on several occasions since WW2 and 1956 with the subtext that it would be very, very unfortunate should negotiations not succeed.
5.) Somewhat. The case is lifted directly from the charming 1994 Irish adaption of The War of the Buttons, but here the ingenuity and leadership of the boys gets them a slap on the wrist and then being marked for better things in a few years.
6.) Well, the general location is known/expected - somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Similarly, we knew where the Titanic went down in @, but it took until the 1980s to find it.
7.) The candid confession is from @, although was in a Komsomol paper. The approximate levels of cars and radios have been boosted to account for Dark Earth changes.
8.) The problem as Barton saw it was that there was no antidote - this was a very good biological construct that was too good.
9.) Matters have already been delayed by the lack of some 1950s triggers and the much larger colons populace. The FLN has no Nasser to support it, nor the same type of Chinese backing and in general has less of a Third World to rally support from.
10.) A lot of chips. There is a suspicion that this is the beast that has been up to no good in the Med.